According to the NASA blog, it took “more than 40 engineers, techies, artists, and circus types” several months to create the video, and they learned some lessons along the way:
We learned something very important about physics in the process of making this video. It is much harder to make small things reliable. Temperature, friction, even dust all greatly effect the repeatability and timing of the small stuff. The first minute of the video failed at a rate that was tenfold of the rest of the machine. Remembering that rule about getting everything in one shot — if your module is further down the line in the video, you’re in big trouble if it doesn’t work! The machine took half an hour and 20 people to reset.
Read more at the NASA blog!
/via io9
Awesome. Just awesome. RGMs make me smile. For that matter, so does OK Go.
Yep, awesome – no better word for it.
Cool indeed!
Thank you for the smile on my face. That was wonderful.
Now I’m wondering what the Whoopie Goldbergian dream video would be. It’d probably just be footage of her actually getting laughs.
It was marvelous! I showed it to my bedridden mother and it made her day too.
Thanks for sharing!
They (OK Go) gave a fun interview about this on The nerdist podcast on 04/22/10.
Here’s a fun parody video someone made in response to this. It really captures all the fun we had as children playing – or trying to play – Mousetrap.