Hacker Cinema
The Dish
2000 · Film · 101 min
Directed by Rob Sitch
A group of maverick scientists on a remote Australian sheep farm are the globe's only hope for obtaining the epic images of man's first steps on the moon.
9 positive3 neutralfrom 12 commenters
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12 comments on Hacker News
See [1] for a funny nostalgic Australian movie about it titled "The Dish".
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/
There’s a fun movie about this particular antenna, starring Sam Neill (from another famous historic movie, Jurassic Park).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dish
Worth a watch.
Undoubtedly. But I'm glad my own country got to at least play a small part, which of course we had to make a movie about (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dish).
It is for my family. It may not be for yours. When they reach the age where they have their own cellphones / social media media then it's different. Freshly popped popcorn from the microwave + salt + butter and introducing kiddos to "the dish" movie after _they have been to the actual dish_ is A+ and highly recommend.
Absolutely NOT the same dish, but if you've not seen this film, you are missing out:
The Dish: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/
12 Monkeys - Travelling back in time to try and track the outbreak of a virus that wipes out most of humanity.
The Abyss - Survival and discovery on a deep water mining platform.
Apollo 13 - Look at the rescue efforts of this historical NASA moon mission. (Does it count as sci-fi?)
The Dish - Also not quite sci-fi, but a comedy about Australia's involvement in the first moon landing.
Battle for Terra - Surprisingly good animated movie about invading aliens.
District 9 - Alien refugee camp in Johannesburg.
Gravity - Astronaut stranded in orbit, trying to get back to Earth.
The Martian - Survival and rescue of a lone astronaut stranded on Mars.
Moon - After a serious accident, a solitary worker on the Moon discovers a conspiracy.
Oblivion - A veteran assigned to extract Earth's remaining resources begins to question what he knows about his mission and himself.
Predator - The classic that launched the franchise.
Predestination - Faithful adaptation of Heinlein's short story, "All You Zombies."
The Prestige - Some minor sci-fi elements. At the end of the Nineteenth Century in London, two stage magicians engage in a battle to create the ultimate illusion whilst sacrificing everything they have to outwit the other.
Source Code - Using limited time-travel to try and get information to stop a second, larger terrorist attack.
WALL E - In the distant future, a small waste-collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.
There's a story there...
Yes, the antenna made famous by "The Dish", as the antenna that received the first footsteps from the Moon is 300km away at Parkes. However, the movie took some license with the truth so the antenna that actually received the first footsteps and rightfully owns the fame was the Honeysuckle Creek antenna at the then NASA tracking station: which was a few kilometres away from the current Canberra Deep Space Tracking Complex at Tidbinbilla (the subject of the article).
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Edit: The Honeysuckle Creek antenna was moved to Tidbinbilla, where it saw further service and now remains as an historic landmark.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeysuckle_Creek_Tracking_Station
What about the Arecibo Observatory? It has a 1,000 ft (300 m) diameter dish. It is well know from the James Bond Golden Eye (1995) movie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory .
Are there physical limitations that would prevent a communication to Pluto?
The Parkes Observatory has only a 230 ft (70 m) dish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes_Observatory . It is well known from the first Apollo moon landing and The Dish (2000) movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/
As an aside, their Twitter account mentions that it was an observatory in Australia that was relaying the signals from Mars:
http://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity/status/232337630711382017
As it happens, it was an Australian observatory that relayed the first video of Armstrong walking on the moon. There was a fun movie made (made by the D-Generation/Working Dog guys) based on that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dish
There's also a movie on something like this, about the moon landing: "The Dish" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/). Was a good movie I believe, but it's been a while.
The square peg/round hole sequence is of course the embodiment of the hacker spirit (not an original thought of mine, but I can't seem to find the original URL at the moment).
Another space/hackish movie would be "The Dish" about the Australian engineers in charge of one the (of course) dishes used to communicate with Apollo 11. Cliffhanger scene: the dish goes out of alignment for some reason and they need to scramble to regain contact in time to televise the moon landing.
And of course there's always "The Right Stuff".
The Dish tells the story of the Australian downlink that provided communications support for the Apollo moon landing. True to life and truly funny picture of engineers collaborating on some hard problems against a deadline.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/