Don’t forego the experience
I’ve seen rockets fly upwards into space, and the pictures don’t do them justice. At the moment of ignition, there’s a flash of light so brilliant that it nearly paralyzes you. It’s as if the world has been rewritten, and the subsequent thundering sound from the explosion is your wake up call for the future. Whatever the outcome, the human spirit lives in the journey’s beginning.
There’s a whole class of experiences that can’t be replicated on screen, though we certainly try. We can recreate the colors of the sky, but not its depth, curvature, or luminosity. We can show the wind blowing through a field, but absent is the effect of friction and the scent of charged air. A waterfall looks impressive on the screen, but your expensive home theater speakers won’t tell you the whole story.
The missing factor is energy.
Film can effectively capture or simulate motion, but not the energy of motion, because energy cannot be created from nothing. The energy of the waterfall is way out of the speakers’ league, and the screen can’t compete with the energy of solid rocket fuel ignition. The effect of experiencing these things first-hand has permanence and meaning.
So says the guy who’s typing away at a corporate workstation and hasn’t heard crickets chirping in a forest for more than 3 years. :-)