It's an expensive indulgence, I know, and if I'd thought about it too long I might've gotten cold feet. No regrets, but I'll have to be a little more careful elsewhere for a while.

This touches on the broader question of who owns the material. Fundamentally you and I do, as the taxpayers who funded NASA, and the law says the original material is in the public domain. But as I said in my original gushing post, we also owe Spacecraft Films for spending the money to digitize it so that it'll be preserved for all of us. I was reading their site again just now, and the FAQ mentions that every time they digitized a roll of film, they left behind one copy of the digital version with the agency that owned the original (generally NASA and the National Archives). That confirms my feeling that giving money to Spacecraft Films is, at least in part, a public service. I get the feeling that people running SF are "one of us", and to them too it's more than just the money.

It's possible that after each set has been on the market for a while, and sales have peaked, that they'll start being broadcast so that everyone can watch. It's right up the alley of The History Channel, and probably Discovery as well. Knowing that my buying the DVDs now will make it possible for other people to see them later reinforces the feeling that my money's well-spent.