The 80-sec­ond clip above cap­tures a rock­et launch, some­thing of which we’ve all seen footage at one time or anoth­er. What makes its view­ers call it “the great­est shot in tele­vi­sion” still today, 45 years after it first aired, may take more than one view­ing to notice. In it, sci­ence his­to­ri­an James Burke speaks about how “cer­tain gas­es ignite, and that the ther­mos flask per­mits you to store vast quan­ti­ties of those gas­es safe­ly, in their frozen liq­uid form, until you want to ignite them.” Use a suf­fi­cient­ly large flask filled with hydro­gen and oxy­gen, design it to mix the gas­es and set light to them, and “you get that” — that is, you get the rock­et that launch­es behind Burke just as soon as he points to it. One can only admire Burke’s com­po­sure in dis­cussing such tech­ni­cal mat­ters in a shot that had to be per­fect­ly timed on the first and only take.…