Verrrry Interrrresting!
Posted on 07/09/2009 10:44:21 PM PDT by Rodamala
ECSTATIC space officials at Nasa could be about to unveil one of their most stunning discoveries for 40 years — new and amazingly clear footage of the first moon landing.
The release of the new images next month could be one of the most talked about events of the summer.
The television images the world has been used to seeing of the historic moment when Neil Armstrong descended down a ladder onto the moon’s surface in 1969 is grainy, blurry and dark.
The following scenes, in which the astronauts move around the lunar lander, are so murky it is difficult to make out exactly what is going on, causing conspiracy theorists to claim the entire Apollo 11 mission was an elaborate fraud.
However, viewers have only ever seen such poor quality footage because the original analogue tapes containing the pictures beamed direct from the lunar surface were lost almost as soon as they were recorded.
Instead, a poor quality copy made from a 16mm camera pointing at a heavily compressed image on a black and white TV screen has been the only record of the event.
(Excerpt) Read more at express.co.uk ...
This is the first I’ve heard of the finding of these tapes. But the fact that they were missing was fodder for the uber-paranoid “moon landings were faked” garbage, so bravo!
The lost NASA tapes: Restoring lunar images after 40 years in the vault
Computerworld | June 29, 2009 | Lamont Wood
Posted on 07/09/2009 5:32:33 PM PDT by Paleo Conservative
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2289311/posts
It was a suicide mission. A computer with all the power of a Hershey Bar controlling a mission with a lander that had never actually been flown because it couldn't have been, sheesh! These guys should be dessicated skeletons floating around the sun by now.
But the biggest question is why risk killing or even worse, stranding, guys on the surface of the moon watching them die. The Soviets would have had the upper hand and America would have been criticized by the rest of the world for RUSHING into space with no safeguards etc., etc. Talk about a throw of the dice.
Verrrrrrrry Interrrresting!
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/110442/WORLD-EXCLUSIVE-NASA-finds-missing-moon-landing-tapes
Ping! Ping! Ping!
SIX years earlier!:
“Were lost almost as soon as they were recorded.”
Wow! Affirmative action hiring in 1969?
I bet it’s good. Why is it Australia makes such great movies and Hollywood makes such crap? I know Australia must make some stinkers, but usually they are very good, beautiful photography, good story line, etc.
That the tapes were misplaced has been well known for a long time. This is very easy to do in an institution that keeps tons and tons of data. At my laboratory, we have a warehouse of data storage packed ceiling high with mostly dusty storage.
I had heard a couple years ago that NASA was making an attempt to discover whether these tapes were gone forever or just misplaced. I am excited that they have found them!
Hey, this is the same NASA that helped fudge numbers for the global warming hoax - opps, I mean 'global warmning eco emergency... I mean, not "fudge" but provide... I mean... how dare you! /s
Thanks for the ping!
Thank you, I would’ve missed this without the ping (it also happens to be my first ever memory).
thanks for posting. I’d heard about the tapes. Didn’t know they’d located them.
bttt
Yes, I definitely lived through that period. Even had “the moon rock” spend a couple of nights in my home when I was in late elementary school (dad’s job involved escorting Neil Armstrong around for a few days, while he was on his international victory tour with the moon rock).
Looking back on it now, it seems insane to have undertaken such a venture with the primitive computers that were state of the art then (so primitive that it was still much easier to do calculations on a slide rule, as demonstrated so well in the historically accurate movie Apollo 13). But our technology didn’t seem primitive to us at the time, of course, just as the technology we have now doesn’t seem primitive to us now (our grandchildren will no doubt giggle over the giant, glitch-prone boxes we currently think of as our very advanced computers). Forging ahead with optimistic confidence is responsible for most of the worthwhile achievements of the human species.
Why not release them on July 20?
That is incorrect. The video camera system used on the lunar module was designed to minimize bandwidth and battery power (and the weight of the addtional batteries). It sent a 320 line non-interlaced signal at 10 frames per second.
The old NTSC broadcast standard that was discontinued last month has interlaced 525 lines at 30 frames per second (about 480 for the picture, the rest between frames), while the PAL and SEACAM systems has interlaced 625 lines at 25 frames per second. The video transmitted around around the world had to be converted from the non-standard video transmissions from the lunar module to other standards like NTSC in the US, PAL in most of Europe and Australia, and SECAM in France (the Soviet Union didn't carry the video). Nowadays one would use a digital scan converter. Back in 1969, it was done mechanically or optically. Getting the original signal recordings would allow the video data to be converted to digital and digitally scan converted.
TV from the Moon
The television camera taken to the lunar surface was a Westinghouse designed and built slow-scan black and white camera with a vertical resolution of 320 lines scanned at 10 frames per second. This camera was chosen because the available bandwidth from the Moon (500kHz) was not sufficient for a standard TV signal.
On Earth, the received slow scan signal was converted to a standard TV picture (in this case, the American standard of 525 lines and 30 frames per second) using specially built scan converters. At Goldstone and Honeysuckle, the conversion was done on site. The Parkes slow scan TV signal was sent to the OTC (Overseas Telecommunications Commission) Paddington gateway exchange in Oxford Street, Paddington, in Sydney and converted there.
I do have trouble believing even giant bureaucracy would lose tapes of the THE VERY FIRST landing on the moon.
But I’m not into the conspiracy stuff. Just don’t believe they would be that stupid to lose something of such great importance and value to the world.
Cedar wrote:
I do have trouble believing even giant bureaucracy would lose tapes of the THE VERY FIRST landing on the moon.
You have just about every kind of “John Doe” on that payroll....
Basically it becomes a “your guilty before proven innocent” sometimes when it comes to dealing with the government. Some are nice, some are not. Just toss that dice.......
NASA Holds Briefing to Release Restored Apollo 11 Moonwalk Video
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=28712
These aren’t from the lost telemetry tapes but from the the scan converted broadcast signal at NASA. Still apparently they are from the best available copy prior to the telemtry tapes being found.
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