Posted on 08/05/2006 7:34:12 AM PDT by oxcart
THE heart-stopping moments when Neil Armstrong took his first tentative steps onto another world are defining images of the 20th century: grainy, fuzzy, unforgettable.
But just 37 years after Apollo 11, it is feared the magnetic tapes that recorded the first moon walk - beamed to the world via three tracking stations, including Parkes's famous "Dish" - have gone missing at NASA's Goddard Space Centre in Maryland.
A desperate search has begun amid concerns the tapes will disintegrate to dust before they can be found.
It is not widely known that the Apollo 11 television broadcast from the moon was a high-quality transmission, far sharper than the blurry version relayed instantly to the world on that July day in 1969.
Among those battling to unscramble the mystery is John Sarkissian, a CSIRO scientist stationed at Parkes for a decade. "We are working on the assumption they still exist," Mr Sarkissian told the Herald.
"Your guess is a good as mine as to where they are."
Mr Sarkissian began researching the role of Parkes in Apollo 11's mission in 1997, before the movie The Dish was made. However, when he later contacted NASA colleagues to ask about the tapes, they could not be found.
"People may have thought 'we have tapes of the moon walk, we don't need these'," said the scientist who hopes a new, intensive hunt will locate them.
If they can be found, he proposes making digitalised copies to treat the world to a very different view of history.
But the searchers may be running out of time. The only known equipment on which the original analogue tapes can be decoded is at a Goddard centre set to close in October, raising fears that even if they are found before they deteriorate, copying them may be impossible.
"We want the public to see it the way the moon walk was meant to be seen," Mr Sarkissian said.
"There will only ever be one first moon walk."
Originally stored at Goddard, the tapes were moved in 1970 to the US National Archives. No one knows why, but in 1984 about 700 boxes of space flight tapes there were returned to Goddard.
"We have the documents to say they were withdrawn, but no one knows exactly where they went," Mr Sarkissian said.
Many people involved had retired or died.
Also among tapes feared missing are the original recordings of the other five Apollo moon landings. The format used by the original pictures beamed from the moon was not compatible with commercial technology used by television networks. So the images received at Parkes, and at tracking stations near Canberra and in California, were played on screens mounted in front of conventional television cameras.
"The quality of what you saw on TV at home was substantially degraded" in the process, Mr Sarkissian said, creating the ghostly images of Armstrong and Aldrin that strained the eyes of hundreds of millions of people watching around the world.
Even Polaroid photographs of the screen that showed the original images received by Parkes are significantly sharper than what the public saw. While the technique looks primitive today, Mr Sarkissian said it was the best solution that 1969 technology offered.
Among the few who saw the original high-quality broadcast was David Cooke, a Parkes control room engineer in 1969.
"I can still see the screen," Mr Cook, 74, said. "I was amazed, the quality was fairly good."
I can see that happening, or the more likely scenario is that after he retired, the folks who went in to clean out his office went, "Hey Charlie, what do we do with all these old tapes, any idea what they are?" Charlie: "Hell, I dunno, but if no one's used them in 20 years, they must not be important, take 'em out to the dumpster."
I've heard that that entire picture is a painting except for the part surrounding the moving crate.
"the tapes were moved in 1970 to the US National Archives"
Not good. The US National Archives destroyed many of the Naval Research Laboratory records sent there for storage.
Looks like they parked in a really bad part of the Hadley Delta.
Happy Birthday, Mr. Armstrong!
From Popular Mechanics, April 15, 2003:
In addition to propelling America on the most dramatic voyages in human history, the Saturn V created a curious urban legend. In 1996, John Lewis, in his book Mining The Sky, made the startling claim that NASA had lost the Saturn blueprints. Like all rumors, the story contained a grain of truth. Paul Shawcross of NASA's Office of Inspector General came to the rescue. While the claim that the blueprints could not be found was true, that did not mean the engineering genius of the Saturn had been lost. The plans for the world's largest rocket still exist, on tiny pieces of microfilm.
And from the alt.folklore.urban newsgroup:
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SATURN V PLANS
Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, the Saturn V blueprints have not been lost. They are kept at Marshall Space Flight Center on microfilm.
The problem in re-creating the Saturn V is not finding the drawings, it is finding vendors who can supply mid-1960's vintage hardware (like guidance system components), and the fact that the launch pads and VAB have been converted to Space Shuttle use, so you have no place to launch from.
By the time you redesign to accommodate available hardware and re-modify the launch pads, you may as well have started from scratch with a clean sheet design.
Wow! But why did they take an Arizona highway sign all the way to the MOON???
Thanks for digging that up. I had hoped it wasn't true. I'd hate to think NASA was that incompetent!
And that reminds me of the closing scene in the South Park spoof (but I repeat myself! :) about the Indiana Jones tapes. They used a warehouse scene like this to indicate where the originals had gone, but the warehouse had a sign "Red Cross 9/11 Relief Funds", or something similar.
This is because the tapes show members of the alien colony inhabiting the dark side of the moon coming over to invite Neil and the boys to dinner!
After all. she has had a lot of experience with never finding critically important missing tapes.
We can rebuild it. Faster, stronger, cheaper better.
Yeah, right. I've got a bridge for sale...
They were sent back to the studio to be reworked for the upcoming Mars mission.
You can't expect these people to know what they are doing. They are not exactly rocket scien . . . oh, hang on!
Now think about the technological changes that took place between 1929 and 1969 and then think about the technological changes that took place from 1969 to the present day. I think we can all agree that the world changed much faster during the past 40 years.
There is more computing power in a simple cell phone than existed in the largest mainframe that existed in 1969 and we are to believe that we landed men on the moon back in those prehistoric times while we can scarcely get people into orbit these days? Give me a break.
LOL!
You and Right have the same idea!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.