Or this movie:
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"We have the documents to say they were withdrawn, but no one knows exactly where they went," Mr Sarkissian said.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't help but wonder if perhaps the tapes were 'borrowed' for use in the production of the movie "for all mankind" (1989) and not returned. The timing would be about right (sent back to Goddard about 5 years earlier).
If you haven't seen the film, I highly recommend it.
JSL
The problem is that we were uninvited guests to the Moon, and told not to return.
Thanks, I will try to find it.
I have an 8mm copy of the first moon walk if that's any help. I wonder it was done video -> other video -> film, or whether it was shot from the original video source? It would have been obvious even then that shooting the film off the original video source would make sense, but I have no idea whether they did.
Perhaps getting a local dive club to scour the bottom of Greenbelt Pond (Lake?) might be a consideration?
I could just picture some guys attempting curling with film reels on a lazy winter afternoon.
The Clinton administration's Space Policy? Or the UN's?
Maybe happened in the era of NASA budget cuts? Thanks, Fritz. And fellow Senator Proxmire.
"There will only ever be one first moon walk."
Can't they just get Michael Jackson to do it again for them?
No substitute for plain incompetence.
And SamAdams, I too am beginning to believe Wayne Green and others that the whole thing is a put on show because the scientists found no one could surive outside the Van Allen belts due to the high energy particles and radiation.That's why it has been nothing but robots since.
oh, god... the tinfoilhatters will be all over this like stink on rice...
Yeah, we did send men to the moon several times. The public lost interest and Nixon didn't know where the moon was. So Congress was free to snipe at any kind of technology while they were sniping at the Vietnam thing. Everything went down in flames.
The van Allen Belts were the problem. They collect and concentrate charged particles. Solar activity was closely monitored for the moon flights and they tried to time things so there wasn't an active solar storm aimed at earth but the phase of the moon was right for the mission.
Finally, something about Algore that makes sense.
I know where they filmed it but it's covered with houses now.
Hmmmmmm. So ... if she floats ... she must be a duck? Made of wood? I'm confused ...
Why haven't we heard of/seen these before? Has NASA been holding them for 37 years as ransom against a budget cut?
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.