Original moon landing film lost

London Daily Telegraph via The Washington Times ^ | August 14, 2006 | Robert Colvile

[seacapn]

The original film footage of astronaut Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon, one of the most important artifacts of the 20th century, has been lost.

The television broadcast seen by about 600 million people in July 1969 is preserved for posterity, but the original tapes from which the footage was taken have been mislaid, most likely in NASA's vast archives at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

The footage could transform our view of the moon landings, offering images far sharper than the blurred, grainy video shown around the world. It also could lay to rest the conspiracy theory that the landings were faked on a Hollywood soundstage.

Despite its iconic status, the television footage was the equivalent of a photocopy of a photocopy. It came from a camera that had been pointed at a black-and-white monitor on Earth. The image on the monitor, in turn, had been stripped of much of its detail.

To make sure the transmission would make it back to Earth, the images sent from Apollo 11 were recorded at 10 frames per second, and had to be converted to 60 frames per second in order to be broadcast. In the process, much of the detail was lost.

Stan Lebar, now 81, was in charge of the images from Apollo 11. What he saw was so blurred that he initially thought something had gone wrong.

[Lexinom]

Authenticity to be determined by the presence or absence of serifs on the letters in the closed captioning.

[Lexinom]

Why would anyone disbelieve the moon landings? I wasn't alive at the time. HOWEVER, I have seen - twice, in person - the 747 with the shuttle on top fly over: once over my school in Seabrook, Texas, and once over my house in Burlington, Washington, in 1986.

If we have a real shuttle that can launch into orbit, with all the complexity that entails, why could we not send a man to the moon?

[spinestein]

Here's a link to an extensive interview Neil Armstrong did in 2001 for the purpose of recording his Apollo mission recollections for posterity.

It's a 106 page transcript and a gold mine of information.





http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/ArmstrongNA/ArmstrongNA_9-19-01.pdf

[Zeon Cowboy]

To be fair, the technology of the space shuttle (my dad worked on the prototype Enterprise) is leaps and bounds beyond that which we used to get to the moon. Did you ever see Apollo 13? It's accurate, they practically had to graph their descent path, write all their variables down and solve for X. It was analog space travel, like using an abacus instead of a calculator.

The technology was prehistoric but I don't doubt that we went there. You can't keep a secret that big for this long, especially considering the amount of people that would been involved in such a staging. It's common sense, the same thing I personally use to debunk all those retarded 9/11 conspiracy theories [tangent] - do you mean to tell me that the government (or someone else?) had all those poor people on the planes taken from the airport, put in a room, told to call their loved ones and say that terrorists had hijacked their plane, and then had them simply disappear? And what of the hijackers? How were they (or someone else) forced to fly airplanes into buildings? Could any sane individual REALLY believe that someone in the government would kill 3,000 people and go through all this trouble... for what? To start a prolonged war on unfamiliar soil, any possible economic benefits of which would be crushed by the costs of the war itself?

Wait, haven't libs always been saying that Pres. Bush is stupid and childish? But other libs think he's an evil, diabolical mastermind? Which is it?[/tangent]

Back to the topic at hand, I find it stunning that someone so irresponsible could be entrusted to keep track of something so important. I hope this gets found someday, it would be a real damn shame if it's still sitting in some basement by the time The Man Upstairs starts His comeback tour...

[spinestein]

The technology needed to put a payload into orbit has been around since Sputnik. THAT was no hoax. The engineering behind rocketry has enjoyed an undeserved reputation for being at the limit of human capability, but to tell the truth, rocket science ain't really rocket science.

Building the container to keep astronauts alive in while in space is also easier than it's popular image. It just took a whole lot of money, time and manpower to build the necessary infrastructure for the program, and then to build the vehicles themselves, and finally test them and refine them to make sure they would continue to work properly in spite of their complexity.

Within the next few years it looks as if there will be private space vehicles actually transporting people into orbit, and when that becomes commonplace the people who claimed that traveling to the moon is fiction are going to look silly.

[spinestein]

[I find it stunning that someone so irresponsible could be entrusted to keep track of something so important.]


Really there are only two LIKELY possibilities:

1) It was misfiled and will turn up on a different shelf during a thorough search

2) It was pilfered by an insider and it will turn up at some point in the future after the person who took it can't be in jeopardy for theft anymore



The Apollo moon landing is arguably the greatest single event achievement of humanity to date and the original film of its happening would be a profound loss.

[NaughtiusMaximus]

Put your hands above your head and back slowly away from the keyboard!

[cabojoe]

Here is another take on the tapes that tends to agree with your #1.

[Jaysin]

I would like to offer you some advice.

go dig up those old tapes/reels, find a place that will convert them onto CD, and then you can ged rid of them. We had some 8mm tape from around 1980 of me playing soccer with friends etc....and today it's gone...FOREVER

I recently took several old VCR tapes of family reunions, birthday parties etc.... and had them converted to DVD for $20 each. the quality is fine and now I dont care if the tapes get lost.

To everyone out there that has all there old vacations from the 80's on vcr tape sitting in the basement, do yourself a favor and get them transferred to a CD or other modern median.
It's YOUR history.

[Jaysin]

I would like to offer you some advice.

go dig up those old tapes/reels, find a place that will convert them onto CD, and then you can ged rid of them. We had some 8mm tape from around 1980 of me playing soccer with friends etc....and today it's gone...FOREVER

I recently took several old VCR tapes of family reunions, birthday parties etc.... and had them converted to DVD for $20 each. the quality is fine and now I dont care if the tapes get lost.

To everyone out there that has all there old vacations from the 80's on vcr tape sitting in the basement, do yourself a favor and get them transferred to a CD or other modern median.
It's YOUR history.

[taxesareforever]

Armstrong has a well deserved reputation for being a very uninteresting interview,

Yeah interview. One in 30 years and it stunk. CBS played the interview just like they played the public with Cronkite doing the feeding.

[taxesareforever]

Yeah right. There is more evidence against it then there is for it.

[taxesareforever]

Man-made artifacts, especially corner reflector arrays, are detectable at the claimed landing sites.

And the proof of this is...?

[Recovering_Democrat]

We have our top people working on it...TOP PEOPLE.

[cabojoe]

Try googling "corner reflector arrays moon". If you still have doubts, I'm sure you can contact some of the researchers that are still firing lasers at the reflectors on the moon.

[MadJack]

You're wasting your time. He already knows "the truth" and nothing will convince him otherwise.
All the money "supposedly" spent on the manned space program has actually been allocated for mind control technology as directed by the Bilderbergs.

[OBXWanderer]

I was fortunate enough back in the mid eighties to have business dealings with a former astronaut. Stu "Rusty" Roosa, command module pilot on Apollo 14, along with his wife and my friend had dinner one night at a great little resturant in Biloxi, MS. One of the most captivating conversations that I have ever had; with one of those guys that had the most lonely job out of this world. Command Module Pilots stayed aboard while the other two went down to the moon's surface, thus being out of radio range for periods of time, while behind the moon. I think 14 was the mission Shepard hit the golf balls on the moon. Funny how a lot of those guys ended up in the beer business.

[DustyMoment]

The television broadcast seen by about 600 million people in July 1969 is preserved for posterity, but the original tapes from which the footage was taken have been mislaid, most likely in NASA's vast archives at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

NASA losing something.

Gee, what a surprise.

[Cheburashka]

Graham: Swing away, Merrill.

Merrill: Huh?

Graham: Merrill, swing away.

[Publius6961]

There's no question about it. Large bureucracies are mindless. How much confirmation do we really need?

What good are national "archives" if they don't even have enough sense to define "importance" and "priorities" for the national historical record?