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Has Anyone Seen the Moon Pictures?
NASA has received a lot of bad press in the last few years. Now in a stunning move to prove how much they have learned from past mistakes, it appears they have lost the magnetic tapes that recorded the first moon walk. They also seem to have misplaced the original recordings of the other five Apollo moon landings. Hopefully nobody has taped an episode of "The OC" over them yet.
What technology should I use if I want to make sure my video and photos of today is around for my great-grandchildren? (Assuming they care...) Is there a service that will keep them continually updated in a lossless digital format? How would they get paid?
J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
Goddard has been undergoing some organizational restructuring over years. That means office shuffling and renovations here and there. It often involves spring cleaning of all the junks piled up on top of shelves and cabinets.
My guess? Some old geezers probably had thrown them away into a garbage bin. It's probably got dumped into some industrial dumping site in New Jersey or somewhere... that said, it's SOL to me.
[I saved one optical disc from a garbage bin once...I'm sure it contains some IUE data, not the moon landing stuff... there is no way to read the damned thing anywhere to be sure...]
How could this be misplaced! This is arguably one of the greatest human accomplishments ever!
P.S. Let the flame wars begin!
PPS The Armstong moon walk is proably my earliet memory,and I remember watching it with my great Grandma who was born before the first auto and airplane.
..........FULL STOP.
It was also the case that back in the 60s and even the 70s magnetic tape was very expensive and so was reused. TV was still fairly novel and there wasn't as many reruns as we have now (stations just stopped broadcasting during the night). So why keep this tape of last weeks Dr. Who when we can record a new show over it?
Seriously, that's the great part of digital media and what give it longevity. You don't make things last by trying to put them in a format that will last forever and tuck that away, you just copy them to new formats perodicly. CD or DVD will work fine for now. Copy them to one of those, make 4 copies. Put 2 copies each in two seperate locations, maybe two in a bank safe deposit box, two at home. Then, just remember to refresh the backup. I'd do it a minimum of once every 5 years, or when you get a new, better storage technology, whichever comes first. Make sure to hand that off to your children, and so on. Then, no matter how far in the future it is, the data will still be there.
I mean in reality, the CDs would probalby last many decades when stored in a climate controlled dark place, like a bank, but that's not the real problem. The problem will be in 100 years, CD-ROMs will be something for antique collectors or data recovery shops only. Everyone else will be on some format probalby yet to be developed. So not only does your refresh make sure the media doesn't die, it also makes sure it's current technology.
Same thing with file formats. Who knows how long those will last, but you can update them, as necessary. If DV falls out of favour for some new video techonology, you can recode your videos to that, no problem. There will be plenty of time when both formats are widely available. However 100 years down the road, it might be a real feat to find software that understands DV.
That's the way to do it, if this is something you really care about. We aren't talking a lot of labour here, and we aren't talking something you need to do often.
I have data on my harddrive from 15 years ago, it's just been copied and recopied, old papers I wrote. They just get copied to a new drive when I get one, and to my backup drives. When a new version of Office comes out, I convert them to the new file format. In doing this, I'm likely to never lose them.
Just use the advantages of the medium. Digital makes perfect copies, the copies are cheap, they are high density, and you can translate from one format to another. That means you solve the permenance problem by recoping and the destruction problem by having multiple copies in different locations.
He who dies having spent the most time playing with his toys wins.
KFG
One of the unique realities of living in the area of Huntsville, Alabama (MSFC) is that you get contact with people who are actually doing things. If you make the right contacts, you know who and what is going on. Here is what is going on regards to NASA and the original data from the Apollo missions. More precisely what has gone on.
The US officials at NASA ordered the destruction of all of the records associated with the Apollo Missions after the last flight to the moon. The Chief of the Records realized how stupid this was and he conspired with certian persons to have some 8 tons of records moved to a secured location with persons in custody who would not tell where the records were or admit they existed. The reason I know of this is that I had extended contact with the man who set this up. The reason he told me was that the discussion of returning to the moon was coming up about 8 years ago and NASA sent a some men out to see him asking if the rumor was true that he had done this and where they could get the records. He told them it didn't exist but on my arrival he was spitting mad at the idiots at NASA over wanting the records. He feared that they might be destroyed if NASA got them again. He felt they were priceless historic documents and that they must be protected. I do not expect them to appear for 100 years or more due to this.
Contained in these records are films, data stores, and all of the technical documents for operation of the Apollo System. Why these were ordered destroyed he felt was a very malicious act. The real reason for the order was that the US Government at the time wanted to destroy the ability to return to the moon any time in the near future. They possessed about 5 rockets able to go and they wanted nobody able to operate them. The also did not want any more able to be fabricated. This discloses international agreements that involved the USSR and other parties that demanded the destruction of this data.
Believe this or not if you will but this is in fact what happened. This discloses the very dirty nature of the behavior of some "well respected" parties in the world. I cannot hope to have people on this forum believe me, but maybe some will. The reason I was present was I was working as RN at the time and I was making Home Health visits 2 times a day to the home. Frankly I was more trusted than the NASA people by this former high ranking NASA man. My experience with such men has included former German Rocket Scientists and many others. When you meet these people you learn what has really gone on.
This man who was the chief of the record keeping for the Apollow program told me how a year before the Sputnik launch the President of the United States had ordered the entire US Army Missile program lab at what is now Marshall dismantled and taken to the dump. When the Sputnik launch panicked the Americans, He and others had to go to the Base Dump and with their own money buy back the "Scrap" equipment in order to get the lab going again. Even the first test stand they built was built this way. It is now an historic monument!
The description of some details here is slightly modified so as to keep some nasty people off the trail and to protect the records. The title of the position the man held is descriptive but not the real title. I am not sure if this man is still alive and I don't want to cause him or his associates any trouble. There have been several attempts to secure these records to have them destroyed over the years since 1973.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
I assume there are two sets of recordings to consider. The original TV broadcast was live, so we can be fairly certain that those masters are magnetic, recorded back on earth while they were live broadcasted. In the case of these shots, there was no film master to recut magnetic tapes from. Even if film was eventually made from the tapes, the tapes are still the masters.
In those shots we also saw several instances of the astronauts hopping around with what looked like hand-held video recorders, and I would assume those were motioln film, not magnetic. (though I suppose those may have been still image cameras? they looked like film though)
From the article I am assuming it was the magnetic tapes made of the live broadcast that were lost? If that is the case, at least we should still have the film from the actual moonwalk recordings? Those should be better quality anyway, seeing as they didn't get mucked up by being transmitted such a distance with much lower tech at the time.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Why do supposedly smart people believe such stupid shit?"
I can't speak for the scientologists, Dankiken, or Hoagland, but here's why your own logic proves to me that God is up there. (^_^)
Can you even grok what it would take to pull off a hoaxed creation of the Universe? You need to fool nearly the entire Federal government, thousands of engineers, almost the whole US Navy, and all the people at places like church on Sunday _including their friends_. And throughout all of this, you have to make sure that possibly thousands of people who know "the secret" that they will never talk, even on their deathbeds.
And then you have to fool all the believers with a happiness that can't look like anything found on Earth.
It's just simpler to go to God. It's like "looking busy" at your employment - it's actually easier to do real work than to fake it.
Even the government most capable of pulling off complete dismissal of God as possible failed miserably. The Soviet Union was a much more closed society and Star City was off limits to foreigners. They were ahead of us, and even got to the Marxism-Leninism before us. The entire doctrine of the Marxist proclaims an atheistic state the only true way to go! They could have staged forced everyone to be an atheist, and nobody would have been the wiser in the West until the fall of the Soviet Union two decades later. Yet over one third of the former Soviet Union professed religious belief. Why? BECAUSE IT WAS A STUPID IDEA TO RISK ANY OTHER WAY.
"The fact is, the original poster is _just like_ those who believe in pyramid building aliens and creationists because they deny logic, history, human nature and plain evidence of reality. They are uneducable dolts."
I don't believe in pyramid building aliens, and my tinfoil cap is gathering dust in the basement; but even scraping the surface of the Bible proves it to be a historically accurate, God-inspired book---full of plain evidence (over 600 prophesies that [ZOMGWTFBBQ!] were actually RIGHT!) that The Big Guy Upstairs loves you and wishes you would stop calling people names.
Anyway.
(/two cents)
(/sigh) now mod me down (^_^)
The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.
Scientific and historical proof lies in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Do a Google search on them; it's 5 AM and I don't feel like explaining something you should have checked out before you made that argument.
Second, most of them are either so general that they match anything at all, or so obscure they could mean anything at all and are only understood after some event seems to fit.
I'm not going to go too far into the irony of that sentence's vague covering of all your bases--but it's kinda funny. Anyway. Chances are you have a Bible at your house, if not, go check out an online Bible resource; read Ezekiel 26. A lot of good stuff about this city called Tyre. Pretty specific. All happened. Deuteronomy has a lot about Israel, if you'd like to scan through it--it all happened. And the over 300 prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the coming Messiah--that Jesus guy, remember him? Mel Gibson made that movie about him...ring a bell?--all were perfectly accurate. Show me how "most" of those 300 are general or obscure or anything seems to fit.
And please, please know your Bible before you argue over it.
Have a nice day!
The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.
Funny thing: An old colleague of mine recently recovered some old research data from punched plastic tape (coated paper, actually) that we used to input the CDC-160G back in the mid-60's. Barcoding has an even higher reliability, and can be coded for error correction. It's probably not as space-efficient as what we have now, but my mom has tape measures from the early 1800's that are still readable. Maybe we should print the data in barcode on fabric?
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
"Not believing that we went to the moon doesn't give me a membership in a tinfoil-hat brigade."
... ignorant ... at best. A few years ago, Fox showed some 'documentary' that claimed that there might be evidence the moon landing was a hoax. Every single point of the 'evidence' was EASILY refutable. For example: They claimed that the astronauts were too brightly lit and that the extra light must have come from studio lighting. They even had a 'professional photographer' come on the show and say that it was impossible for that sort of lighting to occur. This 'professional photographer' was completely ignoring the fact that light bounces, even on the moon.
... pardon the expression ... looney. But in the future, I'd recommend that you clarify your views. Too much attention has already been paid to people who have bastardized science to prove their over-zealous point.
Back up a sec, this dude may have a point. The reason that the negative attitude exists for people who believe the moon landing is faked is because the rationale that has been publicized for this is
You'd have to be pretty ignorant to buy in to their logic. That's why, if you just announce that you don't believe it happened, it is generally assumed (whether it is right or wrong, sorry.) that you are part of this little group. If you are simply saying "I wasn't there, so I cannot say for certain", then I think that's a different story. I can sympathize with that. I wasn't even alive when the moon landing happened. In that respect, I cannot actually say it did. Fair enough.
I think the mods were a little too quick on the trigger with modding down your post. You are right that simply not being 100% certain that the moon landing happened doesn't mean you're a
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I would have thought all the video recordings from the moon missions would have been loaded to Google Video by now. Perhaps NASA was in the process of preparing the files for upload when they discovered they don't actually have the files...
Actually, this event illustrates the conundrum that we are all presented with in this digital age. In the analog age we were accustomed to the loss of old data--it really had little value to the general population. Sure, we had a box of photos of vacations and relatives and such, a wedding album, maybe a voice recording or super-8 film. We relied on historians to do the digging and to present the past to us. People lived shorter lives and when they died they didn't leave behind much data that couldn't be easily divvied up among survivors--photos, keepsakes, mementos.
That's all changed, and with the boomers entering the end game, habits will change.
Today we can easily capture and keep quite a lot of data in a tiny area. It may not be evident just how many gems are saved on the deceased's computers, or portable devices, and how much time will it take to sift through it? It's not a group activity where you can sit with mourners around a box of photos, dig them out and tell stories as you hand them around.
Do we just shut off or reformat and not bother to look? Maybe it becomes a task assigned to one trusted person through a will--to "sift throught the data, share the gems and destroy the porn", before reformatting the system.
Maybe it falls to the elderly to email out to others the digital items they treasure, so that the burden is spread around.
So, I keep an old scsi hard disk from an early Mac because I think that disk has a voice recording I captured of my daughter. Some day I want to mine that disk and recover that sound. The physical disk is of no value to others as it sits collecting dust, and is always at risk of being thrown out.
I think the experience at NASA is probably repeated among us all quite frequently.