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Has Anyone Seen the Moon Pictures?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the we-never-landed-there-anyway dept.

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.

19 of 474 comments (clear)

  1. oh no! by drDugan · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can see it coming now... a tinfoil hat brigade shouting,
    "that's because we never WENT to the moon!" and
    "The original tapes would have proved it!"

    1. Re:oh no! by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Funny

      Not to worry, they can probably re-cut the film from the raw takes if MGM still has those.

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    2. Re:oh no! by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Funny
      Not to worry, they can probably re-cut the film from the raw takes if MGM still has those.
      Neil Armstrong shot first!
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  2. My my my. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    How convenient, almost as if we never landed on the moon at all.

  3. No backup?! by Enselic · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Ok, I have this original video with the first man on the moon, should I make some backups? Nah... Is it important that I remember where I put it? Nah..."

    1. Re:No backup?! by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 5, Informative
      Ok, I have this original video with the first man on the moon, should I make some backups? Nah...

      Old technology sucks. I know, because I'm an old technologist.

      The year was 1969, peeps, 37 years ago.

      Magnetic tape degrades. For the 7 track stuff used back then you were lucky to get 7 years out of a tape -- that's why the IRS required only 7 years backup of data, they couldn't reliably ask for more. 9 track wasn't substantially better. Look up "print-through" (you may have to resort to paper sources for that).

      Disk space was expensive and hard to get too -- 55mb IBM 2370 disk pack cost about $1K each or worse in old money iirc. People weren't even aware of the need to make backups yet, and that was for data only -- the idea of storing video in digital form didn't happen until the late 70's when JPL trialled storage of images as well as image catalogues (don't ask about JPLOS -- please. Or Mark IV.).

      Film degrades too. We've lost a lot of original movies and animation because of the chemically active film substrata.

      I wouldn't be surprised if they "lost" it because the media simply degraded to the point of unusability. When was the last time you wrote your congresscritter to have NASA data archives funded properly? They're mostly living from grant to grant there and conserving this fantastically important data won't happen without a push. So push!

      Mmmm. Lost a planet Obi-Wan did. Embarrassing!

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    2. Re:No backup?! by m0rph3us0 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Umm... the 7 year thing comes from the Mosaic code, not magnetic backup media. Something about all debts being forgiven after 7 years. It has nothing to do with magnetic storage and has been part of British Common law for centuries.

    3. Re:No backup?! by leenks · · Score: 5, Informative

      Perhaps those tapes were on stock not vulnerable to the binder degrading over time causing the oxide to literally fall off the backing, or that has a problem often known as "vinegar syndrome" where the binder reacts with the backing producing a sticky residue (I believe certain Ampex tapes from the 70's/80's are good examples of this). Many recording studios have been stung by these problems, particularly the residue one, to the point that specialist companies have sprung up to deal with the problems. One solution is to cool or bake the tapes respectively, but it doesn't always work.

      One large classical music label in the UK (sadly now dead) had major issues with these problems in the early 90's, and decided to take action before it was too late. They played all of their tapes through a specially modified deck which I believe had basically huge swabs to catch the residue before the tape passed any of the mechanism. The audio was then recorded onto modern DAT tape. Those master tapes were all almost certainly ruined in the process, but at least there is a backup on modern DAT using tape which is supposedly not susceptible to the problem.

      More information at http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byauth/st-laurent/c are.html and http://www.tiguersound.com/Studio_Information/Tape Bake.html

  4. Not alone by 15Bit · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The BBC does exactly the same. They've lost vast numbers of TV programmes over the years. Every so often an episode of Dr Who, Hancock's Half Hour or Steptoe and Son turns up in the basement of some guy who used to work there.

    I guess the difference is that the Beeb never really thought these things were historically important, and hence had poor archiving rules. You'd hope that this was not the case at NASA.

  5. Remakes? by BACPro · · Score: 5, Funny

    With remakes being the rage in Hollywood, this shouldn't be a problem at all...

  6. Hoboy. by Soko · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Houston, we have a problem..."

    Soko

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  7. Re:Dupe? by Quaoar · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't you get it? Slashdot is backing up this story so such a disaster can never happen to them.

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  8. Re:"lost moon pictures" by kfg · · Score: 5, Funny

    What we actually did was build studio on Mars, where it was easier to fake lunar conditions. I'm sure the original tapes would have shown this clearly.

    KFG

  9. I found it! by soft_guy · · Score: 5, Funny

    I found it. NASA can thank me later.

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    1. Re:I found it! by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

      Here's the real one. A little too real.

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  10. Re:Yeah, right... by Aufero · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Is the article honestly trying to suggest that NASA couldn't reverse engineer a format and design a player for it if the original player was lost? I personally find that a little hard to believe." I don't. If NASA did it, it would require five years, fifteen administrators, and fifty million dollars. The quarterly funding reviews alone (much less the reviews of the reviews) would take up more time than the project, and the funding would be proxmired halfway through to pay for a bridge to an island owned by a friend of some congressman. If they ever find the tapes they should hand them over to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which would probably have them transferred to more durable media in six months at a cost of $30,000.

  11. Re:100 year format by henriquemaia · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't worry too much about that - geeks don't even get laid, so there's no point of talking about your great-grandchildren.

  12. Re:Checklist by meatflower · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you really used AOL that would have been all in caps, not just the last part.

  13. Re:Parent post is moronic. by Ihlosi · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Or maybe they just believe that, you know, the US was unable to get a person to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s. Nothing to do with aliens, pyramids, evolution or creationism, just that they couldn't and didn't do it.



    Why of course the US wasn't able to get a person to the moon. That's why they borrowed all those German rocket scientists, who were out their jobs anyway after launching rockets at London became unfashionable.