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Digitized Apollo Flight Films Available Online
Pooua writes "SpaceRef reports that NASA and Arizona State University have teamed up to offer all of NASA's Apollo lunar films online at no charge. The images are scanned from the original films at high resolution, then offered as 16-bit TIFF or 8-bit PNG or ISIS files. The project is expected to take 3 years, but some images are already available. The ASU-NASA website is located at the Arizona State University Apollo Image Archive."
I found a hair on one of the images. The last one, just SE of the hill in the center of the crater. For some reason, this amuses me.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
So, has anyone yet found the lost original tapes of the Apollo 11 landing?
i can't believe in this day and age, we haven't landed on Mars yet!
Question- had funding levels and interest in space contunues at the level it was at in the 60s and 70s, would we have landed on Mars by now?
But we have, multiple times! That we haven't put humans on Mars doesn't mean we haven't landed there. And what, exactly, would a human be able to find out that couldn't be better found out by spending the same amount on automated systems? To me, it seems it would be meaningless bravado, risking human lives for no real benefits.
Regards,
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*Art
Although there may be millions of idiots that believe the moon landing was a hoax, or perhaps worse, could be a hoax since they don't know any better, there are a few intelligent, well-reasoned self-proclaimed scientists who write books, do talks, etc that push the whole sordid matter. I recommend reading Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things to get an ideal why this phenomena happens and help understand how to control it. Don't underestimate the ability for intelligent people to delude themselves!
Then suddenly they were withdrawn. Probably the bandwidth at that time made it far too expensive!
Glad to see they're coming back though...
Stuart http://stuarthalliday.com/
Dude, it's because the Soviets were in on it, or the US had some dirt on the Soviets, or space aliens mind controlled them both or whatever. Trying to dissuade conspiracy theorists from their conspiracy is like trying to prove to a paranoid person he's not being followed. The more you tell him noone's following, the more convienced he is that you're lying to fool him or you're a pawn they use to trick him, and everyone is simply pretending not to follow him. Yhe more you tell them there is no conspiracy, the more "proof" there is a conspiracy because nobody is willing to tell the truth. The more testimony, the more evidence you present there is no conspiracy, it just "proves" how big the conspiracy is. Ultimately they think that everyone else is either part of the conspiracy or has been tricked by the conspiracy, and that only they and their fellow conspiracy theorists know the truth.
It's much the same methods and logic as used in for example Holocaust denial, despite tons of evidence they claim it's all fabricated, the jews are lying, the captured Nazis were tortured and are lying, the Allied forces are lying, all other eyewitnesses are lying, the concentration camps, gas chambers and whatnot were fake, in short tens of millions of people and massive labor efforts would conspire to create it. Yet the conspiracy lives on, and it's a far less likely one than a faked moon landing. And it's certainly no surprise that it's being fueled up again as most of the eyewitnesses and the first-hand accounts are dying, ao they can claim it's all based on propaganda. It's FUD of the highest order.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I hear this argument over and over again.... and I don't buy it.
You simply need to have somebody "on the ground" and able to "pick up" a rock, turn stuff over, and react to the local environment... where you don't have to discuss in "committee" what action you are going to do next.
I would have to agree that the "initial reconnaissance" ought to be done by robots.... as it was done on the Moon as well (or have you forgot the Ranger series of spacecraft?) When you have so many unknowns, as there were about the Moon back in the 1950's regarding the whole idea of even physically landing on the Moon, it was vital to get something "out there" and test what is going on. This is wise in term of nearly all sorts potentially dangerous situations, which is why even the military is setting up robots to go into potentially dangerous areas for recon purposes.
But there does reach a point where you have to physically send somebody to the place in order to conduct field research... as remote vehicles simply are far too limited and can't be designed to take on every contingency. Having somebody with opposable thumbs and fingers capable of being "programed" at a distance with just a few words and be able to fix something like wiping the dust off of a solar panel, or even being able to "think outside of the box" and come up with a totally new situation.
In spite of the fact that he was on the Moon for less than two days, Harrison Schmitt conducted far more scientific discovery on the Moon and gathered more real usable data than all of the robotic missions to all of the rest of the planets combined, except for perhaps the Earth itself. I am not making that claim lightly either. He also took decades of real experience being a professional geologist.... a PhD even in that field... and used that knowledge while on the Lunar surface to gather some samples that none of the other twelve astronauts would have even considered. Dr. Schmitt's research will literally be referred to for centuries to come as a foundation of extra-terrestrial mineralogy and "geologic" studies. He would not have been able to do any of that unless "he was there" and capable of making those crucial decisions about what to skip and what to grab.
I can't even imagine what would happen if a full scale permanent laboratory was on the Moon with full time scientists capable of doing something that wasn't so much of a rush job that it seemed like a temporary layover between international flights at an airport. And going to some of the more "interesting" areas of the Moon rather than selecting parts of the Moon that were chosen explicitly because they were boring... like trying to determine the geology of the Earth by landing in the middle of a corn field in Kansas instead of in the Grand Canyon of Arizona.
There still is some "low hanging fruit" of scientific knowledge that can be gathered by robotic vehicles to explore Mars, such as Spirit and Opportunity. But there will be a point of diminishing returns where having somebody on the ground there to conduct the research will not only return much more information, but significantly more data. And this is only the "scientific" justification for sending people into space and going to Mars. Or Antarctica to use another example of a comparatively hostile environment where scientists do go physically for research. People live year round at the South Pole itself, for crying out loud. Are you suggesting here that they should all be replaced by robots too?
There are also other reasons for going to Mars besides pure scientific rationales, but I don't want to digress any more with those further points.