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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."

21 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. So by eclectro · · Score: 3, Funny

    Does this mean that there will finally be an oscar for the set design?

    --
    Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
    1. Re:So by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · Score: 2, Funny

      I don't think so, but if you wait until the special edition comes out you may be able to get to hear the director's commentary

      --
      "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
    2. Re:So by HermMunster · · Score: 2, Informative

      They are not films. They are simply photos from film. Big difference.

      --
      You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
  2. Can't be fake by Verteiron · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Can't be fake by jgoemat · · Score: 2, Funny

      My GOD, the moon is inhabited by giant hairstylists!

  3. Another resource by TrippTDF · · Score: 3, Informative

    For any interested parties, the Apollo Archive is another great project to put Apollo media online.

  4. Re:Huh? by arth1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    16-bit TIFF or 8-bit PNG? Why don't they use 16-bit PNG?

    Probably because if you get the PNG instead of the TIFF, the reason is you need to save space and/or bandwidth. The PNG files have also have a reduced resolution (RTFA).
    If you needed the full quality, you would go for the 1.2 GB(!) TIFF anyhow.

    The scan itself is 12-bit, which they say is as good as 14-bit due to some Leica trickery. Since the originals don't have a high contrast, my guess is that they've simply increased the contrast while scanning, making more pixels fall into different slots. ICBW, but if so, it's still 12-bits, just contrast-enhanced.
  5. Apollo 11 Tapes? by necro81 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, has anyone yet found the lost original tapes of the Apollo 11 landing?

  6. Re:tin-foil hat by TrippTDF · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can't believe that in this day and age, people still refuse to believe that we never landed on the moon.

    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?
  7. Non-Technical Proff we Landed on the Moon. by arthurpaliden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In 1969 the Americans first landed men on the moon. Now some people have made names for themselves by saying that this and subsequent landings never happened. Their position is that NASA faked them in order to save face and fool the public. To prove their point they rely on explanations of the reported events using dubious science and lay explanations that any first year science major would and does, laugh at.

    However, they always miss or purposely avoid the the one piece of irrefutable proof that it did in fact happen. That is that the Soviet government never refuted the American claims and they were in a unique position to do so. For even after the Americans landed on the moon the Soviets still continued to send orbiters, landers and rovers to the moon.

    http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_planetar y_lunar.html

    Now if they wanted to get the goods on the Americans all they had to do was to land, photograph or explore with a rover the American landing sights. Just imagine the embarrassment not to mention the the damage to American credibility, at the height of the cold war no less, that such information would generate. Records even show that they never landed or even explored that areas that that American landings happened. So they did not even go and look to make sure because they knew it really happened.

    But they did not. They did not use it to pressure the Americans to stop bombing North Vietnam and Cambodia where Soviet military advisers were being killed as a result. They did not use it to pressure the United States to stop sending military advisers to and providing Stinger missiles to the Afghan fighters during the Soviet occupation. They did not use it to stop the Star Wars program of the Regan administration.

    In fact they did not even use it to turn the West's attention away from the Soviet Union during the Soviet Coup of 1991 when members of the Soviet government briefly deposed Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and attempted to take control of the country.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_coup_attempt_o f_1991

    Which every body knew was the last death throws of the Soviet empire. If they did not use the information then to turn the attention of the American, and world public, inward to their own governments lies and thus corruption and force it to ignore the events in the Soviet Union in order to deal with a damaging domestic and international issue. Then the proof of faked moon landings did not and never existed.

    One final thought. After the fall of the Soviet Union the Russian economy tanked. People were selling all kinds of stuff owed by the crumbling state, ships, weapons, artworks and knowledge but nobody ever approached any Western news agency or tabloid to sell them this information. And to say that one would buy it but not publish is foolish. The seller could just keep peddling it until some on did and then it would be old news and worthless until then it would still be worth something.

    1. Re:Non-Technical Proff we Landed on the Moon. by ralewi1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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!

    2. Re:Non-Technical Proff we Landed on the Moon. by Kjella · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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
    3. Re:Non-Technical Proff we Landed on the Moon. by Teancum · · Score: 2, Informative

      The amazing story that did "leak out" after the collapse of the Soviet Union was that not only was there a tacit confirmation of the Apollo program... but that the Russians really were in a "space race" to get to the Moon as well. Discoveries of a Russian lunar lander (not just a prototype, but a real working machine capable of landing on the surface of the Moon), documents about some of the cosmonaut training for going to the Moon, and some of their plans for how they were going to accomplish the task were uncovered.

      The only thing that kept the Russians from getting there first was that they made a few mistakes in trying to scale up their rocket designs, as the Russian equivalent to the Saturn V blew up on the launch pad taking out several workers and destroying nearly all of the launch equipment. Had some better engineering decisions been made at the right time not too much earlier, and it would have been a Russian instead of Neil Armstrong who could have first planted a flag on the Moon. For P.R. spin purposes, the Russian government after 1969 claimed that it was never a goal to get to the Moon in the first place and killed any attempts to restart the program.

      I have no doubt that then or even now the Russians could build and develop independently the capability of getting to the Moon... and do so for a fraction of the cost of the Apollo program.

      The only way to truly put these rumors to rest is to wait for the day when a Dateline:NBC reporter shows up at the site of the Apollo 11 landing and plants his foot next to Neil's and Buzz's footprints. Unfortunately that is still several decades away from happening, and is much more likely that Dateline:NBC will be canceled as a TV show first. Even then, there will still be skeptics who will claim at that time the U.S. government will have a secret committee who set up the models from the Hollywood back lot and put them on the Moon as a sort of rewriting of history... once ordinary people can go to the Moon and check it out for themselves.

  8. Re:I'd like to see more stuff like this by maeka · · Score: 2, Funny

    Nah, if it is documentaries with lots of nuclear explosions you want, thisis the movie for you.

  9. People on Mars by infonography · · Score: 3, Funny

    Mars was the original home of Humanity before the great collapse of the atmosphere that protected the early Martian People. This was 70 thousand years (earth) ago.

    They narrowly avoided the disaster in time thanks to their Chief Scientist AlGor who warned of the impending doom.

    --
    Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
  10. Re:An Idea by Iron+Sun · · Score: 3, Informative

    Done years ago. It's why planetologists talk about periods like the Late Heavy Bombardment.

  11. Hold on there, We've been here before! by Quatermass · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Hold on there. Didn't NASA offer all their lunar shots as high-res TIFFs way back in the 1990's? I remember demonstrating the 'Internet' to classes back then and one of the key points was being able to look at very high-res TIFF pictures of Neil Armstrong's fuzzy out of focus shots!

    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/
    1. Re:Hold on there, We've been here before! by Pooua · · Score: 2, Informative

      NIX is still online: NIX Home I can only speculate about the difference between NIX and AIA, but I suspect that NIX only has images that have been cataloged up to now, not necessarily every Apollo image on film. AIA is supposed to scan all the stills, eventually. Maybe AIA will share the results with NIX?

      --
      Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
  12. Re:tin-foil hat by Teancum · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.


    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.
  13. Re:According to Occam's Razor... by Franklin+Brauner · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Because, obviously, they were in on it. Have you never heard of the boxer who throws the fight?

  14. Nasa Journal by florescent_beige · · Score: 2, Informative

    I realize someone mentioned apolloarchive, but Nasa also has an incredible amount of Apollo material online.

    Almost everything you want to know about the mission op's is here.

    The Apollo 11 landing from 11 minutes out is amazing, including the 1202's. But I have to admit, the one that sends shivers down my spine every time I watch it is Apollo 17. Cernan & Schmitt's reaction after the pitchover when they see the landing zone is better than anything you've ever seen in a movie, ever.

    --
    Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller