Has NASA Found the Lost Moon Tapes?

jra writes "For over 5 years, various people both inside and retired from NASA have been engaged in a quest. They were looking for the long-lost original slow-scan video tapes from the Apollo 11 moon landing, which went missing in a record-keeping snafu, covered in unreasonable detail in a Wired article a couple years ago. Well now, according to the UK's Sunday Express newspaper, some tapes may or may not have been found which may or may not be the Apollo video. Apparently — I love the British press — the NASA boffins are a bit put out that it leaked; they were hoping to blow everyone's minds with the scoop themselves."

Comments

Hope

[Tablizer]

That would be great if true. To lose the originals of the greatest technological and exploration achievement event since Columbus is a gut-wrenching thought. (And the existing copies are poor quality.)

Re:Hope

[Tablizer]

while Columbus stumbled across the New World despite sheer ignorance and wrongheadedness and was really lucky not to die through sheer incompetence.

He was one of the best navigators in the business at the time, and had a very experienced crew. It's just that he was missing a few pieces of the puzzle. On his second mission, he used his knowledge of celestial mechanics and eclipses to fool some island tribes into thinking he was a god, saving his crew from torture or starvation.

Further, Neal Armstrong was once quoted as saying he felt they had a 50/50 chance before the trip. Many things did almost go wrong on the first flight, including an overloaded computer and insufficient landing fuel. Luck, skill, and experience overrode those. Apollo 11 was hardly a sure thing.

They were *all* gamblers.
     

Re:Hope

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

He was a good navigator; but he also believed in a number for the earth's circumference that was wildly wrong(and this wasn't just a "product of his time" error, superior numbers were widely available, and he was kind of a crank for not using them). It was sheer luck that the Americas happened to exist right about where Asia wasn't.

Re:Hope

[frieko]

So does a pencil.

Conspiracy theory

[veektor]

Crucially, they could once and for all dispel 40 years of wild conspiracy theories.

New facts would never dispel a perfectly good conspiracy theory. Instead, the new facts are evidence that the conspiracy is still on-going.

Up your k1lt!

May "or may not"

[uberdilligaff]

Wouldn't it be nice if people (such as the summary writer) understood that "may" inherently includes the uncertainty as to whether it actually "does", or perhaps "does not"? Then they wouldn't feel compelled to append the completely redundant "or may not" every time.

"Scoop" ?

[jimhill]

Apparently someone forgot to tell NASA that they're a government agency and not some kind of mass-media Nielsen-dependent agency that relies on "scoops" and "special announcements". When they find something, they should announce it immediately. Suppose they'd found these tapes on July 21...would they have thought it appropriate to sit on them until July 20, 2019, just to have something special to go with the 50th anniversary?

Re:"Scoop" ?

[Somegeek]

If only we lived in a world where government agencies got the funding that they needed regardless of current taxpayer whim. In one example, if NASA drops in popularity then they become an easy target for Senators looking to make a name for themselves as budget cutters.

Thus any scoops or special announcements that they can come up with help keep them popular in the taxpayer's eye and help keep the budget cutters away.

Re:"Scoop" ?

[Trepidity]

I disagree with all sorts of things the government does; can I have my money back too? I'm not a big fan of the military; if you want to develop new fighter jets, use someone else's money please. And why is my money being used to operate the patent office? Or the courts that adjudicate patent disputes?

So, Is There Hope...?

[camperdave]

So, Is there hope for finding the missing Dr Who episodes?

Neil Armstrong was there to take that risk.

[tjstork]

In fact, "abort" would have been the "right" decision in my opinion based on what was known at the time.

Unless you are Neil Armstrong. There is a reason he was picked to go on that mission. He starts out as a combat jet pilot over Korea, brings back a totally shot up bird.

After taking a bit of time to get some additional education, he winds up as a test pilot... flying all sorts of exotic craft. He makes his way into NASA, and there, he makes a quick decision that saves a tumbling Gemini spacecraft. Then, he's ejecting from wildly unstable lunar lander proxy craft.

Pretty much his whole career, Armstrong flew a bunch of crazy aircraft in a bunch of dangerous situations and proved himself as having a knack for making the right decisions, and quickly, because of crunch time.

He gambled that the computer was still returning...excessive risk

I think its fair to say that with his track record, he didn't take excessive risk -for him-. He was the best flyer NASA had, and he was doing his job.