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

[Tablizer]

If not for the debris, they would probably have turned around a bit sooner and simply gave up

Ironically, Neal faced a similar decision. The computer was signaling an unknown overload and they were also running tight on landing fuel as he spotted some large boulders he wanted to avoid. He could have called to abort the mission, using the ascent engine to return to moon orbit. In fact, "abort" would have been the "right" decision in my opinion based on what was known at the time.

He gambled that the computer was still returning useful info despite the overload[1], and that he could manage his way to a landing on short fuel. I remember him saying afterward that even if he ran out of fuel, he was close enough to the ground for a "bounce" landing while jetting around the boulders, and thus mostly ignored ground-control's warnings. (The main ground announcer even joked about ground control "turning blue" just after landing because of the late landing.)

He was possibly thinking he might never get a second chance, and thus took on excessive risk.

[1] (It turned out the computer was still sufficient despite the overload, but they didn't fully know it then because they didn't know the cause yet. The cause turned out to be an extra un-docking service that they accidentally left on that wasn't needed for landing.)
               

Re:We have had the videos *all along* you IDIOT

[dotancohen]

MALWARE WARNING! DO NOT CLICK ON PARENT'S LINKS!

not yelling not yelling not yelling not yelling not yelling not yelling not yelling not yelling not yelling not yelling

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.

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.