Slashdot Mirror
NASA Releases Restored Apollo 11 Video, But Originals Lost
leetrout writes "I attended a media briefing held by NASA at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. this morning where they released restored video of the Apollo 11 mission. The clips released are about 40% of the total footage to be restored by September by Lowry Digital in Burbank, CA. Wired has all the clips. A couple remarkable comments made during the briefing included the opinion from the original footage search committee that the original slow scan footage (stored as a single track on telemetry tapes) has been lost forever as the tapes were likely recycled by the mid '80s (apparently common NASA practice). Also, that someone from the applied physics laboratory was in Australia converting the slow scan directly to video. This differs from NASA's goal of merely broadcasting the event, at which it was successful. Unfortunately, no one knows where those tapes of approximately two hours of footage are located."
It is truly amazing what you can "find" when you have unlimited access to huge amounts of supercomputing power.
;)
The render times are probably really impressive too.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Having a Hollywood studio "restore" the footage is going to provide wonderful ammunition for the conspiracy nuts, as they now get to claim that even if the tapes were real, you have no way of knowing if the restored information is genuine or inserted.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Reminds me of http://wechoosethemoon.org/ which was quite busy today. wayback machine to realtime proceeding of apollo 11 mission
The BBC "recycled" tapes in the '70s and '80s, losing many episodes of well-known programs forever *coughdrwhoandmanyothers*.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I read somewhere else that NASA had a tape shortage at some point, so they recycled the moon landing tapes to store other data.
I wonder if advanced data recovery techniques could recover the previously written data well enough to be useful.
--PM
Its incredible to me that NASA wouldn't think far enough ahead to save these tapes for posterity's sake.
Incredible. One of the defining moments in our history, and they didn't think to hold onto it? The whole goal was to only shoot for live feed?
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Right next to the tape with Nixon's 18.5 minutes.
wasn't some of the lost footage recovered from tapes that Pink Floyd had? I remember a news article (last year?) about some tapes Pink Floyd got from NASA to use in some music videos, which they fished out for NASA from their archives when they heard the originals were lost.
My sig has been answered.
They just threw out the bits where you could see the boom mic.
A story appeared on /. 3 days ago that they were found. WTF? Thanks for getting our hopes up. :(
the Neil Armstrong ADR is especially good, given the problems with the first version.
"Hey folks, Neal 'Moonman' Armstrong here -- I can say Moonman now, can't I! -- reporting live, that's LIVE LIVE LIVE from the surface of the mooooooooon, that's right, the one, the only, the biggest satellite in orbit around the Earth you all know and love, and lemme tell ya, folks, the Earth is looking pretty damn good from here, it's a real crackerjack experience, even in this helluva suit, to be up here, and waving down there at all you fine listeners. Station break and ID comin' up, but I'll be right back atcha with more moon-media-madness, so stay tuned!"
I'm pretty sure that's William H. Macy, though the alternative sound tracks and director's cut are good, too. Gary Sinese doing his "perpetual typecast criminal conspirator on the moon" is pretty good, too, and I will admit the Reese Witherspoon version makes those space suits suddenly look pretty sexy. The Nick Cage one is cool, too, sort of a National Treasure reprise.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Anyone who has seen Contact knows exactly what happened.
-David
"If we could send a man to the moon, why can't we send a man to the moon?"
Darn directors cuts! I *liked* the old version where you could see the Vaseline blur under the LM, and Armstrong shot first.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
The BBC "recycled" tapes in the '70s and '80s, losing many episodes of well-known programs forever *coughdrwhoandmanyothers*.
Much as the BBC should be smacked about with a blunt instrument for wiping, they at least have the defence that these were low-budget productions that were seen as ephemeral in nature at the time and of no obvious use. (Legal agreements meant that they couldn't be retransmitted, and there wasn't a home video market as such).
NASA spent billions (in *60s money*) getting the first human being to walk on the moon- which would have been an obviously massive historical event even before it happened- yet thanks to some beancounting jobsworths and bureaucrats, rather than being treated as a valuable historical document and archived as they should have been, the high-quality originals have been lost.
This both defies belief and is all too believable; but that doesn't make it any less of a disgrace.
After initial jubilation, I was right to be sceptical about that the Sunday Express's accuracy (they were the ones who broke the- incorrect- story that the original tapes had been found).
Anyway, getting this digitally tarted-up version of the existing footage instead is a $50 consolation prize after being incorrectly told that you'd won a million on the lottery. Even if the image quality is good, the reprocessed footage still likely won't look as good as the original slow scan would have, and it certainly won't have the same veracity.
And that's the most important thing. They lost the damn originals, and regardless of how good the remasters *look*, they're not the damn originals.
You'll excuse me if I don't feel like breaking out the party poppers at NASA's DVD-age PR fluff hyping the remastering of their crappy fourth-generation footage as a minor success instead of the non-reversal of a massive loss of historical material.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
My uncles and my father all watched the Apollo 11 Moon landing *LIVE*. As they were in Australia they were getting the feed slightly before the U.S did. I have no doubt that the moon landing happened but the three of them have all told me the same strange story about when they watched the moon landing.
I can't say exactly when, but they heard Armstrong, a man known for his calm under pressure, say in an excited voice: "Huston, Huston: There is something large and suspiciously* white moving off the crater ri.."(* may have been "brilliantly")
the transmission was cut off and they were left wondering what was going on . I have no doubt the moon landing occurred, but the conspiracy may be concealing information about something much stranger. I'm not claiming to know the truth, but is anyone surprised when the government covers things up to comfort us anymore? Whilst I believe the majority of UFO sighting can be explained by high speed intelligence reconnaissance aircraft and UFO sightings were a convenient cover for their operations, a small percentage of UFO sightings may actually be *Unexplainable*.
That the original recording of the most significant event in modern history have been "lost" at all. Maybe NASA can quite honestly say 'We don't know where the tapes are" because the Air Force or the CIA has them. All we have to do is see how other sightings of UFO's recorded by military officers are treated. Perhaps the story of faked moon landings is misinformation/misdirection to distract from the real conspiracy? What's the availability of all the other moon landing tapes? Was there really only one recording of the first landing?
I don't know, but I don't buy the 'Whoopsee, silly us. We lost the recordings of the most significant event in modern history' explanation. The only way to be sure is to see and hear the recordings of the original moon landing in it entirety from separation of the LM and CM to the docking of the LM to the CM. As it's is a significant piece of human history and surely nothing about the mission's activities were classified, I should be able to, even just to connect to what was achieved all those years ago.
If I ever got a chance to meet Armstrong or Aldrin and without pushing for details I would ask "Respectfully Sir, When you landed on the moon did you witness anything you are not allowed to discuss?", I might not get an answer but at least I would get to look into their eyes as I asked.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Some years ago I read an article on baseball stadiums, which is actually relevant in terms of possibly explaining why NASA would view the tapes of the original moon landing as expendable. Essentially the article said that in the USA in the 1960s everybody was obsessed with tearing down the old to make room for the new. This started in the 1950s but really got going in the 1960s. One example of it was that many American cities (Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Houston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Atlanta and probably others) built giant "multi-purpose" stadiums to house both baseball and football teams. Old baseball only stadiums were often torn down (Forbes Field) or moved (Crosby Field - mostly moved to Kentucky) to make way for what were eventually called "cookie cutter" stadiums that all looked identical and were meant to house everything from baseball and football to concerts and motocross rallies. These stadiums ended up being "jack of all trades, master of none" offering bad viewing for all sports. But that was how things apparently were in the 60s. Throw out the old to make room for the new. So when you have an entire society that seems to be dedicated to the belief that you can only make progress by destroying the past and building on top of it, yes, I can certainly believe that NASA in such a climate considered the films to be worthless and not worth keeping.