Slashdot Mirror
Unseen Moon Landing Video Released
bazzalunatic writes "Digitally remastered footage of the moon landing, including high-quality and brighter images of Neil Armstrong stepping off the ladder will be shown for the first time ever to the general public at an awards ceremony in Sydney, Australia. The magnetic data tapes seem to have all been lost — erased — by NASA, so all that's left are VHS recordings, which have been restored, giving the best-ever film of the whole moon landing. The publicity over this seems to be pushing NASA into releasing the whole 3-hour recording."
First hoax!
This "remastering" digitally removes the wires used to give the illusion of 1/6 Earth gravity on the soundstage.
It was a sound stage on mars
There was no Video Home System when the moon landings happened. There was reel to reel tape, and cinescope, but no VHS until 1976.
Free Martian Whores!
Didn't they show this for the 30th Anniversary last year?
I'll hold out for the inevitable 3D Extended Edition BluRay Director's Cut.
This sig is in another castle.
Yes, the iphone was invented in 1967..
Wait... WTF why would NASA "erase" the originals? wouldn't that seem like too momentous of an occasion to destroy???!?!?!?! Or am I miss-reading something here?
That they are covering up and why nobody has been back to the moon since?
Sure, call it digital remastering. We all know they just re-shot the footage on the sound stage. Give it a few years and they will "find" a 3D recording in a vault somewhere.
Does this mean I finally get to see the shootout with the aliens they had? Sweet!
An old man, sitting in his couch, watching himself in an old college football match. Repeating over and over the twenty seconds where he scored a touchdown.
But the old man isn't really old. He has a strong, young body. He could stand up and go play another football match. Score another touchdown. But he's too tired, so he'll just play the old tape. Over and over again.
This video may not be suitable for kids under the age of 70
Why is the first public broadcast of remastered footage of an American moon trip being broadcast in Australia. This makes no sense.
They are saying that only a VHS tape of the landing is left, and that all the original tapes were erased/lost/destroyed. But this new tape is FROM one of those original tapes, albeit from the Sydney archives who relayed the data since they were part of the line-of-sight network to communicate with the astronauts.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I don't understand why people get so excited over seeing the live broadcast when there is so much footage they they taped on the moon that's in colour.
Sig: I stole this sig.
I guess the franchise was due for a reboot. I'm excited to see the new take on it.
"We discovered, to our horror, that in the 1970s and 80s NASA had taken the tapes in the national archive and erased them all to record other missions."
It's an archive, right? There will be records of who did this, yes? And you have the death penalty in the US - which you tend to otherwise use for inconsequential stuff mostly?
Yes, the idiots reused the tape.
At the time of the Moon landing, three stations - Goldstone in California, Honeysuckle Creek in Canberra, and Parkes in New South Wales - simultaneously recorded the events onto magnetic data tape. The direct recordings were not of broadcast quality, says John, so they had to set up a regular TV camera pointed at a small black-and-white TV screen in the observatory to obtain higher-quality images that could be relayed to television stations around the world.
They didn't use the TV camera to obtain a higher quality, but to convert from the odd signal used by NASA [1] to PAL/NTSC.
1: the nonstandard TV signals were used to make video transmission possible in the small amount of bandwidth available.
As long as the Australian presenter doesn't announce that it was Buzz Aldrin who got off the ladder first.
Really? in my opinion it looks like crap. The original one has some noise, and a hell of a lot more detail, look at the moon's surface around the rover compared to this "higher quality" remaster. There is almost no detail there, just a gray blur.
It literally looks like they just removed the little bit of noise, which i really didn't see a problem with, and then ran it though a soft focus filter
This time George Lucas has gone too far into the star wars prequel territory
and here we go with every humourless idiot whinging about it
SOP.
Tapes where expensive and took a while to get. SOP was to reuse the tapes.
Hey, you wouldn't want them wasting tax dollars on a tape that would just be sitting around, would you?
It's important to remember the context. From pretty much everyones point of view, they would be going to the moon so often it wouldn't be a big deal.
And they where only reused one they had been ensured it had been taped for broad cast. That meant there where many copies in many formats. well 3 formats I think.
There was also a format issue in the 80's the made them reuse tapes for a period. IIRC
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I know "they always intended for it to be brighter and in high definition but they didn't have the budget to do it at the time..." Call me when they announce that it is being remade in 3D.
at the first, and so far, only post on the site:
"Digitally remastered = digitally re-faked"
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
"high-quality and brighter images of Neil Armstrong stepping off the ladder"
Oh, good, the remastered moon landing. In a year or two we'll get the special edition, with all new special effects. The once-lifeless moon will have all manner of alien life. Probably the golf ball will swing first at the astronauts.
Additional footage of the astronauts' training will be released, but it will be unpopular with fans of the oringal moon landing. Much of the criticism will focus on a goofy sidekick they meet, who somehow seems to play an important role in spite of being a babbling fool.
Later there will be a DVD release with the SE footage alongside the video as it originally aired. HD and 3D versions will follow eventually.
In this episode, NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong famously steps out of Apollo 11 to plant a flag on the surface of the moon. In the remastered edition, we've added a backdrop of stars, corrected shadows and lighting and out of place crosshairs, and updated background scenery to include more realistic footprints. Fans of the moon landing will appreciate the realistic crater at the landing site, the moondust being compressed by the lander, the correction of the flapping flag and the dialog now has the proper transmission delay.
It's important to remember the context. From pretty much everyones point of view, they would be going to the moon so often it wouldn't be a big deal.
Just like because I live in the U.S., visiting Plymouth Rock holds no value because I'm always on U.S. soil. Substitute any historical site. Reusing those tapes was a bonehead move.
And here I go hearing "wing-ing" instead of "wine-ing" when i read Whinging. (Yes I know thats the British spelling of the word)
Right, because Betacam and VHS recorders were not readily available, so they destroyed original footage of monumental achievements.
I understand the root cause: NASA has since the '70s been under-funded but still - they could have saved the footage by going to newer, superior and less expensive formats and preserve the original media.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Let's hope that they digitally added some stars in the backgrounds in order to placate the conspiracy theorists from believing the footage has been faked.
Digitally rerendered footage of the moon landing, ...
"PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN FOOTAGE OF of the historic Apollo 11 moonwalk will be shown exclusively at the 2010 Australian Geographic Society Awards in Sydney on 6 October." (emphasis theirs)
The most important achievement of humanity...and the official records are destroyed.
If that does not smell hoax, I don't know what does...!!!
Does the original image on the left, in the video actually look sharper to anyone else than the remastered one? I find the remastered one looks blurry. :S
Pics or it didn't happen.
Am I right in thinking that data recovery firms (and government agencies) can pull data off a hard drive, even after it's been overwritten - possibly several times? (Yes, if you overwrite it with random noise, that might make it hard to guess what was there before, but if you just record a normal file or video over the top, that'll have a set of known statistics that make it possible to subtract out and recover the earlier data.)
And if that's the case, why can't they recover the original recordings - which must surely rank amongst some of the most important ever made? It's not like NASA doesn't have the money or the expertise to do this.
While I personally believe that we did land on the moon, there are those who think it was all a hoax. You can find more details of it on Wikipedia. One of the arguments deals with missing tapes, which apparently is confirmed by this article (that they were erased). Now I don't think this as evidence that the moon landing was a hoax, but it does raise the question: What idiot would be so careless with tapes involving such a monumental event? I can buy the story that someone may have stolen them so that they would have the only copy of video recordings of the landing, but ... erased? Did some idiot tape their favorite sports game over it accidentally (this is not a serious question)?
Am I the only one who sees the growth of mad conspiracy theories such as the "faked moon landing" as a sign post on the road the the decline of our civilization?
I was at a party a while ago in which I met a seemingly intelligent professional who seemed to honestly believe that humans never landed on the moon. I suspect that though some of the posts calling the landing fake are trolls, I believe that many who believe the landing is fake are sincere. I do not believe this is a harmless trend.
Voltaire had an quote that I believe is germane here: "Those who can make people believe absurdities can make them commit atrocities".
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Agreed - if they needed cash so much, surely they could have sold the originals for many, many times their worth as digital recording media to any number of national museums who would have lovingly preserved them.
VHS tapes ... from 1969 ??? Are we sure they're not watching Capricorn One ???
It's important to remember the context. From pretty much everyones point of view, they would be going to the moon so often it wouldn't be a big deal.
No, the context was a worldwide event that inspired and united a generation, nay, a populous, on a scale never seen before or since, and everyone at the time was well aware of the significance. It was the *first* human exploration of an extraterrestrial body, and the first recording thereof. The first of anything is always more historic, important, and monumental than any repetition. You don't take a piece of art and say oh well, "there's going to be so many reprints and facsimiles that there's no point preserving the original." It's patently obvious that the original holds significantly higher value. In fact, if anyone thought it wasn't a significant event, there wouldn't have been a space race to begin with.
SOP is really no excuse -- it should have either been ignored, or a waiver requested -- and it was a truly boneheaded to record over it.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
This new video shows the Moon Landing as the director originally wanted to portray it for American audiences, though the technology was lacking in 1969. The Special Edition of the Moon Landing includes more jawas and droids edited in to the scene seamlessly alongside Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. The "One Small Step" segment now includes a dance number cut from the original release.
Because those tapes are recorded in an analog format instead of digital, which makes recovery impossible.
-- Cheers!
"that might make it hard to guess what was there before"
Not just hard, next to impossible (depending on the number of times it was overwritten), even for a government agency.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
People believe it was faked because they don't want to believe we were capable of something 40 years ago that we are not capable of today. They want to have hope for the future, but the moon landing is an obvious sign of decline (or rather, the fact that it happened so long and we can't do it today is an obvious sign of decline).
"The magnetic data tapes seem to have all been lost — erased — by NASA"
I have a hard time in accepting this, one of the greatest human acheivements ever accomplished and the tapes are allowed to be lost or erased. You have no choice but to wonder if this was done on purpose to hide something?
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
He wasn't joking.
If you look at the NASA staffing for the data collection areas during that time you will not see the position Archivist anywhere. Lots of engineers and scientists but no qualified librarians or archivists.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Am I right in thinking that data recovery firms (and government agencies) can pull data off a hard drive, even after it's been overwritten - possibly several times? (Yes, if you overwrite it with random noise, that might make it hard to guess what was there before, but if you just record a normal file or video over the top, that'll have a set of known statistics that make it possible to subtract out and recover the earlier data.)
Actually with modern hard drives 1 wipe with 1s, 0s, or random data is enough. 2 wipes if you want to be extra sure. Just the other day I noticed that the Linux wipe utility's "quick" mode does 4 wipes! WTF, get with the times!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
There are TONS of things to do RIGHT HERE. Life extension, for one.
Every time you shit all over a space-related thread, I die a little inside :-(
"Everyone quit with this boring exploration crap and make us live longer! I'm not getting any younger dammit!"
I would like to bring a jellyfish or something back from Enceladus or Europa (where there is probably life right now) and show it to you, and laugh. And then in a "horrible" accident it would sting you with an amazing unstudied deadly venom (that actually turns out to be its reproductive juices, harmless to other creatures from the same planet but deadly to anything on Earth that gets in the way of its projectile mating spear), and your corpse would be used to study its effects, leading to a cure for cancer...or maybe some life extension technology >:)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No one can "pull data" off a modern hard drive after you overwrite it just once. Stop believing in fairytales.
As for analog recordings -- with audio recordings that were erased once but not overwritten, you can usually make out words. With video, whatever quality is left is so poor that even a 3rd gen copy from that will look better.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
If you really are a Dad in Portland, then please please for the good of all Oregonians, please learn the difference between were (past tense of the verb 'to be') and where (referring to a location).
Thanks.
but remember, they took plenty of high-definition photos with Hasselblad cameras. Still, a shame we won't get a return trip in our lifetimes with 3D Imax cameras, live webcams, and tweets from the Moon. Oh- maybe the Chinese or Indians will do it for us..
I just read "including high-quality and brighter images of Neil Armstrong fapping off the ladder". My first thought was "vacuum, ouch!" then my brain kicked in.
Posting anonymously for the obvious reason of being embarrassed.
wow. lots of stuff in the news today about NASA. is today 'Go NASA!' Day or National National Air and Space Administration Day? :)
Am I right in thinking that data recovery firms (and government agencies) can pull data off a hard drive, even after it's been overwritten - possibly several times?
You're not. In the interests of making people prove their claims, someone offered a challenge with a huge bounty a couple of years ago if anyone could successfully recover data from a hard drive he'd only formatted (with zeros, no fancy random overwrites). Nobody even tried to take him up on it. Wish I could find the link, but my Google Foo seems to be on holiday.
It's not like NASA doesn't have the money or the expertise to do this.
They probably don't have the money to do this any more, even if they have the expertise.
But I still don't like it. Sure, the original was kind of amateur-ish with the shadows all wrong and the wind and that sort of things. But a digital enhanced remake will just end up destroying the aura of the original, kind of what happened with the Star Wars remake. Gosh, I hope there won't be a Jar Jar Binks character in the moon landing remake.
I'll just wait for this guy to remake the original.
In the rush to beat the Russians, a lot of shortcuts were taken, including lack of a formal media house. Also, the camera was custom and experimental such that many of the managers didn't know how it worked. It was barely ready in time for the launch.
Further, as soon as the first landing was finished, the staff had to get ready for the second. They were thinking ahead to the next mission (which was to use color TV), not historical archives.
(The color TV cam of Apollo 12 was damaged by accidental sun exposure, and thus there was no live TV from 12.)
Table-ized A.I.
They taped over episodes of The Golden Girls
They - are - bureaucrats.
I used to teach a Unix/Linux sysadmin course, and one of my guest lecturers was a guy from IBAS. He made it quite clear that even those guys, who make a living recovering data from hard drives in all kinds of sorry states, couldn't recover the data if it was overwritten. The amount of times it was overwritten didn't matter in the slightest, once was enough.
If I remember correctly he said that the only thing that overwriting data multiple times does is make you feel more secure. The data is gone after the first overwrite, after that it's all about covering your ass and feeling good.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
Is this the version where Neil is wearing his 2009-issue Rolex ?
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Buzz aldrin punched first!
I'm waiting for the DVD special features release bloopers real, outtakes and directors commentary.
(note to literalists: it's called irony. I do not in fact believe the moon landing was faked).
First, isn't NASA funded by American tax dollars? Then why is the first release of the film being done in Australia, not USA? Second, "The magnetic data tapes seem to have all been lost — erased — by NASA, so all that's left are VHS recordings," ... does this imply that vhs recordings aren't magnetic data tapes?