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Unseen Moon Landing Video Released

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the nice-soundstage dept.

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."

13 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. VHS recordings? by mcgrew · · Score: 5, Informative

    There was no Video Home System when the moon landings happened. There was reel to reel tape, and cinescope, but no VHS until 1976.

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    Free Martian Whores!
    1. Re:VHS recordings? by tverbeek · · Score: 4, Informative

      RTFA: It's a 1980s dupe onto VHS of the original reel-to-reel.

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      http://alternatives.rzero.com/
    2. Re:VHS recordings? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      yeah i don't read the article before i post either

    3. Re:VHS recordings? by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Informative

      There was no VHS at the time of the airing of the First, Second, or Third Doctors either.

      Nevertheless some of the lost episodes were recovered from VHS or Betamax because that's all we have left. Perhaps some engineer copied the original 1969 tapes over to a VHS collection. Then the originals were erased by an idiot, so all that's left are the backups.

      Aside - VHS is a really crummy format for storage. Only ~320 pixels across by 486 scanlines. The original magnetic tapes from 1969 probably offered the full resolution possible with NTSC-I, or about ~640x480. Super VHS can capture that full resolution, but not regular VHS.

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      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    4. Re:VHS recordings? by hcdejong · · Score: 5, Informative

      The footage we're talking about was originally taken with a slowcan camera, 250 TV lines at 10 fps. That's not "a high definition camera".

  2. Isn't that summary wrong? by Fallen+Kell · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

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  3. Re:NASA....in Australia!? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why is the first public broadcast of remastered footage of an American moon trip being broadcast in Australia. This makes no sense.

    Why do we keep getting stupid questions from people who have obviously not bothered to RTFA? No, I'm not going to tell you either, it's too early in the morning to be nice.

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  4. TFA is wrong by hcdejong · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:Careful with the headset feed by tg123 · · Score: 2, Informative

    As long as the Australian presenter doesn't announce that it was Buzz Aldrin who got off the ladder first.

    LOL funny but your also so mean

    for those who missed it this is the reference.
    http://www.thecelebritytruth.com/wrong-winner-announced-australias-top-model/0019829

    The poor girl you won ... opps sorry wrong person

  6. Re:NASA....in Australia!? by icegreentea · · Score: 3, Informative

    The source tapes were from Australia. The highest quality video from the moon landing were in Australia. Since they decided to land on the moon early, the US was under the horizon, so they transmitted to Australia instead.

  7. Fixed that for you by albertid · · Score: 4, Informative

    Digitally rerendered footage of the moon landing, ...

  8. RTFA - Not released. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    "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)

  9. Re:Bah! by stjobe · · Score: 2, Informative

    On a (somewhat more) serious note: man went to the Moon ONCE

    Well, six times really:
    Apollo 11
    Apollo 12
    Apollo 14
    Apollo 15
    Apollo 16
    Apollo 17
    All of them had man walking (and for some even driving) on the moon.

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    "Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley