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."

Comments

Bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a sound stage on mars

VHS recordings?

[mcgrew]

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

Re:VHS recordings?

[tverbeek]

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

Re:VHS recordings?

[commodore64_love]

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.

Re:VHS recordings?

[hcdejong]

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".

Digital remaster scheme

[Enderwiggin13]

I'll hold out for the inevitable 3D Extended Edition BluRay Director's Cut.

Re:Digital remaster scheme

[grub]

I'll hold out for the inevitable 3D Extended Edition BluRay Director's Cut.

Rumour has it George Lucas is working on a version in which Michael Collins steps on the Moon first.

Re:Let me be the first to say it

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I heard on Slashdot that Lucas is remaking this in 3D, next year.

Re:Urm

[tverbeek]

The 30th anniversary of what? The 10-year reunion?

Old men

[Thanshin]

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.

Re:NASA erased the origionals? did I read that rig

[pavon]

Yes, the idiots reused the tape.

Re:Let me be the first to say it

[Sir_Lewk]

I hear in this version Buzz Aldrin shoots first.

Re:NASA erased the origionals? did I read that rig

[geekoid]

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

Fixed that for you

[albertid]

Digitally rerendered footage of the moon landing, ...