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NASA Releases Thousands of Hours of Apollo 11 Mission Audio (thehill.com)

Posted by msmash on from the for-the-record dept.

NASA and the University of Texas have teamed up to digitize 19,000 hours of recordings from the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first two people on the moon. From a report: The audio was uploaded to the Internet Archive, a nonprofit website that hosts digitized versions of cultural artifacts. "One of the things that comes across is that each of the people working for NASA is proud of what they do. They were always working collaboratively," John Hansen, a speech researcher at the university and principal investigator for the project, told NBC News.

7 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Moon Hoaxers? by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now that we have pictures of moon buggy tracks and the gear left behind on the moon...

    https://www.nasa.gov/mission_p...

    ...as well as things like this newly-released thousands-of-hours of audio, do any of the moon hoaxers start to lose their resolve?

    Or to them, is it still just part of a huge ongoing conspiracy involving thousands of men and women that continues to live on nearly 50 years later?

    1. Re:Moon Hoaxers? by olsmeister · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When you're certain something is true, facts are no obstacle. It's trivial to rewrite the narrative to work around such annoyances as proof and evidence.

  2. Is there a key to understanding the tapes? by mykepredko · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have no idea how this works. If I look at the Official Apollo 11 timeline (https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_11i_Timeline.htm), the countdown started on July 14th and splashdown was on July 24th. I can be generous and say that the mission took 11 days (264 hours). According to TFA, there were 30 tracks of data (which yields 7,920 hours of audio). This is only 1/3 of the total - where does the 19k hours come in?

    Secondly, how do you know which tape to look for what? For example, I'd love to hear the rendezvous of the conversation of the CM and the ascent module during docking after launching from the moon but I have no idea where to look in terms of time/track.

    I did do a search, but couldn't find any information on this or a key to understand the tapes. Anybody have any ideas?

    --
    Mimetics Inc. Twitter
    1. Re:Is there a key to understanding the tapes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The article says 170 tapes with 30 tracks, it does not say how long any of them are or that they were only recording 30 tracks at one time. 5,100 tracks is all it gives you. The NASA release mentions these are "surviving tapes" and also says there is a lot more audio that hasn't been digitized. It also hints at transcriptions, perhaps coming to the Explore Apollo site at some point.

      The labels have things like "Flight Director (L)" and "Flight Director (R)" taking up two tracks on a tape. Some of the ones I have opened up sound like they are data (the labels are the same for every tape and do not match the contents). I also found one with some folks that sound Australian (maybe) troubleshooting something.

      I imagine "T880" is a tape label (I get 24 audio tracks for that one), followed by which Historical Recorder was used and potentially which reel on the recorder (U and L look a lot like Upper/Lower to me), then the channel. Unsure on the timestamp, except it appears to be sequential (T889 has channel 17 from 01-42-10_10-12-10 and 10-12-10_18-21-28, but there is silence in the first and talking in the second).

  3. The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)

    Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.

    Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!

    Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.

  4. Re:19,000 hours? does not compute by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 3, Informative

    I wonder where the rest of it is coming from.

    From -

    https://www.sciencealert.com/n...

    The hours and hours of audio encompasses every single communication between the astronauts, mission control and back-room support staff during the entire mission.

  5. More approachable version by Brett+Buck · · Score: 3, Informative

    Try here:

    https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/

    and here:

    https://history.nasa.gov/afj/

          where they have listened extensively to many of the tapes, and transcribed and added explanations. If you want to know what was going on live, that is the place to start.