|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
News - NASA hopes archives have map to moon
NASA hopes archives have map to moon
http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbc...609240331/1007 BY LARRY WHEELER FLORIDA TODAY WASHINGTON - NASA is raiding the National Archives to learn how to get back to the moon. The effort offers an intriguing paradox. While the space agency recently awarded a $3.9 billion contract to Lockheed Martin to build a 21st century lunar vehicle, it has been digging through old boxes in a Texas storage facility to resurrect the 1960s-era blueprints for the Apollo spacecraft. "They are requesting a lot of stuff," said Rodney Krajca at the National Archives regional center in Fort Worth, Texas. The new Orion spacecraft will perform essentially the same tasks as the original Apollo command and service modules: Get a team of astronauts to the moon and back safely. The 40-year-old blueprints are helping a new generation of engineers pick up where their predecessors left off when the Apollo program was canceled in the 1970s. Michael Braukus, a NASA spokesman, said the agency's engineers are reviewing the Apollo drawings to gain knowledge "that will help us minimize cost and increase efficiency." The same federal agency that safeguards original copies of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights also keeps the technical documents created by the army of professionals who designed and built the Apollo spacecraft. The Apollo collection is stored in 170 boxes measuring one cubic foot apiece. And each box is packed with carefully folded paper diagrams. Some of the boxes contain stacks of 3-by-5-inch "aperture cards," each of which features a drawing and printed information. But the cards can't be read without a pre-digital-era viewer -- old-school technology that the National Archives doesn't have. Rummaging through the bins at NASA's request has been a fascinating journey of rediscovery, Krajca said. "You may have 1,500 drawings in one box," he said. "We tried to run one through a map copier. It was a diagram of a control panel for the Apollo spacecraft. I think it was close to 20 feet long. It was a great drawing of all the instrumentation the astronauts used in the capsule." The research has been complicated by the fact that the collection isn't indexed. Archivists have more than a dozen lists that NASA officials sent along with the documents in the early 1970s. Some of the lists are 50 pages long and filled with columns of numbers and titles. "It is not the easiest thing," Krajca said. "If you said, 'I want a lunar module drawing,' over time I could find it, but it is not something I can run and find quickly." Precisely what NASA plans to do with the documents remains something of a mystery. Individuals involved in the space-age archeology project didn't respond to requests for comment, and NASA press officers declined to make agency personnel available for interviews. It is possible the agency is growing more sensitive to negative publicity about its Apollo artifacts as it moves forward with plans to build Orion and a new series of launch vehicles dubbed "Ares." Recently, NASA managers scrambled to respond to reports that the agency had lost the original tapes of the historic 1969 moon landing, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. The tapes eventually were found. Before that, there were reports the civilian space agency couldn't find the blueprints to the immense Saturn rockets that lifted the heavy stack of Apollo modules into space. "There is an urban myth about the Saturn rocket blueprints being lost," said Stephen Garber, a historian and Web curator at NASA headquarters in Washington. "That's not true." NASA's current plans anticipate the new Orion spacecraft will be ready to carry six astronauts to and from the International Space Station no later than 2014, and up to four astronauts to the moon no later than 2020. |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
News - NASA hopes archives have map to moon
"Rusty" wrote in message oups.com... Recently, NASA managers scrambled to respond to reports that the agency had lost the original tapes of the historic 1969 moon landing, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. The tapes eventually were found. They've been found? Is this NEW news? When did this happen? Any further information? Steve Vernon |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
News - NASA hopes archives have map to moon
On Sun, 24 Sep 2006 21:12:23 -0400, "Steve Vernon"
wrote: They've been found? Is this NEW news? When did this happen? Any further information? This is news to me too. I'd like to know. --- Replace you know what by j to email |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
News - NASA hopes archives have map to moon
"Jud McCranie" wrote in message ... On Sun, 24 Sep 2006 21:12:23 -0400, "Steve Vernon" wrote: They've been found? Is this NEW news? When did this happen? Any further information? This is news to me too. I'd like to know. --- Replace you know what by j to email I say we just hoax this one. |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
News - NASA hopes archives have map to moon
"Steve Vernon" writes:
"Rusty" wrote in message oups.com... Recently, NASA managers scrambled to respond to reports that the agency had lost the original tapes of the historic 1969 moon landing, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. The tapes eventually were found. They've been found? Is this NEW news? When did this happen? Any further information? Quick, some one FOI the lot before they get put in another safe place. Or they will then have to admit they still can't find them. BTW, what happen in the US if FOIed docs are lost? -- Paul Repacholi 1 Crescent Rd., +61 (08) 9257-1001 Kalamunda. West Australia 6076 comp.os.vms,- The Older, Grumpier Slashdot Raw, Cooked or Well-done, it's all half baked. EPIC, The Architecture of the future, always has been, always will be. |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
News - NASA hopes archives have map to moon
On Sun, 24 Sep 2006 21:12:23 -0400, "Steve Vernon"
wrote: "Rusty" wrote in message roups.com... Recently, NASA managers scrambled to respond to reports that the agency had lost the original tapes of the historic 1969 moon landing, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. The tapes eventually were found. They've been found? Is this NEW news? When did this happen? Any further information? The author admits that he made a mistake about that: =========================== Tuesday, September 26, 2006 Apollo 11 tapes still missing An article I wrote last week incorrectly reported the lost NASA tapes of Neil Armstrong's historic moonwalk had been found. The hunt for those original magnetic data tapes from the Apollo 11 mission is still on and the story of the search is a fascinating tale. Check out this web site learn more about how retired space program workers are working to locate the original data telemetry tapes. If the tapes can be found and their data converted, the world could see for the first time the clearest pictures ever of Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface. The images transmitted around the world in 1969 were degraded and fuzzy because of the technology used to convert and transmit around the globe the telemetry streaming down from the moon. The "Apollo 11 tape search" Web site contains a number of documents that explain the 37-year-old video technology NASA used and the status of the 21st century "archeological dig" to resurrect the lost tapes. posted by Larry ========== Steve Vernon --- Replace you know what by j to email |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Early NASA PDFs | Rusty | History | 48 | June 13th 06 05:51 AM |
ED CONRAD KNOCKS 'EM DEAD ON LARRY KING LIVE | Ed Conrad | Astronomy Misc | 0 | June 13th 06 01:27 AM |
WE HAVE A WINNER! Smithsonian's New Logo | [email protected] | Astronomy Misc | 0 | June 9th 06 05:35 PM |
Even More on BILLY MEIER & EXTRATERRESTRIALS -- Major Media Conspiracy Against Truth ---- Just like 911 Gov't Hoax & Man as Old as Coal ---- | Ed Conrad | Astronomy Misc | 0 | May 10th 06 11:04 PM |
ED CONRAD WILL WIN IN THE LONG RUN -- 1996 Prediction Coming True -- Evolution Going Belly Up -- Man as Old as Coal | Ed Conrad | Astronomy Misc | 0 | May 10th 06 01:31 PM |