Apollo Tapes are not missing

I know what happened to the tapes, they were found by one of the
Moon-landing deniers/conspiracy guys who had to destroy them because
they were proof that we had actually landed on the moon!

The landing was broadcast live around the world. My question is,
aren't there many "original" tapes that various news and other
organizations would have in their possesion that would make this point
moot. Is is just a question of "NASA's" copy gone south? Does it make
a difference?..........Doc
wrote:
I know what happened to the tapes, they were found by one of the
Moon-landing deniers/conspiracy guys who had to destroy them because
they were proof that we had actually landed on the moon!

wrote in news:1155650001.761196.58410
@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

The landing was broadcast live around the world. My question is,
aren't there many "original" tapes that various news and other
organizations would have in their possesion that would make this point
moot. Is is just a question of "NASA's" copy gone south? Does it make
a difference?..........Doc

It makes a lot of difference. NASA's originals are much higher quality than
what was broadcast live, due to the low-tech NTSC conversion method used
(literally, point a TV camera at a monitor playing the original).


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Jorge R. Frank wrote:
wrote in news:1155650001.761196.58410
@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

The landing was broadcast live around the world. My question is,
aren't there many "original" tapes that various news and other
organizations would have in their possesion that would make this point
moot. Is is just a question of "NASA's" copy gone south? Does it make
a difference?..........Doc

It makes a lot of difference. NASA's originals are much higher quality than
what was broadcast live, due to the low-tech NTSC conversion method used
(literally, point a TV camera at a monitor playing the original).

The following pages, from Australian radio telescopes involved in
tracking Apollo, provide an indication of the considerable degradation
that resulted from the scan conversion process:

http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/apol...V_quality.html

http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/Apollo_11/

Hopefully, the raw data tapes will be found - in readable condition.

Ted Molczan

On Tue, 15 Aug 2006 07:38:37 -0700, molczan wrote:

Jorge R. Frank wrote:
wrote in news:1155650001.761196.58410
@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

The landing was broadcast live around the world. My question is,
aren't there many "original" tapes that various news and other
organizations would have in their possesion that would make this
point moot. Is is just a question of "NASA's" copy gone south? Does
it make a difference?..........Doc

It makes a lot of difference. NASA's originals are much higher quality
than what was broadcast live, due to the low-tech NTSC conversion
method used (literally, point a TV camera at a monitor playing the
original).

The following pages, from Australian radio telescopes involved in
tracking Apollo, provide an indication of the considerable degradation
that resulted from the scan conversion process:

http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/apol...V_quality.html

http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/Apollo_11/

Hopefully, the raw data tapes will be found - in readable condition.


Yeah, it's a race with time. They're already pretty old.

I can imagine there is a rather large number of old not so well documented
data tapes hanging around NASA. I wonder if there is anyone still working
at NASA who would even know what is written on the label of the tape. Or,
if the label is even attached.

This is probably one of the most valuable tapes. Imagine all the other
slightly less valuable tapes waisting away, waiting for their data to be
copied to a hard drive. Ideally, they could start coping data from all
the tapes, then hopefully they would run across the tape in question. The
second worst case would be if they find it right away and let all the
other tapes waist away. The worst being they never find it.

--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @

I'd like to find these tapes, too, but recall that
the even-sharper images from another angle
were taken from the LM window on 16-mm motion
picture film -- but didn't show Neil's full body as
he made his 'small step'.

Can't some grad student run an inverse fourier transform
on the digitized views we have, and 'un-defocus' them
a bit?


"Jorge R. Frank" wrote
It makes a lot of difference. NASA's originals are much higher quality
than
what was broadcast live, due to the low-tech NTSC conversion method used
(literally, point a TV camera at a monitor playing the original).

It makes a lot of difference. NASA's originals are much higher quality than
what was broadcast live, due to the low-tech NTSC conversion method used
(literally, point a TV camera at a monitor playing the original).


And the whole world was fed via that converter. So the higher quality
signal only existed at the receive point (Parks dish antenna?) and
nobody else got to see anything other than the converted signal.

Can't some grad student run an inverse fourier transform
on the digitized views we have, and 'un-defocus' them
a bit?


I doubt that would work. signal to noise issues for one thing.
Also, with video any signal that became "blacker than black" is
effectively clipped off as is thus lost. In crude mathematical terms,
you could multiply something by zero, then you have zero, but after that
you can't ever get back to what you first had.
Similar problem for anything that got saturated (whiter than white).

wrote:
I know what happened to the tapes, they were found by one of the
Moon-landing deniers/conspiracy guys who had to destroy them because
they were proof that we had actually landed on the moon!

As par for the course, they will probably show up on EBay...

Craig Fink writes:

On Tue, 15 Aug 2006 07:38:37 -0700, molczan wrote:

Hopefully, the raw data tapes will be found - in readable
condition.

Yeah, it's a race with time. They're already pretty old.

And in October, the DIL lab is gone, so that removes the last place
that can read them.

How about all of you ringing/writing to you congress critter now. It being
one of `those' years, some may even listen!.

You could also ask why they where remover *from the national archive* for
perminant retention. This just sends my bogometer off scale!

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