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News - NASA hopes archives have map to moon



 
 
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  #1  
Old September 24th 06, 10:22 PM posted to sci.space.history
Rusty
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Default 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  
Old September 25th 06, 02:12 AM posted to sci.space.history
Steve Vernon
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Posts: 30
Default 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  
Old September 25th 06, 02:40 AM posted to sci.space.history
Jud McCranie
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Posts: 140
Default 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.
---
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  #4  
Old September 25th 06, 04:05 AM posted to sci.space.history
jonathan
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Default 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  
Old September 25th 06, 01:46 PM posted to sci.space.history
[email protected]
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Posts: 95
Default 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?

--
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  #6  
Old September 27th 06, 09:22 PM posted to sci.space.history
Jud McCranie
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Posts: 140
Default 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

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