Apollo 11 TV Tapes Go Missing

Richard W.M. Jones writes "On July 21st 1969, Honeysuckle Creek observatory brought us the first TV pictures of men on the moon. The original signals were recorded on high quality slow-scan TV (SSTV) tapes. What was released to the TV networks was reduced to lower quality commercial TV standards. Unfortunately John Sarkissian of Parkes Observatory Australia reports that 698 of the 700 boxes of original tapes have gone missing [warning: large PDF] from the U.S. National Archives. Even more worryingly, the last place on earth which can actually read these tapes is scheduled to close in October this year. The PDF contains interesting comparisons which show that if all you've seen are the TV pictures from the landing, you really haven't seen the first moon walk in its full glory."

Re:Gee, thanks.

[hords]

Oh, BTW, you missed seeing Halley's commet in your lifetime a few years ago.

Halley's comet last appeared in the inner Solar System in 1986, and will next appear in the summer of 2061. [wikipedia.org]

Surely some of us will live that long.

PDF

[antdude]

Just go to http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/Apollo_11/tapes/Se arch_for_SSTV_Tapes.pdf [honeysucklecreek.net] :) The story had Coral Cache URL. =)

Re:Australia!!!???

[Preacher X]

actually the reason for this as far as i have seen is because the australian observatory was the only valid relay point with equipment capable of receiving the signal fromt he video feeds for the lander. During certain orbital positions the US would not have signal contact with the crew, this just happened to be in one of those windows is what most likely happened.

Picobytes?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not think the prefix "pico-" [wikipedia.org] means what you seem to think it means. Do you mean "petabytes" [wikipedia.org]?

See also, "terabytes" [wikipedia.org].

Re:Does it really matter

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't be huge. SSTV records something like 10 frames per second, at 320 lines. Suffice it to say that VGA is miles ahead in terms of quality, but SSTV was great relative to the old broadcasts, for a relative perspective.

SSTV is used for sending video over voice frequencies, fwiw... It's akin to an animated fax, or like the signals weather fax that satellites send out freely with the fax protocol.

Re:Oh come on now, you can't possibly be serious!!

[Zaphod2016]

What these conspiracy theorists always forget is that we placed beacons on the moon which we "ping" with lasers constantly.

Behold more mass-media lies (part of the conspiracy no doubt) here!! [wikipedia.org]

Even if the footage was all faked, and NASA was nothing but a PR department gone wrong, *something* qwnt to the moon and placed very specifically calibrated censors there, coincidentally, these censors have been used WORLDWIDE for some 40 years now. Fade back...Occum's razor trumps David Duchovny for the win.

Re:The real moon conspiracy

[LordSnooty]

Sound? On the moon? You really haven't thought this through, have you?

Re:The real moon conspiracy

[stjobe]

You need to visit this [clavius.org] site. It answers a lot of your questions.

Van Allen belts:

The principle danger of the Van Allen belts is high-energy protons, which are not that difficult to shield against. And the Apollo navigators plotted a course through the thinnest parts of the belts and arranged for the spacecraft to pass through them quickly, limiting the exposure.

Fuel issues:

First, the assumption that a given mission must expend all the vehicle's fuel is highly naive. Every rocket is provided with slightly more fuel than its mission requires, as a safety margin. In any event, the rocket is not compelled to burn all of it. The Saturn V was a sophisticated flying machine that was able to shut off its engine when the desired velocity was obtained, regardless of remaining fuel.

Craters and the like:

By comparison, a fully-loaded Harrier jump jet produces 27,000 lbf thrust at liftoff -- ten times more than a lunar module. Yet you typically do not see a crater under a Harrier. This is because popular intuition dictates that a rocket engine of any size is automatically more powerful than a jet engine of any size. In fact, most jet engines are more powerful than the lunar module's rocket engines.

Lunar Module takeoff film:

Some conspiracists point out that the film of the lunar module ascending from the lunar surface to meet the command module doesn't show any visible exhaust products. That's because by the time it comes into view of the command module the engine has stopped firing. Just as a baseball thrown upward will continue to rise after it has left the propulsive effect of your hand, the lunar module continues to rise after its engine stops firing. Unlike space ships in the movies, real spacecraft don't have to fire their engines continuously in order to make headway.

1 box would be normal, but 700....

[purduephotog]

I've toured the archives for work purposes and planning purposes for large digitization efforts. The speaker from the Smithsonian is absolutely right- just how the hell do you digitize that much crap? The numbers are staggering- pick any task and multiply it by the billions of feet of film and you've got serious timeframes- in the order (of some estimates I did) 30 to 50 years.

But I find it odd that they could misplace all the boxes. The check-in/ check-out procedure used at the archives is fairly regimented- to screw something that large up requires a deliberate effort to delete or mis-file the boxes.

To give you an idea, a box is received / dropped off at the archives. It has it's master database that says "This box is #####". The organization that drops it off maps a number assigned by the archive to that box, and said org maintains all the details of what is IN the box.

The archives then move the box and it's paperwork to the specific row, shelf, and complex. I believe they are to make a total of 12 to 15 'pulls' per hour, which when we were wanding meant actively finding an item in about 2 minutes after you walk into a complex (this place is huge- each complex is a football field).

The paperwork is then returned to central processing for annotation and entry into the DB.

But to lose 700 CF (each box is 1 CF or so) requires serious effort- that implies that someone filed them all in either the wrong complex or completely off the wall location- and that NO ONE has tried to place another item on wherever they are currently sitting.

Now, assume they've been actively 'pulled' for a number of years. Your standard pull & return places a piece of paper at the boxes location- it's a copy of the form showing who pulled it and when. The paper sits where the box originated- I saw some papers from the 70's which implied that the organization pulled the item yet is still paying around 30 cents / month for that space.

A permanent withdrawl could have been done to 'stop the monthly fees', but that means the box wouldn't necessarily go back to the same spot. If all those boxes were moved around the entire archives it would be nearly impossible to locate- there's just not enough eyes to find them- and even then you can double stack boxes to boot so you'd never see them.

So... either the boxes are there or someone checked them out. If they were checked out and the paperwork was lost.... you'll never find them. If they weren't checked out, you would need a miracle (and yes, they do have 'reward' sheets for lost boxes posted around the area) to find them. Maybe there's a cache of boxes somewhere... and then maybe not.

Re:The real moon conspiracy

[shotfeel]

This site [badastronomy.com] is always a lot of fun. The linked page goes through much of the "evidence" used in a Fox TV show about the Apollo moon hoax, and debunks the evidence step-by-step.

One of the things that has fascinated me in the past when reading stuff on the site, is that the way things often work in space often seems to contradict common sense and intuition, even for the scientifically minded.