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Space Science

Lost Moon-Landing Tape Recovered, Restored 90

Posted by timothy from the listening-to-history dept.
esome writes: "Video clips of American astronauts bouncing around on the moon will never get old as far as I'm concerned. Now we've got one more to drool over thanks to Kipp Teague who has worked hard to archive Apollo stuff on his site. The BBC has an article on it here."
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Lost Moon-Landing Tape Recovered, Restored More

Lost Moon-Landing Tape Recovered, Restored

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  • Ok, conspiracy theories ahoy, but with modern cinematic techniques faking a film like this would be *really* easy. But I can believe it.

    Apart from the bullet-time 360 of Neil Armstrong jumping over Agent Smith.

    • The least you could do is Feed The Machinie [8m.com]!

    • except it is audio
  • Here's [nasa.gov] another link to an apollo archive. Lost of stuff here; video, audio, stills, radio transcripts, technical stuff...

  • Audio, not Video (Score:3, Informative)

    by 4im ( 181450 ) on Friday September 21, 2001 @03:00AM (#2328860)
    Where in BBC's article did you read anything
    about video? This is an audio recording, *not*
    video!
  • Will it show the US Flag flapping in the wind on the 'lunar' surface, or Armstrong's " Good Luck Mr Gorsky" comment ;)

  • Movies don't (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Supa Mentat ( 415750 )
    do this stuff any justice. After having just listened to the recording all I can say is WOW! That was history right there, we've seen Houston do the "GO" thing so many times in movies, but man when you hear it for real it just gets you going like a movie can't. About the first 33 seconds are silence with a little static but after that the chatter is pretty constant. Another thing the movies leave out is the fact that nearly all of those guys had moderate to heavy southern accents. ;)

  • The moon -- a ridiculous liberal myth (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 21, 2001 @03:04AM (#2328868)
    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.

    • I knew it! There HAD to be something wrong with the whole "moon" idea. I mean "man in the moon" - what kind of bullshit is THAT?

      I actually believe there are several "moon" satellites orbiting the earth, otherwise we wouldn't be able to see it in Europe, when it is hovering over the US. Damn liberals. Not only do they spy on their own people, but also on us europeans, who have done nothing against them.

      I'll bet that the stars are surveillance satellites as well - I mean, they're always at the same place at night, night after night, year after year. Damn liberals!
    • Hey... You forgot to mention how the earth is flat, and that the Earth is the center of the universe. Maybe saving that for another day huh?
    • You know, I keep seeing this exact same post crop up, and get modded up, every time an article related to the Moon is posted. Is this the definition of "karma whoring"?

      Main points where the joke could be improved: remove, or at least improve, the denial of pre-1950 Moon mentionings (I can think of quite a few pre-1950 references to the Moon, which therefore strains the credulity of that bit), and address the issue of what happens when both Sun and Moon are both set (early pre-dawn, usually) or when the Moon is emitting no light (thus defeating its ostensible illumination purpose).
      • I keep seeing this exact same post crop up, and get modded up, every time an article related to the Moon is posted. Is this the definition of "karma whoring"?

        Since it was posted by an AC by definition it can't be karma whoring since that term implies the poster is getting remuneration in the form of karma. Since AC's receive no karma from their post there is no way for them to receive such remuneration.

        Furthermore, karma whoring in general became essentially pointless on slashdot when the 50 point cap was put in place. Once you get enough points to earn an automatic +1 Bonus, there is really no point to posting purely for the sake of karma, or skewing your posts with the intention of getting additional karma, the hallmarks of a true karma whore.

    • Funny how you consider a movie like "Enemy of the State" factual documentary.

    • these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up.

      Nice troll, but I have one suggestion. Anyone that would speak of "decent, God-fearing Americans" would probably not use the metric system. They would use the English units like miles, as God intended.
      • They would use the English units like miles, as God intended. English units? Not anymore. Bloody government are trying to force metric on everyone. Who honestly feels comfortable with measuring their height in metres and their weight in kilos? Sheesh.
        • I can tell you that the metric system will not take off in the USA until one of two things happen:

          1. The average height of the American male reaches 6 ft. 4 in. (~1.92 meters).

          2. The meter is changed to be equivalent to 2 ft. 9 in. (~890 centimeters).

          Otherwise, those of us who are a bit over average in height will lose the important component of our self-esteem brought by being able to claim 6 feet of distance between the soles of our feet and the tops of our heads. I'm not joking; "1.82 meter-er" just doesn't have much of a ring to it. Until this issue is resolved, expect the US of A to stick with the English system, at least for the measuring of human height.
    • Find any of your grandparents old bibles that was published before 1950 or any old sea story literature regarding nighttime navigation..

  • Now if only the astronauts (Score:3, Funny)

    by Hektor_Troy ( 262592 ) on Friday September 21, 2001 @03:05AM (#2328870)
    had been attractive women with big breasts, watching the bounce around on the moon would have been ALOT more interesting.

  • Great Recordings (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CleverNickName ( 129189 ) <wil@wilwhe[ ]n.net ['ato' in gap]> on Friday September 21, 2001 @03:26AM (#2328894) Homepage Journal
    This audio is just amazing...in a week filled with despair and sadness, it's a welcome break to hear something so optimistic and uplifting. It reminds me of this record set I had when I was in college, called "I can hear it now" [amazon.com]. It was a 3 or 4 LP set of important events that happened in the 60s, narrated by Walter Cronkite. It had the "We choose to go to the moon" speech, the assassination of JFK, MLK, lots of stuff from Vietnam...but the thing that I played over and over again were the recordings from the Apollo missions. Something about that *beep* and the courage in their voices...the sense that I get, just from listening to them talk, was that every one of those men knew they were doing something incredible. I'm really glad this story got posted.

    • Check out that recent movie called "The Dish", about the radio dish in Australia. I watched it last weekend, it restored some of my faith in humanity :) Ordinary people contributing to the Apollo missions, with lots of video+audio clips, of course.
  • The *real* tapes are here [tripod.com]. Open your eyes to the NASA conspiracy!

  • Listen to a piece of history (the rescued tape). (Score:4, Informative)

    by antdude ( 79039 ) on Friday September 21, 2001 @04:51AM (#2328989) Homepage Journal
    In case people overlook the audio link on BBC's link (top right), you can listen to the rescued tape [bbc.co.uk] (direct link to RealPlayer. To me, it sounds very good! The first few minutes is blank/static, but the fun part begins after that. The whole audio is about 10:51.3 minutes. :)

  • The collection of MPEGs they have very nicely fit on one 3" CD. :-)

  • I don't allow proprietary codecs on my machine. Is there a version of this audio clip in a standard format, like AIFF or MP3?

    Schwab

  • Is this the tape where Armstrong says "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky" [about.com]?
  • I can recall some years ago, like on the 20th anniversary or something, there was a late night broadcast of the entire first moon moon landing, however many hours long it was.

    It was was something like 6 hours long.

    I wonder if it is available anyplace.

    (There was also one a similar brodcast about pioneer going past neptune. That one I think I taped, and have it buried someplace)

    • Don't know if it's commercially available but it does exist.Bayern 3, (German TV channel), showed what appeared to be the whole thing on the anniversary of the lunar landing this past July. Really amazing looking at the technology of the period. The wall sized display of the spacecraft's position appeared to be driven by x and y axis wires, (think of a BIG plotter). I was around for the original. Watching it from today's perspective was even more facinating.
  • Very exciting stuff: one of the flight engineers shouts 'GO!' with such palpable joy. Thirty years later and I'm still one of the guys "turning blue."

    This document could be all the more interesting and useful if it were marked up with SMIL [w3.org]. Using this, we could synchronize the display of a transcript, including the names of all the speakers. Last fall at the Virginia Center for Digital History [virginia.edu] I saw a demo of a similar treatment of some audio surrounding Kennedy's administration and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

  • It is amazing to hear them read out the altitude numbers in feet. The building next door to me is 54 storeys tall, so when the lander gets within 500 feet, I can just see it coming down past that building's roof. Then, when it got within 120 feet, I looked out my 14th-floor window and realized they were closer to the moon than I am to the earth!

    Also, keep in mind that they didn't know whether the machinery would work, or whether the lander would sink into the moon dust, or what have you. They were literally descending into the unknown.

    Quite an amazing piece of tape.
    • >they didn't know whether the machinery would work, or whether the lander would sink into the moon dust

      This is the part of the story that really captures my interest, the "T1" decision. They really had no idea what to expect on the surface of the moon and had a leave/stay decision to make in the seconds following the landing.

      Problem was, all the controllers were so overjoyed that the lem had made it down to the surface (after Armstrong had gotten down to _seconds_ of decent fuel), that Kranz had trouble getting them to sit back down at their consoles so they could decide if they were going to take off again right away or stay on the surface.

      I haven't tried to download the audio while here at work, I'm going to do that as soon as I get home tonight. Should be interesting to listen to that moment for real (after having seen it portrayed in "Earth to the Moon" and whatnot).

  • FOX (Score:2)

    by sharkey ( 16670 )
    Has anybody run this past the experts at FOX? They pointed out that the moon landing was a fake, so they should be able to make short work of this. After all, they have an investigative reporter and a camera maker to provide them with incontrovertible opinions.
    • http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

      Learn to stop being be so damn gullible.
      • Seeing as how we are unfamiliar with sarcasm, I will close the cash register at this point.
        --Comic Book Guy

  • Haven't these audio experts at Nasa heard about baking the tapes [audio-restoration.com]? That's standard procedure for any audio or video tapes of that vintage. You put it in a scientific oven (one that maintains a constant temperature, rahter than cycling on and off) at 130 degrees for 4 to 5 hours. That bakes out the liquid and emulsifies the binder. I've been restoring old 1/2" black & white videotapes. They were unplayable without baking and clogged the heads after 30 seconds. After, I was able to play fairly long sections.

  • for the original film? Or they planning on releasing it on DVD? Or perhaps making a remake of the moon landing starring The Rock and Kevin Bacon?
  • You mean the tapes are just rotting away in Texas? Shouldn't one of the greatest recordings in history be preserved in the National Archives?

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