Digitized Apollo Flight Films Available Online 74
Pooua writes "SpaceRef reports that NASA and Arizona State University have teamed up to offer all of NASA's Apollo lunar films online at no charge. The images are scanned from the original films at high resolution, then offered as 16-bit TIFF or 8-bit PNG or ISIS files. The project is expected to take 3 years, but some images are already available. The ASU-NASA website is located at the Arizona State University Apollo Image Archive."
So (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Can't be fake (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
This is not good, considering that these are from the frozen (literally!) originals. It probably implies that the scans were not done in a clean environment, and might unfortunately also mean that the originals may have become damaged by the scan.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably because if you get the PNG instead of the TIFF, the reason is you need to save space and/or bandwidth. The PNG files have also have a reduced resolution (RTFA).
If you needed the full quality, you would go for the 1.2 GB(!) TIFF anyhow.
The scan itself is 12-bit, which they say is as good as 14-bit due to some Leica trickery. Since the originals don't have a high contrast, my guess is that they've simply increased the contrast while scanning, making more pixels fall into different slots. ICBW, but if so, it's still 12-bits, just contrast-enhanced.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't follow your reasoning. They're both just image formats. And in this case, the PNG can hold the exact same information as the TIFF. The only difference would be the size reduction due to the use of LZ compression in PNG. There's no point to differentiate due to file type in this case - just put the different resolutions in different directories or name them slightly differently.
Re: (Score:2)
PNG would not be the best choice for both, because that would mean that many people would have to convert it from PNG to TIFF again at the other end before their software would be able to handle it. While PNG is becoming more and more common, it's not ubiquitous, and especially not
14 bit (Score:2)
Actually, they say the original films (at least some types) do have high contrast, so they were able to modify the Leica to scan at 14 bits instead of the standard 12 bits to capture all the de
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
i can't believe in this day and age, we haven't landed on Mars yet!
Question- had funding levels and interest in space contunues at the level it was at in the 60s and 70s, would we have landed on Mars by now?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
But we have, multiple times! That we haven't put humans on Mars doesn't mean we haven't landed there. And what, exactly, would a human be able to find out that couldn't be better found out by spending the same amount on automated systems? To me, it seems it would be meaningless bravado, risking human lives for no real benefits.
Regards,
--
*Art
People on Mars (Score:4, Funny)
They narrowly avoided the disaster in time thanks to their Chief Scientist AlGor who warned of the impending doom.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:tin-foil hat (Score:4, Interesting)
I hear this argument over and over again.... and I don't buy it.
You simply need to have somebody "on the ground" and able to "pick up" a rock, turn stuff over, and react to the local environment... where you don't have to discuss in "committee" what action you are going to do next.
I would have to agree that the "initial reconnaissance" ought to be done by robots.... as it was done on the Moon as well (or have you forgot the Ranger series of spacecraft?) When you have so many unknowns, as there were about the Moon back in the 1950's regarding the whole idea of even physically landing on the Moon, it was vital to get something "out there" and test what is going on. This is wise in term of nearly all sorts potentially dangerous situations, which is why even the military is setting up robots to go into potentially dangerous areas for recon purposes.
But there does reach a point where you have to physically send somebody to the place in order to conduct field research... as remote vehicles simply are far too limited and can't be designed to take on every contingency. Having somebody with opposable thumbs and fingers capable of being "programed" at a distance with just a few words and be able to fix something like wiping the dust off of a solar panel, or even being able to "think outside of the box" and come up with a totally new situation.
In spite of the fact that he was on the Moon for less than two days, Harrison Schmitt conducted far more scientific discovery on the Moon and gathered more real usable data than all of the robotic missions to all of the rest of the planets combined, except for perhaps the Earth itself. I am not making that claim lightly either. He also took decades of real experience being a professional geologist.... a PhD even in that field... and used that knowledge while on the Lunar surface to gather some samples that none of the other twelve astronauts would have even considered. Dr. Schmitt's research will literally be referred to for centuries to come as a foundation of extra-terrestrial mineralogy and "geologic" studies. He would not have been able to do any of that unless "he was there" and capable of making those crucial decisions about what to skip and what to grab.
I can't even imagine what would happen if a full scale permanent laboratory was on the Moon with full time scientists capable of doing something that wasn't so much of a rush job that it seemed like a temporary layover between international flights at an airport. And going to some of the more "interesting" areas of the Moon rather than selecting parts of the Moon that were chosen explicitly because they were boring... like trying to determine the geology of the Earth by landing in the middle of a corn field in Kansas instead of in the Grand Canyon of Arizona.
There still is some "low hanging fruit" of scientific knowledge that can be gathered by robotic vehicles to explore Mars, such as Spirit and Opportunity. But there will be a point of diminishing returns where having somebody on the ground there to conduct the research will not only return much more information, but significantly more data. And this is only the "scientific" justification for sending people into space and going to Mars. Or Antarctica to use another example of a comparatively hostile environment where scientists do go physically for research. People live year round at the South Pole itself, for crying out loud. Are you suggesting here that they should all be replaced by robots too?
There are also other reasons for going to Mars besides pure scientific rationales, but I don't want to digress any more with those further points.
Re: (Score:2)
Your answer says that a human can find out more than a machine, which isn't at doubt at all. But when it costs several hundred times more to send humans, the equation becomes very different. I have yet to hear a single argument that convinces me that the scientific value of one human mission exceeds that of hundreds of automated ones.
And, reme
Re: (Score:2)
What it feels like to stand on Mars, you unromantic nerd.
Re: (Score:2)
That's easy. Spin a space station section to create an artificial gravity where you weigh a third of what you do down here. Or, much cheaper, send a plane on a hyperbolic trajectory where it sustains approximately 1/3 G for a short while. Combined it with footage shot from Mars, uncomfortable suits and the curse of all long voyages, the smell of urine, and the experience should be complete.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
The hoax is about people believing that the first moon landing was a hoax, Apollo 13 (in your example) didn't even get to the point where they attempted a moon landing.
Your double negative in "people still refuse to believe that we never lande
Re: (Score:1)
Non-Technical Proff we Landed on the Moon. (Score:5, Insightful)
In 1969 the Americans first landed men on the moon. Now some people have made names for themselves by saying that this and subsequent landings never happened. Their position is that NASA faked them in order to save face and fool the public. To prove their point they rely on explanations of the reported events using dubious science and lay explanations that any first year science major would and does, laugh at.
However, they always miss or purposely avoid the the one piece of irrefutable proof that it did in fact happen. That is that the Soviet government never refuted the American claims and they were in a unique position to do so. For even after the Americans landed on the moon the Soviets still continued to send orbiters, landers and rovers to the moon.
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_planetar y_lunar.html [russianspaceweb.com]
Now if they wanted to get the goods on the Americans all they had to do was to land, photograph or explore with a rover the American landing sights. Just imagine the embarrassment not to mention the the damage to American credibility, at the height of the cold war no less, that such information would generate. Records even show that they never landed or even explored that areas that that American landings happened. So they did not even go and look to make sure because they knew it really happened.
But they did not. They did not use it to pressure the Americans to stop bombing North Vietnam and Cambodia where Soviet military advisers were being killed as a result. They did not use it to pressure the United States to stop sending military advisers to and providing Stinger missiles to the Afghan fighters during the Soviet occupation. They did not use it to stop the Star Wars program of the Regan administration.
In fact they did not even use it to turn the West's attention away from the Soviet Union during the Soviet Coup of 1991 when members of the Soviet government briefly deposed Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and attempted to take control of the country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_coup_attempt_o f_1991 [wikipedia.org]
Which every body knew was the last death throws of the Soviet empire. If they did not use the information then to turn the attention of the American, and world public, inward to their own governments lies and thus corruption and force it to ignore the events in the Soviet Union in order to deal with a damaging domestic and international issue. Then the proof of faked moon landings did not and never existed.
One final thought. After the fall of the Soviet Union the Russian economy tanked. People were selling all kinds of stuff owed by the crumbling state, ships, weapons, artworks and knowledge but nobody ever approached any Western news agency or tabloid to sell them this information. And to say that one would buy it but not publish is foolish. The seller could just keep peddling it until some on did and then it would be old news and worthless until then it would still be worth something.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
According to Occam's Razor... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Non-Technical Proff we Landed on the Moon. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's much the same methods and logic as used in for example Holocaust denial, despite tons of evidence they claim it's all fabricated, the jews are lying, the captured Nazis were tortured and are lying, the Allied forces are lying, all other eyewitnesses are lying, the concentration camps, gas chambers and whatnot were fake, in short tens of millions of people and massive labor efforts would conspire to create it. Yet the conspiracy lives on, and it's a far less likely one than a faked moon landing. And it's certainly no surprise that it's being fueled up again as most of the eyewitnesses and the first-hand accounts are dying, ao they can claim it's all based on propaganda. It's FUD of the highest order.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
And USSR completely lost interest in manned Moon programs after US astronauts landed on the Moon.
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, although you are right, it's really not worth engaging these idiots who claim that humans haven't been to the moon. By posting your +5 comment, at the time of writing 50% of the comments to the article now refer these stupid claims that the landing was faked, and that just gives credence to these nutters, who are a tiny percentage of the readership of slashdot.
Rich.
I'd like to see more stuff like this (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
forever eh? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Stills not motion (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Another resource (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Apollo 11 Tapes? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
you know they shot those right after the astronauts broke for a smoke break and they needed to use the set to make some money for Universal Studios.
remember, Universal Studios for all your Conspiracy needs, all 10,000 employees can keep their mouth shut for decades, and they have an industrial incinerator to get rid of all the evidence.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
An Idea (Score:2)
Re:An Idea (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And what you'll end up with is a very general idea of the relative progression of impacts. Chances are very good that this is already known since these images have been kicking around in one form or another for four decades.
Missing (Score:2)
repetitive, laborious work (Score:2)
Interpreted as: There's a lot of cheap labor at ASU. So graduate, do you want to scan NASA films or work at McDonalds?
Hold on there, We've been here before! (Score:2, Interesting)
Then suddenly they were withdrawn. Probably the bandwidth at that time made it far too expensive!
Glad to see they're coming back though...
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nasa Journal (Score:3, Informative)
I realize someone mentioned apolloarchive, but Nasa also has an incredible amount of Apollo material online.
Almost everything you want to know about the mission op's is here [nasa.gov].
The Apollo 11 landing [nasa.gov] from 11 minutes out is amazing, including the 1202's. But I have to admit, the one that sends shivers down my spine every time I watch it is Apollo 17 [nasa.gov]. Cernan & Schmitt's reaction after the pitchover when they see the landing zone is better than anything you've ever seen in a movie, ever.