NASA Releases Restored Apollo 11 Video, But Originals Lost

leetrout writes "I attended a media briefing held by NASA at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. this morning where they released restored video of the Apollo 11 mission. The clips released are about 40% of the total footage to be restored by September by Lowry Digital in Burbank, CA. Wired has all the clips. A couple remarkable comments made during the briefing included the opinion from the original footage search committee that the original slow scan footage (stored as a single track on telemetry tapes) has been lost forever as the tapes were likely recycled by the mid '80s (apparently common NASA practice). Also, that someone from the applied physics laboratory was in Australia converting the slow scan directly to video. This differs from NASA's goal of merely broadcasting the event, at which it was successful. Unfortunately, no one knows where those tapes of approximately two hours of footage are located."

An interesting PR problem

[jd]

Having a Hollywood studio "restore" the footage is going to provide wonderful ammunition for the conspiracy nuts, as they now get to claim that even if the tapes were real, you have no way of knowing if the restored information is genuine or inserted.

Nasa site?

[toxygen01]

Reminds me of http://wechoosethemoon.org/ [wechoosethemoon.org] which was quite busy today. wayback machine to realtime proceeding of apollo 11 mission

Re:An interesting PR problem

[Abreu]

True... So we will have to continue linking to the mythbusters episode until they shut up

(they won't, of course)

Pink Floyd

[escay]

wasn't some of the lost footage recovered from tapes that Pink Floyd had? I remember a news article (last year?) about some tapes Pink Floyd got from NASA to use in some music videos, which they fished out for NASA from their archives when they heard the originals were lost.

Re:I thought they were found...

[ocularDeathRay]

btw I just noticed that link is to THIS page not the other story you wanted http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/07/13/2342220/NASA-Has-the-Lost-Tapes [slashdot.org]

Re:Tape shortage

[$RANDOMLUSER]

That was sort of my point. There was a feeling that the space program was, in a way, "over". There was a perception that Apollo had eaten enormous amounts of money, even though it really hadn't, Viet Nam had taken far more; and somehow, the space program was "discretionary", even "luxury", maybe even "frivolous". NASA was gutted, both of funds and personnel. They were LAST in line to get any money.

Re:Incredible

[ozbird]

Given Hollywood's lack of original material of late, it wouldn't surprise me if they do a remake of the Apollo 11 landing.

Re:Computing power

[mi]

It is truly amazing what you can "find" when you have unlimited access to huge amounts of supercomputing power.

And yet, they can't find the President's real, actual, Birth Certificate [wnd.com]...

Re:NASA needs Dead Tapers... :P

[MrKaos]

NASA spent hundreds of millions on the Apollo Program only to record over them due to a "tape shortage" ?

My uncles and my father all watched the Apollo 11 Moon landing *LIVE*. As they were in Australia they were getting the feed slightly before the U.S did. I have no doubt that the moon landing happened but the three of them have all told me the same strange story about when they watched the moon landing.

I can't say exactly when, but they heard Armstrong, a man known for his calm under pressure, say in an excited voice: "Huston, Huston: There is something large and suspiciously* white moving off the crater ri.."(* may have been "brilliantly")

the transmission was cut off and they were left wondering what was going on . I have no doubt the moon landing occurred, but the conspiracy may be concealing information about something much stranger [wordpress.com]. I'm not claiming to know the truth, but is anyone surprised when the government covers things up to comfort us anymore? Whilst I believe the majority of UFO sighting can be explained by high speed intelligence reconnaissance aircraft and UFO sightings were a convenient cover for their operations, a small percentage of UFO sightings may actually be *Unexplainable*.

What doesn't add up here?

That the original recording of the most significant event in modern history have been "lost" at all. Maybe NASA can quite honestly say 'We don't know where the tapes are" because the Air Force or the CIA has them. All we have to do is see how other sightings of UFO's recorded by military officers are treated. Perhaps the story of faked moon landings is misinformation/misdirection to distract from the real conspiracy? What's the availability of all the other moon landing tapes? Was there really only one recording of the first landing?

I don't know, but I don't buy the 'Whoopsee, silly us. We lost the recordings of the most significant event in modern history' explanation. The only way to be sure is to see and hear the recordings of the original moon landing in it entirety from separation of the LM and CM to the docking of the LM to the CM. As it's is a significant piece of human history and surely nothing about the mission's activities were classified, I should be able to, even just to connect to what was achieved all those years ago.

If I ever got a chance to meet Armstrong or Aldrin and without pushing for details I would ask "Respectfully Sir, When you landed on the moon did you witness anything you are not allowed to discuss?", I might not get an answer but at least I would get to look into their eyes as I asked.

Possible explanation as to why this happened

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Some years ago I read an article on baseball stadiums, which is actually relevant in terms of possibly explaining why NASA would view the tapes of the original moon landing as expendable. Essentially the article said that in the USA in the 1960s everybody was obsessed with tearing down the old to make room for the new. This started in the 1950s but really got going in the 1960s. One example of it was that many American cities (Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Houston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Atlanta and probably others) built giant "multi-purpose" stadiums to house both baseball and football teams. Old baseball only stadiums were often torn down (Forbes Field) or moved (Crosby Field - mostly moved to Kentucky) to make way for what were eventually called "cookie cutter" stadiums that all looked identical and were meant to house everything from baseball and football to concerts and motocross rallies. These stadiums ended up being "jack of all trades, master of none" offering bad viewing for all sports. But that was how things apparently were in the 60s. Throw out the old to make room for the new. So when you have an entire society that seems to be dedicated to the belief that you can only make progress by destroying the past and building on top of it, yes, I can certainly believe that NASA in such a climate considered the films to be worthless and not worth keeping.