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."
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.
True... So we will have to continue linking to the mythbusters episode until they shut up
I'm still wondering what the conspiracy theorists say about the retroreflector experiments that have been conducted daily since Apollo 11. Considering the difference in reflectivity between the moon's surface and the retroreflectors, surely there have been some attempts to explain it.
The conspiracy nuts will say the reflector on the moon just proves there is a man made object on the moon, it doesn't prove it was actually physically placed there by a person. It could have been dropped on the moon by an unmanned rocket, for example.
I'm still wondering what the conspiracy theorists say about the retroreflector experiments that have been conducted daily since Apollo 11.
"The lasers are bouncing off crystal formations... duh!"
The laser retroreflector defense will only work if you have proof that there was no retroreflection happening BEFORE Apollo 11. Since you can't prove that, you can't prove that the retroreflection that's happening now is of man-made origin. In short, it's only circumstancial evidence.
Far too much fun to give up the conspiracy theory, regardless if you believe it or not.
Want to see a techie get his panties in a bunch? Tell him the moon landing was a hoax.
Sure you do: just go back to recordings made before these were remastered. (Same thing we do with Star Wars, I guess.)
Although I suppose the conspiracy nuts could always claim that earlier recordings were modified after-the-fact by NASA using the same sort of ray that is neutralized by tinfoil hats...
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.
The iPhone Armstrong uses to communicate with Collins (pictured drinking new Pepsi, wearing a Snorg-tee whilst playing on his DS), that's inserted...
Reminds me of http://wechoosethemoon.org/ [wechoosethemoon.org] which was quite busy today.
wayback machine to realtime proceeding of apollo 11 mission
The BBC "recycled" tapes in the '70s and '80s, losing many episodes of well-known programs forever *coughdrwhoandmanyothers*.
Much as the BBC should be smacked about with a blunt instrument for wiping, they at least have the defence that these were low-budget productions that were seen as ephemeral in nature at the time and of no obvious use. (Legal agreements meant that they couldn't be retransmitted, and there wasn't a home video market as such).
NASA spent billions (in *60s money*) getting the first human being to walk on the moon- which would have been an obviously massive historical event even before it happened- yet thanks to some beancounting jobsworths and bureaucrats, rather than being treated as a valuable historical document and archived as they should have been, the high-quality originals have been lost.
This both defies belief and is all too believable; but that doesn't make it any less of a disgrace.
Anyway, getting this digitally tarted-up version of the existing footage instead is a $50 consolation prize after being incorrectly told that you'd won a million on the lottery. Even if the image quality is good, the reprocessed footage still likely won't look as good as the original slow scan would have, and it certainly won't have the same veracity.
And that's the most important thing. They lost the damn originals, and regardless of how good the remasters *look*, they're not the damn originals.
You'll excuse me if I don't feel like breaking out the party poppers at NASA's DVD-age PR fluff hyping the remastering of their crappy fourth-generation footage as a minor success instead of the non-reversal of a massive loss of historical material.
While it does seem incredible today, those were very, very different times.
People were far more concerned and enamored with "seeing" an event than how they might see it again. Heck, most people didn't even have colored TVs at that time, and because so much was live broadcast, if you wanted to see something like the moon landing, you planned for it.
Gone are the days of just savoring the moment and keeping the memory alive.
Remember everything that was meticulously preserved from those days were on non-erasable, non-rewritable medium. Magnetic tapes that could be erased and reused were pretty new, and practices for backing important data for posterity, for ever etc were not well thought out. I am sure NASA has meticulously archived and stored the blueprints of Saturn V rockets and wiring diagrams of command modules and such things printed on paper.
On a related note people restoring and cleaning and analyzing old masters and paintings by students of old masters find they were recycling the canvases. Many layers of paintings, some by great old masters, are washed over and painted again.
philosophical rant
Strange, when an object is too close to you in space, it appears bigger than same size object at a distance. But when it is very close to you in time, we don't think it is any big deal. Only later we realize how big whatever that thing was.
people restoring and cleaning and analyzing old masters and paintings by students of old masters find they were recycling the canvases. Many layers of paintings, some by great old masters, are washed over and painted again.
They probably didn't know they'd be considered *quite* as important as they are today (very high, even if one doesn't consider the obscene millions some paintings sell for as their true "worth".)
The major historical nature of the moon landings would have been glaringly obvious even before they happened.
It was The. First. Damn. Man. On. The. Moon.
I think you're cutting NASA way too much slack- and patronising the people of 40 years ago too much. Old 60s episodes of Doctor Who- bad loss in retrospect, but *almost* understandable in the context of the time (ephemeral, low budget, non-established medium, not reusable).
First man to ever land on the moon- that's blatantly important by itself. The fact they spent billions of dollars to get there you'd think was an added impetus. 40 years doesn't make *that* much difference to people's judgement.
Even if the cost of storing the footage was relatively high, it would have been trivial in comparison with what NASA spent on the programme overall. And even more trivial given its priceless historical and non-repeatable nature.
They just assumed someone would DVR it and upload it to be torrented by the masses. As government produced material I assume it would be in the public domain as well.
I don't think it is "incredible" in the sense of "impossible to believe". It's all to easy to believe.
You see the people of the US (as a whole) lost interest in the whole thing once we'd done the Moon once or twice. NASA didn't even have the money to buy mag tapes for the satellite data they were collecting, which anybody with half a brain would see is worthwhile once you'd went through the trouble of putting a satellite up there. Now how many people would understand that cataloging conserving digital me
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.
the Neil Armstrong ADR is especially good, given the problems with the first version.
"Hey folks, Neal 'Moonman' Armstrong here -- I can say Moonman now, can't I! -- reporting live, that's LIVE LIVE LIVE from the surface of the mooooooooon, that's right, the one, the only, the biggest satellite in orbit around the Earth you all know and love, and lemme tell ya, folks, the Earth is looking pretty damn good from here, it's a real crackerjack experience, even in this helluva suit, to be up here, and waving down
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.
One has to wonder at the penny-wise/pound-foolish confluence of circumstances that would lead to NASA erasing mission data because they couldn't buy more tapes...
NASA was under some serious budget constraints after Apollo ended, no great follow-ons after the glorious climax, and every nutjob with a pet cause blathering "If we can send a man to the moon, why can't we.....".
God, we heard that phrase so many times in so many contexts. And every time I heard it, I threw up a little in my mouth.
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.
It looks like these idiots tried to do that with the restored footage by displaying it in the wrong aspect ratio. I really hope it is what I think it is, Wired screwing up, and not NASA.
People(my parents), displaying 4:3 content stretched to fit a 16:9 screen because they want to use the whole screen, drive me batshit!
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
Computing power (Score:5, Funny)
The render times are probably really impressive too.
Armstrong Shot First (Score:4, Funny)
Darn directors cuts! I *liked* the old version where you could see the Vaseline blur under the LM, and Armstrong shot first.
Parent
An interesting PR problem (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
True... So we will have to continue linking to the mythbusters episode until they shut up
(they won't, of course)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm still wondering what the conspiracy theorists say about the retroreflector experiments that have been conducted daily since Apollo 11. Considering the difference in reflectivity between the moon's surface and the retroreflectors, surely there have been some attempts to explain it.
Re:An interesting PR problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The conspiracy nuts will say the reflector on the moon just proves there is a man made object on the moon, it doesn't prove it was actually physically placed there by a person. It could have been dropped on the moon by an unmanned rocket, for example.
Parent
Re:An interesting PR problem (Score:4, Insightful)
"The lasers are bouncing off crystal formations... duh!"
The laser retroreflector defense will only work if you have proof that there was no retroreflection happening BEFORE Apollo 11. Since you can't prove that, you can't prove that the retroreflection that's happening now is of man-made origin. In short, it's only circumstancial evidence.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Want to see a techie get his panties in a bunch? Tell him the moon landing was a hoax.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure you do: just go back to recordings made before these were remastered. (Same thing we do with Star Wars, I guess.)
Although I suppose the conspiracy nuts could always claim that earlier recordings were modified after-the-fact by NASA using the same sort of ray that is neutralized by tinfoil hats...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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.
The iPhone Armstrong uses to communicate with Collins (pictured drinking new Pepsi, wearing a Snorg-tee whilst playing on his DS), that's inserted ...
Nasa site? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
heh, I did that with space simulator in the 90s. And then did one to mars.
Turns out, it's boring.
NASA or the BBC? (Score:5, Informative)
The BBC "recycled" tapes in the '70s and '80s, losing many episodes of well-known programs forever *coughdrwhoandmanyothers*.
Fifth-rate consolation prize (Score:5, Insightful)
The BBC "recycled" tapes in the '70s and '80s, losing many episodes of well-known programs forever *coughdrwhoandmanyothers*.
Much as the BBC should be smacked about with a blunt instrument for wiping, they at least have the defence that these were low-budget productions that were seen as ephemeral in nature at the time and of no obvious use. (Legal agreements meant that they couldn't be retransmitted, and there wasn't a home video market as such).
NASA spent billions (in *60s money*) getting the first human being to walk on the moon- which would have been an obviously massive historical event even before it happened- yet thanks to some beancounting jobsworths and bureaucrats, rather than being treated as a valuable historical document and archived as they should have been, the high-quality originals have been lost.
This both defies belief and is all too believable; but that doesn't make it any less of a disgrace.
After initial jubilation, I was right to be sceptical about that the Sunday Express's accuracy [slashdot.org] (they were the ones who broke the- incorrect- story that the original tapes had been found).
Anyway, getting this digitally tarted-up version of the existing footage instead is a $50 consolation prize after being incorrectly told that you'd won a million on the lottery. Even if the image quality is good, the reprocessed footage still likely won't look as good as the original slow scan would have, and it certainly won't have the same veracity.
And that's the most important thing. They lost the damn originals, and regardless of how good the remasters *look*, they're not the damn originals.
You'll excuse me if I don't feel like breaking out the party poppers at NASA's DVD-age PR fluff hyping the remastering of their crappy fourth-generation footage as a minor success instead of the non-reversal of a massive loss of historical material.
Parent
Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)
Its incredible to me that NASA wouldn't think far enough ahead to save these tapes for posterity's sake.
Incredible. One of the defining moments in our history, and they didn't think to hold onto it? The whole goal was to only shoot for live feed?
Re:Incredible (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah! And Neil shot first!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Incredible (Score:4, Funny)
Basestar.
I am so ashamed of you.
Parent
Re:Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)
While it does seem incredible today, those were very, very different times.
People were far more concerned and enamored with "seeing" an event than how they might see it again. Heck, most people didn't even have colored TVs at that time, and because so much was live broadcast, if you wanted to see something like the moon landing, you planned for it.
Gone are the days of just savoring the moment and keeping the memory alive.
Parent
Re:Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)
On a related note people restoring and cleaning and analyzing old masters and paintings by students of old masters find they were recycling the canvases. Many layers of paintings, some by great old masters, are washed over and painted again.
philosophical rant
Strange, when an object is too close to you in space, it appears bigger than same size object at a distance. But when it is very close to you in time, we don't think it is any big deal. Only later we realize how big whatever that thing was.
Parent
Re:Incredible (Score:4, Insightful)
people restoring and cleaning and analyzing old masters and paintings by students of old masters find they were recycling the canvases. Many layers of paintings, some by great old masters, are washed over and painted again.
They probably didn't know they'd be considered *quite* as important as they are today (very high, even if one doesn't consider the obscene millions some paintings sell for as their true "worth".)
The major historical nature of the moon landings would have been glaringly obvious even before they happened.
It was The. First. Damn. Man. On. The. Moon.
I think you're cutting NASA way too much slack- and patronising the people of 40 years ago too much. Old 60s episodes of Doctor Who- bad loss in retrospect, but *almost* understandable in the context of the time (ephemeral, low budget, non-established medium, not reusable).
First man to ever land on the moon- that's blatantly important by itself. The fact they spent billions of dollars to get there you'd think was an added impetus. 40 years doesn't make *that* much difference to people's judgement.
Even if the cost of storing the footage was relatively high, it would have been trivial in comparison with what NASA spent on the programme overall. And even more trivial given its priceless historical and non-repeatable nature.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think it is "incredible" in the sense of "impossible to believe". It's all to easy to believe.
You see the people of the US (as a whole) lost interest in the whole thing once we'd done the Moon once or twice. NASA didn't even have the money to buy mag tapes for the satellite data they were collecting, which anybody with half a brain would see is worthwhile once you'd went through the trouble of putting a satellite up there. Now how many people would understand that cataloging conserving digital me
It's on a shelf (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Pink Floyd (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Pink Floyd (Score:5, Informative)
ah, times when i wish /. had an Edit Comment option. or something like google's goggles.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you kidding? Can you imagine how that would be abused? Answer: HILARIOUSLY.
1)Post Epic Troll.
2)Let a few responses build up.
3)Replace Epic Troll with deeply insightful post.
4)
5)Profit
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
ah, times when i wish /. had an Edit Comment option. or something like google's goggles.
The goggles... they do NOTHING!
Lost? Sure... (Score:2, Funny)
I thought they were found... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I love the remaster! (Score:2, Funny)
the Neil Armstrong ADR is especially good, given the problems with the first version.
"Hey folks, Neal 'Moonman' Armstrong here -- I can say Moonman now, can't I! -- reporting live, that's LIVE LIVE LIVE from the surface of the mooooooooon, that's right, the one, the only, the biggest satellite in orbit around the Earth you all know and love, and lemme tell ya, folks, the Earth is looking pretty damn good from here, it's a real crackerjack experience, even in this helluva suit, to be up here, and waving down
Missing Two Hours of Footage (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone who has seen Contact knows exactly what happened.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, I'll never get those two hours back.
Possible explanation as to why this happened (Score:3, Interesting)
Tape shortage (Score:3, Insightful)
I read somewhere else that NASA had a tape shortage at some point, so they recycled the moon landing tapes to store other data.
I wonder if advanced data recovery techniques could recover the previously written data well enough to be useful.
--PM
Re: (Score:2)
Those tapes are gone. If they were recycled then we won't know whisch tapes it's on, assuming the one they reused wasn't destroyed.
Re:Tape shortage (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
God, we heard that phrase so many times in so many contexts. And every time I heard it, I threw up a little in my mouth.
Re:Tape shortage (Score:5, Insightful)
If we can send a man to the moon, why can't we store the damn tapes of the event properly?!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And worst of all (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tape shortage (Score:5, Funny)
"Dude, it's not like we can't just go to the moon again!"
I assumed they dismantled the film studio after the first one ...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but Michael Jackson loaned them a replica sound stage.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It looks like these idiots tried to do that with the restored footage by displaying it in the wrong aspect ratio. I really hope it is what I think it is, Wired screwing up, and not NASA.
People(my parents), displaying 4:3 content stretched to fit a 16:9 screen because they want to use the whole screen, drive me batshit!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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