From http://science.slashdot.org/science/06/07/13/1654200.shtml


Apollo 11 TV Tapes Go Missing

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 13, @07:22PM
from the check-the-roswell-basement dept.

NASA Space

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."

PDF: http://www.honeysucklecreek.net.nyud.net:8..._SSTV_Tapes.pdf
SITE: http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/Apollo_11/TV_from_Moon.html

Since no one mentioned it, I thought I'd point out that today is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. How many of us remember watching it on TV in 1969?

Oh yes, I certainly did. I was a teenager in England, where the EVA happened after midnight. I stayed up all night, my family thought I was nuts. They showed it live, then when it was over they repeated the whole thing, and after that I walked down the road and bought one of every newspaper as the shops opened. It was great! Bliss was it, etc.

Phil

Yep -- thirty-seven years and thirty-eight minutes ago (as I type this), Neil Armstrong set his booted foot onto the surface of the Moon.

Seeing as each of the Apollo 11 crew was 38 years old at the time of the flight, each is 75 years old on this date. Kinda makes ya feel old, don't it?

I was 13 and a half years old at the time, myself. I was certain I would see any number of things by the time I reached 50. I haven't seen any of them.

Now, *that* is what really makes me feel old... *sigh*...

-the other Doug

Well we saw some things didn't we? There are MERs,Cassini etc...
I was born in 1972 and one of mine greatest wishes for many years was to watch live broadcast from the Moon...

To my sadness I was born too late (1975) to witness any of the Apollo adventures. To me they seem to belong to the realm of science fiction, along with all the Asimov and Cherryh books I read. The first year I really remember things happening for real in space was 1986, which saw two big events: the Challenger disaster and Voyager at Uranus. Voyager, of course, is the adventure that thrilled and inspired me, and it still does. As much as I love the MERs, Galileo, Magellan, and Cassini, whenever anyone asks me what my favorite mission is, there's no contest.

I'm not sure what it will be like in the future to see those booted feet return to the Moon. I don't think there's much of a case for sending new "explorers" to the Moon, except as practice for manned exploration agencies -- what people will want next on the Moon is, I think, "pioneers" -- people who go to establish a permanent human presence. I'm not sure if the public will find that more or less romantic. I think I'll find it to be less so, but then I like novelty; and life in a small base on the Moon will undoubtedly be filled with much of the same boring but critically necessary grind of maintenance activities that fills the astronauts' time on the ISS. The next boot-footed "explorers" will be those who make footprints on Mars. Or maybe Phobos or some asteroid. (Now that would be cool.)

--Emily

I too missed the whole Apollo experience ( by 3 years more than Emily ) - but I must admit - I was listening to the Planetary Radio show from 3 or so weeks ago when Matt was talking to the guys up at the Glacier via Sat Phone, and I thought "OK - so there's no 10 minutes delay....but that's what people might sound like when they're walking around on Mars"

Footprints in our wheeltracks....one day...and I have no doubt that the moment will reduce me to floods of tears.

Doug

The first one I consciously recall was the John 'n' Charlie Show (Apollo 16), when I was a wee lad who had just turned three years old. The lunar missions were a big deal to little boys back then, along with GI Joe. I remember for my fourth birthday my mom decorated the cake à la Apollo (J-series). It had red, white, and blue icing, and was topped with a pretty good scale model of the LM, two astronauts, LRV, and an American flag. I guess I hadn't developed my patented wisecracking attitude enough to ask, Mom, where's the ALSEP?

I still have those those little models, by the way. Ah, memories!

I think there's still plenty of exploration to do on the moon. I'd prefer not to see just an outpost, but I think we'll get a reasonable mix of outpost and sorties. My favourite site to visit would be Ina (D-caldera), near Mare Vaporub - I mean Vaporum - either with a capable rover or with people.

Phil

I was a college sophomore at Apollo 11 and remember watching it on the television in the dormitory rec room. My first space recollection was watching Echo I.

This makes me feel ancient: Emily and Doug, do you realize that I've owned the motorcycle that I drove into work today longer than either of you have been around?

--Bill

Anyone look in the Richard Nixon Library for them

My favorite area was a candidate for the cancelled Apollo 18, 19, & 20 missions: the Cobra Head/Schröter's Valley/Aristarchus Plateau region.

That reminds me of what a professor once told me when I questioned one of his statements: "Sonny, I've been tenured longer than you've been alive."

My favorite site to visit would be the rim of Tycho. My second favorite would be the floor of Copernicus. In August of 1969, I was "promised" I would see both before Apollo ended. I would really like to see them before I'm ended...

-the other Doug

Luckily my own family didn't think like that. When Armstrong & Aldrin decided to go early it was the middle of the day for me--a school day! So I might have missed the entire thing. (I was about The Other Doug's age.) Fortune smiled, however. My mother came and plucked my brothers and me out of class and took us home to watch it.

(Not that you saw very much at first! As anyone who saw that telecast can testify, at first the contrast was so bad that it was not at all clear what you were looking at! To me it looked like a lot of vague shapes of lightness and shade shifting about in incomprehensible ways. It was only later that it improved. I've since read that some of the powers-that-be at NASA were appalled when they saw those pictures. There they were spending billions to land a man on the Moon yet some penny-pincher had scrimped on what must have seemed at that moment to be was the most important item on board: the TV camera.)

======
Stephen

I audio taped much of the BBC TV Apollo coverage, and one day will dig the things out to try to rescue them (reel-to-reel, mono - and the TV pictures were in B&W too!). I filmed a little of the Apollo 15 mission, using high-speed B&W Standard-8 cine film, and photographed a lot of Apollo 17 using my Petri 7s 35mm still camera. I saw my first colour TV shots with Apollo 17, thanks to a kindly neighbour.

One positive element of the BBC Apollo coverage was that - somehow - they had Gene Shoemaker in their London studio for most of the landings, making astute geological comments throughout.

I really must dig them tapes out...

Bob Shaw

According to the last issue of Air and Space magazine, all the remaining lunar samples (800 pounds worth) have been ruined by seal leaks in their containers.

They have oxidized and no longer exhibit any interesting chemicla activity.

The sharp hard dust particles ruined the seals on the containers and it was not noticed till too late.\

That sounds improbable. Aren't the samples kept in two different locations (at a building at MSC and another at Brooks Air Force Base), with most of them stored in nitrogen (to protect them from moisture)?

What exactly did the article say? (And by "last issue" do you mean the June/July or the August/September one?)

======
Stephen

Sorry for not giving more info.

September 2006 issue of Air and Space.

Page 50

Article title:
Stronger than Dirt

Author:

Trudy E. Bell


Quote:

. . . Every sample brought back from the moon has been contaminated by earth's air and humidity. . .
Gary Olhoeft, Professor of Geophysics, Colorado School of Mines.


He even feels a sample return mission may be required before astronauts return to the moon as necessary tests can no longer be done on the samples we have.

This is a pretty major thing, with the sample return angle, should we have a seperate thread here for this topic?

What's protocol?

We should feel lucky that there was a TV camera on board at all. There was considerable resistance to having a TV camera aboard the lander on the first landing, mostly from the Crew Systems Division people but also from a variety of mission planners. Their argument was that we were trying this very difficult operation for the very first time, and anything that wasn't absolutely essential to the mission of just landing, grabbing a few rocks and getting back into orbit was a complication that could spell disaster somehow. (In fact, there was seriously strong pressure for the first lunar EVA to be a one-person EVA, without using a PLSS but simply piping air, water and comm/electrical lines to the moonwalker via an umbilical.)

The question of carrying the TV camera finally came to a head in early 1969, at which time Deke Slayton (representing the astronauts) and the various officials of CSD sat down with MSC management and argued against it. Finally, Chris Kraft and Bob Gilruth got together and informed their various sub-managers that it was *incomprehensible* not to take a TV camera and share this historic event with the world. When faced with such strong opposition to their plans to try and quietly sink the TV camera on the first landings, those arguing for its deletion were silenced, and the camera was officially included on Apollo 11.

In general, though, the astronauts tended to view the TV cameras as an unwarranted intrusion into their work, and Father Slayton argued this position on their behalf to upper management. Fortunately for us, wiser heads prevailed.

-the other Doug

Just imagine how the lack of a lunar surface camera on Apollo would
have fed the Apollo Hoaxers even more!

Perhaps another reason, in keeping with the times, was the fact that
in the old days of distant exploration, the best most people could hope
for was a radio report from the explorers that they had made it to
wherever they hoped to get. Certain NASA officials might have
honestly thought that a verbal announcement would be enough for
the public of the day.

Remember that certain NASA folk also thought that Mercury astronauts
wouldn't need a window (what the heck would they want to see outside
a spacecraft window in space?) and that I believe the astronauts had
to bring their own cameras aboard on those first missions.

Just to get back on topic... what about the fact that so many boxes of the original tapes (698 out of 700!) are now missing? A most unfortunate loss, if they are not recovered.

About the missing tapes.

It is one of the holy grails of spaceflight that a first generation copy of the Apollo XI moon landing be found. The images seen at the Honeysuckle Creek station outside of Canberra, Australia where those images were received were far better than those viewed by the rest of the world after several generations of transfer, modification and retransmission.

New footage recently came to light through people who worked at Honeysuckle on the day. A new DVD has just been produced and I recommend that if anyone wants to see segments online that they go to the HSKwebsite. A direct link to a 5.7mb mpeg file is here.

The comparison footage between the NASA archive/international broadcast and what was seen at HSK is incredible. Not dark images, but detail folks! Made me cry when I first saw it.

Lots of people are spending huge amounts of time looking for the tapes including pioneers like Stan Lebar (program manager for Westinghouse who developed the Apollo cameras). They are in deep freeze somewhere, it's just a matter of looking though 'Raiders of the Lost Ark -style' warehouses to find them.

Astro0

I was 15 when Neil & Buzz walked on the Moon. Everything started for me with Apollo 8 and didn't last since. It was 3 or 4 am when I watched (exhausted) the TV when the Eagle's door opened. Oh yes, it was so hard to understand what we were seing and I was amazed thiking it WAS history but not feeling it was : it was just happening. I followed all landings afterwards. The beggining of TV transmission of Apollo 12 and then, splash the TV get the sun and stopped. The drama of Apollo 13, when I was still believing that NASA could do anything (and they proved it). Not so much of Apollo 14 since I was at school but ALL Apollo 15 because it was vacation time. I taped all the 15's flight (with french comments on TV) and I realy have a strong souvenir of this one. I followed a little bit less 16 & 17 again because of school but, beleived it or not, I bought my first telescope DURING Apollo 17's flight.
It was hard time then, even Viking & Voyager were far from launch.
Then again a long time with no much project or waiting Voyagers fligh-by's
Then came 1997, Pathfinder and the Internet
Then came Spirit and Opportunity
Then came UMSF

I checked the HSK website and found that the Apollo 11 video footage is avaliable for sale on DVD. I'll plan to order a DVD soon.

Astro0, are you in the group photo on the intro page to the HSK website?

--Bill

Good Space.com article ( http://www.space.com/news/060813_apollo11_tapes.html ) including contributions from a man called Stooke

Doug

I have a finger in every pie. Talk about unhygienic...

Phil

A bit late but here is my annual Apollo related commentary on my site:



http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/Apollo30.html

Don, I hope you don't mind me quoting you, since I think the following lines are pure poetry:

But very sad, elegiac poetry.

Astro0, are you in the group photo on the intro page to the HSK website?--Bill

Sorry Bill, I'm not. Just a bit young for that one.
I was only 7yo when we landed on the Moon.
I still remember it like it was only yesterday though.
I know what the weather was like, what the TV looked like, and even the colour of the carpet I was sitting on. I was one of the billion humans who sat transfixed on that single moment in history.

Today, I know a bunch of the Honeysuckle people, and at my day job at the DSN station in Canberra I am busy helping to keep as much of its history together as possible.

The DVD is great BTW and I recommend it to anyone who wants to 'see' at least sections of that first 'small step' at a higher quality. No substitute for the finding the original tapes, but I remember that when I first saw this newly sourced material and the extra detail it provided, a tear came to my eye.

Astro0

Even more ominously and far less poetically, I am reminded of Otto Spengler's Decline of the West...please let's not make Apollo our modern equivalent of the pyramids....

Here's a good one for you Phil. I was driving home tonight around 10pm local time, listening to one of those "spooky" radio shows (because that's where the dial was set and I wasn't really paying attention). They brought on their "science expert", none other than [a famous conspiracy kook] who preceeded to quote you, Phil Stooke by name, from the Space.com article as evidence that there is some kind of conspiracy afoot by the "authorities" to hide lunar images.

[EDIT removed kook's name]

RH is nothing short of scum imho - and I'd rather his name were not even mentioned in this place. He doesn't even deserve the criticism.

Doug

Just as an FYI, I was involved in a discussion of these Apollo 11 tapes back in March of 2004. A Jeremy Cavanagh and Richard L. Hess asked a number of folks to help look for a Mincom slow-scan video tape system, to read the tapes. At the time, I was under the impression that they had the tapes, but were looking for a machine to read them. I guess not.

In any case, this has been simmering for years, but now its hit the main stream media. That might get NASA to find the tapes. And while they're at it, they can look for the lost Mariner-4 image data...

The story of the missing tapes has made its way to nearly every news organisation now.... interesting to see how a news story is made and spread.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4791883.stm

"A coalition of scientists and Nasa veterans - including Mr Lebar and Mr Sarkissian - is now hunting through Nasa's archives."
______

Very interesting about Mr Thingy. I told that gang to take something of mine off their website a while back but I can't be bothered to fight them. Hey Dickie! Do you read me? I'm on to you - I haven't forgotten your thing about Saturn's rings being the source of ultimate power for whichever erstwhile superpower gets out there first. I understand your motives - but you took it all too far!

Phil

Yes I noted that too, why I checked in on this thread again. Here's the AP verson at Yahoo.

It was just mentioned on Keith Olberman's show on MSNBC as part of his worst person in the world segment. He also mentioned that conspiracy theorists will say NASA can alway go back to their sound stage in New Mexico to recreate it

NASA Provides Further Update On Apollo 11 Tapes

Washington DC (SPX) Aug 16, 2006

NASA personnel continue to sift through 37-year-old records in their attempt to locate the magnetic tapes that recorded the original Apollo 11 video in 1969. The original tapes may be at the Goddard Space Flight Center, which requested their return from the National Archives in the 1970s, or at another location within the NASA archiving system. Despite the challenges of the search, NASA does not consider the tapes to be lost.

http://www.moondaily.com/reports/NASA_Prov..._Tapes_999.html

Pink Floyd to the rescue! (maybe...)

One Small Step in the hunt for Moon Landing footage

Tapes Found


These appear to be data from the surface experiments, not sure about the video....

Doesn't sound like the found tapes are the ones this thread was originally about. (my emphasis)

Perhaps not, but it kinda sound like NASA needs to look after its data better. A lot better.


As Oscar Wilde might have put it: To lose one set of tapes might be classed as an accident. To lose two looks a lot like carelessness.

I would hate to think that thirty years from now NASA might suddenly discover that the original tapes/disks of the MER pancam data had gone walkabout and that nobody now knew where they were.

======
Stephen

Outrageous.

What's even scarier is that modern data archiving is typically digital/network-based, so it would be REALLY easy for, say, MER imagery to be stashed away in some forgotten file(s) and carelessly deleted someday during an upgrade or routine maintenance... .

Clearly, NASA has to get its act together. A good start would be to talk to some archiving pros like the Library of Congress.

Ghastly if it turns out some one recorded episodes of Green Acres over the missing tapes while testing out an early TV distribution satellite . . .

"...That's one small step for... <buzz, crackle>... Mr. Haney!"



-the other Doug

...or Arnold the pig oinks out "one giant leap..." Gah. It's funny, but it's not.

Apollo TV Tapes: The Search Continues