NASA Employed Photo Artists to Airbrush Lunar Anomolies

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by ecoparity
At least one former astronaut has discussed this issue ...

Of NASA altering space photographs? Do tell, please, who you mean?

Clark C. McClelland, Edgar Mitchell - Clark certainly believes he was fired from NASA for discussing certain subjects and becoming privy to others. I personally have real life relationships with a few current and former NASA employees who have discussed a number of things with me privately and none of them have reached out to the UFO research community or sought any publicity whatsoever.

I can understand questioning the stories from some of the sources but when it comes to at least two of these non public sources I can find no reason for them to lie and no fault of character or mental status, in fact these disclosures coming from them was a huge shock based on how conservative and skeptical I know each of them to be.

Unfortunately that situation does no one any good so far as proving things one way or the other, it's only good for my personal convictions on the subject. Unlike most others I don't prescribe some conspiracy of evil to any withholding of information which might be ongoing, knowing the people who work in that field I'm convinced they would only participate if they truly felt it served the greater good in some way to do so.

I just hope we are close to the day when these things can be brought into the light and any technical advances which might be withheld would be released. The US has completely given away our production capabilities which leaves us with only one possible alternative on which to build a strong economy - new technology, alternative energy, bio science, etc. I think it's time to ask ourselves which direction leads to a better future for the US and for the World. It does seem like the old way has led us into a bit of a dead end otherwise.

[edit on 16-9-2009 by ecoparity]

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
If you know anything about internet commerce you will realize what they have to gain is money.

What the heck have you got against making money?

I wanted a good copy of that NASA triangle UFO and they charged me $110.00 for the scan and one print...

Why is it okay for one side of the fence to demand money and the other side gets blasted?

Originally posted by skepticantiseptic The money going to NASA for "space exploration" funds many other black projects.

No... NASA does NOT do any 'black projects' That is the Dod's jurisdiction.

Originally posted by zorgon

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
If you know anything about internet commerce you will realize what they have to gain is money.

What the heck have you got against making money?

I wanted a good copy of that NASA triangle UFO and they charged me $110.00 for the scan and one print...

Why is it okay for one side of the fence to demand money and the other side gets blasted?

I think Zorgon your example here "about one or other sides making money" is not relevant...

You see, i guess NASA charge you with 110 not because wanting to make money on you, but because that is a service done to you..i mean there is a department, some people hired to do this, i guess, which just respond to this kind of requests. I mean, if they have a public free (internet or else )archive, you can get whateved you want for free, but if you want something putting some guys to work.... I think it is the same with your printer for example: if you want a driver or a manual, you can find it on the support area of the manufacturer site, but if they didn't have it there, then you can request them a CD/manual, but i think you have to pay some work done by the guys there... Also regarding the amount 110...i don't know, but if is much less, there will be much more not so serious requests, and they have to pay more employees and resources, and therefore, you can on the other hand ask "why do they -NASA- spent our taxes to so many employees?"

Another difference:
Also, NASA requests money from their own work (ussually i guess), based on their own initial data.
The "other side" you reffer, they request money on something not based on their initial data, but on NASA initial data.

So, this is not a good comparisson in my opinion.

Originally posted by ecoparity

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by ecoparity
At least one former astronaut has discussed this issue ...

Of NASA altering space photographs? Do tell, please, who you mean?

Clark C. McClelland, Edgar Mitchell - ....

I have never seen Mitchell accuse NASA of altering photographs. Never. If you've seen such a quote, please provide a link -- or retract your statement.

McClelland is not an astronaut. However, he has claimed he has watched space-to-ground TV of aliens meeting with spacewalking astronauts. I do not believe him. Why do you?

Seems your mouth outran your evidence. A lot of that going around.

Originally posted by JimOberg

I have never seen Mitchell accuse NASA of altering photographs. Never. If you've seen such a quote, please provide a link -- or retract your statement.

Get this Jim,

Bart Sibrel got Edgar Mitchell to say that the Apollo 14 crew used the same technique to fake their distance from the earth as can be seen in the following video from Apollo 11 (below). However, Sibrel was borderline disingenuous with his presentation and questions:

'


Now Jim - Watch this one and pay special attention to the to the bit towards the end:

Want to call the CIA and have them waxed?

-Mitchell's son

[edit on 16-9-2009 by Exuberant1]

Originally posted by depthoffield
I'd like to express here my opinion regarding NASA (or any other organization making scientific photos and releasing to the public) tampering their photos.

I've said this in another topic, but it seems very appropiatte also here, so i will make a CTL+C and CTRL-V action:


I agree that NASA many times modify its photos.

But i didn't agree of the reason of doing it, the conspiracious reason.
Tampering the static images is a common proces.
Do you really expect that some images to be EXACTLY RAW images? You know, RAW images may have all kind of artifacts, or not so good brightness/gamma/contrast.

I will explain that: also i tamper my images (not all, but ussually some of them):


When, many years ago, i began to "digitalise" some of my precious photos on paper, from chemical films, using a scanner and a PC.

Guess what i did..i tampered the images:
- i modified gamma, contrast, brightness, colors or hue
- i removed using clone tool, the scratches, developing errors (white/dark patches)
- i used masks to raise/low brightness on zones (sky, overexposed areas)
- i cropped the 0....255 interval of brightness variations in the low part (dark areas), for example let's say as an example to 10...250, automatically (autocontrast) or manually (dark level threshold), to increase contrast and remove darky noisy ugly areas



In this days, using digital photography, i also tamper some of the images (the very important ones):
- i modified gamma, contrast, brightness, colors or hue
- i removed using clone tool, the non-desired things, like bugs, electrical strings when deteriorating the atmosphere of the image etcetera
- i remove red-eyes
- i used masks to raise/low brightness on zones (sky, overexposed/underexposed areas)
- i cropped the 0....255 interval of brightness variations in the low part (dark areas), for example let's say as an example to 10...250, automatically (autocontrast) or manually (dark level threshold), to increase contrast and remove darky noisy ugly areas
- i remove noise in high iso images (which also could make the human skin to appear smooth like baby skin, which i don't want, so i have to pay attention, or to use masks to operate only on zones (ussually the sky, where the noise is more obviously)
- i remove/reduce chromatic aberations, fringe or contaminations (like the sun/moon/bright areas false halo
- i remove dead pixels (hot pixels) when they spoil the image.
- various other tamperings.

A detailed analysys of those my photos can show easy that those images where tampered.

My reason? To make perfect images from where is not. Am I lying/hiding something in my images? Well, i could say yes, but with a noble reason.

I thing NASA just doing the same with their RAW data when publishing to the world. Nothing more. Also they stitch images and also make projections, scallings, using monochrome spectrum wavelenghts and compose images from them etcetera.

I bet many people didn't know this normal tampering processes, and they could send me to jail because i tampering my images, if this was very important to them (i lie to them, no?)






[edit on 15/9/09 by depthoffield]

ok, what you say is true, but this is a government paid organization. so...i ask you, why didn't they retain the "raw" and be able to show them too?

these are historic pictures of our moon, not some relative of yours who had red eye.

and if YOU hired someone to take valueable photos of something you would possibly never see again, wouldn't you want the "RAW" photos as well as the retouched photos? of course you would...your arguement doesn't make sense.

[edit on 16-9-2009 by jimmyx]

Originally posted by jimmyx
ok, what you say is true, but this is a government paid organization. so...i ask you, why didn't they retain the "raw" and be able to show them too?

The RAW are ussually films (objects). They are unique.
The next first generation "copies", what i understand you want to be available as RAW digital data, are various scans taken by various teams at various times with different equipments. Which one is the RAW?

I think those RAW digitals, are there as very big files and not necessay common standards as jpeg, tiff etc, not appropiate for publishing them as is for the public. I guess they are available in scientific circles, but not directly for browsing.
As i remember, nowadays, missions from NASA or ESA, to Mars, Saturn etc provide also the RAW data, but i don't think they will re-make the history (spend money from budget) for older missions, just to please some Hoaglands and also. Somehow those missions are done.
This is my opinion, as my common sense tell to me. There could be hidden/obfuscates things, but i want to see the real ones, not the imaginary/scams only.



[edit on 16/9/09 by depthoffield]

[edit on 16/9/09 by depthoffield]

reply to post by Exuberant1

However, Sibrel was borderline disingenuous with his presentation and questions:

Oh, not again!

"borderline" disingenuous??? You are being generous to Mr. Sibrel. He's a raving lunatic, and a liar. That vidoe clip from the "mockumentary" has been thoroughly discussed, and dissected and trashed already.

Why bring it up again?? You can't be serious?

A shame, along with the earlier post of those images (like this one):

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b9b46ff52744.jpg[/atsimg]

without source reference, and that looks like it had obviously been altered OUTSIDE of NASA, yet are presented with a question mark about 'possible' airbrushing??

Poor.

[edit on 16 September 2009 by weedwhacker]

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by ecoparity

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by ecoparity
At least one former astronaut has discussed this issue ...

Of NASA altering space photographs? Do tell, please, who you mean?

Clark C. McClelland, Edgar Mitchell - ....

I have never seen Mitchell accuse NASA of altering photographs. Never. If you've seen such a quote, please provide a link -- or retract your statement.

McClelland is not an astronaut. However, he has claimed he has watched space-to-ground TV of aliens meeting with spacewalking astronauts. I do not believe him. Why do you?

Seems your mouth outran your evidence. A lot of that going around.

Clark was an example of someone who claims to have been fired over secrets, you asked another poster to provide you with an example.

If we accept the claims made by both of these men then alteration of photos and video evidence has to be occurring, also you kind of skipped right past the Gary McKinnon thing so I'm not sure my "fingers outran my evidence", (mouth being a bit inaccurate in this scenario).

Originally posted by depthoffield

Originally posted by jimmyx
ok, what you say is true, but this is a government paid organization. so...i ask you, why didn't they retain the "raw" and be able to show them too?

The RAW are ussually films (objects). They are unique.
The next first generation "copies", what i understand you want to be available as RAW digital data, are various scans taken by various teams at various times with different equipments. Which one is the RAW?

I think those RAW digitals, are there as very big files and not necessay common standards as jpeg, tiff etc, not appropiate for publishing them as is for the public.

In the case of the images referenced in the following article, you think correctly Depthoffield. Apparently some people have no idea of the fascinating story behind the amazing efforts to recover some of the raw data (You can read the entire article which is very long, from the link, but I tried to excerpt some of the more interesting parts below):

articles.latimes.com...

NASA was so preoccupied with getting an astronaut to the moon ahead of the Soviets that little attention was paid to the mountains of scientific data that flowed back to Earth from its early space missions. The data, stored on miles of fragile tapes, grew into mountains that were packed up and sent to a government warehouse with crates of other stuff.
(snip)
Evans was at her desk in the 1970s when a clerk walked into her office, asking what he should do with a truck-sized heap of data tapes that had been released from storage.

"What do you usually do with things like that?" she asked.

"We usually destroy them," he replied.
(snip)
Although the original high-resolution images were saved on 2-inch-wide tape, those pictures weren't seen by the public. The images that scrolled across television screens and appeared on the front pages of newspapers were snapshots of the originals using standard 35-millimeter film. The images were grainy and washed-out, like a poorly tuned television set.
(snip)
She had no idea what she was letting herself in for. The full collection of Lunar Orbiter data amounted to 2,500 tapes. Assembled on pallets, they constituted an imposing monolith 10 feet wide, 20 feet long and 6 feet high.
(snip)
There was no point, she realized, in preserving the tapes unless she also had an FR-900 Ampex tape drive to read them. But only a few dozen of the machines had been made for the military. The $330,000 tape drives were electronic behemoths, each 7 feet tall and weighing nearly a ton.
(snip)
One day in the late 1980s, she got a call from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida: "We heard you're looking for FR-900s. We've got three of them. Where do you want us to send them?"

Having already stretched her bosses' goodwill at JPL by storing the tapes there, she reluctantly agreed to take the drives herself. Evans stored the three tape drives from Eglin and a fourth she got off a salvage list -- none of which worked -- in her own garage.

There they sat, for two decades.

"I was stuck with these drives," Evans said. "I couldn't get rid of them."

Evans applied regularly to NASA for funding to repair the drives. She was turned down every time. One NASA center estimated it would cost $6 million to restore the drives and digitize the tapes.

Finally, in 2005, retired and increasingly doubtful that the historic images would ever see the light of day, Evans gave up on NASA and went public.
(snip)
Wingo, Cowing and Zin worked into the night with student volunteers, cannibalizing the tape drives to get one machine working. "We felt a sense of urgency," said Greg Schmidt, deputy director of NASA's Lunar Science Institute at Ames.

They had managed to get $100,000 from NASA for their project, and decided they would focus their efforts on the Earthrise picture.

The drives kept breaking down. Rebuilding the demodulator that converted the electronic signals into images proved particularly difficult. When they couldn't find parts at warehouses, they dug through rusted rocket shells at Ames' junkyard to perform what Zin called a "wrecking yard rebuild."
(snip)
The project has so far cost $250,000, far less than the $6-million estimate by NASA.

Having succeeded once, the team released its second image this weekend -- the Copernicus crater. The team eventually hopes to retrieve all 2,000 images from the five missions.

The images will be of more than historical interest. In April, NASA is scheduled to launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to again map the moon. This time it will be looking for a site to erect a permanent human base.

By comparing the new images with the old ones, scientists will be able to study changes in the lunar surface. That information could be invaluable to colonists.

Schmidt flew Nancy Evans up for a small ceremony at Ames in November, when the first image was released.

To the old-timers at NASA, she was a heroine, the best example of a person who, in Schmidt's words, "goes far beyond her professional duties" in the name of science.

So you see Depthoffield and others, while your statement is absolutely correct that: "I think those RAW digitals, are there as very big files and not necessay common standards as jpeg, tiff etc, not appropiate for publishing them as is for the public.", saying these files are not in a format compatible to what the general public or anyone else has, is perhaps the biggest understatement of the century.

And let's all give kudos to Nancy Evans, a true American Heroine who stored these huge machines in her own garage for decades to make this data recovery project possible!

Originally posted by ecoparity
Clark was an example of someone who claims to have been fired over secrets, you asked another poster to provide you with an example.

If we accept the claims made by both of these men then alteration of photos and video evidence has to be occurring, also you kind of skipped right past the Gary McKinnon thing so I'm not sure my "fingers outran my evidence", (mouth being a bit inaccurate in this scenario).

Yes, Clark does claim that. He also claims his name appears in the 'Bible Code'. He is a pitiable man in a tough situation late in his life. But he reported 'UFO stories' to NICAP for thirty years. Why then was his latest employment problem a UFO-related problem?

You keep saying 'both of these men' made claims about people being fired from NASA over revealing UFO secrets. What does that have to do with the claims of the second man, Ed Mitchell? Where am i missing your point?

I overlooked Gary McKinnon out of compassion. Here's a guy who admits he was high much of the time he was hacking [and now claims other learning disabilities as mitigating factors], and you list him as a reliable witness?

What would be surprising would be that after several decades of space activities, there were NOT a parade of people stepping forward claiming high-level insider knowledge. In practically every other field and other subject, there are always a few folks doing this. How can their claims be separated from random noise and confabulation? There are still people claiming to have witnessed secret dead Russian cosmonauts in outer space.

Remember the famous VJ Day Times Square of a sailor kissing a girl? There were at least half a dozen serious, sincere claims of a specific person being that kisser. How many of them, max, do you think were authentic? What percent?

no message.

[edit on 16-9-2009 by Cole DeSteele]

reply to post by Cole DeSteele


(removed)

[edit on 16 September 2009 by weedwhacker]

Its a Tower Of Babel ancient tower of luna there is where the "Gods" lives sow called Gods of the Ancient world. but its nothing like that

Originally posted by JimOberg
Yes, Clark does claim that. He also claims his name appears in the 'Bible Code'. He is a pitiable man in a tough situation late in his life. But he reported 'UFO stories' to NICAP for thirty years. Why then was his latest employment problem a UFO-related problem?

You keep saying 'both of these men' made claims about people being fired from NASA over revealing UFO secrets. What does that have to do with the claims of the second man, Ed Mitchell? Where am i missing your point?

I overlooked Gary McKinnon out of compassion. Here's a guy who admits he was high much of the time he was hacking [and now claims other learning disabilities as mitigating factors], and you list him as a reliable witness?

What would be surprising would be that after several decades of space activities, there were NOT a parade of people stepping forward claiming high-level insider knowledge. In practically every other field and other subject, there are always a few folks doing this. How can their claims be separated from random noise and confabulation? There are still people claiming to have witnessed secret dead Russian cosmonauts in outer space.

Remember the famous VJ Day Times Square of a sailor kissing a girl? There were at least half a dozen serious, sincere claims of a specific person being that kisser. How many of them, max, do you think were authentic? What percent?

I don't keep saying" 'both of these men' made claims about people being fired from NASA over revealing UFO secrets" - that was another poster. You asked him to provide you with just one example of someone so I submit Clark. Like it or not he does claim he was fired from NASA for seeing things he wasn't supposed to see and talking about it. To be more accurate he claims he was fired for what he saw and had his pension taken away for talking about it.

Is it your position that no one has ever been fired from NASA for violating security / data classification? That would be an incredible record for any agency which handles classified materials.

Gary wasn't much of an uber hacker, that's true but high or not he did manage to penetrate NASA's systems as well as a number of pretty high level DOD and others. It has to suck being at the mercy of the lowest bidder, especially when some contractor decides to install VNC and leave the default password on. In this case it's the equivalent of parking the Ferrari with the keys in the ignition, the engine running and driver's side door standing wide open. Despite all that and the fact he could have made up anything he came across as actually trying to hold some things back and the guy's believable even with all his human flaws. If he'd claimed to have seen photos of NASA / ET orgies we'd all be laughing but the stuff he was willing to talk about came across as real. The guy even admitted he didn't find the smoking gun but did find something that scared the hell out of him, convinced him to keep his mouth shut and call his attorney. Not a rocket scientist but definitely not a moron.

Look, I'm not going to beat up on you because I honestly feel bad for anyone who has to represent the "company line" vs. the metric s-ton of credible witnesses and data representing the UFO phenomenon. You have to be aware of the endless list of witness statements from very well respected people, including a number of famous astronauts. Here's to hoping the ETs continue taking the sneak and peak approach for a good long time, at least long enough so that it isn't your name in the history books as being at the forefront of lying to American public. I know the threat of going down in history as being part of that cover up would eat away at me but like I said, I give you guys the benefit of the doubt that you're doing it for the right reasons.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
And let's all give kudos to Nancy Evans, a true American Heroine who stored these huge machines in her own garage for decades to make this data recovery project possible!

Thanks. And indeed fascinating stories.
As I said, for older missions, the things are done, for financial reasons, no matter how many Hoaglands demand the "raw" data. Unless some fundings or enthusiasm try to re-process/recover the initial data.
What remains, are more or less tampered photos (for common sense reasons as i said before), results of processing at the time of processing. Who is not happy with that, could make efforts to restore himself the original data, since is not confident in what other teams have done before. Or i don't know what the solution could be.

Since it came up in the discussion, specifically the question as to which direction would NASA go in to eliminate any photographic evidence, alter or destroy - it just so happens that Ken Johnston, former NASA Manager of the Data and Photo Control Department of NASA's Lunar Receiving Laboratory at MSC during the Apollo Program claims he was instructed by his superiors to destroy certain materials from the Moon program, the "high resolution" masters if I recall correctly.

I'm guessing he would be another of those "bad seeds" who make up stories about NASA. It's weird how all these people in pretty high level positions end up going sideways but it was the sixties. There's no telling what kind of shenanigans were going on at the Cape back then.

Originally posted by ecoparity
Since it came up in the discussion, specifically the question as to which direction would NASA go in to eliminate any photographic evidence, alter or destroy - it just so happens that Ken Johnston, former NASA Manager of the Data and Photo Control Department of NASA's Lunar Receiving Laboratory at MSC during the Apollo Program claims he was instructed by his superiors to destroy certain materials from the Moon program, the "high resolution" masters if I recall correctly.

I'm guessing he would be another of those "bad seeds" who make up stories about NASA. It's weird how all these people in pretty high level positions end up going sideways but it was the sixties. There's no telling what kind of shenanigans were going on at the Cape back then.

Dunno about the Cape. But I do know from documentation and interviews that a whole string of Johnston's self-aggrandizing claims are inconsistent with all other independent sources. Jet fighter pilot? Nope, he washed out if flight training (FOIA his military records and prove this yourself). LM test pilot? Nope, he was what we called a 'switch monkey' in the simulator, never got off the ground. Head of photo archives? Nope, he was a shipping clerk. PhD in Physics? Nope, the certificate was for a non-existent 'seminary' in Denver that you buy with a coupon and a check to a PO Box. Saved a set of unique moon pix at his alma mater? Nope, they lost track of them decades ago and didn't notice.

You can verify all these disappointing revelations yourself. Names, dates, places -- all on the public record.

He's another of your reliable experts? Who you gonna call on next -- ACORN???

Are you being PAID to pose as a gullible eager-believer to make real UFO buffs look silly?

Originally posted by ecoparity
Since it came up in the discussion, specifically the question as to which direction would NASA go in to eliminate any photographic evidence, alter or destroy - it just so happens that Ken Johnston, former NASA Manager of the Data and Photo Control Department of NASA's Lunar Receiving Laboratory at MSC during the Apollo Program claims he was instructed by his superiors to destroy certain materials from the Moon program, the "high resolution" masters if I recall correctly.

Apparently it was standard practice to destroy all the high resolution master tapes. Excerpt reposted from my post a few up from this:

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
articles.latimes.com...

NASA was so preoccupied with getting an astronaut to the moon ahead of the Soviets that little attention was paid to the mountains of scientific data that flowed back to Earth from its early space missions. The data, stored on miles of fragile tapes, grew into mountains that were packed up and sent to a government warehouse with crates of other stuff.
(snip)
Evans was at her desk in the 1970s when a clerk walked into her office, asking what he should do with a truck-sized heap of data tapes that had been released from storage.

"What do you usually do with things like that?" she asked.

"We usually destroy them," he replied.
(snip)

Fortunately someone made a huge effort to salvage some of them.