Lost Apollo-11 Tapes

REALLY good discussion by Robert Pearlman and other space historians --
www.history.com...

a reply to: JimOberg

Any info, transcript I can read?

a reply to: JimOberg

All i get is a voice saying "this content is currently not available"..

Any chance of a YT link ?

originally posted by: kloejen
Any chance of a YT link ?

Or an OP...

originally posted by: swanne

originally posted by: kloejen
Any chance of a YT link ?

Or an OP...

Here is a link!

(Link broken)

Best...thread...ever.

originally posted by: swanne

originally posted by: kloejen
Any chance of a YT link ?

Or an OP...

This. I'm not going to go clicking on links with no idea what they are. A short description (at the least) would be nice (and required, if I'm not mistaken...).

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
(and required, if I'm not mistaken...).

You are not mistaking.

10 words and a link to a TV show isn`t much of an OP

originally posted by: Tardacus
10 words and a link to a TV show isn`t much of an OP

If my tv is right, Jim was too busy on the Science channel to provide any details for the link.

Wikipedia has a summary article:

en.wikipedia.org...

Apollo 11 has a slow-scan television telecast of the moonwalk. The video was sent back to Earth as a radio signal.

"When the Apollo TV camera radioed its images, the ground stations received its raw unconverted SSTV signal and split it into two branches. One signal branch was sent unprocessed to a fourteen-track analog data tape recorder where it was recorded onto fourteen-inch diameter reels of one-inch-wide analog magnetic data tapes at 3.04 meters per second.[5] The other raw SSTV signal branch was sent to the RCA scan converter where it would be processed into an NTSC broadcast television signal.[5]"

NASA lost around 700 magnetic tapes. It's not known whether these were overwritten and reused or put into storage somewhere remote.

a reply to: stormcell

Thanks for a better op than the OP!

A star from me.

I most sincerely hope the lost footage was not overwritten.

BRAD MELTZER'S LOST HISTORY
I watched this show last week. It's interesting. Last week they were in search of Apollo Moon rocks that had disappeared.

Here's a stream of consciousness set of notes concerning this program. But I suggest you check out the History Channel site. If for no other reason than Brad Meltzer is an interesting and amusing host.
Brad Meltzer's Lost History: Moon Landing Tapes
The first 18 minutes cover the Moon landing tape issue.

The standard Apollo 11 landing video is inspiring but grainy and dark. NASA had hi res of this video but it is lost.
A tech found a hi-res photo in Australia while looking through old records. It is of the landing, but it is good quality.
Polaroid shot of video on screen as it was received from the moon. Can actually see reflection of LM in their visors as they read the plaque on the lander.
July 20th, 600 million people watching. 1/6th of the Earth's population.
Signal from camera received in Australia. Displayed on tiny screen of about 6", then recorded on big tv camera in use at the time. Then sent around the world via satellite. Outstanding achievement at the time.
But mag tape was capturing the actual video that was being seen on the screens of the techs.
In 1990's a tech working at Parkes Observatory, John Sarkissian, decided to answer the question of which station in Australia was actually receiving the video, because everyone claimed it was them.
NASA couldn't find the tape. Then he found the polaroid and realized how crystal clear the images actually were.
He got in touch with the NASA engineer who put all of the video broadcast systems in place, and then they realized that nobody knew where any of these tapes were.
Then another NASA engineer thought that they may be in his garage!!
In all there were 45 tapes used to record the landing. Can't find any of them.
12 - 15 minutes per tape. 4 recorders at each downlink station.
At a reunion of engineers from Apollo era in Australia, one engineer admits to making a backup of one of the tapes as a souvenir. But doesn't say anything for fear of getting in trouble. Had it in his garage for over 30 years.
Nobody in Australia had equipment to play it because it was ancient technology, so it was sent to NASA in US.
They played the tape, but found it only contained telemetry data from 1967.
Then the story went public and the SHTF.
Then they found out that all of the tapes had been sent to the National Record Center of the National Archive in Washington, DC.
The room where the tapes are stored is 3 or 4 football fields in size with shelves 25 feet high filled with boxes of data.
Metzler: Like the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
220,000 tapes and other artifacts.
No unique markings on any of the tapes. No one knew they were handling precious artifacts.
Horror: NASA started reusing tapes in the 70s and 80s because they were running out. So they erased and reused them without paying any attention to what they were.
They are still optimistic because they know a duplicate set of tapes were made. And perhaps someone else did as the Australian engineer did and saved a copy.
Seems there was a process in place to make video copies of the tapes that the lead engineer didn't even know about.
But nobody knows where they are either.

If you know where they are, you can get a reward from the show.

dex

originally posted by: JimOberg
REALLY good discussion by Robert Pearlman and other space historians --
www.history.com...

I'm wondering if they are being hit by DDos attacks too, I have a reply somewhere in the ether to that effect because the stats for DDos indicated another hit was on it's way, and the outage here tonight happened at the moment I hit the reply button! There was no degrading of service either, just straight off.
I just checked H2 is not offline ..as yet. Must be some other problem.

a reply to: smurfy

Is that what happened here? The first time I went to post my previous message to ATS, the connection was lost and it took a while before I could reconnect. I could connect to a lot of other sites, just not to ATS. I thought it might have been a DDoS attack.

Maybe there is too much truth flowing through these pages...

dex

Its just shocking that nasa managed to lose recordings of one of the most important event in mankinds history

When I got the link from Robert Pearlman, it worked for me, but I'll verify.

Sorry about that!!

Here's his master site --

www.collectspace.com...

originally posted by: JimOberg
When I got the link from Robert Pearlman, it worked for me, but I'll verify.

Sorry about that!!

Here's his master site --

www.collectspace.com...

You've got an awesome moustache.
I'm going to look into all of your links. I think you're legit.

originally posted by: amurphy245
Its just shocking that nasa managed to lose recordings of one of the most important event in mankinds history

Not really. I took photos on my last trip, transferred them from the camera's chip to my computer, then deleted the files from the chip. Essentially, that's what happened with the Apollo 11 tapes.

Unlike the later missions, the Apollo 11 slow-scan 10 frames-per-second video down-link was part of the unified telemetry stream that included spacecraft status and astronaut biomedical readings. All of this data was converted into readable formats, and of course the video was converted to broadcast formats of the day. So when the decision was made by whomever-it-was, as far as he knew, all of the data on the tape had been transferred and saved and nothing would be lost by recording over it.

However...

It simply was not common knowledge at the time that the videos that everyone saw broadcast around the world live and seen on countless replays was markedly inferior to what was originally on the monitor at Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes. Hell, even the guys who were working at those stations on the day were too busy working the equipment to gawk at the little monitor (that was mostly blocked by the camera that was sending it out to the world).

Furthermore, 30 years ago digital restoration was still in its infancy. Even the few people who were aware of it still did not have an inkling of its full capabilities. It's one of those technologies that we take for granted today, but was virtually unknown at the time.

I imagine that the unknown (and probably under-paid) archivist working a boring job in a warehouse somewhere simply knew that the data on the tape had been transferred and saved, and gave no more thought to it than I did erasing my holiday pix.

P.S. I'd like to know exactly how the tape in question was labeled. In all probability it said something like "A-11 data down-link. 42 of 95. July 21, 1969".

"Hey, it's just data." not knowing that the video was encoded in the telemetry, which was unique to Apollo 11 and not common knowledge.

"It's not from the day of the moonwalk." not realizing that July 20th in the US was the morning of July 21st in Australia, where the signal was down-linked.

"All the information has been transferred and saved anyway." not being able to see decades into the future to know that data restoration would be viable (on a video that he didn't know needed it).

...and *poof* - there goes another historical relic.

a reply to: amurphy245
I recall watching a documentary a few years back claiming the lost reels were found in a old abandoned McDonald's building. But the tapes could not be played due to the specialized player not working. Something about the high speed bearings having failed and could not be replaced due to the age of them.

Anyone else remember this?

a reply to: jamesthegreat

I believe the tapes you're referring to are from the Lunar Orbiter missions, and they are currently being restored in what was a McDonald's on a NASA facility.

www.moonviews.com...

They were not originally stored there, but were transferred there so they could restore them, which they are doing.