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NASA Loses Apollo Mission Tapes

I found them! They were in my garage!! oh, wait, They were looking for the originals, not my old VHS copies ;)
 
redAPPLE said:
because according to the bush administration, there is no oil on the moon.

and rocks can't be burnt.
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And according to the Clinton administration there weren't any interns there so there was no point to go exploring.

I know you're just joking, but this obviously isn't the fault of just one administration
 
This could only happen to America. Come on people, half the world already thinks you're a bunch of ignorant hillbilly patriot parrots, why'd you have to lose those tapes and give the anti-moon-landing-front more ammunition than they already 'have'?

On a sidenote, I can only sign what the other guys said about NASA's budget not allowing other missions to the moon. If village idi...president Bush wouldn't be so busy making war half the way around the globe, he could be looking for resources to go to the moon. Maybe even settle down there. After all, we don't got much time left on this planet.

Wow, writing this felt really weird.
 
because according to the bush administration, there is no oil on the moon.

and rocks can't be burnt.
Click to expand...

Well, there is something up there worthwhile called he3 which can be used in a fusion reactor.

http://www.exn.ca/apollo/Future/

Thats also the reason that China and others are interested in the moon as well. Until recently, nobody else had the capability to go to the moon. Now we have Russia, China, soon to be India and possibly Iran that are now building the infrastructure to do so.

http://www.space.com/astronotes/astronotes_july25_aug7_04.html

July 29

China’s Moon Probe Project Maturing

Phase one of China’s "Chang'e I" project is picking up speed. The effort was kicked off in March 2003 and is under the guidance of an "elite squad" of scientists and engineers, according to a July 27 report in the China’s People's Daily Online.

Citing Ouyang Ziyuan, academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and chief scientist in the project, he said the development of the Moon probe will surely bring huge rewards.

Earlier this year, it was reported that about 1.4 billion yuan (roughly $170 million) is the phase one funding amount for the spacecraft. It would orbit the Moon by 2007.

Goals of the first phase of the Chang'e I project include:

* Take three-dimensional images of the surface of the Moon.
* Analyze the quantity of the useful elements and the distribution of the material types on the surface of the moon - mainly the quantity and distribution of the 14 elements of "exploitation and use value", such as titanium (Ti) and iron (Fe)
* Measure the thickness of lunar soil and grasp the age of the surface of the Moon and estimate the quantity of helium 3 (He3).

For command and control of the Moon probe, work is ongoing in maturing a Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) network. Four large radio telescopes are being installed in Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming and Urumqi to enhance operations of the lunar probe.
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Cooknn said:
Funny thing is that Armstrong botched the quote as he descended from the ladder of Apollo 11's Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) and stepped onto the lunar surface. It was supposed to be "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" :eek:
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He didn't botch it, the 'a' was sort of blurred together between 'for' and 'man'. Additionally, the communication equipment used had horrible sound quality. The sample rate was terrible. Think about it this way, the moon landings were done on 4K of memory!

But from the human side of things, he was descending a ladder in a bulky space suit, AND he was about to set foot on the MOON! if that was me, not only would I blur my words together, I would freak out, then take a dump in the suit, then convulse like ted kennedy when he climbs stairs.
 
pilotError said:
Some better info on the search for the tapes:

http://www.space.com/news/060813_apollo11_tapes.html

http://www.space.com/news/061103_apollo_tapes.html
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If you believe in conspiracy theories, don't bother reading this.
I like pilotError's links as credible explanations. The following is my personal experience as how I'd make sense of this.

All NASA documents are recorded and assigned an archivist. Archivists are responsible for receiving, cataloguing, storing, preserving the artifacts. As a former archivist (not NASA), I know that inheriting video footage means spending time viewing, tagging, and deciding how to catalogue the video. Sometimes, cataloguing means just logging the date, broad subject, and amount of footage; frequently, cataloguing means just logging that you have received an artifact from a source on a certain date and that you'll get to it later. This can pile up, rather dramatically, especially if you have endless storage space. Remember the last scene in "Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark"? That could have been any of the institutional archives I've worked in. Couple that with the mobility of archivists, changing cataloguing and filing procedures, sloppy recording of what and where things are, and you have a researcher's nightmare.

Two years ago, I wanted to do do some cognitive research using some of the footage from various space exploration missions. I started by researching on-line. Some VHS/Beta tapes were indexed, and readily available to the public (and as of Jan. 2005, the video catalogue (NASA Video Catalog, January 2005, NASA/SP—2005-7109/SUPPL15 - videocat.pdf - sorry, didn't think of keeping the URL) does list the Apollo 11 flight and moon landing). My research, though centered on seemingly more obscure catalogues, and I was looking for over 100, 000 feet of unlogged, undigitized videos. My search quickly degenerated into a labyrinth of where these various videotapes could be stored by NASA (Wash. D.C, California, Cleveland, Texas, and Florida, for starts). Getting access to the footage was intimidating (I couldn't even easily find out who was locally responsible for a section even with pretty impressive contacts, and I temporarily put this research aside). The bureaucracy is maddening.

I have no doubt that the footage will re-emerge, either as the original or digital copies. Maybe not in my lifetime, though.
 
Legolamb said:
... Some VHS/Beta tapes were indexed, and readily available to the public...
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I thought all the old technology would be captured into newer technology, but that would be impossible as more and more stuff would have to be converted to newer and newer technology. Hence this question:

does the archiving institution have a mandate to maintain the functional equipment (in this case, a betamax/vhs player) to play the medium which they archive? Or do they rely on the individual who "checks it out" to find a suitable player?
 
johnee said:
I thought all the old technology would be captured into newer technology, but that would be impossible as more and more stuff would have to be converted to newer and newer technology. Hence this question:

does the archiving institution have a mandate to maintain the functional equipment (in this case, a betamax/vhs player) to play the medium which they archive? Or do they rely on the individual who "checks it out" to find a suitable player?
Click to expand...

From my research, they have the betamax/vhs player for on-site viewing; otherwise, you purchase a copy and deal with it off-site.
 
Like other movies, they will find the footage someday.

And then they will release it in a special digitally-restored version, complete with a "Making of..." featurette, a running commentary track by the director of NASA, and a music video. :D
 
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