'One small step for man,' 700-box tape loss for NASA

[Greylyn58]

Original recordings of Apollo moon missions are missing.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The U.S. government has misplaced the original recording of the first moon landing, including astronaut Neil Armstrong's famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," a NASA spokesman said on Monday.

Armstrong's famous space walk, seen by millions of viewers on July 20, 1969, is among transmissions that NASA has failed to turn up in a year of searching, spokesman Grey Hautaloma said.

"We haven't seen them for quite a while. We've been looking for over a year and they haven't turned up," Hautaloma said.

The tapes also contain data about the health of the astronauts and the condition of the spacecraft. In all, some 700 boxes of transmissions from the Apollo lunar missions are missing, he said.


snip....

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/08/14/space.tapes.reut/index.html

Why and how was this allowed to happen. I find this absolutely unbelievable!!

[mbperrin]

1. Ah, well, 700 boxes, heh, could be anywhere.....

nothing wrong here, all is good....say, those couldn't be the ones sold to a private collector for ...nah............couldn't be.............

[bigbrother05]

2. Hell, George

probably traded them for a case of beer.

[XNASA]

3. Hmmmm..........I wonder exactly which tapes they're talking about?

And by that I mean, I wonder where these tapes were recorded??

In Mission Control? In the TV studios and backrooms of NASA PAO (Public Affairs Office)? At NASA HQ in DC?

Do they mean the Air-to-Ground feeds, or the TV Programs feeds, etc? Or a feed called Mission Audio which is fed to the Media?

There are so many variables, it would be difficult to say which tapes exactly are the 'official' versions.

While I worked at NASA, one of the last projects I oversaw was the digitizing of a lot of the old tapes. The tapes were very unique and there was only one machine in Houston at JSC that could play the tapes. I think they were 2" tapes, with 40 channels recorded....but there was only 2 playback heads that were only 1 channel each. Those tapes were stored in a vault in the PAO office at JSC.

[SKKY]

6. I have no idea how things worked at NASA, but that was...

...my initial thought exactly. There is no way there could only be 1 original set of tapes documenting one of the
most important events in our country's history.

[hedgehog]

23. That's the first thing I thought of.

Information written on good acid free paper lasts forever if properly stored. Data stored electronically is lost as soon as the next generation of electronics is developed.

[TomInTib]

4. Collectorville...

Any time and place where valuable collectibles and lax security meet, bad stuff happens.

[TlalocW]

5. They had to go missing

Because on one tape you could hear someone say, "Okay! Cut! That's a wrap! Let's break for lunch, people! We'll shoot the coming down the ladder scene when we get back!"

TlalocW

[IChing]

13. LOL.....Ha,ha ha, that was funny thanks

I wonder when someone would post that scenario vs an e-bay one.

ROTFL

[MADem]

7. Hell, they're probably the same place all those crucial Chief Justice

Roberts papers that the Senate never got to review are stuffed....they'll turn up eventually!! Or they'll serve as kindling at Camp David....one or the other!

[6000eliot]

27. Maybe they're with the douche bag's service records?

[sandnsea]

8. My mom filmed it

She stuck a camera in front of the tv and filmed it, but I don't think she thought to make an audio recording. But I've got a copy of the video on one of my family tapes.

[William Seger]

9. Did they search eBay?

[WhiteTara]

10. my thoughts exactly, William

:hi:

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

11. It's buried under the rubble piled up around the launch pad

The Apollo 11 launch pad should be a shrine- no, make that the destination of a PILGRIMAGE- but it's been abandoned to rust and rubble long since. So much for the historical importance of that entire era. :cry:

[pitohui]

12. i saw it real time

trust me the quality was so shitty that at some point down the line it was prob. tossed as not worth saving

[Duer 157099]

14. Actually, they were higher quality SSTV recordings

not the ones that were shown on TV... which of course raises the question: why didn't they show the high quality recordings?

[KatyMan]

15. Apparently,

at the time there was no way to translate the high quality NASA video feed to a TV transmission, so they had TV cameras placed in front of the NASA receivers that relayed the images.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/one-giant-blunder-for-mankind-how-nasa-lost-moon-pictures/2006/08/04/1154198328978.html

[Duer 157099]

24. Ah thanks. But that still raises the question

of, in all these years, we have not seen the high quality recordings. Had the issue come up, the tapes would have been digitized and thus preserved.

Hard to accept that idiots are in charge of stuff like this.

[KatyMan]

26. That I accept, and

thought along the same lines: why haven't we seen the good video before? Maybe it was lost/destroyed/sold a long time ago and some earnest NASA person just noticed?

[Kolesar]

17. & I fell asleep watching it!

I recall that Neil and Buzz stepped down the ladder well into the evening. It was a school night for me and I was only 9. I have only seen tapes of it.

[krispos42]

16. Oh. My. God.

This is almost like 'misplacing' the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence.

The lunar landing conspiracy guys are going to go apeshit over this. I might have to get my tinfoil hat out...

[LeftHander]

18. They have top men on it....nt

[Show_Me _The_Truth]

19. ...TOP men

N/T

[Javaman]

20. I work as an archivist...

for a large firm. very large. documents going back over 100 years.

Occasionally, I will misplace something, but given the system I have set up, I will usually find it within a day.

However, there are certain sensitive materials and info that I have to keep very close track of day in and day out, regardless of how old it is. These documents are kept in a temp controlled area under lock and key. Everything is triple cross referenced, so nothing is lost, misplaced or misfiled.

One would think, that probably the most significant moment in human history would be guarded under such conditions as I have state above at a minimum.

Truly mind boggling.

on edit:

if they used standard filing boxes which are 1.2 square feet of space, that translates to 840 square feet. That is not a small foot print (pardon the pun). If all of them are gone, I suspect one of two things have happened. Some clod misfiled them, because if they are all kept together, it would be very hard to misplace that amount or two, someone stole them.

[Baclava]

21. We had to have those tapes removed. It could set back the invasion

...the colonization must go on as planned.

Did Apollo 11 Encounter UFOs on the Moon? from the Book "Above Top Secret" by Timothy Good

According to a former NASA employee Otto Binder, unnamed radio hams with their own VHF receiving facilities that bypassed NASA's broadcasting outlets picked up the following exchange:

NASA: What's there? Mission Control calling Apollo 11...

Apollo: These "Babies" are huge, Sir! Enormous! OH MY GOD! You wouldn't believe it! I'm telling you there are other spacecraft out there, Lined up on the far side of the crater edge! They're on the Moon watching us!

In 1979 Maurice Chatelain, former chief of NASA Communications Systems confirmed that Armstrong had indeed reported seeing two UFOs on the rim of a crater. "The encounter was common knowledge in NASA," he revealed, "but nobody has talked about it until now."

http://www.ufocasebook.com/moon.html

[Ezlivin]

22. Tell the RIAA that someone's pirated them and sharing them on P2P

Once they are involved the tapes will turn up.

[ConcernedCanuk]

25. There is no real proof that the USA actually landed on the moon

.
.
.

If they can land Rovers on Mars, why not the moon to show the location and "footprints" of the landing?

The race for the moon was the PNACers guise to develop their missile system - it worked

The public happily gave their taxes to be "the first on the moon",

While really, the USA Military was just developing more weapons

The USA government even hired Hollywood directors to make sure that the launch was appealing to the public, and EVEN MOVED THE LAUNCH PAD from it's original location so it would look "nicer" to it's viewing public.

Heck, even decades later, the USA has to rely on the Russians just to maintain the Space Station

To quote one of our past Prime Ministers, Jean Chretien, as he refused to join in the mess in Iraq

"Give me proof, - a proof is a proof is a proof"

USA's Admin has been full of doublespeak ever since they killed off JFK

That's My Canuk Opinion anyhoo

[countryjake]

28. Bet they're in Wapakoneta!