NASA erased Apollo11 moon footage to reuse the videotape, Hollywood restores it

[Liberty Star]

These are the brightest and the smartest among us? LOL

NASA lost moon footage, but Hollywood restores it

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – 15 mins ago

WASHINGTON – NASA could put a man on the moon but didn't have the sense to keep the original video of the live TV transmission.

In an embarrassing acknowledgment, the space agency said Thursday that it must have erased the Apollo 11 moon footage years ago so that it could reuse the videotape.

But now Hollywood is coming to the rescue.

The studio wizards who restored "Casablanca" are digitally sharpening and cleaning up the ghostly, grainy footage of the moon landing, making it even better than what TV viewers saw on July 20, 1969. They are doing it by working from four copies that NASA scrounged from around the world.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090716...jA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNuYXNhbG9zdG1vb24-

 

[Golding]

I expect this to be a new foundation for the argument of a moon landing hoax. I wonder what they taped over it with.

 

[satchelmcqueen]

im not buying it. i may be wrong, but if you tape over something on film...how can you get it back??

 

[Mini-Me]

I expect this to be a new foundation for the argument of a moon landing hoax. I wonder what they taped over it with.

The boss must have REALLY wanted someone to tape The Brady Bunch for him...

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

im not buying it. i may be wrong, but if you tape over something on film...how can you get it back??

First off, you can't "tape" over something on "film" - film uses a chemical reaction to set the image and can only be used once.


Second - they don't have the originals: (technically, the AU tapes are originals - but not NASA's originals)

"Nafzger said a huge search that began three years ago for the old moon tapes led to the "inescapable conclusion" that 45 tapes of Apollo 11 video were erased and reused. His report on that will come out in a few weeks.

The original videos beamed to Earth were stored on giant reels of tape that each contained 15 minutes of video, along with other data from the moon. In the 1970s and '80s, NASA had a shortage of the tapes, so it erased about 200,000 of them and reused them."


Third - they are doing the restoration from copies:

"The restoration used four video sources: CBS News originals; kinescopes from the National Archives; a video from Australia that received the transmission of the original moon video; and camera shots of a TV monitor. "

Though from another article, posted here a while back, and hinted at in this piece - there was a loss in quality in transmission and conversion so the AU tapes are the best quality video.

Digital media also degrades over time as there is electron drift, not to mention breaking down of the physical media so by comparing / merging the best of multiple copies a good, crisp copy can be obtained.


Forth - when you tape over or erase magnetic media, the underlying information isn't really gone. Some of the electrons will maintain a memory of what was there before and this can be recovered. It's a very very expensive and time consuming process involving such things as clean rooms, moon suites, and electron microscopes so is almost never done. Considering the low density of this tape and type of media this would be a lot more trivial than a modern hard drive.

As an aside, if you erase something on a hard drive, it just marks the sector free - the data is still there. To really get rid of it, you need a program that will physically overwrite the data about 20 times with alternating patterns of 1's and 0's.

-t

 

[PatriotOne]

Oh yeah. I remember the great film shortage of the 70's and 80's. Desperate people were doing desperate things .

Do people really believe this?

 

[Mini-Me]

As an aside, if you erase something on a hard drive, it just marks the sector free - the data is still there. To really get rid of it, you need a program that will physically overwrite the data about 20 times with alternating patterns of 1's and 0's.

-t

Not to get too far off-topic, but even Peter Gutmann, who created the Gutmann method (pretty much the most paranoid and ridiculous method ever for erasing data), thinks that methods like that are overkill:

In the time since this paper was published, some people have treated the 35-pass overwrite technique described in it more as a kind of voodoo incantation to banish evil spirits than the result of a technical analysis of drive encoding techniques. As a result, they advocate applying the voodoo to PRML and EPRML drives even though it will have no more effect than a simple scrubbing with random data. In fact performing the full 35-pass overwrite is pointless for any drive since it targets a blend of scenarios involving all types of (normally-used) encoding technology, which covers everything back to 30+-year-old MFM methods (if you don't understand that statement, re-read the paper). If you're using a drive which uses encoding technology X, you only need to perform the passes specific to X, and you never need to perform all 35 passes. For any modern PRML/EPRML drive, a few passes of random scrubbing is the best you can do. As the paper says, "A good scrubbing with random data will do about as well as can be expected". This was true in 1996, and is still true now.

 

[Liberty Star]

All good points. But won't it be more cost effective to just redo the take ( except do it on earth)? I had heard that some land stretches in Arizona looked kinda like moon surface and if that's true, why not just do a reshoot there and save tax payers zillions of dollars from these costly hollywood restoration projects?

 

[Pauls' Revere]

I expect this to be a new foundation for the argument of a moon landing hoax. I wonder what they taped over it with.

porn

 

[blocks]

Why didn't they go to the Bureau of Video Restoration?

 

[Danke]

I had heard that some land stretches in Arizona looked kinda like moon surface and if that's true, why not just do a reshoot there and save tax payers zillions of dollars from these costly hollywood restoration projects?

Good point.

Luckily the meteor that created this crater in AZ just barely missed the nearby roads.

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

I expect this to be a new foundation for the argument of a moon landing hoax.

The AU tape was the original, as a ground station there received the signal and transmitted it to us because the moon was on the wrong side of the Earth part of the time. It's existence would tend to prove it was not a hoax.

I wonder what they taped over it with.

Probably telemetry and image data from other flights.

Why didn't they go to the Bureau of Video Restoration?

Actually the National Media Lab (NML) handles these type of things. They are now the Imation Government Services Program.

http://nml.org

links to a number of reports on data archiving and recovery can be found here: (scroll down)

http://cool-palimpsest.stanford.edu/bytopic/electronic-records/electronic-storage-media/

It looks like most have been taken offline, however some can be found here and if not present, search on the title and another copy should be able to be located somewhere. Failing that - try google cache / the way back machine.

http://www.imation.com/en/Imation-P.../Government-Services/NML-Archived-Documents-/


-t

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

Not to get too far off-topic, but even Peter Gutmann, who created the Gutmann method (pretty much the most paranoid and ridiculous method ever for erasing data), thinks that methods like that are overkill:

The preferred method of disposing of magnetic media that has contained TS or above data is to collect it in a vault till there is enough, then go out, dig a pit, stack it up and cover it up with several hundred pounds of thermite. Then lite...

> "thinks that methods like that are overkill"

uh, hu...

There are DoD specs that state 7 overwrites are fine for Secret and below data.

I have been to auctions selling off bank equipment where the computers were set up to show they worked. ALL customer data including balances, Addresses, SS#'s, etc were NOT SCRUBBED! Then there are the many commercial and gvmt cases of laptops being stolen that contained tens of thouseands of personal data records of citizens.

Personally, I like the hyper-paranoid approach of the government.

-t

 

[pacelli]

Do people really believe this?

No kidding!!!!!

 

[Kraig]

I have a really hard time believing men went to the moon with all this. Hollywood restoration? Why even bother.

 

[acptulsa]

Well, guys, you seem to have lost the perspective of history. The home VCR did not exist at this time. When they say tapes, therefore, they aren't talking about standardized casettes that could be picked up at the local drug store for a few bucks.

In fact, videotape was not a very old technology and used primarily by t.v. stations and networks. I don't know how standard that was, but between the very real concerns about mass and a practically unlimited budget, they decided to use very specialized equipment. So, they designed a system that was completely unique, nonstandard, and probably expensive as hell.

Then they got to the moon (presumably). Shortly thereafter, their budget started to shrink--even as the greatest 'car culture' the world had ever seen or will ever see decided that astronauts needed a dune buggy...

I think this circumstance argues against the hoax theory, myself. If they staged it, they wouldn't have scrimped on videotape. Indeed, they'd have probably used film. If it's for real, the medium is a minor detail. If you stage it all for the cameras, the medium is the whole point. And they'd have used the best damned film they could find.

 

[pcosmar]

Oh yeah. I remember the great film shortage of the 70's and 80's. Desperate people were doing desperate things .

Do people really believe this?

Really.

You might take into consideration that this was 1969. Video technology was far less advanced.
from wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape

Although Quad became the industry standard for 20 years, it had drawbacks such as an inability to freeze pictures, no picture search, and in early machines, a tape could reliably be played back using only the same set of hand-made tape heads, which wore out very quickly. Despite these problems, Quad could produce excellent images. Subsequent videotape systems have used helical scan, where the video heads record diagonal tracks (of complete fields) on to the tape.

Unfortunately, very few early videotapes still exist. The high cost of early videotapes meant that most broadcasters erased and reused them, and (in the United States) regarded videotape as simply a better and more cost-effective means of time-delaying broadcasts than the previous kinescope technology, which recorded television pictures onto photographic film. It was the four time zones of the continental United States which had made the system very desirable in the first place.

It was not "recorded" on the moon. The video signal was transmitted back and recorded on tape .
At the time "pre-recorded" broadcasts were a new thing.( about 2 years.)
The only Film that would have existed would have been from a camera pointed at a TV screen.

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

Well, guys, you seem to have lost the perspective of history. The home VCR did not exist at this time. When they say tapes, therefore, they aren't talking about standardized casettes that could be picked up at the local drug store for a few bucks.

In fact, videotape was not a very old technology and used primarily by t.v. stations and networks. I don't know how standard that was, but between the very real concerns about mass and a practically unlimited budget, they decided to use very specialized equipment. So, they designed a system that was completely unique, nonstandard, and probably expensive as hell.

Vidiotape was invented in 1959. At the time a machine to read and write said tapes costs $50,000,000. Presumably the cost went down a bit by the 70's and 80's. - still, VERY EXPENSIVE! Not to mention low resolution.

-t

 

[Kraig]

Well, guys, you seem to have lost the perspective of history. The home VCR did not exist at this time. When they say tapes, therefore, they aren't talking about standardized casettes that could be picked up at the local drug store for a few bucks.

In fact, videotape was not a very old technology and used primarily by t.v. stations and networks. I don't know how standard that was, but between the very real concerns about mass and a practically unlimited budget, they decided to use very specialized equipment. So, they designed a system that was completely unique, nonstandard, and probably expensive as hell.

Then they got to the moon (presumably). Shortly thereafter, their budget started to shrink--even as the greatest 'car culture' the world had ever seen or will ever see decided that astronauts needed a dune buggy...

I think this circumstance argues against the hoax theory, myself. If they staged it, they wouldn't have scrimped on videotape. Indeed, they'd have probably used film. If it's for real, the medium is a minor detail. If you stage it all for the cameras, the medium is the whole point. And they'd have used the best damned film they could find.

With the originals gone who can even be sure what format it was originally recorded on? If you were going to stage it you would want the quality to be as poor as possible to prevent any detailed look into what is actually happening, and that is all we have. Doesn't exactly instill trust for me, and I would like to believe it. I grew up building models of the Apollo rockets because I was so fascinated with the accomplishment. Now I would like to believe it just because I am tired of being labeled as a nut case for everything else, it's just not easy to believe. Eventually someone will go investigate the landing sites and put this to rest. If NASA really wanted to put it to rest they could release the exact landing coordinates and challenge any country to send a probe up there to take a look.

 

[acptulsa]

With the originals gone who can even be sure what format it was originally recorded on?

The people who worked for NASA at the time (a great many of whom are still alive, and not all of whom could possibly have been in on the hoax if it was one).

Doesn't exactly instill trust for me, and I would like to believe it. I grew up building models of the Apollo rockets because I was so fascinated with the accomplishment. Now I would like to believe it just because I am tired of being labeled as a nut case for everything else, it's just not easy to believe. Eventually someone will go investigate the landing sites and put this to rest. If NASA really wanted to put it to rest they could release the exact landing coordinates and challenge any country to send a probe up there to take a look.

Study the technology. Do you doubt shuttles go up and fix satellites? Do you doubt spy satellites, or think we get live feeds worldwide without them? Well then, study up and see if you can prove it happened by determining that not only do the technological records of those missions make sense, but those developments must have happend at that time or the shuttle wouldn't have happened.

Lotta time and work, there. But if you make a good case, the book could sell quite well.