Missing Apollo 11 video tapes found???

[doodah]

This story is running in a newspaper in the UK ... anyone know if this is true? or got any ideas about how they got it and not a US or Australian news source? I phoned them up but the journalist won't be in until Tuesday!

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/110 ... ding-tapes

 

[doodah]

Also, what sort of quality would the pictures be anyway, in real terms? Not "amazingly clear" from what I've read before!

 

[Smersh]

Hi Doodah, I just started a thread about this over in SS & A, then remembered we had this special section for the 40th anniversary and noticed your thread here, so I deleted mine - sorry bout that.

According to the Sunday Express it's a "world exclusive" so I guess we'll have to wait to see if other media picks up on the story, or if / when NASA themselves make an announcement.

Seeing as the 40th anniversary is approaching, this is quite a coincidence isn't it ... ?

Whatever, if this is true (and I see no reason why the Express would get such a clear-cut story wrong,) then it's great news that at last we'll be able to see this footage.

 

[doodah]

What is interesting I think is that this was already known about:

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/818

And the Nasa guy in the Sunday Express says they are the same tapes!

Would all the telemetry data and video pictures have been somehow mixed together for transmission from the LM and then seperated after recording on earth? I'm basically asking if the vid/telemetry/voice data were all on the same tape ... in which case, as we already know the telemetry tapes have been recovered, Bingo!

 

[Smersh]

Hmmm ... that story was in 2006! (So if that's true I wonder why it's taken 3 years before this latest story in the Sunday Express, and why we haven't yet seen the footage?)

As for your technical question about the telemetry - I'm sorry I don't know but I'm sure others here will.

 

[aphh]

Hmmm ... that story was in 2006! (So if that's true I wonder why it's taken 3 years before this latest story in the Sunday Express, and why we haven't yet seen the footage?)

As for your technical question about the telemetry - I'm sorry I don't know but I'm sure others here will.

They had the tapes, but didn't have a working recorder to play the tapes. They were simply embarrassed to admit they had junked the required VTR's. Some dedicated individuals started to restore the old images from the lunar orbiters and fixed one suitable VTR with a lot of effort, so they now have the capability to view the old tapes.

That's my thinking but I think it's what happened.

 

[Chryseplanatia]

I haven't looked into this much yet, but I suspect that the video was 1" or 2" video tape.Not a lot of machines around in good working order, though this would affect 2" more than 1".

This reminds me of problems I encountered a few years back when searching the National Archives for Apollo 12 audio (the post-TV camera burnout audio). ALL the material I could find had flux-lines through it; ie, a "Swish-swish" noise caused by lines of force from some magnetic source nearby. And this is at the federal archive! We are talking national treasures here. Interestingly, if you're looking for Apollo 11 or 13 material, it's been duplicated so many times it's always findable. But material from the lesser-known flights- 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16- national treasures all- are getting harder to find.

Gemini and Mercury- same story!

 

[aphh]

ALL the material I could find had flux-lines through it; ie, a "Swish-swish" noise caused by lines of force from some magnetic source nearby.

That may be copy effect from the reel's own content. Over time magnetic field from the content gets copied to part of the tape above it on the reel.

All historic content on magnetic media should be copied to non-magnetic media to prevent loss of archives. It's a heck of a lot of job, though.

 

[SilverDart]

I haven't looked into this much yet, but I suspect that the video was 1" or 2" video tape.Not a lot of machines around in good working order, though this would affect 2" more than 1".

This footage is on data tapes, not videotapes. The tapes were not recorded on 2 inch Quad VTRs, which existed in 1969. Nor were they recorded on 1"C VTRs, which debuted in the mid seventies. If the video was recorded on either of these formats, it would have been easier to resurrect it. Instead, it was recorded on, a now, much more obscure computer media tape format.

The data was recorded on 1" computer data tape, that had a duration of only 15 minutes. An earlier article described the data format, and the tape machines that were recently brought back to life at a former McDonalds at Ames Research Center in silicon valley (it's been dubbed McMoons). At the bottem of this post, there's a link to the project, and how they brought back these 1960s era tape drives so that we can view both the Lunar Orbiter images and, of course if the above story is true, the first Moonwalk at it's original -- though less than NTSC quality -- video.

The Moonwalk video is known as slow-scan video, and had an image quality much less than the NTSC standard of 484 horizontal lines of resolution. Plus the frame rate was about 10 frames per second, not the 29.97fps that is the North American standard. The reason our current versions look as bad as they do, is due to how they were converted to NTSC and PAL. In 1969, they didn't have a fully electronic means to reprocess the video stream to a broadcast format, so, unlike what the British Newspaper reported, a video camera was used to shoot the screen at Parkes. From there, it was sent to the uplink station as a broadcast formatted signal. I've watched the NBC footage from A&E's "As it Happened" rebroadcast in 1989 (now safetly transferred to DVD from my original VHS tapes), and it is sharper than the 16mm footage of the same broadcast. If this new find is true, the video quality will be much improved, including how the frame-rate differential is translated.

I believe Mark Grey, at Spacecraft Films, also has found some improved footage as well, maybe it's the same source. I'll look forward to seeing it when its available.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/art ... geNumber=1

 

[Chryseplanatia]

Silverdart- thanks for the elucidation there; I was taking a shot in the dark with the formats. Of course, I shoulda remembered that 1" came along later, but when it was in use around me (the 1980's), I could never afford it, so my exposure to the "pro" formats in those days was limited at best.

So what you are talking about is like those reel-to-reel data tapes as seen (fictionally) in "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" and "The Time Tunnel." At least it wasn't punch cards!

As re the Apollo 12 tapes (earlier post), the idea of the flux lines printing through the tapes is a good one, though I got 3 different versions and they all had the same audio "artifacts" (a digital term for an analog problem, I guess!) in the same places, so I think it must be a sub-master issue at best, a master issue at worst. And it would be hellish expensive to save al this stuff, I agree. I am hoping that a program like the JSC archives, now at the University of Houston/Clear Lake, might see to it. They have done incredible work with some of their other holdings, with a minimal but devoted staff. Heck, if I lived in Houston, I'd do it ont he weekends!

 

[Chryseplanatia]

PS: Mark Gray's work is awesome and inspiring. I sure wonder how he affords it though; it can't be a terribly profitable undertaking as opposed to the (substantial) costs involved!

 

[SilverDart]

So what you are talking about is like those reel-to-reel data tapes as seen (fictionally) in "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" and "The Time Tunnel." At least it wasn't punch cards!

Well I guess they look like an Irwin Allen epic, just more functional. "Print through" may turn out to be a problem with these tapes. If it is a problem though, it seems the folks that have been getting the data off of the Lunar Orbiter tapes, are able to overcome it. Those tapes are two to three years older than the Apollo 11 tapes.

When you think about it, it really is scary how fragile and ephemeral tape is, and digital media in particular. These "lost" tapes were our society's most advanced formats, back in the 1960s, and now there are just two facilities in the world that can play back the computer tapes of the sixties (and that's not even every format that existed then). So today's digital files, pictures, videos, etc., may face a similar problem forty or fifty years down the road, when people likely won't have DVD or CD readers to playback today's media. It is certainly an issue for archivists, and it has them worried. If anything, it may require teams, like the one at Ames, to constantly go back to the digital media archive, and update them to whatever the current formats are. Time and money consuming, so I hope that the 12 centimeter disc is still around, and backwards compatible all the way back to the compact disc. Otherwise, we may be having the same discussion forty years from now about trying to convert the HDTV images of the last Space Shuttle flight.

 

[aphh]

So today's digital files, pictures, videos, etc., may face a similar problem forty or fifty years down the road, when people likely won't have DVD or CD readers to playback today's media.

I doubt that since optical media basically only requires strong enough magnifying lens and the data could be read. Ofcourse laser rot could still render optical media non-readable.

Magnetic media is extremely difficult to read correctly even when there are no defects in the content or media.

 

[SilverDart]

It's a slightly different problem for our current generation of digital media, in that, although the optical media may well be in near pristine shape, but the data on it might be incomprehensible to the computers of the future. Why? Due to the CODECs, or image formats used to create the data. A computer does not just have to read the raw data, it has to translate all those 0s and 1s into something that resembles the intended image. Anyone who has tried to open a .mov file, but didn't have QuickTime on their computer knows what I'm talking about: your computer can physically read the file, but it can't convert it into a useable format, because it is missing the proper application to play it back. It is exactly this problem that archivists are worried about, the obsolescence of file formats in the future.

Another analogy would be ancient Egyptian texts that, although well preserved over two thousand years, no one knew how to read them until the Rosetta Stone was discovered. Only then did they yield useful information. Hopefully, a "Rosetta Stone"-like application will be around for a long time, so that we can read this generation's digital files well into the distant future.

By the way, this is not a problem for conventional, analogue film, as it can be read without the aid of a machine, and is seen as a more archival medium than either digital media or analogue tape. It is also why we see so much of the Apollo television footage as video photographed onto motion picture film (the kinoscope process was used to backup the 2" Quad videotapes and allow easy international distribution post-flight). The film held up over the years, while the videotapes gradually became unplayable due to drop-out and other problems. As each generation of film-back-to-video processes improve (telecine), so do the quality of these archived images. So hopefully, the Apollo 11 data tapes are still in a playable state, because they will produce the best possible image from landing, as it will be the unmitigated images, not translated by poor video or film techniques.

 

[SilverDart]

Here's a link to the format used, alerting that the tapes might be missing:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apoll ... tapes.html

It explains the tape formats that went missing.


NASA is holding a press-conference tomorrow to officially announce that they did find the tapes and have prepared them to be shown. Here's the press release, dated July 13, 2009:

Mark Hess
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-6255
mark.s.hess@nasa.gov

Tina Tate
The Newseum, Washington
202-292-6620
ttate@newseum.org

July 13, 2009

MEDIA ADVISORY : M09-125


NASA Holds Briefing to Release Restored Apollo 11 Moonwalk Video


WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a media briefing at 11 a.m. EDT on Thursday, July 16, at the Newseum in Washington to release greatly improved video imagery from the July 1969 live broadcast of the Apollo 11 moonwalk.

The release will feature 15 key moments from Neil Armstrong's and Buzz Aldrin's historic moonwalk using what is believed to be the best available broadcast-format copies of the lunar excursion, some of which had been locked away for nearly 40 years. The initial video released Thursday is part of a comprehensive Apollo 11 moonwalk restoration project expected to be completed by the fall.

The Newseum is located at 555 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. The news conference will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's Internet homepage.

Participants in the briefing will be:
-- Richard Nafzger, team lead and Goddard engineer
-- Stan Lebar, former Westinghouse Electric program manager
-- Mike Inchalik, president of Lowry Digital, Burbank, Calif.

For NASA TV downlink information, schedule information and streaming video, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

The Newseum is a 250,000-square-foot museum of news. The exterior's unique architectural features include a 74-foot-high marble engraving of the First Amendment and an immense front wall of glass through which passers-by can watch the museum fulfilling its mission of providing a forum where the media and the public can gain a better understanding of each other. More information about the Newseum is available online at:

http://www.newseum.org



Here's a link to the format used, alerting that the tapes might be missing:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apoll ... tapes.html

 

[SilverDart]

Bad News and Good News
First the bad news: The original, 1" 14-track computer tapes, were erased and reused sometime in the early 1970s. This is akin to someone throwing away a camera original negative. NASA's budget in the early 70s meant that they needed to reuse all their 1" tapes for future Apollo missions.

The good news: It appears the Australians also have an unconverted slow-scan tape, using a specially modified 2"Quad VTR to record slow-scan video at it's native 10 fps, 320 line progressive scan format. These tapes have not been recovered yet, but are believed to be still in existence, as they were not part of NASA's tape archiving/reuse plan.

What was displayed today, was footage that originated on 2"Quad NTSC tapes recorded by CBS and from the uplinke site in Australia, that were processed using the same kind of image restoration equipment that is used to restore Hollywood films for DVD/Blu-ray release. Looks much better than what exists today. There still might be one more improvement possible in the future, if/when the 2" tapes are found, but I can't wait for the Spacecraft films release of this newly restored footage sometime in September. Apparently, Mark Grey did have something to do with this upgrade footage.

 

[earth_bound_misfit]

Here's some snaps of the slow scan monitor at Honeysuckle Creek. There's a lot more detail in the slow scan.
http://www.jsaxon.org/space/hsk/hskpict ... /A11TV.htm

Here's one for example, from the above link:

I sure hope they find these tapes, though since they've already been looking for three years, I reckon there's not much chance.

 

[earth_bound_misfit]

More info and links regarding the lost tapes here: http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/Apollo_ ... index.html
Buy one, get one free. A great present for the space nut in the family: http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/dvds/dvd2.html

 

[Chryseplanatia]

Those stills from Honeysuckle give me chills. The detail is really something!

I think we oughta saint Mark Gray. I don't know how the heck he can afford to do what he's doing, but I'm sure glad he's doing it (that was a tongue twister!).