
Moon landing tapes got erased, NASA admits (2009) - uptown
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/07/20/us-nasa-tapes-idUSTRE56F5MK20090720
======
NameNickHN
> We should have had a historian running around saying 'I don't care if you
> are ever going to use them -- we are going to keep them'

The really couldn't figure out by themselves that they shouldn't throw away
the visual evidence of one of the most important events in human history?

~~~
karlkatzke
I think at the time, most folks at NASA expected moon landings to be
commonplace within a decade.

~~~
irixusr
The crazies, maybe. I hope not most NASA folk; there really is no way for
lunar landings to have been common using chemical propellants and disposable
rockets. Even today alternatives are mere speculations. So either our NASA
dreamer was a poor engineer, or a nut job willing to nuke Earth to visit a
lifeless rock.

Which is not a bad thing: given the immensity and ludicrousness of the Apollo
accomplishment, I think NASA had quite a few nutjobs!

~~~
Agustus
In Apollo 13 the movie, there is a scene where the NASA representative is
walking politicos on a tour:

 _JIM LOVELL \- I 'm slated to be the commander of Apollo 14 sometime late
next year.

CONGRESSMAN \- If there is an Apollo 14... Now, Jim, people in my state have
been asking why we're continuing to fund this program - now that we've beaten
the Russians to the Moon._ [1]

The chasm between what NASA wanted, pilots down, was to keep on its
trajectory, but the politicians saw monies to tender.

[1] [https://sfy.ru/?script=apollo13](https://sfy.ru/?script=apollo13)

~~~
golergka
Why people blame politicians that accurately represent people's views? If you
have a bigoted, stupid, awful politician who's popular without fraud or
dishonest competition practices in general, may be you should blame education,
may be the media, but the politician himself is just doing his job —
representing the people. The bigoted, stupid, awful people.

~~~
Agustus
I am not blaming the politician, just noting the chasm in the NASA projections
and what the politicians are pivoting on.

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Raed667
Sounds like the best way to hide any editing done to the original tapes.

 _puts foil hat on_

~~~
simonh
It's ok, you can take the foil hat off. The broadcast from the moon was
relayed live to TV stations across the world. The tapes they're talking about
were just NASA's recordings of that direct broadcast. So there never was any
opportunity for the tapes to be edited like that, because they didn't sit in
the chain between the cameras on the moon and the broadcasts everyone saw on
their TVs. Fortunately other news organisations (and probably governments)
also taped the broadcast as well, hence we still have recordings available.

In fact, it was technologically impossible to record the entire live broadcast
on a single tape because tapes with enough capacity didn't exist until many
years later. Therefore a faked broadcast from tapes would have had visible
transitions as they switched from tape to tape. These transitions would have
been visible on the taped copies of the broadcast which the currently
available recordings derive from.

~~~
kiiski
> Therefore a faked broadcast from tapes would have had visible transitions as
> they switched from tape to tape.

In other words you're saying that one should believe NASA landed on the moon,
because broadcasting a fake recording would have been technologically too
difficult for them?

I don't doubt that they landed on the moon, but I'm not quite convinced about
that logic ;)

~~~
Navarr
The fun thing about that argument is that if NASA _didn't_ land on the moon,
then it falls apart!

"If NASA has the power to land on the moon, clearly they could've faked a
broadcast."

"If you're saying they didn't land on the moon, though, how can you use that
as technological proof to edit the broadcast?"

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tonylemesmer
Link to the restored videos mentioned in the article:

[http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/hd/apollo11_hdpage.html](http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/hd/apollo11_hdpage.html)

------
huhtenberg
More background -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes)

------
nzp
Two issues with the article. It is my understanding that the lost tapes are
raw data feed S-band recordings. That signal contained both the TV signal and
the telemetry which was normally sent via S-band. Upon reception the TV signal
was split from the telemetry and recorded to standard TV tape and broadcasted
using a Telecine like method. So, the "original" TV recordings do exist, as
the existence of restored recordings suggest. What is gone is the telemetry
mixed with the TV signal.

Secondly, they didn't erase those tapes because of money savings, or at least
not just because of it. It was a supply issue. In the late '70s, early '80s,
the manufacturer of those tapes suffered production problems due to the
replacement of a substance used in the tapes, if I remember correctly it was
whale oil or something like that. The production needed to be scaled back up
with the new process, and in that time there was a severe shortage of that
particular type of data tape, so NASA had to recycle old tapes.

~~~
jacobushi
Actually the original signal was low frame rate, high resolution. So it's more
than your description says. A special video monitor with long afterglow
phosphorus was recorded by an NTSC camera. Imagine what modern signal
processing could have done with that original slow scan signal recorded in raw
to these tapes. Alas, it's lost like tears in the rain.

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NickHaflinger
Has any of the conspiracy theorists ever considered pointing a laser at the
moon to detect the retroreflectors that were left their by Apollo 11.

[http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_11/expe...](http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_11/experiments/lrr/)

~~~
saalweachter
Inconclusive experiment; retroreflectors could be deployed by unmanned probes.

~~~
NickHaflinger
How about the conspiracy theorists funding a probe, sending it to the landing
site and taking samples of the human waste product the astronauts allegedly
left there. Back on earth they can do a DNA comparison with the surviving
relatives. They can make a movie out of it and call it "first poop in the
moon".

~~~
ejolto
Inconclusive experiment; poop DNA destroyed by solar and cosmic radiation.

~~~
jharger
Well _something_ pooped there!

~~~
andrewflnr
Poop could be deployed by unmanned probes.

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GTP
They erased one of the most important historical documents of our time, that
was a very bad mistake.

~~~
creshal
> _The bad news is they were part of a batch of 200,000 tapes that were
> degaussed -- magnetically erased -- and re-used to save money._

You'd think an organization like NASA can plan their budgets a bit better than
that.

~~~
hanniabu
You'd think an organization as important as NASA wouldn't have to worry about
budget cuts year after year.

~~~
coldpie
The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is chaired by Lamar
Smith, a Republican from Texas who denies climate change science and is
currently busy wasting gov't time and funds harassing NOAA scientists.

It's all going to be fine... it's all going to be fine...

~~~
Agustus
Mr. Smith does not deny climate change science, he is a skeptic, not the same.
As a congressman, he is afforded the roles of his position to investigate
corruption or suspicions of corruption, which in this case includes an agency
using taxpayer dollars avoiding the release of information to a committee. The
NOAA situation is one where the agency should openly share data with the
committee and Mr. Smith would go away, by stonewalling, the agency does not
help the cause of science or dissipate suspicion of obfuscating results.

~~~
coldpie
"""It was inconvenient for this administration that climate data has clearly
showed no warming for the past two decades. The American people have every
right to be suspicious when NOAA alters data to get the politically correct
results they want and then refuses to reveal how those decisions were made.
NOAA needs to come clean about why they altered the data to get the results
they needed to advance this administration’s extreme climate change agenda."""

[http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/congressman-
doubles-d...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/congressman-doubles-down-
accuses-noaa-scientists-of-doctoring-results/)

Fffffffffffaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrttttttttttttttttttttttt

~~~
creshal
> _NOAA provided Rep. Smith with all the data, methods, and explanation he
> requested but has refused to hand over the communications of its scientists,
> which it regards as protected._

I'd better hope so.

~~~
tertius
Why? We don't allow this in business, why should we allow this in the
government?

Think Steve Jobs asking a VP to show his reasons for obfuscating the reasons
for sales figures reported over a period and then adjusted.

VP: Sorry, that's confidential.

In this situation, I'm paying the administrator (that person that governmental
agencies are accountable to) to make sure those agencies aren't obfuscating
their own reasons.

I demand answers, whether those answers lead nowhere is inconsequential.

~~~
mturmon
That's not the correct analogy. The House has oversight to be sure money is
not wasted, but not to monitor all dialogue between scientists.

For a summary of what's going on, better than I can do here, see this letter
from another member of the House science committee:

[http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.h...](http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.house.gov/files/Ranking%20Member%20Johnson%20Letter%20to%20Chairman%20Smith%20on%20NOAA%20Subpoena.pdf)

~~~
Agustus
The letter does not help the situation:

* The letter says: "In your various demand letters you noted the scientific study in question was of some consequence, and could potentially have an effect on policy decisions. However it should be emphasized that the issue in question is a scientific research study, not a policy decision by a Federal agency. As such, this is not an area of delegated legislative authority by Congress to the Executive (unless you are proposing that Congress should somehow legislatively overrule peer-reviewed scientific findings.)*

First, Mr. Johnson, cutely tries to defer that science is not going to be used
in a policy manner. Right now, the President of the United States is engaged
with making policy decisions from scientific studies, so his premise is flawed
to begin with. Also, all of the pushes for climate change agendas feed from
scientific studies.

Second, pointing to the delegation of authority and making a cute reference to
legislating peer-reviewed scientific findings is a nod to The Daily Show
crowd's jokester attitude.

Third, the last line from the paragraph says that "you have not articulated a
legitimate need for anything beyond what NOAA has already provided" plays into
my argument from before about a government agency obfuscating.

One could argue that the obfuscation is to hold a checks and balance, but then
why is a legislature member worried about what the executive branch is doing?
The executive branch should be defining what it will fulfill in FOIA requests
and why.

Also, the entire letter points to my earlier discussion that while one can
have the data, the models, and the methodologies, the reasoning behind the
change appears to be left off and NOAA is not helping the concern with the
agency when it does not come out with this. Even if they came right out and
said, look, we used an incorrect number of significant digits, that is why our
models appeared misleading before, it would be a quick story, make the rounds
on skeptic sites, and then could move forward. So, why obfuscate?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Second, pointing to the delegation of authority and making a cute reference
> to legislating peer-reviewed scientific findings is a nod to The Daily Show
> crowd's jokester attitude.

It seems to me it (like the next line you take issue with) is previewing the
administration's arguments on whether the subpoena serves a legislative
purpose should this dispute escalate to the point where Congress attempts to
impose consequences and the Administration challenges that attempt in the
courts.

Explaining one's position _why_ a demand is outside of the requesters legal
authority to demand is quite appropriate in a response to a demand.

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mariuolo
The problem is they became interesting only decades later, when the ability to
actually watch them arrived with hdtv.

It's a real shame, but not many organisations are that farsighted.

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zerohm
There is also a pretty fascinating story about the effort to save and restore
the photo mapping of the moon from an abandoned McDonald's.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Orbiter_Image_Recovery_P...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Orbiter_Image_Recovery_Project)

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peter303
Until there was cheaper paper, old books made of papyrus or goat skin would be
scraped or bleached and recycled. A Single page of goatskin might be months
farmer wage. Especially if the book was from a no longer popular language or
subject.

~~~
tertius
So they recorded the moonlanding on goatskin?

All jokes aside, I see your point, but applying it to the moon landing is a
little far fetched.

~~~
matheweis
>> A Single page of goatskin might be months farmer wage.

> I see your point, but applying it to the moon landing is a little far
> fetched.

Not at all, in the 1970's those tapes easily cost a month's of an average
workers wages. It would make perfect sense to re-use them to save a bit of
money, especially if you were doing it at scale and didn't realize you were
about to erase the master copies.

~~~
tertius
> especially if you were doing it at scale and didn't realize you were about
> to erase the master copies.

I agree with this.

Negligence of this level, though, is indescribable.

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ommunist
And now Russia plans to established its ground base on the Moon by 2040.
History is not without the sense of irony.

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jcslzr
Does people still believe we went to the moon on 1969? 1969! tvs did not even
had remote controls!

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klaustopher
This post is from 2009

~~~
dang
Thanks, added.

