Let's use another analogy to clarify the Telemetry tapes. Each day an ENG crew goes out and tapes newsworthy events, be it a politician promising tax cuts, a motor accident, or the backdrop for the weather.

They come back and transfer those tapes onto a non-linear editing suite. That is, they make a copy which is less than the original as far as quality goes. Believe or not in today's digital world, the method of compressing video into whatever digital copy does indeed yield quality loss. As does each subsequent dub.

The news team transmit that copy of the footage on the airwaves. An archival copy is also made, on digital betacam (yet another dip in quality - it may not be noticeable to the naked eye, but its still most definitely and measurably there).

Several days later the tapes are stored, and never used again, because we have the news story which was refined on a non-linear suite is the one they refer to from now on.

Jump ahead 40 years and we all use whatever new technology, say a ficticious upscaler which employs fractal equations to render an HD 1080p rendition of standard 480i material. Someone 40 years from now decides it would be ideal to use the original camera tapes - but guess what? That's right those tapes were junked when the station went tapeless.

Now, we have a lesser quality copy of the footage, but WE STILL HAVE THE FOOTAGE.

Nothing is missing it is simply on a different format other than what it was originally recorded on. Is there a grand conspiracy? No.

Guess what happened with the Apollo telemetry tapes? That's right they were extrapolated into their relative formats and stored for ever-more in those formats. There is nothing missing on those recordings which was on the telemetry recordings.

"But it is not as clear." I hear you cry! Possibly not, I haven't seen the telemetry tapes against say the TV feed from TCN-9 Sydney, but then the manner of standards conversion was never some huge secret by NASA. TV Trade journals documental all aspects of the TV camera, TV signal and scan converter designs. Everyone who was interested knew that optical/buffer conversion would be used. Up until the mid 1980's optical scan conversion was used in commercial TV. Today some color episodes of Dr Who are made from NTSC optically scan converted copies. These are historical and important documents of TVs golden era! Surely the BBC realised this and took better precautions to ensure their longevity? NO THEY DIDNT.

The missing telemetry tapes are not some isolated case in the world of television. Poor organisation and sloppy archiving of the telemetry tapes may be to blame, who knows. If these tapes were so important to the mystery of conspiracy, why did the Hoax Believer camp never once think to access the tapes when they were still archived (I believe 1979 is where the paper trail ends)

Why is it that the missing tapes only became highly important to the hoax crowd once the news was made by NASA? Anyone who knew the ex-engineers knows that this search was going on longer than the first break of the story on the wires.

Why, if these tapes constitute such an important part of hoax evidence, were they never once, before the story of the search broke, ever referred to by ANY hoax proponent be it Percy, Sibrel, or Kaysing et. al.?

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