At the risk of throwing petrol on a CT blaze, this point has me amused and baffled in equal degrees. Why complain about the lack of the SSTV tapes from an Apollo 11 TV broadcast that went live to some 600 million people around the globe and of which copies are readily available to anyone who wants them...but not see "dark forces" (tm)at work around Apollo 12 and Beano's stuff-up?

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"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

Way to go.

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"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures - in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." St. Exupery

Hey, amateur radio operator (ham) here.
US Amateur Extra class, call sign NE9ET. First licensed in 1958.

Hams have often communicated with space vehicles, including ISS, occasionally a Shuttle, and using some dedicated (typically LEO) satellites. Preferred antenna is a multi-element beam (Yagi) -- think rooftop UHF TV antennas. These are directional in that most of the signal radiated from them goes out more or less along the long axis in the direction of the "director" elements, and signals are preferentially received from the same direction. No practical RF antenna -- even a dish --is laser sharp, so at the distance of the moon, you'd hit virtually the entire earth with significant signal levels.

Note that for space vehicle work from earth, an alt-azimuth mount, ideally computer controlled to track the vehicle is a plus, and allowance has to be made for Doppler shift of the signal frequency. The latter just might be an issue in your case.

Note also that many people, not just hams but also people from the Short-Wave Listening (SWL) community, listened in on the signals sent from the moon. The technology for this is pretty wide-spread.

And BTW, hams do work with TV signals, though only in the higher frequency bands, where bandwidth is less of an issue.

Hope that helps.

Here's another radio ham who knows space comm. What exactly was the question?

I have studied and analyzed Apollo communications quite a bit, especially the Unified S-Band (USB) system used during most stages of flight. Voice and video were analog, so they required considerably more power (or antenna gain) than a modern digital system would have.

For most of a mission, the USB operated in a phase-modulated (PM) mode with a carrier for Doppler tracking, telemetry on a phase-shift-keyed subcarrier and voice on a narrowband FM subcarrier. In this mode, the required ground antennas were relatively small and within reach of serious advanced radio hams. Several hams did in fact listen in.

Video was a different story. Even with the huge ground dishes available (see "The Dish"), sufficient video signal-to-noise ratio was not possible without operating the USB in FM, frequency modulation. (Analog video on C-band satellites is FM for the same reason.) FM improves received signal-to-noise ratio but only when the signal is above a certain threshold; below that threshold FM makes things *worse*.

The LM could not transmit PM and FM at the same time, so the bottom line is that during a LM video transmission there was no way a radio ham could get anything, not even voice.

I have made spreadsheets that analyze Apollo links at various points in a mission using actual specifications. They are certainly consistent with observations. Slow scan FM video was chosen for Apollo 11 because time pressure precluding setting up the surface S-band antenna used on Apollos 12 and 14. (Apollos 15-17 used a separate relay unit and antennas on the lunar rovers.) Increased signal levels and improved ground stations allowed the eventual use of color TV on the later missions.

Cosmicdave's question is "How could a (as you put it) 'highly directional signal' be transmitted to three recievers in three totally different locations? Surely an omni-directional antenna should have been used?"

Apollo slow-scan TV tapes and panorama photographs

The three receivers being the Parkes, Goldstone, and Madrid ground stations. Dave seems to think the beam width on the LM's 1-meter dish would have been too narrow to cover more than one station.

(I was a radio ham as well, WB9KXI, back in the 1970s but got out of the hobby around the time radios stopped looking like radios.)

Ah, now I understand the question. Naturally, the conspiracist lacks all the facts.

The steerable antenna on the lunar module was about 61cm in diameter. On S-band it had a gain of about 20 dBi and a 3 dB beamwidth of 12-14 degrees. The earth at lunar distance is roughly 2 degrees (four times the diameter of the moon as seen from earth).

So obviously the beam was much larger than the earth. On the rover missions, the astronauts had to align its dish by hand every time they stopped, and while that could be tedious they always managed to do it.

The largest antenna was the 3-meter "parasol" erectable used on Apollos 12 and 14 (and carried but not used on 11). Its beamwidth was about 3 deg, still bigger than the earth.

sts60 asked:

cosmicdave answered:

But when pressed, cosmicdave admitted:

So instead of saying, "My beliefs do not fall into any of the above," and doing a lot of handwaving, he could have simply answered "2."

So when he said,

it makes me wonder if perhaps he really meant he could answer in half a dozen short sentences.

Thanks for the laugh, Dave.

You complain about the lousy quality, then later tell us you've been watching it on the internet. Whatever for? Shouldn't you be watching the highest quality available on a large screen? How about the Spacecraft Films' three-DVD set of Apollo 11? You'll see more on them than probably on the internet, and in better quality.

Some things on the DVDs I've never see a hoax-believer explain in terms of a "hoax" are the views of recognisable craters from angles different to those if viewing from earth. They are clearly taken from lunar orbit and so too are the still photos or reconisable lunar features.

Not official Apollo records, but my own transcripts from the TV boadcasts on the way to the moon, along with a tongue-in-cheek list of the odd sounds, one of which Bart Sibrel erroneously claims is someone saying "Talk." The times shown are those on Spacecraft Films' disc 1.

Hi cosmicdave

Please stop plugging your webside. Thank You.

--Dennis

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Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true. -- Niels Bohr --

Ipsa scientia potestas est. ~ Knowledge itself is power.---- Bacon
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Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit.


Hint: this is at heart a scientific forum, and underneath the fooling around there are some diamond-hard minds hanging about, ready to tear you to shreads. -- mike alexander --

At the risk of throwing petrol on a CT blaze...
Why complain about the lack of the SSTV tapes from an Apollo 11 [...] but not see "dark forces" (tm)at work around Apollo 12 and Beano's stuff-up?

Or Apollo 13's failure to land on the Moon at all? There are many arguments Dave could make, some of them possibly stronger than others. He may also revise his hypothesis to account for why only certain missions needed to have their high-quality TV suppressed.

But until he actually makes those arguments, or actually clarifies his hypothesis by responding to the questions made toward it, we can't really get anywhere. If we continue on without him, then we commit the straw-man fallacy.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Just as a follow-up, FACETS placed a petition online titled, "FORMAL REQUEST to RE-IMAGE CYDONIA AREA on MARS." They formally requested that Cydonia be imaged on May 7, 2000, when the MGS was to be in "perfect position." The petition with some 3,000 signatures was emailed to Dan Goldin, Dr. Michael Malin and Senator John McCain. Peter A. Gersten acted as FACETS' attorney.

To promote the petition, messages like this appeared on the Web:
Sorry for the sidetrack.

The examples you posted are photographs, not movie footage. your trying to compare photographs with the TV footage.

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There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

Photographs of the same scene as is recorded in the SSTV. That's the point. You can tie up the TV, the DAC film and the 70mm Hasselblad pictures. So what is supposedly hidden in the SSTV that doesn't show up in either of the two higher-res media?

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

Answer #1: Yes

Also, after revisited Gary Neff's page with his videos of the Apollo 11 landing. It soon occured to me that there was something rather strange.

Mr Neff makes a comment on his page that Apollo films were shot at 6 frames per second, but displayed at 29.972 frames per second for the TV audience. In other words, 5 times too fast.

I thought that was interesting because, If the footage was running 5 times faster than normal, how come that the comms corresponded to the TV pictures? Wouldnt they be 5 times behind the events shown on camera?

Answer #2: Please be more specific - what are you actually asking?

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

Hmmm, what about the 3d Moons that NASA made prior to any Apollo Moon landing?





And interestingly enough, and which confirms my belief earlier in this discussion, NASA have discovered that they can optimise original photos of the Moon by upgrading their old machinery, as reported at http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/11/17/



So as I said earlier, perhaps there is something on those original SSTV pictures that they dont want you or I to see. If they can refurbish the old analogue machines and use a new digital process to extract information stored in the old magnetic tapes, whats stopping them doing the same with the SSTV footage?

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

I could make those arguments, your right. But I know, for every argument I start means a lot of debating and I have not got the time right now to start going into all the other odd little things with the other missions. I would rather save those questions and my time and effort towards my own article which you can all come and read and then we will discuss them if you so wish.

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

Thats exactly what I was referring to. Thanks for finding it.

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

Answer #1: Yes

Let me be absolutely sure I understand. You are asserting that a small, web-delivered video is a sufficiently faithful copy of Apollo video resources to allow you to assess the quality of the original material? Is this what you're claiming?

Mr Neff makes a comment on his page that Apollo films were shot at 6 frames per second, but displayed at 29.972 frames per second for the TV audience. In other words, 5 times too fast.

I'm not sure what you intend by "films."

The Maurer 16mm film DAC was operated at various frame rates depending on which part of the mission was being documented. The flight plan gives the DAC frame-rate settings for each portion of the mission. But the 16mm film were not broadcast live, of course.

The SSTV necessarily operated at a different frame rate from any broadcast standard. The conversion to standard NSTC frame rate is part of the scan conversion process we've already discussed. The SSTV monitor was the target for an ad hoc optical scan conversion setup, the output of which was a standardized frame rate.

6 fps converts to 30 fps by duplicating each source frame 5 times. You seem to be assuming that the frame rate was converted simply by speeding up the rate at which the original frames were displayed. This is not correct. Nor is it possible, after a moment's thought will demonstrate.

Answer #2: Please be more specific - what are you actually asking?

It was specific when I asked it the first time. I shouldn't have to ask it again.

You argue that you are acting fairly by listening to the answers given at BAUT and incorporating them as appropriate into your writings. Toward that end I asked you to comment on your particular comparison that started this debate.

You show a Polaroid photograph or two taken from the SSTV monitor. You present that as evidence of the quality of the television that could conceivably be obtained if the SSTV tapes could be found and played on appropriate equipment.

However, we have explained that the only way such quality can be attained practically is to sit physically in front of an SSTV console and watch it there. A large-format film copy of certain frames (your Polaroids) exist, but cannot naturally practically exist for the entire record. Any practical copy (in a motion picture format) required an optical conversion process, such as was done.

Now you reproduce the atrocious quality of the American TV broadcast and suggest that's the best we have. It is not the best we have, as the HSK transfers attest. And they were made according to methods and with equipment that were acceptable and reasonable at the time, and common in the industry.

In all your fairness do you believe it's appropriate to hold up an unattainable standard as your expectation, and then reproduce the absolute worst copy you can find and then claim that's how far it falls short?

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Clavius Moon Base

Enough of these games and hints. If you think NASAare hiding something in these tapes what is it?

Why isn't it in any of the stills aor film that was taken on the same mission? Why isn't it in any of the other missions footage?

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Then you really should start your own board where you don't have to follow the rules here. Or else wait until you've actually written the page before trying to make us read it.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I could make those arguments, your right. But I know, for every argument I start means a lot of debating and I have not got the time right now to start going into all the other odd little things with the other missions.

No, you misunderstand. You are most definitely on the hook either to revise your hypothesis to account for the relevant data, or explain exactly how the data are not within the scope of your hypothesis. Simply saying you don't want to talk about them does not suffice.

Others have suggested ways in which you may argue. I have cautioned them that rebutting those proto-arguments before you actually subscribe to any would constitute a straw-man fallacy on their part. That doesn't mean you aren't obliged to provide some argument. Persisting in your fallacy will not make the questions go away.

I would rather save those questions and my time and effort towards my own article which you can all come and read and then we will discuss them if you so wish.

Then you probably shouldn't have posted them prematurely to BAUT. Once you start debating them, you're on the hook. If you wish to keep participating at BAUT, then you may not abandon a debate you start, simply because you prefer to talk about something else.

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Clavius Moon Base

No, your question as I understood it was if Mr Neffs videos were as good a quality as the telecasts (those originally televised to the TV audience in 1969?) I would say that yes they are.

Mr Neff makes a comment on his page that Apollo films were shot at 6 frames per second, but displayed at 29.972 frames per second for the TV audience. In other words, 5 times too fast.

This was referring to the Buzz Aldrin LM footage. Later on the page he also says that the lunar descent was filmed at 6 frames per second, and so we can apply the same routine to that film - that it was shown to the TV audience at 5 times the speed. If that is the case, why did the audio match the events on the film?

Heres the link to his page: http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/video11.html

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

How can I say what is in the footage without viewing it?

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

Well that answered half the question.

I am trying my best, but with work and other things its a long process at the moment. I'm not demanding anyone come and read the article if you dont want to. Its your choice.

This whole debate was started because I made an innocent comment about the missing tapes in another thread. It was not my intention to be involved in a 7 page debate on the subject. It was a just an observation that all of a sudden had people asking why I thought it odd that those tapes had gone missing.

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

Actually, you started this thread, not me. I just made an innocent comment regarding the loss of 698 out of 700 boxes of tapes and you had to go and make a big issue out of it.

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

Did you read ther post by Jay? in it he tells you exactly how the broadcast to the TV audience was made. No it wasn't at 5 times the speed.

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Hmmm, what about the 3d Moons that NASA made prior to any Apollo Moon landing?

Are you asserting that's how the orbital photography was taken?

And interestingly enough, and which confirms my belief earlier in this discussion, NASA have discovered that they can optimise original photos of the Moon...

It also confirms a general lack of interest. You left out the part where this project started in the 1980s and languished until 2007 because no one was interested in funding it, and it was finally done by the private sector. Obviously they got results. That doesn't mean everything that might get good results is worth the effort.

What do we have? A bunch of pictures of the Moon that are no better than what we got from later missions. There is some satisfaction in restoring an historical artifact, but not always enough to make it happen ever time.

So as I said earlier, perhaps there is something on those original SSTV pictures that they dont want you or I to see.

Pure speculation. You've been trying to make a name for yourself for several years now brokering wild rumors of government coverups and stuff "They don't want you to see!!!!" What do you have that makes this more credible than any of the other rumors you spread?

If they can refurbish the old analogue machines...

Standard mass-produced equipment for standard formats that had merely fallen into disuse, not custom-built equipment storing custom formats that only ever existed in a few places.

You can't keep sidestepping these important details.

...whats stopping them doing the same with the SSTV footage?

The inability to remember where the tapes are.

Despite your desperate handwaving that it's inexcusable for such a thing to have been misplaced, you cannot provide one iota of information to support your theory that the tapes are being suppressed because of what they might contain.

No doubt when the tapes are located there will be a discussion about what can be done with them. But you still have zero evidence of a coverup.

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You started the discussion. I simply moved it to a new thread under moderator's orders. There is no such thing as an "innocent comment" in the Proving Ground of BAUT. If you make a claim, you will be asked to prove it. You said 698 boxes were missing and then claimed it was because of some government coverup to suppress information. The latter claim you must either support with evidence or concede.

And I'm not sure that I'm the one making a big deal out of the television issue after you assured us that you had done your homework on it and were prepared to argue it. Why would you so much homework to make your point, and then say it's no big deal?

Now stop trying to poison the well, and deal with the debate or withdraw.

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Clavius Moon Base

No, your question as I understood it was if Mr Neffs videos were as good a quality as the telecasts (those originally televised to the TV audience in 1969?) I would say that yes they are.

Are you talking about Apollo 11 only? I understood the context here to be all Apollo video, not just Apollo 11. Personally, no I don't consider Neff's conversions to be identical quality, but before I pursue that line of questioning I want to make sure it's aimed in the right direction.

Mr Neff makes a comment on his page that Apollo films were shot at 6 frames per second, but displayed at 29.972 frames per second for the TV audience. In other words, 5 times too fast.

No, that is not how the frame-rate conversion process worked. You misunderstand Neff. You are the one reading into his statement that the frames were simply shown at a faster rate. I assure you Neff is quite competent in dealing with the various frame rates in the original Apollo sources, and that you are not getting his intent correct.

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