As requested by the moderator, this thread is being started to address Cosmic Dave's claims regarding the missing slow-scan TV (SSTV) tapes from the Apollo 11 mission. My previous post is duplicated below.

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

Heh...this is the first thread I've ever seen you start. Therefore you've never started one before

No need to use the search function, it's simple logic and common sense

Pete

PS I've nothing relevant to say in this thread, just avoiding marking some quizzes

__________________
PJE

There's so much I don't know about astrophysics. I wish I had read that book by that wheelchair guy.

The obvious question is if this is the best quality film taken from Apollo 11, why didn't NASA make sure that it was properly labeled and stored so that it could be easily found? Whats the significance of this film? Its the clearest footage taken!

Its a bit like making a Hollywood film and losing the original master copy. Any other 'copies' are inferior to the original. I thought that as your a 'photographic expert', you would realise that?

__________________
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.

Question:
Answer:

Also it isn't film, it's the tv signal.

__________________
All Moderation in Purple
To report a post (even this one) to the moderation team, click the reporting icon in the upper-right corner of the post:
─────────────────────────────────────────────
◄Rules For Posting To This Board ► ◄Forum FAQs ► ◄ Conspiracy Theory Advice ► ◄ Alternate Theory Advice ►

But its still the clearest footage available - agreed?

__________________
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.

The obvious question is if this is the best quality film taken from Apollo 11...

It's analog tape of the raw SSTV downlink signal. It isn't film. It isn't standard videotape. It can only be played on equipment specially designed for this particular SSTV implementation, used only for the Apollo 11 lunar surface EVA. That equipment is about the size of two refrigerators, is 40 years old, is delicate and not easily moved, ever existed in only a handful of instances, and cannot convert to any other format; it can only display the picture on its built-in TV screen.

...why didn't NASA make sure that it was properly labeled and stored so that it could be easily found?

The storage of such records falls under the jurisdiction of the U.S. National Archives, which provides that service for all U.S. government agencies and offices, with some exceptions. NASA delivered all its raw material to the Archives as required by regulation. The Archives in turn applies its own policy to determine what will be indexed immediately and what will be indexed later as resources become available.

Raw data that can only be read by a special machine and of which suitable copies exist in standardized formats does not seem to require immediate indexing.

Whats the significance of this film? Its the clearest footage taken!

Not a good enough reason. The cost and effort involved to access the material must be weighed against its potential value. High-quality copies of the Apollo 11 lunar EVA exist. Handwaving aside, what specific benefit do you purport to gain from this data that would justify the expense and difficulty of making it accessible?

If good enough quality for some purpose can be found in standardized formats, where is your justification?

Its a bit like making a Hollywood film and losing the original master copy.

No, it's nothing like that at all.

A camera negative in a Hollywood production is typically standard Eastman film stock that can be fed into any of a hundred types of standard 35 or 70 mm equipment for various purposes such as developing, printing, and scanning to digital formats. It can be processed and treated by any of dozens of standard chemical processes for those emulsions. It can be stored and retrieved according to any of a number of standard methods that are well-tested by the industry.

Custom slow-scan raw data is not in any way like a standard format. And one can easily make the case that the first thing one ought to do with such data is to copy it immediately to a standard signal format and a standard storage medium that makes it instantly available to standardized equipment of the industry.

Any other 'copies' are inferior to the original.

In what exact ways? I have asked you several times for details on this claim, and all I'm getting is handwaving. You are trying to make the case that the inaccessibility of this data is somehow remarkable. You bear the burden to prove that something about this data makes its unavailability inexcusable.

I thought that as your a 'photographic expert', you would realise that?

As a photographic expert I realize why your handwaving is insufficient and why your analogy is inapplicable.

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

No, I do not agree.

You seem to be basing your opinion on a misconception of what this data actually is, and upon the assessment in someone's paper you read. I have asked you specific questions regarding that assessment. Please provide your answers, so that we can come to some clear consensus about the nature of this data.

The paper claims the original tape will contain additional resolution over copies in standardized format. Please elaborate on this claim.

The paper claims signal degradation occurred as the result of transmitting the scan-converted signal over the enhanced MSFN to Houston. Please provide examples of such degradation. Also please explain why this would affect tapes made by television stations in Australia, which used the Honeysuckle Creek feed.

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

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.?

__________________
"TV online! Goldstone TV online! Honeysuckle video online!!"

I'd like to add, though it's not particularly relevant, that Hollywood film studios do lose their master copies, or have them altered or destroyed by improper storage techniques. This is less of a problem now-a-days; but prior to VCR's, many studios simply failed to foresee a need to spend a lot of money to keep the originals.

Film in any format is not necessarily the easiest thing to store; it requires temperature and humidity control, aswell as regulated exposure to light. The more film you have, the more expensive it gets to store it in a long-term manner. I can't say it was the case for NASA, but you reach a point where percieved value of the film is less than the cost to preserve it. Particularly when you have the video in other, more easily stored formats.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

No not agreed, that's what you are trying to establish.

__________________
All Moderation in Purple
To report a post (even this one) to the moderation team, click the reporting icon in the upper-right corner of the post:
─────────────────────────────────────────────
◄Rules For Posting To This Board ► ◄Forum FAQs ► ◄ Conspiracy Theory Advice ► ◄ Alternate Theory Advice ►

I'd like to add, though it's not particularly relevant, that Hollywood film studios do lose their master copies...

They most certainly do. I've inadvertently lost originals before, and I consider myself reasonably well organized and careful.

...or have them altered or destroyed by improper storage techniques.

Or even in spite of proper ones. The fire at the Universal film vault is a modern example. Even a state-of-the-art facility is susceptible to loss and damage.

Film in any format is not necessarily the easiest thing to store...

Nor is magnetic tape. I had to throw out a bunch of 9-track 6250 BPI computer tapes last year because they had degraded to the point where the drive could no longer read them. They were 30 years old, but they were brand new when written, and had been read only 3-4 times. They were simply not up to being stored for that long. And because I have no more 6250 BPI tapes, the drive is now on the trash heap too.

There is no guarantee that the original SSTV tapes will be legible at all, even if a machine can be found that will attempt to read them.

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

The worst thing regarding tape storage I ever witnessed was at a commercial station in Sydney. A one-off master which was on loan from a competitor station for a tribute show special was stored near a machine which along with being able to clean old quad masters, could also erase said tape if a little switch was toggled prior to the cleaning command. Guess what happened with the master tape on it for "cleaning"?

__________________
"TV online! Goldstone TV online! Honeysuckle video online!!"

Given that the recently discovered Apollo 9 telemetry tape in Australia was playable after being stored for 30+ years in an attic, there is a good chance that relatively better stored tapes will also be similarly playable. But as you say Jay, there are no guarantees.

__________________
"TV online! Goldstone TV online! Honeysuckle video online!!"

Hope springs eternal. Since telemetry was stored on 9-track tape instead of in a custom format, there's a better margin of tolerance. I wish I'd had their drives when I was trying to resurrect my 9-track tapes. For every success story there's a horror story: for example, one of the stellar guitar solos from Boston's Third Stage album whose master tape welded itself to the capstan wheel after being stored for only a couple of years.

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

It might actually be fortunate that the tapes used for Apollo telemetry were manufactured in the 1960s, before manufacturers like Ampex and 3M started using polyurethane binders.

The polyurethane binders used from about 1976 to 1986 were prone to a problem in which the binder absorbed moisture from the air and turned into a glue-like substance. I've seen reels of 2-inch Ampex 456 which were so sticky that when you mounted them on a machine and hit "play" nothing would happen because the capstan couldn't exert enough force to break the tape loose from the heads. Tapes suffering from "sticky shed" could only be rendered playable by baking them in a convection oven to dessicate them- a process which took around 8 hours and carried some risk of ruining the tape altogether.

Luckily, tape manufactured before the mid-'70s didn't use polyurethane as a binder and isn't subject to this problem.

Old tape stock can be surprisingly durable. I've done trouble-free transfers of recordings made on Scotch 111- an acetate-based tape that was basically Scotch tape coated with ground-up rust- nearly 50 years after they were recorded.

__________________
Please enjoy your trip through this door.

Yes I read that on the liner notes of Third Stage. I bet he was sweating a river. I once had a 17 year old 8-track audio tape which was near ruin. Luckily the "baking" technique worked miracles giving a 9dB increase in volume, plus opening the frequency response threefold. It sounded as if I was playing keyboards live. I made hi-res digital copies during the first pass after baking. Though I still have to do the remixing one weekend...

__________________
"TV online! Goldstone TV online! Honeysuckle video online!!"

I have no idea what happened to the boxes of 9-track tapes from some satellite missions with which I was involved. They may have been thrown away by one of the successor companies. There's no organizational interest in that data, anyway, as much of it was essentially duplicate data received at other locations.

Then there was the mass spectrometer data taken during the flight, in which there was considerable interest. The data was backed up to a certain cartridge-type tape drive. The drive failed. The manufacturer was called: "The number you have reached is no longer a working number..."

Could the data have been retrieved through other means? Probably. Was the extra money spent to do so? No. Has it made a detectable disturbance in the Force? Again,... no.

There are many, many examples of knowledge, recorded data, and physical items getting lost (or otherwise made inaccessible) through "organizational entropy", technological evolution, and so on. Of course, in the conspiracist cartoon view of reality, such things can't happen; it's always part of the eeevil master plan, or at the very least Highly Suspicious.

__________________
"Slapping a guy on the head is just as funny now as it was eighty years ago."

Of course, in the conspiracist cartoon view of reality, such things can't happen; it's always part of the eeevil master plan, or at the very least Highly Suspicious.

Kinda brings up a point that I was discussing with myself in my head earlier (sorry, that's not uncommon...but I doubt any of you find that suprising either).

Conspiracists often run into trouble by thinking that Nasa would/should keep certian evidence so as to prove the missions were real. The problem is, Nasa has no need to prove the missions were real. They know they've been there because, well, they went there. Their interest is in preserving data and objects that are of scientific value, not preserving data to prove their accomplishment.

And, of course, I'm not saying they don't do the later. In fact, their very good about preserving "evidence" (I prefer to call it preserving history). That's why there's peices of the Apollo (and other) missions in museums across the world. That's just not always their main priority.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

Small Mercies.

__________________
All Moderation in Purple
To report a post (even this one) to the moderation team, click the reporting icon in the upper-right corner of the post:
─────────────────────────────────────────────
◄Rules For Posting To This Board ► ◄Forum FAQs ► ◄ Conspiracy Theory Advice ► ◄ Alternate Theory Advice ►

here are the engineering notes on the video camera used during the missions
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/WEC-Engineer-3-1968.pdf

apparently, when the camera is in "slow scan" mode, the camera can produce "quality" pictures, however, according to the document, the scan resolution is 10 frames per second at 320 lines per frame and in "slow scan" mode you get 1 frame per about 1/2 second (5/8 frame per second @ 1280 lines per frame)

the sensitivity of the camera is impressive showing a scene illumination of .007 ft lamberts to 12,000 ft lamberts

its operating temparture is from 0 to 130 degrees Fahrenheit

when i was little i had to wonder if the vacuum tube was an open design as there would be no need for a tube to contain the detector since it is designed for an airless environment.

__________________

-work in progress--

given the parameters of the video camera, it would seem unlikely that the video camera would take "the best footage" of the lunar landing.

the 70mm and 35mm stills are/were superior to anything the video cameras could take.

__________________

-work in progress--

The WEC was specifically designed to operate in earthshine had the mission required it. For some indication of the SEC sensitivity the Apollo 9 downlinks, though short, exhibit the enormous range of light sensitivity the camera could handle. The honeysuckle feed as seen in Australia shows remarkable clarity as Armstrong climbs the ladder. This was unfortunately high contrast in the rest of the world as a switch in Goldstone was improperly selected.

Once Parkes kicks in you see an extremely good picture when you consider the bandwidth limitations placed on the camera (320 lines, 10fps). There was a device planned but never flight-qualified which would have allowed color pictures in hi-re mode for Apollo 11. The images from that camera in color are stunning!

Those of you willing to do a side by side comparison with the A12 color camera and A11 B&W can turn off the color info on the A12 footage. You'll see (ignoring the conversion, kinescope etc degredation) that the two cameras were not that far removed quality wise.

__________________
"TV online! Goldstone TV online! Honeysuckle video online!!"

One more thing, regarding new digital conversion of the telemetry tapes: a little while back the 2" field sequential raw footage of Apollo 16 (made from the raw feed) was rematrixed to form new digital converted color video. The results are very nice! I can describe it as seeing the footage "sparkle" similar to a car which has been polished. While watching the video, you sense that it looks better but it is very sublime. There are certainly no astounding revelations, its more of a visual pleasure to watch.

I imagine a similar look would occur to material digitally converted from the A11 telemetry tapes. There would be a notable improvement, but we would _not_ have a jump similar to say, the transition between sepia and color as in "The Wizard of Oz!"

__________________
"TV online! Goldstone TV online! Honeysuckle video online!!"

And my point regarding resolution degradation is that the scan-conversion process actually up-converted the signal to NTSC and similar standards: increased frame rate and increased lines per frame: 29.97 frames per second at 525 lines per frame. Not a true supersample, of course, but very little argument possible there for a degradation in resolution as the result of the scan conversion.

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

Pffffffffff!!! That's what they pay us, er, I mean you to say.

Actually the only thing that would introduce any type of quality drop is the fact that a camera pointed at a screen and that usually brings about some form of increased contrast. However, the camera was pointed at a hi-res monitor, so the drop in resolution is not really the issue, more the change in contrast. This can be seen on the side by side HSK video grabs.

Which is a good thing otherwise that coke bottle would be seen a mile away, this way it blends in seamlessly with the surroundings.

__________________
"TV online! Goldstone TV online! Honeysuckle video online!!"

So putting your post into context, you believe that the original Apollo tapes are no more worthy of being kept than episodes of Dr Who?

The big difference between your examples and the original magnetic tapes is that the ones available today were firstly scan converted, and then filmed off a small TV set. They were then sent by either landline, satellite or microwave relays to Houston, before being released to the TV companies. The degredation that occured by using that process produced far inferior quality footage than the original SSTV ones.

Here are examples between the two qualities. These pictures show the same image, one is a polaroid of the SSTV image as it was relayed to Parkes, the other darker pictures are the ones seen by TV viewers.

Picture as seen by TV viewers


Picture from SSTV scan


Picture as seen by TV viewers


Same picture from SSTV scan


The TV pictures are a lot darker, which was because the contrast was turned down too low when the camera was placed in front of the TV that was showing the pictures from the Moon. So, the supposed 'similar quality' tapes that you say are available are anything but.

As regards to an investigator being allowed to see those original tapes, I highly doubt 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.

what is the conspiracy here? So the tapes were lost, if you had them what would they show?

__________________
All Moderation in Purple
To report a post (even this one) to the moderation team, click the reporting icon in the upper-right corner of the post:
─────────────────────────────────────────────
◄Rules For Posting To This Board ► ◄Forum FAQs ► ◄ Conspiracy Theory Advice ► ◄ Alternate Theory Advice ►

Just look above - I can see a marked difference.

__________________
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.

It would be nice to have a link to the original thread so we who are not familiar with it can figure out what this thread is about. Especially those of us who saw the landing on live TV and also those of us who have used video cameras of various kinds.

What is the problem in the first place, missing original tapes, recordings? TV stations and movie companies lose valuable archive film and video originals all the time.