Houston, we have a problem. There is probably no artifact in the history of space exploration more precious than the first television images of the Moon captured by Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts as they disembarked from their lunar module in July 1969.
Unfortunately, the magnetic tapes of those images have gone missing. Worse still, they appear to have been missing for at least 30 years – and nobody, until now, even noticed.
The man who devised the lunar camera for the mission, a retired Westinghouse engineer called Stan Lebar, is hoping the tapes can still be recovered somewhere from the bowels of NASA, the US space agency, or from one of the companies to which NASA has outsourced its archival storage.
But, after a year of looking, he and a small band of old-timers in the space business have turned up precisely nothing. Their hope is to track the tapes down before they deteriorate so far as to be unreadable, then transfer them to digital format so they can be preserved for ever.
Until now, they have kept the story out of the press because, they say, they do not want to embarrass NASA. They insist it is wrong to characterise the tapes as “missing”. “They’re not missing,” Mr Lebar said, “we just haven’t found them.”
Of course, there’s another reason to keep quiet about this. Maybe the tapes didn’t exist in the first place? There are more than a few folks who think the whole adventure was the product of a secret film production crew — that we never set foot on the moon.
Some of the same folks who’ve given us an alternative view of 9/11 offer a contrary tale of the lunar landing — here.
Decide for yourselves what really happened to the tapes?
If Stanley Kubrick were alive, we could as him for the dupes…
ldrin tried to walk away, but the 37-year-old Sibrel followed him onto the street, demanding that Aldrin place his hand on the Bible. “Swear that you walked on the moon!” Sibrel cried.
For a second, a glint crossed Aldrin’s eyes as it seemed he was actually considering swearing on Sibrel’s actual Bible to something that he actually did do.
But, alas, the hotel doorman came over and broke things up. And then Aldrin put two-and-two together: He had been had been lured to the hotel as part of a ruse by Sibrel, who had arranged for a fake Japanese film crew to interview Aldrin for a fake kids show about space.
At that point, Aldrin finally lost his cool. When Sibrel and his Bible came at him again, Aldrin unleashed a moon shot of his own—right to Sibrel’s jaw. (It couldn’t have been that much of a punch, though, because less than a second after it landed, Sibrel was already asking his cameraman, “Was that on camera?”).
The moonwalk may not have been captured, but the punch was.
Lost? Or never even recorded in the first place? You decide!
Actually, the video feeds from the moon first went to Image Transform in Burbank, who had a proprietary video enhancing and noise reduction system, and then were sent to Nasa. Image Transform is no more but I’ll bet some of the principals, who still ARE around, have copies somewhere…
Tom
Hmmm, not that the fury has built up around them I shall put them for sale on Ebay!
Oh, what about their backup? ha ha ha ha ha! Who needs any backup?
It’s so expensive to have to backup anything like ORIGINAL MOON LANDING TAPES! maybe the Russians can lend NASA theirs.
Just sad. Heck, the record companies are losing master tapes all the time also. Pieces of history just slipping through the fingers.
Oddly though, the government losing something doesn’t surprize me very much.
LMAO….
“They’re not missing,” Mr Lebar said, “we just haven’t found them.”
Miss-ing (adj) – not able to be found.
Michael Jackson probably bought them along with the Beatles collection.
Even if they are found, the RIAA or the MPAA would say that if you transfered the tapes to a digital format you would have to pay them a license fee ! Or they would make it illegal and seize the tapes themselves.
“Of course, there’s another reason to keep quiet about this. Maybe the tapes didn’t exist in the first place?”
Eideard, I’m surprised at you. You must know that Nixon erased those tapes.
Bet they loaned them out, or sent them to be Re-done, and they Never returned…
#13
It was Rosemary Woods, remember? She must have been doing some transcribing for NASA before working for Dick.
did I say that right?