NASA Loses original 'One Small Step' recording (1 Viewer)

[Bryan X]

NASA has been looking for the past year and can't find the original recording of the first moon landing which includes Neil Armstrong's "that's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

That's arguably one of the most historic events of civilization and the original recordings get misplaced?! Unbelievable.

Maybe George Lucas has them. We all know how important historic media preservation is to him....

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/0...eut/index.html

 

[MarkHastings]

It's: "that's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

Perhaps Lucas could clean them up to fix that glitch.

 

[Bryan X]

Can you imagine all the snazzy special effects Lucas could add to this? It boggles the mind.

Apollo 11: Special Edition

The way it was originally intended: See Buzz Aldrin step first!

 

[Yee-Ming]

And now the conspiracy theorists will have a field day saying NASA "had to lose them" so that the originals couldn't be checked/verified against tampering...

Must say it's quite bizarre that something so historically significant could get lost. What'cha gonna do, it's the federal government after all...

 

[Lynda-Marie]

That is so sad. Even though I was only three years old at the time, my dad plunked me in front of the TV to watch the landing, and hear that message. I actually have a very vague recollection of it.

And I think you're right, the conspiracy theorists are going to have a FIELD day with this one!

 

[Mike Heenan]

This shouldn't be a surprise anyways, considering how well studios handled their negatives and the like back then, why should we be surprised NASA misplaced the original tapes? And the tapes were probably erased and used again like the old tv shows.

 

[Yee-Ming]

I wouldn't equate NASA's Apollo records with movie negatives. In hindsight the likes of Casablanca and Gone With The Wind might seem "historic", but there's no doubting, even before it happened, that the first Moon landing was a momentous occasion in human history. To bungle up the storage of those records is really a SNAFU of major proportions.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

The tapes probably ended up in the White House during the Nixon administration. I understand there was a large demand for blank tape there in 1972.

 

[Cees Alons]

No chance that they were, eh... stolen?


Cees

 

[MarkHastings]

LMFAO! You gotta love when consipracy theorists blame conspiracy theorists.

 

[Jeff_CusBlues]

The article also states that NASA says the original tapes are probably degraded and unusable anyway. I don't understand how they could not protect and keep track of these tapes. As Yee stated, this was a known, significant event. I work for a gov't contractor and if I misplace or don't protect a record, the gov't rains down a huge sh*t storm. It appears they don't do as they say.

 

[Mike Frezon]

No dts = no sale.



Actually, maybe the tapes are stored near the Ark of the Covenant in that huge storage room depicted at the end of Raiders....

 

[Mary M S]

I read, there would be a issue with degradation, but if they are found and with current technology (if playable at all) the resolution improvement acheived should be startling.

The broadcasts we are all familar with was a picture taken of a picture, IE: the networks placed a camera in front of a NASA moniter and shot that.
The orginal tapes could provide footage with a resolution increase comparable to the PQ jump from VHS to DVD.

Therefore showing more detail in the footage than ever before seen by other than NASA control during Apollo's actual transmissison.
Another tidbit for the conspiracy theriosts to roll with.

Gives us a good excuse to 'do it again' just to prove it.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Actually, that wouldn't work. The reason why the network footage was taken by the camera-to-monitor method is that the crude scan conversion was needed. See, the Moon missions used colour television cameras working on the (CBS) field-sequential colour system, which is not compatible with normal (simultaneous) colour TV. The better the scan conversion, the more obvious the colour fringing and breakups!

 

[Bryan X]

Regarding all the skeptics who think we faked the landings:

I always thought if we faked the landings, then these old videos of the moon landing would have the equivelant look of a Star Trek episode from the 60's or some other sci-fi B-movie.

 

[MarkHastings]

but they do.