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| Science & Technology |
| NASA lost moon footage, but Hollywood restores it |
| 2009-07-17 |
| You just know this will bring out the conspiracy nuts. NASA could put a man on the moon but didn't have the sense to keep the original video of the live TV transmission. In an embarrassing acknowledgment, the space agency said Thursday that it must have erased the Apollo 11 moon footage years ago so that it could reuse the videotape. But now Hollywood is coming to the rescue. The studio wizards who restored "Casablanca" are digitally sharpening and cleaning up the ghostly, grainy footage of the moon landing, making it even better than what TV viewers saw on July 20, 1969. They are doing it by working from four copies that NASA scrounged from around the world. "There's nothing being created; there's nothing being manufactured," said NASA senior engineer Dick Nafzger, who is in charge of the project. "You can now see the detail that's coming out." The first batch of restored footage was released just in time for the 40th anniversary of the "one giant leap for mankind," and some of the details seem new because of their sharpness. Originally, astronaut Neil Armstrong's face visor was too fuzzy to be seen clearly. The upgraded video of Earth's first moonwalker shows the visor and a reflection in it. |
| Posted by:ed |
| #11 They lost the freakin' Moon landing footage, yet they want to keep our medical records?? |
| Posted by: Cornsilk Blondie 2009-07-17 18:42 |
| #10 Ah, that's a relief, Nimble. I was afraid you'd gotten a bad batch of rocket fuel or something. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2009-07-17 16:06 |
| #9 Btw, the ancient Romans knew how far it was to the Moon, 240,000 miles give or take a few. The Van Allen belts are quite close to the Earth by comparison and they loop right down to the atmosphere near the magnetic poles. They are relatively thin and the astronauts passed through them in a few minutes. Micro-electronics are more, not less, sensitive than living tissue to ionizing radiation. Geostationary communications satellites have to pass through the Van Allen belts to reach their 24 hour orbits (22,000 miles out). They would not work if space were filled with lethal radiation. That is, the very fact that we can see the conspiracist ravings is proof that they are false. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2009-07-17 16:04 |
| #8 Lumpy, Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy website is ground zero for Moon Hoax rebuttals. Go there and find the answers. Are you aware, for example, that amateur radio operators all over the world were able to track the Apollo missions by direction finding, triangulation, and doppler analysis on their signals? It is physically impossible to fake this, especially when the direction differs slightly for each observer. If amateurs could do this, it is a sure bet every military force and intelligence agency in the world could. In one way or another, the missions were under independent observation from the time the astronauts got in the capsules until they passed behind the Moon and, exclusive of those short occultations, for the rest of the flight right back to splashdown. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2009-07-17 15:58 |
| #7 I had never thought about it until I toured NASA and someone brought up the conspiracy theory. The questions weren't really answered by the guide: How far is the moon from the earth? (140,000?) How far is the manned Space Station?(200 miles) Where is the Van Allen radiation belt? He did state the existing computer technology in 1969 would power a pocket calculator today and pointed out it was the Cold War and a matter of national security. I came away with doubts when finding they stayed for two days and a manned flight through the radiation has never been repeated--robots only. It doesn't matter to me one way or the other but I hope if it was a bluff, we aren't called on it when the shuttle is set to retire in 14 months and we have to depend on Russia or China. |
| Posted by: Lumpy Elmoluck5091 2009-07-17 15:49 |
| #6 No, I'm not serious. Incredible that one could entertain the contrary, but we live in incredible times. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2009-07-17 15:45 |
| #5 I hope you're not serious, Nimble. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2009-07-17 15:38 |
| #4 See post about Lunar Orbiter photographing old landing sites. Even Apollo 14 footprints show up! |
| Posted by: 3dc 2009-07-17 14:51 |
| #3 We all know that moon landing is about as authentic as Bambi's birth certificate. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2009-07-17 14:39 |
| #2 Hollywood actually produced something useful? Did hell freeze over? |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2009-07-17 12:35 |
| #1 I'm sure some of the original studios can be found, where the original [/snark] Don't hit me, Buzz!! |
| Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 2009-07-17 12:24 |