Moon landing tapes got erased, NASA admits (2009)
reuters.com
reuters.com
The really couldn't figure out by themselves that they shouldn't throw away the visual evidence of one of the most important events in human history?
Which is not a bad thing: given the immensity and ludicrousness of the Apollo accomplishment, I think NASA had quite a few nutjobs!
JIM LOVELL - I'm slated to be the commander of Apollo 14 sometime late next year.
CONGRESSMAN - If there is an Apollo 14... Now, Jim, people in my state have been asking why we're continuing to fund this program - now that we've beaten the Russians to the Moon. [1]
The chasm between what NASA wanted, pilots down, was to keep on its trajectory, but the politicians saw monies to tender.
It is true the main blame for our policies rests with those continuing to elect them. But those actually representing us and making the decisions are responsible also.
IIRC a large set of moon landing data was lost when somebody set the tapes down on a heater and left them there too long.
Not moon-landing related, but Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), the very first group to use a Roland TR-808 drum machine, was unable to read the original masters because they were recording using a cutting-edge digital format for which there are no readers.
Preserving digital data for the long term is hard.
Disclaimer: Library and Info Sci degree with archives coursework.
About 5 years ago I helped a team migrate a bunch of data from ~30 year old 9-track tape reels. Obtaining and restoring hardware that was even capable of reading the reels was hard enough (we are talking spending thousands of dollars purchasing zero-warranty equipment from sketchy places on the 'net that had a few sitting in some dusty corner of their warehouse).
We also had to write our own software to read the tapes until an error occurred; reset the drive, retry reading from that spot again, and so on, and then concatenate all of the chucks together.
Most of the reels were eventually readable this way, but there still ended up being a not insignificant number that were given up on after several failed attempts.
My suspicion is that everyone involved just assumed it was someone else's job to take care of that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the person who degaussed the tapes did so with the thought, "sure someone has backed this up."
puts foil hat on
In fact, it was technologically impossible to record the entire live broadcast on a single tape because tapes with enough capacity didn't exist until many years later. Therefore a faked broadcast from tapes would have had visible transitions as they switched from tape to tape. These transitions would have been visible on the taped copies of the broadcast which the currently available recordings derive from.
In other words you're saying that one should believe NASA landed on the moon, because broadcasting a fake recording would have been technologically too difficult for them?
I don't doubt that they landed on the moon, but I'm not quite convinced about that logic ;)
"If NASA has the power to land on the moon, clearly they could've faked a broadcast."
"If you're saying they didn't land on the moon, though, how can you use that as technological proof to edit the broadcast?"
Of course the taped copies we have now must have been recorded on multiple tapes. So are the transitions on them from switching tapes to record the broadcast, or are they actually the transitions from the original faked broadcast? If the original broadcast was faked and broadcast from tapes, you'd expect to see both types of transitions in the modern copies!
Secondly, they didn't erase those tapes because of money savings, or at least not just because of it. It was a supply issue. In the late '70s, early '80s, the manufacturer of those tapes suffered production problems due to the replacement of a substance used in the tapes, if I remember correctly it was whale oil or something like that. The production needed to be scaled back up with the new process, and in that time there was a severe shortage of that particular type of data tape, so NASA had to recycle old tapes.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_11/expe...
You'd think an organization like NASA can plan their budgets a bit better than that.
It's all going to be fine... it's all going to be fine...
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/congressman-doubles-d...
Fffffffffffaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrttttttttttttttttttttttt
Nothing externally hinted at any issue, but when an internal machination occurs, the public facing data may not be enough.
As an aside, please stop downvoting me for these posts, I am not trying to defend for or against climate change, just pointing out that a reason for suspicion could exist. If you disagree with my internal machination comment, please witness EPA and Pebble Mine, Lois Lerner and her IRS hijinks, and the former Secretary of State on the origins of the Benghazi attack, all of which were forward facing items that looked fine, but internal machinations showed suspicious activity.
I more-or-less agree with your points about downvotes.
Where do you get this? I ask because as far as I can tell we were told 20 years ago that it would be too late 10 years in the future (10 years ago for us) based on models that have clearly not panned out.
I'm sincere in asking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fifth_Assessment_Report
"""The global surface temperature increase by the end of the 21st century is likely to exceed 1.5 °C relative to the 1850 to 1900 period for most scenarios, and is likely to exceed 2.0 °C for many scenarios"""
> I ask because as far as I can tell we were told 20 years ago that it would be too late 10 years in the future (10 years ago for us) based on models that have clearly not panned out.
Yes, it is unfortunate that science isn't perfect, but it's the best we have, and computer projections have only made it more reliable in recent years than it was in the 80s and 90s. I understand that changing the base of our entire economic system isn't easy, but it's becoming blindingly clear that it needs to happen to halt more disastrous changes. Deniers like Smith are preventing positive action on climate change from occurring, and side-shows like the NOAA investigation are a waste of both critical time and money.
If we had taken action twenty years ago, perhaps we wouldn't be having this conversation at all.
China has brought their coal plants online and they use 4,361,427 thousand short tons of unfiltered or carbon captured coal to the United States carbon capturing EPA mandated 924,442 thousand short tons. Compare areas that have coal plants with those which do not in China versus America [3] and you can see that our nation has it under control and China does not. [1]
Are we honestly going to another country and tell them to quit developing?
Do we have the will to force them to give up their coal fired plants for nuclear energy (which from internal announcements is set to make up only 5% of their power structure), or natural gas? What does that will look like, money, political manipulation, force?
How can you say that computer projections are more reliable now than they were before? Hurricane projections, using state of the art modeling for a shortened horizon cannot say whether a hurricane in three days will bear west or east of Florida. The validation of the computer projections of today will not be evaluated for another fifteen years, all the while, every day you can continue on with that statement, essentially: "All of the previous models had errors, but today's model is perfect."
[1] http://www.eia.gov/beta/international/
[2] I do not have a picture that correctly does this justice, there are ones that are doctored by greenpeace and others where the plant is not running at capacity. So this is not a fair comparison.
Are you willing to give them money and how much, what if they do not use it for appropriate actions?
Are you willing to force them to change, how do you propose forcing them? Are you willing to wage American lives now for a future probability?
The United States of America has done a great job reducing its environmental impact. Back in the day it was a rare event to see stars in Los Angeles because of the fog (the gaseous burning orb ones not the celebrities), but thanks to the EPA, it is a common occurrence now.
The problem with this is that the populace won't because they are skeptical, for very good reasons.
They see models not working (i.e. alarmism backfired), they see IPCC authors leaving and denouncing authorship because they view the report as too alarmist. They see people warning of "we'll have the worst hurricane seasons ever in the next 5 years!" and then very little happening.
Alarmism has an unfortunate contribution to skepticism (while not the intended result of action) that will keep skeptics in power. And I think this is a good thing.
You advocate for people like Smith to not have positions of power. You should also look at people on the other end of the spectrum, alarmists, who have power and try to use it to incite action. That backfires and we move nowhere. Skepticism, as I mentioned before, is a natural reaction to this.
Change needs to come from both sides.
I'd better hope so.
Think Steve Jobs asking a VP to show his reasons for obfuscating the reasons for sales figures reported over a period and then adjusted.
VP: Sorry, that's confidential.
In this situation, I'm paying the administrator (that person that governmental agencies are accountable to) to make sure those agencies aren't obfuscating their own reasons.
I demand answers, whether those answers lead nowhere is inconsequential.
For a summary of what's going on, better than I can do here, see this letter from another member of the House science committee:
http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.h...
* The letter says: "In your various demand letters you noted the scientific study in question was of some consequence, and could potentially have an effect on policy decisions. However it should be emphasized that the issue in question is a scientific research study, not a policy decision by a Federal agency. As such, this is not an area of delegated legislative authority by Congress to the Executive (unless you are proposing that Congress should somehow legislatively overrule peer-reviewed scientific findings.)*
First, Mr. Johnson, cutely tries to defer that science is not going to be used in a policy manner. Right now, the President of the United States is engaged with making policy decisions from scientific studies, so his premise is flawed to begin with. Also, all of the pushes for climate change agendas feed from scientific studies.
Second, pointing to the delegation of authority and making a cute reference to legislating peer-reviewed scientific findings is a nod to The Daily Show crowd's jokester attitude.
Third, the last line from the paragraph says that "you have not articulated a legitimate need for anything beyond what NOAA has already provided" plays into my argument from before about a government agency obfuscating.
One could argue that the obfuscation is to hold a checks and balance, but then why is a legislature member worried about what the executive branch is doing? The executive branch should be defining what it will fulfill in FOIA requests and why.
Also, the entire letter points to my earlier discussion that while one can have the data, the models, and the methodologies, the reasoning behind the change appears to be left off and NOAA is not helping the concern with the agency when it does not come out with this. Even if they came right out and said, look, we used an incorrect number of significant digits, that is why our models appeared misleading before, it would be a quick story, make the rounds on skeptic sites, and then could move forward. So, why obfuscate?
It seems to me it (like the next line you take issue with) is previewing the administration's arguments on whether the subpoena serves a legislative purpose should this dispute escalate to the point where Congress attempts to impose consequences and the Administration challenges that attempt in the courts.
Explaining one's position why a demand is outside of the requesters legal authority to demand is quite appropriate in a response to a demand.
Right. I keep forgetting that the USA have no concept of privacy and that everyone receiving a wage is treated like a part-time slave.
The reality is that there's a lot of physical and historical evidence here and denying it is fairly ridiculous.
What I find hilarious about this is that the deniers don't deny any other mission. Why is it that we can launch all this mass with no problems and have all these wonderful missions all over the solar system, but once we pressurize a cabin in space and land it on the moon, suddenly these people are in denial. Their position would be more rational if they denied all space missions.
They're one of the biggest holes in the conspiracy theory. State-level actors with much to gain by proving it to be a fake, the technology and know-how to do so, and nothing much to lose by revealing it.
> Russia isn't a trustworthy nation and the US could have have a quid-pro-quo with them...
In the height of the Cold War? Not bloody likely.
> Their position would be more rational if they denied all space missions.
Some do.
an NSA analyst, identified in the book as Perry Fellwock, described overhearing Komarov tell ground control officials he knew he was about to die. Fellwock described how Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin called on a video phone to tell him he was a hero. Komarov's wife was also on the call to talk about what to say to their children. Kosygin was crying.
--
The US was sitting upon a very embarrassing radio communication of Soyuz 1's failure and didn't act on it. You bet your ass this was traded for something valuable. The only reason we even know about this is because a non-state actor in Berlin happened to catch this conversation and told others about it.
I agree faking a moon landing is a bit much, but the argument that "Russia and the US agree" isn't really worth anything. Right now Russia and the US agree that ISIS is the biggest threat in Syria, for example, but from a casualties numbers perspective Assad is responsible for 10x to 20x the deaths. Political convenience often trumps truth.
> Komarov never told ground control that "he knew he was about to die." In fact, while he was in orbit, there was a decent chance that he would get back home alive. And by the way, there was no "video phone" in 1967. And also, Kosygin had nothing to do with this space mission and never spoke to Komarov.
The video phone is irelevant and probably a misunderstanding via a translator. Clearly the NSA and berlin listeners would have no idea what was seen/heard outside of the spectrum they were able to tap.
Not too long ago people like you were denying the Nedelin catastrophe. I think there's a lot of coverups the Soviets pulled that are only coming to light in the past couple decades. Russia has a problem with openness and honesty with its space program. They pretty much ran it as a black ops, not telling other countries their launch schedules or programs. This was done as to make coverups easier. That guy died for nothing. The Soviets forced him on that thing and he knew he was a dead man.
It's a real shame, but not many organisations are that farsighted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Orbiter_Image_Recovery_P...
Just learned by reading Gore Vidal's autobiography of the same name.
All jokes aside, I see your point, but applying it to the moon landing is a little far fetched.
> I see your point, but applying it to the moon landing is a little far fetched.
Not at all, in the 1970's those tapes easily cost a month's of an average workers wages. It would make perfect sense to re-use them to save a bit of money, especially if you were doing it at scale and didn't realize you were about to erase the master copies.
I agree with this.
Negligence of this level, though, is indescribable.