NASA Finds Missing Moon Landing Tapes!

Werewolf said:
When dealing with the sheer number of items somewhere like Nasa will have in the archives, even the best indexing system fails, especially if it's not fully computerised (as the NASA archives probably weren't in the early days)

I suspect NASA have hundreds of thousands (millions even) of items in their archives, and all it takes to lose something like these tapes is for someone not to have made a note on an index card when moving them (or on computer these days), for them to have been put in the wrong place, or even for something to have been put in front of them.
Even just losing something like a 6x4" index card could have meant losing them for a long time until a full inventory is done (and in the case of something like magnetic tapes they might just have a serial number noted on them, so could require specialist equipment to read the contents).

It's nice to see that NASA have found the tapes again :)
Not that it's ever going to stop the conspiracy theorists.
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The funny thing about the conspiracy theorists, a lot of them dont realise there is already well over a hundred hours of moon walks available in the public domain already, it really wouldnt surprise me if people think the grainy footage is the only thing we have.

The old stuff scrubs up pretty well too, especially the stuff on 16 and 17, some stunning movies are available to see.
 
Werewolf said:
When dealing with the sheer number of items somewhere like Nasa will have in the archives, even the best indexing system fails, especially if it's not fully computerised (as the NASA archives probably weren't in the early days)

I suspect NASA have hundreds of thousands (millions even) of items in their archives, and all it takes to lose something like these tapes is for someone not to have made a note on an index card when moving them (or on computer these days), for them to have been put in the wrong place, or even for something to have been put in front of them.
Even just losing something like a 6x4" index card could have meant losing them for a long time until a full inventory is done (and in the case of something like magnetic tapes they might just have a serial number noted on them, so could require specialist equipment to read the contents).

It's nice to see that NASA have found the tapes again :)
Not that it's ever going to stop the conspiracy theorists.
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But something like that over rides all.
 
dekez said:
I wouldn't get your hopes up, tapes may be a total mess by now.
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Aye, depending on the quality of the original tapes and how they've been stored :(
Hopefully NASA's archiving of the tapes will have been to at least the sort of standard used for film footage, in which case I suspect they will be able to get good readings from the tapes (I suspect they'll be using specialist, very well maintained equipment to try and read them).

My worry is that given the likely size of the archives NASA has, it's quite possible that the tapes may well have been stored badly at some point :( (it wouldn't be the first time important documents/materials have been stored in a damp environment).
 
NASA didn't have a central archive in the 60s, or the 70s. As a result, tapes tended to get shipped around between the various NASA centres and all too often then got mislabeled, mislaid, or simply forgotten about. It isn't just the Apollo missions that have had this problem - data from many of the early probes has suffered the same fate. Back then, beating the Russians to get man safely to the moon and back was their one and only priority - anything else, including data archiving, was secondary.
 
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Red and White said:
did the Japanese photos show the landing site then? if not either then i call shenanigans
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Not sure tbh, a couple of years ago on one of the BBC channels there was a programme about the moon conspiracies, IIRC they claimed that just a few months after the programme was due to be shown there would be a jap satellite orbiting the moon and it would be able to take images of the landing site and would clear up the conspiracies for once and for all, never heard any more about that mission since however :/
 
Berserker said:
NASA didn't have a central archive in the 60s, or the 70s. As a result, tapes tended to get shipped around between the various NASA centres and all too often then got mislabeled, mislaid, or simply forgotten about. It isn't just the Apollo missions that have had this problem - data from many of the early probes has suffered the same fate. Back then, beating the Russians to get man safely to the moon and back was their one and only priority - anything else, including data archiving, was secondary.
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It's a shame really, maybe if they had looked after this data properly a lot of these conspiracy theories wouldn't have happened. (Well probably not but it may have lessened the impact, people are always going to believe what they want )
 
sidthesexist said:
Not sure tbh, a couple of years ago on one of the BBC channels there was a programme about the moon conspiracies, IIRC they claimed that just a few months after the programme was due to be shown there would be a jap satellite orbiting the moon and it would be able to take images of the landing site and would clear up the conspiracies for once and for all, never heard any more about that mission since however :/
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It's goal wasn't to take pictures of the landing site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SELENE

After successfully orbiting the moon for 1 year and 8 months, the main orbiter's operation finished by the controlled collision to the lunar surface on 18:25 June 10, 2009 (UTC).
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Controlled collision?

"That's it fellas.. we're done"
"What now?"
"Crash it"
 
We will find out if the Moon landings were a hoax I expect.

Future space exploration will use the Moon as a launch base and is there not a Moon landing planned for the next 10-15 years or so ?

I believe it happened and a 66 year gap from the first flight to a man on the Moon is such a huge step.
 
how do you lose video of the first every flight to the moon? is it that insignificant? "oh look - a video. I wonder whats on this. Hope its some space prawn."

If they knew the video existed they would have been looking for it.
They would have archived it in the first place.

the most renowned scientific company loses a video? sure.
 
Not sure what to make of this,.... movie world has gone a long way... ??? you don't just lose.... and oh... find again years later something so significant.
 
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