Ahrcanum

The Eagle may have landed but is the truth out there?  The original footage of man landing on the moon was filmed by a video camera on the lunar module.  Technology being what it was 40 years ago used a non-standard format which US television channels could not use. It was beamed back to earth, and then converted into a TV-friendly system.  As a child, I saw it all live with our rabbit ear antenna TV.

Once again, my antenna are twisting to get a frequency of truth, as NASA has admitted that it probably deleted the original footage in the 1970s and 80s, when it had a film shortage and needed to reuse them.

At a news conference, NASA  revealed some newly-restored footage of the moon landing, including Neil Armstrong’s first step onto the lunar surface.  The four selected scenes showed Neil Armstrong and then Buzz Aldrin stepping on to the lunar surface, putting up a commemorative plaque and the raising of the American flag. Engineer Richard Nafzger spent three years searching for copies worldwide. He found footage in Australia and at the CBS television studios in Houston, as well as reels of tape in NASA’s own huge archive vaults, which had not been viewed for 36 years.  Lowry Digital is restoring two-and-a-half hours of the footage and NASA expects to release the full version in September.

If you read through the now declassified and very abbreviated transcription of the Apollo conversations which can be found at http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/mission_trans/AS11_CM.PDF one of the first conversations is over the cameras. “00 00 30 39 CMP Alright, Buzz, here’s one Hasselblad for you.” 

Later in the day they discuss setting up for a live video feed to earth- “00 01 16 58 CMP And you have 6 frames per second, and it’s color; you got 15 minutes worth – 6 frames a second, f:8,infinity, 1/250th.” Inevitably they miss taping that sunrise and the Hasselblad ends up floating around and they somehow can’t find it in the little module.  In the end they figure things out at, “O0 01 28 28 CMP See that, Buzz? You’re a TV expert.”

NASA knew damned well the importance of documenting the Apollo missions, but the the conversations between the astronauts sounds more like the three stooges trying to figure out light readings, how to turn things on and which camera to use.  They had color and black and white film to preserve what they saw including what was noted on Page 72, day 4, when they get a good look at the moon’s surface  “03 04 06 44 CMP Yes, that’s what I was talking about just a minute ago. It’s kind of hard to believe that that’s volcanic and formed by some faulting, isn’t it? I don’t believe that – but it’s such a perfect straight line.

 I’m going to put the R in the reserve camera.OB 09 55 46 CDR Okay.0B 09 55 47 LMP And the S in the surface camera. On Day 4, page 106. don’t think there’s any place except in the – in here, that it says anything about 16-millimeter footage – 03 l0 04 33 CDR In the card, right? 03 l0 04 35 LMP No, I’m thinking about for the descent. Here we are; 16 millimeter, HC-EX, f:4, 500, infinity,6 frames per second. Okay. 03 l0 05 14 CDR You got the flight plan handy,…s

NASA went so far as to prepare a card of what camera was to be used for each duty!   For the landing, ” unstow and configure for use 16 millimeter, HC-EX, f:4,500, infinity, 6 frames per second., 

It is all recorded on film and NASA tapes over it? Perhaps the real reason the tapes went missing was not to allow anyone to ever see what is described here, ” 

05 05 31 03 CDR Yes.05 05 31 08 LMP … structure somehow  05 05 31 31 LMP 3.5, Nell.

05 05 32 44 LMP Woo-woos is on VHF B –

05 05 32 48 CDR … B?

05 05 32 50 IMP Not on A.

05 05 32 58 CDR (Laughter) That’s your story, huh?

 05 ll 45 56 LMP Well, I hope – I hope they have the data that shows Just what we did have at contact when they can get photographs … all the film we got….

The world data center A for rockets and satellites contains space science data archives since Jan , 1969- before the lunar walk.  http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a14/A14PhotoIndexPt1.pdf How did this footage got erased? What about the superintendent of documents and Technology Application Center of the era?  They lost the originals as well? 

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