Original Apollo 11 moon walk tapes were erased

[gary]

In a National Public Radio story by Nell Greenfieldboyce dated 16th July 2009,
Dick Nafzger from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center confirmed that the
the original higher quality non-reformatted video of the Apollo 11 walk which
was stored on tape were almost certainly degaussed and over-written with
data from later satellite missions.

One of the people involved in the search was Stan Lebar who led the engineering
team at Westinghouse that designed and built the lunar cameras. Pouring through
enormous US Govt archives, Lebar concludes -

"So I don't believe that the tapes exist today at all.
"It was a hard thing to accept. But there was just an overwhelming amount of evidence
that led us to believe that they just don't exist anymore. And you have to accept reality."


NPR story here -
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106637066&ft=1&f=1007

[Dennis]

Ouch! I did not want to hear that…:(:screwy:

Cheers

Dennis

[sheeny]

:sadeyes:

[Geoff45]

This will be good news for the conspiracy theorists who peddle the line that it never happened. Watch for "They were deliberately destroyed because modern technology would have shown them up as fakes"
Geoff

[renormalised]

That's almost a given....and then they'll say they know where the "real" tapes are being kept at....Area 51:P:P:D:D

[Omaroo]

It's ridiculous to think that a person involved in the Apollo 11 flight within that area would consciously write over tapes of such historic value and significance. GSFC should hang their collective heads in shame for letting it happen - all to save a few bucks on tape. Accidental or not, it's truly incredible.

[Jen]

:eyepop: i hope the person who stupidly erased them was fired :lol::lol:

[seanliddelow]

They were taped over for family guy:P

[PeterM]

Im sure it has happend to us all at sometime (even the conspiracy theorists).
Accidentally recording over a family gem of a VHS, are your childs first footsteps any less important than the first steps on the Moon? Deleting something from the PC without thinking, Hard Drive crashing with no backup. Perhaps even scarier is the amount of precious family pics/videos now being stored on DVD, Memory Sticks and External Hardrives, often without the old faithful hard copy.
I read not long ago (after someone finally did some research dispelling the myth that DVDs and CDs "last forever") that the average life span of a DVD was 18 months to 5 years, there are now gold archival DVDs offering up to 100 years.
Some here may have a surprise in years to come when they go to show the grandkids the pics and videos taken years earlier.
PeterM.

[Robh]

I find it rather hard to believe that an event of such importance was not consciously backed up on tapes and stored for future generations.
What were they thinking? Not!

Rob

[PeterM]

Rob, I totally agree with you.
I also think maybe a case of " I thought you did?" "err, no I thought you did" and then hoping that by the time someone cottoned on you had retired, as has probably happened.
I have also heard that the original and only blue prints to build a Saturn V rocket were completely shredded and destroyed.
It sounds to me like NASAs early archival systems and those in charge were not up to scratch with the same level of technology that their machines and astronauts were.
PeterM.