Never-Before-Seen Moon Images Rescued From Trash

There is a long thread on this topic at ATS:

[url] www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread394867/pg1 [/url]

Thanks Marsrocks. All I can say is "Wow---negatives scanned with a 5 micron spot (200 lines/millimeter resolution)."

That's mind-boggling. After all this time, I can finally see Trinket's point. I mean think of all the questions this begs. Are we really to believe later ships that circled Mars somehow lost this technology?

This reminds me of a Software Manager I worked with some years ago. When subsequent version of our software had new and repeating problems that were fixed once before, he used to get his team together and say, "the software is supposed to get <b>better </b>with each new version....not <b>worse.</b>"

So, aside from the question of whether or not they lost this technology, will we ever really get to see these images, and if so, will we really get to see them all, or will there be mysterious areas that have unfortunate blank-outs?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">The spacecraft did not ship this film back to Earth. Instead, they developed the film on the Lunar Orbiter and then raster scanned the negatives with a 5 micron spot (200 lines/millimeter resolution) and beamed the data back to Earth using yet-to-be-patented-by-others lossless analog compression. Three ground stations on Earth (one was in Madrid) recorded the transmissions on these magnetic tapes.

Recovering the data has proven to be very difficult, requiring technological archeology. The only working version of the Ampex tape player ($300K when new) was discovered in a chicken coop and restored with the help of the original designer. There is only one person on Earth who still refurbishes these tape heads, and he is retiring this year. The skills to read this data archive are on the cusp of disappearing forever. {From ATS thread}<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

rd

This is NASA's official statement from Nov 13, 2009:

www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2008/08_99AR.html

The way they present this is that the new processing of the images is what's given them the higher resolution. I'm not so sure I believe them. I went back and listened to the scientists in the clip from KTVU, and it seems to me like they are saying something different, which is the way I presented it in the first place.

Also, I was kind of surprised the ATS thread ended last November. Why would it end? Plus, the video in the beginning of the thread "is no longer availabe due to a copyright claim by a third party."

Where's Trinket when we need him?

rd

do you mean: Nov 13, 2008?

paolino

Paolino