Seriously people! Why the f**k dose the American Government and NASA use the crappiest video shooting devices ever? When they went to the moon they had billions of dollars in hand that enabled them to use a good and decent camera which were available at that time, but they preferred using a black and white camera with the sh*tiest quality ever; and since then, it has become something usual for them, as also seen in this stupid video!
I mean couldn't they use a feakin HD camera with a high range zoom? My Sony consumer camera can take better pictures than the video they showed!!! And VHS??!!? Are they f**king kidding me!
This was a freking nice moment in human history and they've just ruined it!
Do you honestly believe they didnt record it in HD? and that they are really using a VHS player, and not Hi8 or something more advanced? Why would this warrant such a long comment? So many questions here....
You do know that the things they're videoing are kind of far away, right? Like, hundreds of miles above the earth? No amount of HD is really going to help with that.
And as for the video of the launch, they probably were more worried about the thing going where it needed to than setting up cameras; that's probably their standard missile-hasn't-blown-up-on-the-pad check camera. Why should they have added a fancier one?
@ Kyledl: Dude, this is what everybody said in 1969 when the moon landing was aired in crappy-black and white TV quality, and even after 35+ years, we haven't seen any good footage of the moon, yet, if there is any.
I'll bet your camera wouldn't have even been able to see this. Do you know how far away that is? It's obvious that it's zoomed in significantly and that this is even digitally zoomed.
A camera with a telescopic lens would've solved the whole problem! They are shooting pictures and sometimes videos of galaxies hundred light years away from us, and explosions happening at super far distances from earth, and they supposedly can't shoot an exploding satellite that close to us?
And do not say that having high quality images is not important, it is damn sure very important and is part of history to have good quality videos of such events! If the cause was so important and video is not, all these news reporters would have been using standard quality cameras until this day, but this is not the case; if people are dieing in some war that doesn't mean shooting the events on camera is wrong, it is what we call "Digital History", keeping records through video, which is damn sure important, and cool.
Not hate right here, just simple question: Why isn't that shot in HD then showed to people in HD too?
So your Sony camcorder can shoot high speed images of an object moving 5,000 miles an hour crashing into something moving 17,000 miles an hour, at night from around 133 nautical miles away? Must be some camcorder. There's a lot more to this than pointing a camcorder with a big lens on it at the sky. At least one of the videos was shot from 26,000 ft, apparently from an aircraft, which given the velocities of everything involved, the fact that they were able to track the missile, and have zoom capable of seeing the impact is pretty impressive. Also, I would imagine that their goals are based more on getting clear, high contrast cloud free images rather than looking like some big budget film.
Let's also not forget that it was a spy satellite and the reason for shooting it down was so that it didn't fall into the hands of others. Let's for a second assume that what Jason just said didn't make sense and they DID have HD footage of this, isn't it possible that they modified it for public showing? No... what Jason said makes perfect sense.
Did you even watch the video, or any other news source? First, "Hundreds of Millions of Miles above the Earth" is going to take you quite far away. That Sun deal is only 100,000,000 miles away. They stated in the video that it was shot down at 149 Nautical Miles above the Earth, or 171 Statute miles, or 240 km. The space station orbits at a whopping 350-460km or 189-248 miles up. It's not that much of a stretch, a high-def camera plus digital zoom wouldn't provide too shitty of a picture. Mind you, without a huge optical lens it wouldn't be a pretty picture either.
There's a big difference between shooting pictures of very large objects very far away and very small objects (relatively) very near to us.
Keep in mind that sattelite is moving at about 17,000mph (to put that in perspective, the missile was going 5,000mph, and a commercial jetliner doesn't usually go much faster than 600mph). To focus on a small object like that, traveling that fast at a somewhat close distance is quite difficult for any piece of equipment. Galaxies and whatnot like you mention are EXTREMELY far away and large, so any movement they do is negligible. What's easier to do....focus on a bird flying above you ~40ft or focus on a plane flying above you at 30,0000ft?
Well, Don, if this is really a spy satellite as what you said, then my whole comment is just plain nonsense. My apologies, I didn't know it was a spy satellite.
First, about the moon, the live video from the moon lacked in quality most likely because of the radio transmission of the video. Also, the moon is basicly all one color any way, so not a whole lot of color contrast. Also the good cameras back then I assume were really big and heavy, which they most likely didn't have room for.
Secondly, I don't think nasa really had any thing to do with this, atleast not the video any way. Also NASA is doing a lot of things in HD now, and I believe the Nasa channel is now broadcasting in HD. I've seen HD videos of shuttle launches, they just don't make it easy to find on the website.
Dude, real life is not a Jerry Bruckheimer film. They don't have crews up there with studio lighting and multiple cameras. As I saw that missile going up, I thought "damn, that's some pretty amazing tracking, considering that missile is going hundreds (if not thousands) of MPH." They have massive zoom lenses to see that far, especially for the kill shot. Look up at the sky. See how big it is? Imagine a point of light the size of a pinhead up there, and hitting it from the ground. And it's moving at 17,000 MPH, mind you. That there's video at all is pretty amazing.
@Saad It's one thing to take great pictures of galaxies its all together different to take pictures of a fast moving object thats going to be smashed to bits. I would venture to guess that a lot of the astronomy pictures of galaxies, and other deep space objects aren't as simple as attach the camera to the telescope and take a shot(although I wish it was that simple :) ). From what I understand, a series of shots have to be taken and then "stacked" in a software program (atleast with digital astrophotography, not sure how it works with film astrophotography. Not only that but the exposure time on a single photograph is generally more than a few seconds, to let more light in.
Of course it is harder to track a bird on a tree than to track a plane far away fro me, but my point here is not about how far or how stabilized is the shot it is about the raw medium and hardware that they used? I mean if I use your example Kamokazi, I could put it this way:
Which one has better picture? Using the same equipments and shooting methods with an HD camera or using the the same equipments and shooting methods with an SD camera?
So Kamokazi, even though that it is hard to shoot that "bird", it would've been a great thing if they used better "processing" and better quality cameras.
It's not as simple as just swapping out the camera behind the lens, or even swapping out the sensor. It's not as though they shot with an off the shelf camcorder and should have swapped it with a better off the shelf camcorder. I have no first hand knowledge, but I would guess that the sensor used in military grade extremely long range cameras is a unique beast completely different from what you'd find in a consumer or pro level video camera. And simply adding pixels doesn't always work.
As an example look at the transition from sd camcorders to hd camcorders. When given the same sensor size, say 1/4" and cramming more pixels onto the sensor, less light actually hits each pixel. Which is one of the reasons(as I understand it) that HD low light performance is lagging behind SD currently. I would imagine that designing a camera made to film moving objects in low light conditions hundreds of miles away while the camera itself is moving at great speeds probably involves some tradeoffs.
You do realize it would have been easier to send Black and white over FM radio (what they used) than color. Less Bandwidth is required for Black and white.
Probably one of many things. - Last night there was the lunar eclipse, so all of the high grade cameras with Stellar Observatories for Telescopic view were probably reserved years ago to photograph Saturn's Moons and such. Far more important information! - He said there was HD film taken of the event, which they are reviewing. So there is film. - Regardless of anything else this was a US Military Excersize, to shoot down a US Satellite with a $60million US Missle, if I had to guess probably $300million of US tax payer money went up in smoke last night, and if the military had the chance they would say it never happened, just in order to save face. Therefore, the really telling pictures are classified, and probably always will be.
Please do us all a favor and tell that to the face of one of the Apollo astronauts. They may be old, they will take your fucking head off for even suggesting such a thing. Actually go ahead and say that to anyone working the Apollo program at the time. You will be lucky if you only get a broken nose. These people put their damn lives on hold and on the line for this. This tin hat wearing bullshit is just that. This is in the same insane vein as people who are/were suggesting that, that wannabe face on mars is proof of previous life there and NASA is covering it up. Same bullshit different people.
The low-fidelity film from the lunar landing was because of three things:
1. The signal had to be so strong it could reach Earth
2. The camera had to be small enough to be easily carried and used
3. The battery power had to last while shooting film and sending the signal
They had the technology for nice quality color picture then, but it simply couldn't happen with the limited battery power and size. So, they had a lower resolution than 480i and a black-and-white image.
I don't suppose the thought ever occurred to you that they do have high definition, crisp, clear video of the event but chose not to release it because of paranoid secrecy concerns?
I understand your point of view, but you need to understand the difference of Hollywood and reality. I happen to work with NVA systems and my company sells equipment like this to the military.
I can tell you right away that the point is not to deliver outstanding picture quality, but to capture differentials in high contrast. The idea is to saturate everything that is moving at high velocity (explosions, the targets, fragments of the targets, etc). By doing so, you get a much clearer image. High color gamuts and super resolutions are pointless for this kind of operation since it would interfere with the actual bombing, making it a lot harder to see what actually happened.
As for the moon landings and the Hasselblad objectives that were used, things have changed significantly for the past 50 years or so. If we ever go to the moon, you can expect incredible detail.
1. They have clean, clear, crisp HD footage. 2. They don't have HD footage, because they can't do it at that hight, or that they don't care. 3. They actually shot down a spy satellite. 4. NASA will kick my butt for whatever I said. 5. I can't use a Sony camera to video tape such an event. (I had no idea!) 6. USA military has super systems that we didn't know about until some people told us about it right here. 7. SD is better than HD in some ways, hence (maybe) shooting this process in low quality SD (maybe). 8. That real life is not a Jerry Bruckheimer film. 9. Jon Doe hates the shit out of me. 10. The signal had to be so strong for it to reach Earth, which means that this footage was recorded from a live broadcast. 11. That this whole thing is a secret mission that they had to reveal for some reason. 12. NoneOfYourBusiness gave me an answer that I needed. Thank you!
Very helpful you guys. What a great conversation. :)
"A young electrical engineer at Westinghouse, Lebar had been tasked with developing a camera that could capture the most memorable moment of the 20th century – the Apollo 11 moon landing. The goal of the mission wasn't merely to get a man on the moon. It was to send back a live television feed so that everyone could see it – particularly the Soviets, who had initiated the space race in 1957 by launching Sputnik. If the feed failed, Lebar, the designated spokesperson for the video setup, would turn the camera on himself at Mission Control in Houston and apologize to more than half a billion TV viewers. "It was my responsibility," he says. "I'd have to stand up and take the hit."
Building a camera that could survive the crushing g forces of liftoff and then function in near-weightlessness on the moon was only part of the challenge for Lebar. The portion of the broadcast spectrum traditionally used for video was sending vital ship data to Earth, and there was no room left for the standard black-and-white video format of the era: 525 scan lines of data at 30 frames per second, transmitted at 4.5 MHz. So Lebar helped devise a smaller "oddball format" – 320 scan lines at 10 fps, transmitted at a meager 500 kHz. Tracking stations back on Earth would take this so-called slow-scan footage, convert it for TV broadcast, and beam it to Mission Control, which would send it out for the world to see.
And that was the easy part. To ensure a direct transmission signal from the moon, NASA had to maintain stations in three continents – two in Australia (the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station near Canberra and the Parkes Radio Observatory surrounded by sheep paddocks west of Sydney); one at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in the Mojave Desert of California; and one at the Madrid Manned Flight Tracking Site in Spain. As Armstrong suited up for his first moonwalk, Dick Nafzger, the 28-year-old coordinator of the tracking stations' TV operations, was as nervous as Lebar. Nafzger was the guy at Mission Control charged with monitoring ground equipment and the conversion of the slow-scan footage to US broadcast standards. "We were all going to be involved in something of monumental historic importance," he says.
When Armstrong opened the hatch on the lunar module, stepped out onto the moon, and uttered his famous words about mankind's giant leap, the tracking stations with a direct line on the Apollo's signal were the ones in Australia. The 200-foot-diameter radio dish at the Parkes facility managed to withstand freak 70 mph gusts of wind and successfully captured the footage, which was converted and relayed to Houston. "When the door opened, I knew the camera was working," Lebar says, "It was pure elation."
The world watched in awe as Armstrong took his first steps, and the camera engineers at Mission Control started popping the champagne corks. Amid the celebration, though, Lebar scrutinized the video, and his joy vanished. He had known the converted footage wouldn't be as good as a standard TV signal. But as Armstrong bounded through the Sea of Tranquility, the astronaut looked like a fuzzy gray blob wading through an inkwell. "We knew what that image should look like," Lebar says, "and what I saw was nothing like what I'd simulated. We looked at each other and said, 'What happened?'"
With the rush of history upon him, Lebar let the concern pass. "As much as we may have found it disturbing," he says, "the public didn't seem to mind. Everyone seemed happy to see the guy on the moon." Lebar never even saw the raw transmission; only the few tracking-station engineers did. But as they converted the feed for Mission Control and the worldwide audience, they also recorded it onto huge reels of magnetic tape that were promptly sent to NASA to be filed for safekeeping.
Not long ago, Lebar learned why the footage had looked like mush: The transfer and broadcast had degraded the image badly, like a third-generation photocopy. "What the world saw was some bastardized thing," says Lebar, now 81. "Posterity deserves more than that." Good thing the engineers in Australia recorded the raw feed. Now Lebar and a crew of seasoned space cowboys are trying to get that original footage and show it to the world."
Yeah! Where's the slow-motion action shots of the same explosion from 5 different angles and Sean Connery parachuting from the doomed satellite seconds before impact to land on a secret British submarine somewhere in the Indian Ocean where 10 hot ladies are waiting for his fat wrinkly ass?
Your ignorant comment does a huge disservice to the people who worked on that camera to get you shots on the moon. Lets see you get your Sony Mavica work in a vacuum and at the huge temp. swings in space which can go from 120 C. down to -160 C. If you're the moronic type into conspiracies the moon conspiracy is by far the laziest. It's impossible the get a story about space on here without one of you mouthbreathing asshats bringing up the effing moon landing or 9/11. Isn't there some fanfiction and/or furry site you could be trolling on?
They did send up a color video camera with one of the moon landings. But it broke and all they needed to fix it was a screwdriver, which they forgot to pack. And it's hard to find a hardware store on the moon.
The Triumph proved to be one of the better looking and performing pre-paid handsets we'd had the pleasure of holding in our sweaty mitts, but we had one major hangup: the name.
The most commented posts on Engadget over the past 24 hours.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
Seriously people! Why the f**k dose the American Government and NASA use the crappiest video shooting devices ever? When they went to the moon they had billions of dollars in hand that enabled them to use a good and decent camera which were available at that time, but they preferred using a black and white camera with the sh*tiest quality ever; and since then, it has become something usual for them, as also seen in this stupid video!
I mean couldn't they use a feakin HD camera with a high range zoom? My Sony consumer camera can take better pictures than the video they showed!!! And VHS??!!? Are they f**king kidding me!
This was a freking nice moment in human history and they've just ruined it!
its all about budget cuts:
$73,999,900 - Ballistic missile and trajectory calculation
$100 - Camera and film
Do you honestly believe they didnt record it in HD? and that they are really using a VHS player, and not Hi8 or something more advanced? Why would this warrant such a long comment? So many questions here....
You do know that the things they're videoing are kind of far away, right? Like, hundreds of miles above the earth? No amount of HD is really going to help with that.
And as for the video of the launch, they probably were more worried about the thing going where it needed to than setting up cameras; that's probably their standard missile-hasn't-blown-up-on-the-pad check camera. Why should they have added a fancier one?
@ Dave: looooooool.
@ Kyledl: Dude, this is what everybody said in 1969 when the moon landing was aired in crappy-black and white TV quality, and even after 35+ years, we haven't seen any good footage of the moon, yet, if there is any.
I'll bet your camera wouldn't have even been able to see this. Do you know how far away that is? It's obvious that it's zoomed in significantly and that this is even digitally zoomed.
God dammit you guys!
A camera with a telescopic lens would've solved the whole problem! They are shooting pictures and sometimes videos of galaxies hundred light years away from us, and explosions happening at super far distances from earth, and they supposedly can't shoot an exploding satellite that close to us?
And do not say that having high quality images is not important, it is damn sure very important and is part of history to have good quality videos of such events! If the cause was so important and video is not, all these news reporters would have been using standard quality cameras until this day, but this is not the case; if people are dieing in some war that doesn't mean shooting the events on camera is wrong, it is what we call "Digital History", keeping records through video, which is damn sure important, and cool.
Not hate right here, just simple question: Why isn't that shot in HD then showed to people in HD too?
So your Sony camcorder can shoot high speed images of an object moving 5,000 miles an hour crashing into something moving 17,000 miles an hour, at night from around 133 nautical miles away? Must be some camcorder. There's a lot more to this than pointing a camcorder with a big lens on it at the sky. At least one of the videos was shot from 26,000 ft, apparently from an aircraft, which given the velocities of everything involved, the fact that they were able to track the missile, and have zoom capable of seeing the impact is pretty impressive. Also, I would imagine that their goals are based more on getting clear, high contrast cloud free images rather than looking like some big budget film.
Let's also not forget that it was a spy satellite and the reason for shooting it down was so that it didn't fall into the hands of others. Let's for a second assume that what Jason just said didn't make sense and they DID have HD footage of this, isn't it possible that they modified it for public showing? No... what Jason said makes perfect sense.
@Jason - intelligent post
@ Randall
Did you even watch the video, or any other news source? First, "Hundreds of Millions of Miles above the Earth" is going to take you quite far away. That Sun deal is only 100,000,000 miles away. They stated in the video that it was shot down at 149 Nautical Miles above the Earth, or 171 Statute miles, or 240 km. The space station orbits at a whopping 350-460km or 189-248 miles up. It's not that much of a stretch, a high-def camera plus digital zoom wouldn't provide too shitty of a picture. Mind you, without a huge optical lens it wouldn't be a pretty picture either.
@Saad
There's a big difference between shooting pictures of very large objects very far away and very small objects (relatively) very near to us.
Keep in mind that sattelite is moving at about 17,000mph (to put that in perspective, the missile was going 5,000mph, and a commercial jetliner doesn't usually go much faster than 600mph). To focus on a small object like that, traveling that fast at a somewhat close distance is quite difficult for any piece of equipment. Galaxies and whatnot like you mention are EXTREMELY far away and large, so any movement they do is negligible. What's easier to do....focus on a bird flying above you ~40ft or focus on a plane flying above you at 30,0000ft?
Well, Don, if this is really a spy satellite as what you said, then my whole comment is just plain nonsense. My apologies, I didn't know it was a spy satellite.
First, about the moon, the live video from the moon lacked in quality most likely because of the radio transmission of the video. Also, the moon is basicly all one color any way, so not a whole lot of color contrast. Also the good cameras back then I assume were really big and heavy, which they most likely didn't have room for.
Secondly, I don't think nasa really had any thing to do with this, atleast not the video any way. Also NASA is doing a lot of things in HD now, and I believe the Nasa channel is now broadcasting in HD. I've seen HD videos of shuttle launches, they just don't make it easy to find on the website.
Dude, real life is not a Jerry Bruckheimer film. They don't have crews up there with studio lighting and multiple cameras. As I saw that missile going up, I thought "damn, that's some pretty amazing tracking, considering that missile is going hundreds (if not thousands) of MPH." They have massive zoom lenses to see that far, especially for the kill shot. Look up at the sky. See how big it is? Imagine a point of light the size of a pinhead up there, and hitting it from the ground. And it's moving at 17,000 MPH, mind you. That there's video at all is pretty amazing.
@Saad
It's one thing to take great pictures of galaxies its all together different to take pictures of a fast moving object thats going to be smashed to bits. I would venture to guess that a lot of the astronomy pictures of galaxies, and other deep space objects aren't as simple as attach the camera to the telescope and take a shot(although I wish it was that simple :) ). From what I understand, a series of shots have to be taken and then "stacked" in a software program (atleast with digital astrophotography, not sure how it works with film astrophotography. Not only that but the exposure time on a single photograph is generally more than a few seconds, to let more light in.
@ Kamokazi & DT:
Of course it is harder to track a bird on a tree than to track a plane far away fro me, but my point here is not about how far or how stabilized is the shot it is about the raw medium and hardware that they used? I mean if I use your example Kamokazi, I could put it this way:
Which one has better picture? Using the same equipments and shooting methods with an HD camera or using the the same equipments and shooting methods with an SD camera?
So Kamokazi, even though that it is hard to shoot that "bird", it would've been a great thing if they used better "processing" and better quality cameras.
You get me right?
It's not as simple as just swapping out the camera behind the lens, or even swapping out the sensor. It's not as though they shot with an off the shelf camcorder and should have swapped it with a better off the shelf camcorder. I have no first hand knowledge, but I would guess that the sensor used in military grade extremely long range cameras is a unique beast completely different from what you'd find in a consumer or pro level video camera. And simply adding pixels doesn't always work.
As an example look at the transition from sd camcorders to hd camcorders. When given the same sensor size, say 1/4" and cramming more pixels onto the sensor, less light actually hits each pixel. Which is one of the reasons(as I understand it) that HD low light performance is lagging behind SD currently. I would imagine that designing a camera made to film moving objects in low light conditions hundreds of miles away while the camera itself is moving at great speeds probably involves some tradeoffs.
You do realize it would have been easier to send Black and white over FM radio (what they used) than color. Less Bandwidth is required for Black and white.
Probably one of many things.
- Last night there was the lunar eclipse, so all of the high grade cameras with Stellar Observatories for Telescopic view were probably reserved years ago to photograph Saturn's Moons and such. Far more important information!
- He said there was HD film taken of the event, which they are reviewing. So there is film.
- Regardless of anything else this was a US Military Excersize, to shoot down a US Satellite with a $60million US Missle, if I had to guess probably $300million of US tax payer money went up in smoke last night, and if the military had the chance they would say it never happened, just in order to save face. Therefore, the really telling pictures are classified, and probably always will be.
SAAD,
Please do us all a favor and tell that to the face of one of the Apollo astronauts. They may be old, they will take your fucking head off for even suggesting such a thing. Actually go ahead and say that to anyone working the Apollo program at the time. You will be lucky if you only get a broken nose. These people put their damn lives on hold and on the line for this. This tin hat wearing bullshit is just that. This is in the same insane vein as people who are/were suggesting that, that wannabe face on mars is proof of previous life there and NASA is covering it up. Same bullshit different people.
PS....http://science.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/Science/Images/Content/tranquility-base-gpn-2000-001102-xl.jpg
http://space.about.com/library/images/aagrapollo11a.htm
http://nix.ksc.nasa.gov/search;jsessionid=1nc8rq1p0ebxk
Again STFU you loon.
@ Jon Doe: Thank you. :|
Sure, everyone else is doing it, I'll reply too.
The low-fidelity film from the lunar landing was because of three things:
1. The signal had to be so strong it could reach Earth
2. The camera had to be small enough to be easily carried and used
3. The battery power had to last while shooting film and sending the signal
They had the technology for nice quality color picture then, but it simply couldn't happen with the limited battery power and size. So, they had a lower resolution than 480i and a black-and-white image.
Hope that answers that for ya ;)
I don't suppose the thought ever occurred to you that they do have high definition, crisp, clear video of the event but chose not to release it because of paranoid secrecy concerns?
Saad Rabia:
I understand your point of view, but you need to understand the difference of Hollywood and reality. I happen to work with NVA systems and my company sells equipment like this to the military.
I can tell you right away that the point is not to deliver outstanding picture quality, but to capture differentials in high contrast. The idea is to saturate everything that is moving at high velocity (explosions, the targets, fragments of the targets, etc). By doing so, you get a much clearer image. High color gamuts and super resolutions are pointless for this kind of operation since it would interfere with the actual bombing, making it a lot harder to see what actually happened.
As for the moon landings and the Hasselblad objectives that were used, things have changed significantly for the past 50 years or so. If we ever go to the moon, you can expect incredible detail.
I have learned from all of the comments that:
1. They have clean, clear, crisp HD footage.
2. They don't have HD footage, because they can't do it at that hight, or that they don't care.
3. They actually shot down a spy satellite.
4. NASA will kick my butt for whatever I said.
5. I can't use a Sony camera to video tape such an event. (I had no idea!)
6. USA military has super systems that we didn't know about until some people told us about it right here.
7. SD is better than HD in some ways, hence (maybe) shooting this process in low quality SD (maybe).
8. That real life is not a Jerry Bruckheimer film.
9. Jon Doe hates the shit out of me.
10. The signal had to be so strong for it to reach Earth, which means that this footage was recorded from a live broadcast.
11. That this whole thing is a secret mission that they had to reveal for some reason.
12. NoneOfYourBusiness gave me an answer that I needed. Thank you!
Very helpful you guys. What a great conversation. :)
Saad Rabia,
"A young electrical engineer at Westinghouse, Lebar had been tasked with developing a camera that could capture the most memorable moment of the 20th century – the Apollo 11 moon landing. The goal of the mission wasn't merely to get a man on the moon. It was to send back a live television feed so that everyone could see it – particularly the Soviets, who had initiated the space race in 1957 by launching Sputnik. If the feed failed, Lebar, the designated spokesperson for the video setup, would turn the camera on himself at Mission Control in Houston and apologize to more than half a billion TV viewers. "It was my responsibility," he says. "I'd have to stand up and take the hit."
Building a camera that could survive the crushing g forces of liftoff and then function in near-weightlessness on the moon was only part of the challenge for Lebar. The portion of the broadcast spectrum traditionally used for video was sending vital ship data to Earth, and there was no room left for the standard black-and-white video format of the era: 525 scan lines of data at 30 frames per second, transmitted at 4.5 MHz. So Lebar helped devise a smaller "oddball format" – 320 scan lines at 10 fps, transmitted at a meager 500 kHz. Tracking stations back on Earth would take this so-called slow-scan footage, convert it for TV broadcast, and beam it to Mission Control, which would send it out for the world to see.
And that was the easy part. To ensure a direct transmission signal from the moon, NASA had to maintain stations in three continents – two in Australia (the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station near Canberra and the Parkes Radio Observatory surrounded by sheep paddocks west of Sydney); one at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in the Mojave Desert of California; and one at the Madrid Manned Flight Tracking Site in Spain. As Armstrong suited up for his first moonwalk, Dick Nafzger, the 28-year-old coordinator of the tracking stations' TV operations, was as nervous as Lebar. Nafzger was the guy at Mission Control charged with monitoring ground equipment and the conversion of the slow-scan footage to US broadcast standards. "We were all going to be involved in something of monumental historic importance," he says.
When Armstrong opened the hatch on the lunar module, stepped out onto the moon, and uttered his famous words about mankind's giant leap, the tracking stations with a direct line on the Apollo's signal were the ones in Australia. The 200-foot-diameter radio dish at the Parkes facility managed to withstand freak 70 mph gusts of wind and successfully captured the footage, which was converted and relayed to Houston. "When the door opened, I knew the camera was working," Lebar says, "It was pure elation."
The world watched in awe as Armstrong took his first steps, and the camera engineers at Mission Control started popping the champagne corks. Amid the celebration, though, Lebar scrutinized the video, and his joy vanished. He had known the converted footage wouldn't be as good as a standard TV signal. But as Armstrong bounded through the Sea of Tranquility, the astronaut looked like a fuzzy gray blob wading through an inkwell. "We knew what that image should look like," Lebar says, "and what I saw was nothing like what I'd simulated. We looked at each other and said, 'What happened?'"
With the rush of history upon him, Lebar let the concern pass. "As much as we may have found it disturbing," he says, "the public didn't seem to mind. Everyone seemed happy to see the guy on the moon." Lebar never even saw the raw transmission; only the few tracking-station engineers did. But as they converted the feed for Mission Control and the worldwide audience, they also recorded it onto huge reels of magnetic tape that were promptly sent to NASA to be filed for safekeeping.
Not long ago, Lebar learned why the footage had looked like mush: The transfer and broadcast had degraded the image badly, like a third-generation photocopy. "What the world saw was some bastardized thing," says Lebar, now 81. "Posterity deserves more than that." Good thing the engineers in Australia recorded the raw feed. Now Lebar and a crew of seasoned space cowboys are trying to get that original footage and show it to the world."
That explains why it looked like shit. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/nasa.html
@Jon:
$300 million? No, a lot more taxpayer money was wasted than that. Try >$10 billion not including the cost of the missile.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/that-satellite.html
Yeah! Where's the slow-motion action shots of the same explosion from 5 different angles and Sean Connery parachuting from the doomed satellite seconds before impact to land on a secret British submarine somewhere in the Indian Ocean where 10 hot ladies are waiting for his fat wrinkly ass?
Your ignorant comment does a huge disservice to the people who worked on that camera to get you shots on the moon. Lets see you get your Sony Mavica work in a vacuum and at the huge temp. swings in space which can go from 120 C. down to -160 C. If you're the moronic type into conspiracies the moon conspiracy is by far the laziest. It's impossible the get a story about space on here without one of you mouthbreathing asshats bringing up the effing moon landing or 9/11. Isn't there some fanfiction and/or furry site you could be trolling on?
@Sma
They did send up a color video camera with one of the moon landings. But it broke and all they needed to fix it was a screwdriver, which they forgot to pack. And it's hard to find a hardware store on the moon.