Apollo 11 tapes for sale

[Obviousman]

From Colin Mackellar:

Hi all,

You might see media reports today - like the one below….


https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jun/28/apollo-11-tapes-moon-landing-sale-value-nearly-lost

Apollo 11 tapes bought for $218 may sell for millions after nearly being lost
Tapes identified in 2008 as the only surviving original recording of the first moon landing in 1969 are to go up for auction in July

Sat 29 Jun 2019 AEST

When Gary George bought a truckload of videotapes for $218 from a US government surplus auction more than 40 years ago, he planned to sell them to television stations – to record over.



For what it’s worth, I thought I'd mention that the tape search team is familiar with the background to these tapes. We evaluated them, more than 10 years ago, for the EVA TV restoration effort.

They are NTSC 525 line quad tapes recorded at Houston - so not slow scan - and not unique either.

There are quite a few “original recordings” of the converted TV - of variable quality.

While these tapes are quite good, they are certainly not "the only surviving original recording”.


I thought I should mention that, in case you were thinking of starting a fundraising campaign to buy them. ;-)

(I’ve seen reports that Sotheby’s hopes for $2.5 million for them.)

<https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/one-small-step-one-rare-recording-see-the-moon-landing-like-never-before>


I certainly wish the seller well!

best wishes

Colin

[bknight]

That was a great investment.

[VQ]

I wondered about this, because the reporting on CNN was quite unclear. So these are one station's recordings of the original live TV broadcast of the EVA? From the way the article I saw was written, it sounded like these were unique film recordings that had been physically recorded on the moon's surface, which seemed incredible.

[Obviousman]

They are just good quality NTSC video tapes of the mission.

[apollo16uvc]

I wondered about this, because the reporting on CNN was quite unclear. So these are one station's recordings of the original live TV broadcast of the EVA? From the way the article I saw was written, it sounded like these were unique film recordings that had been physically recorded on the moon's surface, which seemed incredible.

These are tapes recorded At Houston.
Which means they are recordings directly from the tracking station signal and thus much higher quality than those recorded by people from TV, or by broadcasting stations.

[apollo16uvc]

It won't matter.

The fact that NASA doesn't have these tapes already means they don't care about providing an other, possible superiour source of the EVA.
It may be possible to combine footage from the tapes NASA got with this source to increase sharpness and decrease noise.
The footage in the reference shot looks very sharp, better clarity than the source used for restoration by NASA.

If it gets bought by a collector the digital files will never be released. As long as it isn't in the digtal domain and copied at multiple locations on Earth it might as wel not exist.

A sad day for the preservation of history.

[Obviousman]

Seems he hit the jackpot!

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-07-21/moon-landing-nasa-original-videos-sold-at-sothebys-auction/11329292

[Dandy]

I really hope the buyer has them enhanced and posted to the web. I'd really like to see it. Some day, someone talented will do a 3D model recreation of the EVA incorporating all available terrain data and hasselblad photography. I know it can be done. I'd like it to be done in a game engine like Unity so we could move the camera POV around and watch them from any location at any time in the EVA.

[Obviousman]

I really hope the buyer has them enhanced and posted to the web. I'd really like to see it. Some day, someone talented will do a 3D model recreation of the EVA incorporating all available terrain data and hasselblad photography. I know it can be done. I'd like it to be done in a game engine like Unity so we could move the camera POV around and watch them from any location at any time in the EVA.

It would be great to have VR technology allow us to walk around the various sites, wouldn't it?

Hell, put us in a EVA suit and experience what it was like for the astronauts!