Fly by Foy

[Jairo]

www.flybyfoy.com/nasa.htm

It is an enterprise specialized in "flying with wires", saying that they were called by NASA to simulate the Apollo images, in the case they lost signal.

Do you know any NASA source about that?

[JayUtah]

I'm quite familiar with Foy -- I'm a certified Foy flying technician.

This is news to me. If such a contingency was planned, why wasn't it invoked for Apollo 12 when the signal was lost?

[Jairo]

I stumbled on that in the wikipedia article about William Karel's Dark Side of the Moon. I've never seen anything about this, even from HBs. But they are likely to use this information to suggest it could and was indeed faked. Maybe it's a matter of time.

I would like to research a little more before it comes.

[PhantomWolf]

Interesting. I'm sure that had they had to use it it would have been made clear that it was a simulation because of signal loss, though since they didn't use it we'll never know. It would seem that they only did it the once. Of course it's the sort of contingency that would make sense if you were doing it for real, since if it was being faked you wouldn't have to worry about signal loss, but I doubt that'd stop the CT's claiming it was an attempt to fake the fake. Interesting that they commented that the hanger setup looked nothing like the landing site, if the landsite was really a studio one would have thought that they'd have been able to do a better job with the hanger version.

[BertL]

I watched some CBS footage with Walter Cronkite of Apollo 11, and they used simulations of what was going on before the astronauts turned on the television camera on the surface. I would say that the company was hired to do these kinds of simulations.

[PhantomWolf]

Quite logical really, after all who would have wanted to sit and watch Walter for 4 hours?

[rfinkels]

I have some direct knowledge and expertise in this area as I am the webmaster and defacto historian for Flying by Foy. I certify that the materials presented on the webpage at:
www.flybyfoy.com/nasa.htm are accurate. I have held the original photographs in my own hands. Furthermore I had a related conversation directly with Peter Foy in 1968 which may provide some background to this story as well as the CBS link.

When a live TV feed was tried for the first time....I think it was a Gemini flight, the astronauts pointed the unit directly at the sun early in its operation and blew the camera tubes. At the time Flying by Foy had been providing all three main networks with services for their NASA flight coverage. Peter had recounted to me that after the live camera flight had been announced, two of the three networks canceled use of Foy services for simulation. Only one of the networks continued to use the services of Foy.

Of course when the camera was destroyed, only that single network was left with any kind of dynamic coverage via the Foy simulations.

Indeed there had been a long tradition of Foy simulation of NASA work, going back even before there was a NASA (yes a Paradox). The 1959-1960 Television Series "Men Into Space" features EXTENSIVE "Weightlessness" effects by Foy. I recently watched about 6 of the episodes of this weekly TV show and find the work to be quite extraordinary. At the time and for years after, this depiction was considered to be the most realistic depiction of early manned space flight though in hindsight one might wonder why.

In the TV show, the space flights are undertaken by the US Air Force and the Surgeon General's Office, and I believe these orgs are also listed as consultants. No mention of NASA in this TV show depiction (NASA wasn't founded until the latter part of 1958). By the way, Men into Space was broadcast on CBS

There was no intent by Foy to "Fake" a moon landing and indeed his simulations of the actual event were never broadcast (though as I said earlier the still photos are in the record). Had deception been the intent, I do not believe that Peter would have participated in the project. But given the failed live coverage earlier in the space program, and the earlier work on Men Into Space (and later, "The Flying Nun" and "Fantastic Voyage", it seems quite logical that his services would have been employed to aid in the momentous lunar landing coverage.

By the way the services of Foy are still used from time to time in Governmental work. Only last month in London, Foy's services were used at the opening of the new Darwin Centre Museum, where human butterflies flew above the head of Prince Harry. In the USA the Foy folks were employed to fly the million-dollar replica of the Wright Flier in for the opening of the Smithsonian's new Hazy Center of the Air and Space Museum.

If people are interested, I will see if Peter's family has more recollections of the specifics surrounding the NASA work though this may take a few months as I am located away from their home in Vegas.

Richard Finkelstein