"Talk"

[turbonium]

I listened to an interview with Bart Sibrel (the good buddy of most here! )
He mentions that the Apollo 11 "secret" footage he received has dialogue between the astronauts and ground control, in which a third party voice is heard saying "Talk" to the astronauts after a long period of dead air after ground control had spoken.

What's the story on this?

[twinstead]

If I recall, we have only his word for it; the 'talk' segment has never been shown.

Does anybody have any more information?

[JayUtah]

Yeah I do.

What Sibrel interprets as the word "talk" (and doesn't let anyone tell him differently) is a garble caused by leakage through the intercom diodes. It was a well known problem with the Apollo comm system and it happens only about a thousand times in every mission, including just before the well-known "Houston, we have a problem" transmission.

The astronauts' headsets were used for local communications as well as for talking over the radio. They have a switch on their umbilical that switches modes. When it's in intercom mode (the default) sometimes conversation over the intercom leaks across diodes onto the downlink circuit. So what you hear is a noisy, distorted version of whatever the astronaut says over the intercom to his crewmates.

[PhantomWolf]

I might be wrong, but the footage is when they were testing the TV equipment. Because the group that were getting the feed from the TV Camera were in one place, and Mission Control was just getting audio, they wanted the crew to discribe what they were filming so that they could later figure out how the two fit together. The crew were a bit slow in responding to give a commentery to the filming so Huston was justing giving them a little reminder.


Well after reading Jay's post, I probably am wrong. lol

[JayUtah]

Nobody says "talk". There's just a syllable that Sibrel thinks sounds like the word "talk". Therefore it has to be the word "talk". Anyone who has listened to any appreciable portion of Apollo audio knows exactly what those garbles are.

[turbonium]

The link to the clip is below. It's "Video Sample 2" from the video "A Funny Thing..."

www.moonmovie.com/moonmovie/

[sts60]

Well, the footage isn't "secret" either. So the underlying premise fails too.

[turbonium]

So what you hear is a noisy, distorted version of whatever the astronaut says over the intercom to his crewmates.

I have to be honest here - while I'm no fan of Sibrel and his tactics, it does sound like somebody saying "Talk" to me. I really don't hear any noise or distortion of some "garble", Jay. But I'll also consider your point about a lot of similar audio "glitches" being heard amongst the Apollo transmissions. Do you know of other examples I could find that could be mistaken for this type of thing?

It's only my personal opinion, of course. Would the voice, if authentic, implicate the Apollo 11 mission as faked because there should be no third party on the audio?

[frenat]

The interesting thing about how the brain tries to make sense of randomness (such as hearing voices in static and pictures in the clouds etc.) is that if you are told what you are supposed to be hearing or seeing it suddenly becomes much easier to hear it that way. Before that, you may think it is something completely different.

[Bob B.]

frenat said:

...if you are told what you are supposed to be hearing or seeing it suddenly becomes much easier to hear it that way. Before that, you may think it is something completely different.

I agree, frenat. When I heard the audio originally I though it resembled the word "talk" but it certainly wasn't very clear. After I listened to it a couple more times I came to the conclusion it sounded like "talk" only because Sibrel planted that idea in my head. I think it would have just sounded like a garbled syllable without the suggestion.

[JayUtah]

...it does sound like somebody saying "Talk" to me.

That's purely subjective.

I really don't hear any noise or distortion of some "garble", Jay.

That doesn't even make sense. "Garble" and "distortion" and "noise" are essentially the same thing the way I'm using them. Whether you say it was garbled or distorted or noisy, that's pretty much saying the same thing.

I hear a very unmistakable electronic distortion, such as what you get when your analog stereo cables fray or when you've got the wrong signal level internally in the equipment. It's fully consistent with what we would expect from the given explanation: diode leakage. That sort of buzzing, humming tone to the syllable is what you hear when things leak.

Do you know of other examples I could find that could be mistaken for this type of thing?

The only one whose location I know for sure is the one I mentioned before: Apollo 13 reporting their explosion. I listen to a whole bunch of Apollo audio for other reasons and I note the crossover garbles but I don't keep track of where each one occurs. Your best bet is to pull out one of the mission DVDs and just let it play for a while.

Would the voice, if authentic, implicate the Apollo 11 mission as faked because there should be no third party on the audio?

Even in the worst case, what is your evidence that this is some third party? Why, for the sake of argument, can't it have been one of the onboard crew? It's also a point of unsupported interpretation that our mystery voice "must" be a third party.

But to answer your question directly, it's a matter of convention that the CAPCOM alone talks to the crew. But it is technically possible and allowed in some cases for others such as the MSFN operators also to address the crew. It's not a hard-and-fast rule that it's a two-party conversation.

But why should we even consider that? It's very far from established that this is an order from some cigarette-smoking backroom guy, and at worst it's a begged question. That sort of thinking is what you get when you let the desired conclusion drive the argument.

This is a limited-scope fallacy. Sibrel singles out one garble and writes this whole backstory for it. But none of that means diddly if you can't similarly explain the other thousand times. If your explanation answers only one data point in a thousand and doesn't work for any of the others, you reject it as improbable. What was the cigarette-smoking prompter saying the other thousand times?

The diode explanation doesn't suffer from this. Not only is it well within the experience of electrical engineers, it explains every single time it happens.

[turbonium]

That's quite true, and is something I was going to mention. Having pre-conceived ideas about what one has yet to hear or see can "cloud" one's judgement. There is no way of knowing whether or not it applies in this case, unless the audio is played for people eho aren't aware that it has been identified as the word "talk" beforehand.

Maybe we should all play the audio segment in question for others who haven't heard it before and are not told to listen for the word "talk", or anything else about it for that matter.....

[JayUtah]

Yes, Turbonium, I agree. When I worked with my father doing social science research I had to read all about the zillion ways you can improperly lead a respondent. These questions:

Do you hear the word "talk"?
What word do you hear?
What do you hear?
Do you hear anything?

will all get you different answers -- all of them correct because they're subjective!

[frenat]

That would be interesting to see what people think it is but it is definitely not what Sibrel wants to have happen.

[turbonium]

That's purely subjective.

Of course it is - I thought I was clear on that point by saying "to me" it sounded like "talk".

That doesn't even make sense. "Garble" and "distortion" and "noise" are essentially the same thing the way I'm using them. Whether you say it was garbled or distorted or noisy, that's pretty much saying the same thing.

I assumed you made the same distinction between them which I did. My mistake. Sorry.

I hear a very unmistakable electronic distortion, such as what you get when your analog stereo cables fray or when you've got the wrong signal level internally in the equipment. It's fully consistent with what we would expect from the given explanation: diode leakage. That sort of buzzing, humming tone to the syllable is what you hear when things leak.

What you hear is also purely subjective, of course. Much better than our personal opinions would be to apply the audio samples to waveforem analysis.

The only one whose location I know for sure is the one I mentioned before: Apollo 13 reporting their explosion. I listen to a whole bunch of Apollo audio for other reasons and I note the crossover garbles but I don't keep track of where each one occurs. Your best bet is to pull out one of the mission DVDs and just let it play for a while.

Thank you.

Even in the worst case, what is your evidence that this is some third party? Why, for the sake of argument, can't it have been one of the onboard crew? It's also a point of unsupported interpretation that our mystery voice "must" be a third party.

Whoa, hold on and ease up. This is the claim Sibrel makes in the interview I heard as a "third party voice". I'm not personally claiming there is "evidence" for a third party voice.

But to answer your question directly, it's a matter of convention that the CAPCOM alone talks to the crew. But it is technically possible and allowed in some cases for others such as the MSFN operators also to address the crew. It's not a hard-and-fast rule that it's a two-party conversation.

That's all I wanted to know - what a third party voice, if it existed, would mean regarding any evidence for a hoax. From your answer, it would not prove any such thing.

Jay - I have this vision of your blood pressure rising to perilous levels. As we have noted before, it's not healthy for either of us to get too worked up over these discussions, or to take them personally. Perhaps it's hitting a nerve because it's really a "Sibrel" issue, but I'm just speculating...

Anyway,

Cheers.