The rest of the original images

[Jairo]

Where are stored the original films and tapes from the Apollo missions?

Are they in a single place?

Thanks.

[echnaton]

The film is stored in the Film Archive (Building 8) at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

[Jairo]

Thanks. Does this include the video tapes?

And... should I have said "where are the original films and tapes stored"?

[echnaton]

I don't know how the video and other telemetry signals set back from the moon are stored.

[ka9q]

Apparently NASA has treated telemetry tapes rather differently from photographic materials. The latter are kept in freezers and handled very carefully; the former seem to be stored much as an afterthought, and in some cases the tapes were recycled to meet a shortage due to QC problems with new tapes. This is a real shame, as we could now produce better quality conversions from NASA's non-standard video formats than were made at the time.

Knowing what we know now, had I been the NASA archivist I would have insisted on finding some way to archive the raw telemetry data using the technology available at the time. E.g., it probably would have been possible to record at least some of those signals on film that could be stored in the same way as the actual photographic materials.

But all this was 4 decades ago, and one can't really hold NASA responsible for not seeing that far into the future and predicting the technology we'd have today.

[Ginnie]

Oct 4, 2010 13:59:42 GMT -4 ka9q said:

Apparently NASA has treated telemetry tapes rather differently from photographic materials. The latter are kept in freezers and handled very carefully; the former seem to be stored much as an afterthought, and in some cases the tapes were recycled to meet a shortage due to QC problems with new tapes. This is a real shame, as we could now produce better quality conversions from NASA's non-standard video formats than were made at the time.

Knowing what we know now, had I been the NASA archivist I would have insisted on finding some way to archive the raw telemetry data using the technology available at the time. E.g., it probably would have been possible to record at least some of those signals on film that could be stored in the same way as the actual photographic materials.

But all this was 4 decades ago, and one can't really hold NASA responsible for not seeing that far into the future and predicting the technology we'd have today.

In the late sixties, 80,000 magnetic tapes related to satellites and the space program were being analyzed annually by computers. That's a lot of tape.

[Jairo]

Is the film from the 16 mm DAC cameras stored together with the other film material in the Film Archive?

[gonetoplaid]

Oct 8, 2010 9:01:30 GMT -4 Jairo said:

Is the film from the 16 mm DAC cameras stored together with the other film material in the Film Archive?

I would suspect it is since it is "Flight Film." If this is true, then all of us should petition NASA/ASU to also digitally scan the 16mm DAC films as well.