NASA Ignores Its Own Cool Stuff Again
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Update: NASA caught their omission and corrected it.
Additionally, in 2008, the "Earthrise" image was restored by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project using the mission's original data tapes and a restored original FR-900 tape drive. More on the restoration: https://t.co/qYpeqmWyYQ pic.twitter.com/lLwDy73Qi0
— NASA (@NASA) August 23, 2018
Sure it’s cool, Keith, if you are a CSG (Certified Space Geek).
But if you are an ordinary American it looks like the thousandth copy on a 1980’s Xerox.
For those who aren’t aware of it, the high resolution Lunar Orbiter 1 photos would have likely been lost forever if it hadn’t been for the efforts of Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing who basically picked up the baton on what had been an abandoned project in the past to recover the images off of the original tapes. The tapes could only be read by Ampex FR-900 tape drives, rare even when operational, the few relics that could be found needed to be restored.
In case you are thinking of your old Ampex reel-to-reel tape drive, the FR-900 was six feet tall and weighed 600 pounds.
The following Wikipedia link has the fascinating story behind the restoration project.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/…
They did a really great job! They deserve a huge thank you for saving history.
Seeing the picture of the tape drive brings back memories of when I was at New Mexico Tech in the early 1980’s. Once when getting something from a storage shed by Workman Center I stumbled on a pair of tape drives that had JPL tags on them and wondered what historic data they might have handled.
In the year 1966, the year NASA’s budget maxed out at ~4% of the US budget and we get firsts like these images and the landings that soon followed. Now 50 years later, eking out an existence in a unfocused, ever contended industry, and surrounded by a population that has video games with better resolution and destinations than anything reality can promise. I worry about the path forward.