Technologies that we’ve lost – and the quest to find them again, io9
“I asked NASA Watch’s Keith Cowing about this, and he explained that this is just an urban legend. The schematics are all still around, mostly on microfiche, and any ancient computer files just hold images of the original plans as opposed to now unreadably obsolete data. Still, while the knowledge wasn’t lost, it was certainly forgotten, and worse, it was badly organized. As Cowing – himself working on the rediscovery of old NASA documents with the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project – told me, all this archival information was basically abandoned until NASA’s started working on the Constellation program last decade, and now that that project has been forgotten the information is again beginning to gather dust. If there is a point of disconnect, it’s more in terms of how we understand the information and the different ways in which we approach science forty-five years on”
Unfortunately some of the important information from the Apollo and Viking
programs have been lost. A search is going on for drawings and reports for use
on the Orion program. I am going though documentation in my collection and will
provide info to the requesting authority (I do not want to reveal this persons
name or affiliation at this time). What happened to much of the lost info is
that it was in corporation archives and has been lost due to companies going out
of business, acquisitions, deterioration, or use of obsolete storage techniques (one company
had their records on Wang discs which are not now readable due to
deterioration).
And these losses are still occurring. Before I retired I left all the items in my office neatly filed; shortly
thereafter after I was contacted to help with some issues I found the management
just put the contents of my office into a dumpster.