A few days ago my girlfriend and I made a small, but highly entertaining discovery at one of our favourite little restaurants in Linden.Waiting for our order, we decided to play one of the old board games stacked up on a bookshelf near the till. I reached into the dusty pile and yanked out a small box with "Fact or Crap" written on the faded cardboard. No mystery about how the game works: you read out a list of statements and your opponent guesses whether they are true or false - fact or crap.
Within minutes we were lost in the game, working through the cards faster than the chef could sprinkle toppings onto our pizza. Fact, fact, crap, fact, crap, crap... and on it went until the food arrived.
Next month, Nasa will ask the entire world to play a big fat game of "Fact or Crap" when they unveil "new and amazingly clear" footage of the 1969 moon landing. Yes, the "one small step, one giant leap" one. THE moon landing. After 40 years of conspiracy theories about whether America made the whole thing up, Nasa will try convince us that somehow, the most important videotape in the world (not counting the Paris Hilton one) was "lost".
At this point I should reveal my bias. I am Russian and am therefore a little subjective on the space race issue. Although we sent the first man into space, we never attempted a single moon landing - never mind moon walk (Michael, may you rest in peace). But surely I can't be the only one who questions this incredible discovery.
* The Daily Express broke the story and has a fascinating article on it. Read it here (right-click and open new tab). And comment on whether you think it's for real.
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Interesting! I've been following this with interest all my life and while it's obvious that the Apollo Missions did actually happen, and that the footage we have seen is actually a real moon landing I have always had a few questions (from when I was about 5 years old) and I'm hoping someone can answer them.
ReplyDelete1. Neil Armstrong walking down the ladder to set foot on the moon - who set up the camera? I guess it was probably an 8mm lens set at about 10m away to be able to get the LEM in the shot. ??? I originally thought there might have been an off set boom? No! Maybe another craft? No! The lunar orbiter was doing laps around the moon at the time. So WTF? Did Buzz Aldrin get out first and set up the shot so that Neil Armstrong could take the glory?
2. Once they were done on the moon and took off to dock with the orbiter, there is footage off the moon take off, sparks flying and a great rate of take off. In this video, as the LEM takes off the camera pans out and tracks up to see the LEM reach about 200ft or so. While it's possible they left a camera on the moon that was relaying video back to Australia how did they do the pan & tilt etc? I doubt whether they had the technology to do it. It would have meant using a light sensitive pan & tilt camera with auto focus as well as object tracking (a little like what we have today in the form of facial recognition / number plate recognition) cameras to do it and while it was actually a Moon mission run by literal rocket scientists I don't believe they had the camera tech. Maybe they left a camera man up there???
Looking fwd to this newly scrubbed footage - I just think it will inspire more questions.
Cheers, R
Phil Plait has blogged about this too and in an update wrote:
ReplyDelete"Update 2: According to Bob Jacobs, NASA Deputy Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs, the Sunday Express article I link to below "is a fiction". Sounds to me like I got duped, and I apologize to everyone for forwarding this story. Hopefully more info will come out soon, and I’ll update as I hear it."
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/28/lost-apollo-11-video-tapes-found/
How interesting. I picked up this link on Twitter and went to the newspaper directly, found the story and linked up to it. At that stage, Nasa hadn't said anything on it (I checked their website too). Working for a newspaper myself, I wouldn't be surprised if someone got a little too creative with the story. You have to admit, it makes a great read. I remember the day we declared - on our front page - how a President had died while he was very much alive in hospital. Made for an interesting correction the following morning... I'll keep checking on this.
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