Apollo 16: The Men, Moon and Memories

Published on May 22, 2013

This program profiles the mission of Apollo 16, and presents FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME interviews with ALL THREE astronauts who went on that mission, Commander John Young, Lunar Module Pilot Charlie Duke, and Command Module Pilot TK Mattingly. Apollo 16: The Men, Moon and Memories is an engaging, unique, and definitive one-hour documentary, looking at this historic mission through the eyes of those who participated in it.

The successful Apollo 16 Manned Lunar Landing Mission was the second in a series of three science-oriented missions planned for the Apollo program. The major objective of the mission was to investigate the largest area ever covered of the lunar surface thanks to the newly created Lunar Rover which gave the Astronauts the ability to cover miles of turain in a short amount of time.

©UFOTV® and NASAFLIX®, a UFO Video, Inc. Company.

Visit us online: http://www.UFOTV.com

This film is really quite nicely done.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I clicked on it since it was from a UFO-related site, which, to be frank, often means trouble, but once it started, I couldn’t stop watching it.

It was a nice feeling and a refreshing surprise.

Gosh, there are so many stories contained within; fabulous footage from before, during and after the mission; personal recollections galore, great insights and even a few funny stories… most if not all of which I had never heard before… I assure you that you will not regret watching this movie.

Enjoy and Peace.

LRV on the Moon – Apollo 16 – HD Video Stabilized

Uploaded on Aug 27, 2010

Apollo 16’s LRV rolling about the surface of the moon.

video stabilized using Deshaker v2.5 filter for VirtualDub 1.9.9

Source: Apollo Mission 16mm High Definition Transfers

Nice. Very nice.

Kudos and props to britoca, the uploader, for finding, stabilizing and sharing this footage.

Being so distracted lately I don’t remember seeing this clip, although I surely must have at some point, but, hey, here it is now and that’s what counts.

Peace.

“Leaving The Area At A High Rate Of Speed”

I love Pete Conrad.

Published on Aug 15, 2012 by eeasynow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_spacecraft

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Conrad

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/images/print/AS17/148/22682.jpg

Seriously.

A classic if ever there was one.

As for the video, it seems like the SLA panel’s still there, but there is other movement by something in apparent close proximity.

Actually, though, it isn’t exactly clear if the footage shown corresponds to the observation given or if it is being used to illustrate the point.

Either way, I like it.

And if the latter, good eye!

Peace.

Two Heaping Helpings Of Apollo Image Anomalies!

Due to new and debilitating circumstances which will prevail for a while, my escalating despondency precludes writing much of anything, but I’m dealing with it. Today wasn’t so bad after all. It’s just so hard. If you only knew. I do surely want to post stuff, as WATT is one of the few things I’ve got to hold on to. So in light of that, here is something for you to enjoy in the interim that I find rather exciting. As usual, Luna has compiled some truly fascinating material:

Uploaded by LunaCognita on Mar 11, 2011

This presentation is a simple compilation of some more anomalous photographs and 16mm DAC film footage that I have archived during my years of research and investigation looking into the activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The images and footage shown here were taken during the Apollo program, filmed by the astronaut flight crews during their journeys to and from the Moon.
Most of what I show here involves “lunar transients” – unidentified objects in space that were captured on film as they transited in front of (or passed near) a celestrial body such as the Moon or Earth. I believe many of these objects are not on the lunar surface, but rather were above the lunar surface when captured on film.

I also include several examples of NASA image obfuscation as well, just to help highlight the fact that the space agency also removes anomalous objects from frame in order to “sanitize” scenes prior to official archive release so as to ensure they do not reveal too much of the truth about what is really up there.

Hope you enjoy!
Cheers,
LC

Here is a link to an ongoing forum discussion regarding some of what is shown in this video.
http://magic-ufo.forum-phpbb.in/t1122-nasa-s-anomalies-above-the-moon-ufos-ca… (Ed. Note: Defunct.)

Here are a few links to the last set of images I show, dealing with the detection of cropping obfuscation being employed to sanitize the scenes
.
NASA “Gateway” archive link to frame#AS11-36-5319 – shows object off the Earth’s limb.
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/photo.pl?mission=AS11&roll=36&f…

NASA “LPI” archive version of #AS11-36-5319 that does not show the object (residue of the cropping is detectable under enhancement)
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/images/print/AS11/36/5319.jpg

Cropping proof – second last image shown (AS16-118-18873).
ftp://nssdcftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/miscellaneous/planetary/apollo/a16_h_118_18873.tiff

Cropping proof – Last image shown (AS13-60-8588).
ftp://nssdcftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/miscellaneous/planetary/apollo/a13_h_60_8588.tiff

My favorite bit in that collection are the two objects shown landing (as opposed to crashing) between 1:10 and 1:30. I note with excitement that they both land in the very same crater / depression. And that, my friends is why I refer to them as landing. Additionally, they are way too slow to be meteoritic objects impinging on the lunar surface. Absolutely my favorite scene. To date, anyway.

I like, a lot, the rectangular thingie that starts at 3:58, too, as I’ve always had a soft spot for rectangular UFOs; I mean, it’s just so aerodynamically wrong… and also the “pole” that follows. Nice.

And now for part 2:

Uploaded by LunaCognita on Mar 28, 2011

Hello everyone. Since I received such a positive reaction to my last video –http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FI_ZFYCIR0 – (Ed. Note: Shown above.) – I decided to continue the compilation theme here with this new production, highlighting a few more Apollo image anomalies that I have cataloged over my years of researching this incredible subject matter.
Hope you enjoy!

REGARDING FRAME 20680 – the “PYRAMID” frame from Apollo 17 (the very last image I show in this presentation) –
here below is a link where you can read my direct rebuttal to the skeptic claims that the “Pyramid” frame from Apollo 17 (20680) is actually just showing a part of the LRV during EVA2 @ Nansen. That debunker claim is entirely inaccurate, and the fully verifiable evidence I provide you at this link PROVES that you have been grossly and deliberately misled by NASA and the ALSJ online archive website as to the true “where and when” that frame 20680 was actually exposed.

EDIT – Sorry gang, the entire MagicUFOForum where this evidence was posted has for some reason that I am unaware of been removed from the web entirely, without even the Google cache links working any longer. All the evidence I and others had posted to that forum over the past year and a half (including the evidence regarding this Pyramid frame) has been removed from the Web entirely!

I will post a new link to that evidence as soon as I find a new forum or blog where I can re-post it to. I just want you to be aware I am trying to hide any evidence here by deliberately sending you to a dead link, and in the meantime anyone who wants a copy of my rebuttal can feel free to email me at lunacognita@gmail.com and I will be happy to send it to you directly that way.

After you understand the facts and see with your own eyes the provable, verifiable cataloging games NASA played with that Pyramid frame in order to bury it in the archives for decades, it might make you wonder why a site like the MagicUFOForum, where this kind of evidence and explanation was originally posted, no longer exists to be viewed by anyone. Sometimes telling the truth can have consequences!

Cheers everyone, and I apologize again that the link to that evidence I posted on the MagicUFOforum is now dead.

LunaCognita

Ah… great! At 2:23 we have my little moon buddy, the seriously mysterious “thing on the boulder” … another fave… and the sky enhancements at 6:43 and again at 7:09 just blow me away.

The Apollo crew members have stated officially that the comment about “visitors” was in reference to some shenanigans played on them by the technical folks back home involving placing some annoying reminders (in the form of patches) of plans that went awry for them in every nook and cranny, which is okay with me and I can even believe it, but, I still get the feeling, deep down inside, even though I know all that and they themselves said it, that, well, you know… I believe my memory has recalled that story right as an overview.

I hope you enjoyed these as much as I have. Major props to Luna for work well above and way beyond the call of duty.

Peace.

LunaCognita on An Eagle’s Ascent From Tranquility Base.

Will try to write more and sidestep the depression a bit, but until then… this quickie post will have to do. It presents WATT friend and reader (!) LunaCognita’s latest film, an unprecedented proper look at the footage of the lift off of the Lunar Module from the end of the Apollo 11 mission. He pretty much explains what’s what with it below, but, do note that near to and again at the end of this clip there are two unidentified objects seen landing…

and they both land…

in the very same spot!

LunaCognita | December 31, 2010

This presentation shows the 16mm Data Acquisition Camera (DAC) footage that was shot during the Apollo 11 ascent from Tranquility Base. In this ascent footage, the DAC motion picture camera was mounted in the right side forward-facing (LMP) window of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module “Eagle”, providing us a view looking down at the Moon’s surface as the LM ascent stage fires and sends the spacecraft on its way back up to lunar orbit for rendezvous and docking with the CSM “Columbia”.

Rather than just showing the raw footage here as it is cataloged in the NASA film archives, I instead show the footage in a rotation-corrected format in order to always keep the scene in it’s proper “horizon up” viewing orientation throughout the duration of the clip. This proper “horizon up” perspective can be established based on some simple visual criteria, with the goal being to ensure we are viewing the footage with the lunar surface being shown so that the Moon’s horizon that is closest to the camera’s current principle point always remains aligned and level towards the top of the field-of-view (even if the horizon itself is not actually visible at the time). This ensures that the surface scene you are viewing can be accurately interpreted.

As you can see in this footage, the rotation correction to align the scene to the “horizon up” viewing perspective is an absolutely vital adjustment that must be applied first in order to be able to even begin attempting to analyze and interpret scenes such as this one accurately. Because the DAC camera was hard-mounted in the window of the LM during liftoff from the lunar surface, this meant that the standard locked display perspective that NASA provides in their archive clips showing the Apollo ascent footage is ALWAYS displaying the lunar surface scene below in an inaccurate perspective. For over 40 years, the public has actually been watching ascent footage like this from the various Apollo missions where the lunar surface after liftoff is being shown essentially upside down (between 135 to 180 degrees off of the “horizon up” viewing perspective).

The point to this simple presentation is to merely serve as a reminder to everyone who is interested in doing their own analysis of ANY of the Apollo DAC footage or still frames of the lunar surface to always consider the question of “what is the proper viewing perspective for each scene?” The ugly fact is that the vast majority of the Apollo DAC footage and still frames, as they are archived by NASA, are not presenting their lunar surface scenes to you in anything close to the proper “horizon up” viewing orientation that our eyes expect to see. Obviously, unless this improper viewing perspective is corrected for first, you have very little chance of being able to analyze the scenes you are looking at with any degree of accuracy at all.

In addition to the rotation-correction, I also was forced to make several frame-rate adjustments to this Apollo 11 DAC footage, and the reason for that is because just before the four-minute mark after liftoff, the 16mm DAC camera suddenly alters it frame exposure rate, switching from 12 frames-per-second (the proper declared setting for filming the liftoff and ascent) down to 6 fps. I have no idea how or why this sudden frame-rate setting change occurs, because adjusting the DAC camera’s fps setting “on the fly” was certainly not one of LMP Buzz Aldrin’s checklisted duties during ascent, and I see no mention in the Apollo 11 mission and post-mission reports to account for this anomalous occurrence. The Apollo 11 ascent footage, as it is archived by NASA, makes no attempt to correct for (or even draw attention to) this sudden step-down in frame-rate, which results in the raw archive footage appearing to suddenly show a doubling of the playback speed. In addition to this, NASA typically renders their HD digital DAC archive at 29.97 NSTC, resulting in further interpolation stretching being introduced in the digital footage. I have attempted to correct for this effect here in order to ensure that the playback rate of the DAC footage accurately matches the accurate timeframe that I was able to establish using the accompanying raw mission audio track and flown liftoff&ascent charts – essentially using the accurate audio timeline to re-synchronize the inaccurate video playback rate so they match up correctly for the duration of the nearly 10-minute complete sequence of footage showing the Apollo 11 ascent from Tranquility Base.
http://magic-ufo.forum-phpbb.in/t871-…
Cheers everyone,
LC

If you’d like to check it out, there is a nice discussion of this work going on over at ATS. Short so far and very well reasoned.

Apollo. 15. Magazine Of Mystery. Number 83.

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Strange. Very strange.

And disconcerting.

Disappointing, too.

Then again it is NASA. A rather bizarre organization, NASA.

You see, this post was initially inspired by my running across an interesting page at Lunar Explorer Italia last night titled  AS 15-83-11218 and the Stephenville UFO: a VERY SMART image-comparison (by Carlo Contu). As you no doubt have gathered from said title, Mr. Contu noticed that the Apollo image in question and the sportiest image of the infamous Stephenville, Texas UFO are remarkably similar. You know the one, the pretty rainbow colored squiggly line in the night sky…

So I Googled up the image number, all set to do a session in Photoshop. But it wasn’t available nice and large at  NASA History’s Apollo Image Library… in fact they don’t even list the magazine as existing at all! What’s up with that? Note that they do list magazines for which they have no pictures to show yet… so, why not 83?

All was not lost, as they are all shown on the Lunar and Planetary Institute’s Apollo Image Atlas… but the images at LPI are all small, all at low resolution and none are really suitable for delving into in hopes of doing any sort of confident analysis. Some clues came out, though…

Here’s the text at the LPI page for this magazine:

Apollo Image Atlas

70mm Hasselblad Image Catalog

Apollo 15, Magazine ??

Images AS15-83-11218 to AS15-83-11234

Why does it say “Magazine ??”? Huh? What was that? Note, of course, that right below that line, in the picture range it clearly states  AS15-83-xxx to AS15-83-xxx. 83, again, is the magazine number.

Ah, I see, when you go to the individual photos it lists right below them their confusion’s source, they don’t know the Letter sub-designation of magazine 83. Well, why not? And even so does not knowing the letter therefore qualify it’s contents for near oblivion, displayed small and low-res on a sub-site for the Apollo program?

Note: For those not familiar with magazines, they are a removable part of the Hasselblad camera, a film holding ‘magazine,’  pre-loaded with film that eliminates the need to string the film through the camera as in a standard 35mm camera. They just snap on and off the back.

Note, too, that 83 was not the first magazine used by the Apollo 15 crew, so although there seems to be some sort of labeling error, I don’t imagine that there were any other issues with it. The Image Atlas starts at 82… which naturally makes me wonder about the existence of 1 through 81, but that’s not completely relevant here. The ones they do show are otherwise sequential in content.

As you can see below, the images captured are intriguing… to say the least… especially the last one, the swoopy, streaky and oh so freaky AS15-83-11234.

What do they show? I can’t say as I know. I can speculate as well as you can, but unless the impossible happens and the crew of 15 give us a play-by-play description, speculation is all we’ve got. Another thing to speculate about is why are there only 17 pictures? Why did they stop snapping? Must see if I can find anything in the transcripts, but, I rather doubt that if there was anything exciting going on it’d still be within them.

I really do like that last one… what the hell is all that? It’s absolutely fascinating. Was there an encounter with something, something we can barely comprehend, way out there in the cold, vast darkness of space?

Hmmm?

LunaCognita Gets Forensic On Apollo

Ah, great, here’s the new vid from LunaCognita that looks into more of the footage shot during the Apollo missions. I posted a bit about the trailer for it a little while ago on this blog.

Actually, I’m holding out hope that this is only a part of a bigger picture… there’s some cool anomaly shots in it to be sure… including a truly inexplicable boomerang shaped thing… you’ll see… but my thirst for more and more weirdness is strong; and the second half presents a visual representation of the results of frame stacking, as explained more below.

Frame stacking is an old technique that can produce some seriously spectacular results unachievable by any other method… it is very commonly used by the astronomical community and professional photographers and photographic printers alike in a process called HDR, or High Dynamic Range photography. That’s printers as in people, not machines, by the way.

A very handy link was found at NASA’s History site in a section on Apollo 12’s approach and landing by Easynow over at ATS… it goes into some detail, with pics, about the DAC camera and its mountings, view angles and other good stuff… please do check it out, it’s pretty cool.

NASA’s Apollo Coverup – A Forensic Look At The 16mm DAC Film Footage

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LunaCognita
March 16, 2010

In this presentation, we will focus on taking a closer look at several interesting segments of film footage from the NASA archives. All the footage shown and analyzed here was originally shot by NASA astronauts during the Apollo missions (1968-1972) on 16mm film, using what was known as the “Data Acquisition Camera” – the “DAC”.

The Maurer “DAC” cameras were modified variable frame rate 16mm motion picture film cameras used by the various Apollo crews throughout their missions to film scenes of interest through the windows of the spacecraft, interior spacecraft activities, as well as to shoot exterior footage during lunar surface “moonwalk” operations and Low-Earth Orbit or Trans-Earth-Coast EVA ops in cis-lunar space.

I included a bit more information on the Apollo DAC camera in the brief writeup I did attached to the earlier teaser/trailer video for this presentation – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo81LM…

FRAME-STACKING
In the last half of this presentation (starting at 4:30), I show various examples where I employ an enhancement technique known as “frame-stacking” against the raw DAC archive footage. In certain cases, frame-stacking can be employed to forensically attack the raw frames of film and produce an enhanced composite still-frame of a stable (or motion-stabilized) scene. It should be noted that “stacking” is by no means a new method of enhancing video or motion picture film footage. It is a digital enhancement technique that has been around a lot longer than most people would probably believe, and in many cases it can provide us an improved look at some of the deeper image detail that is actually buried beneath the random “noise” in the raw footage.

Frame-stacking exploits the fact that the DAC footage, like any motion picture camera or digital video footage, is comprised of many sequential still images shown in rapid succession to simulate the appearance of motion to the viewer’s eye. If the raw footage is providing us with a stable (or motion-stabilized) scene that has no or little movement in the field-of-view, it might appear that the scene is comprised of many individual photographs that all seem to capture the identical view. However, appearances can be deceiving, and the truth is that each of those individual frames making up the raw film footage have slight variances between them, with each one suffering from its own unique random noise artifacts. “Stacking” works by analyzing and comparing all the raw frames that make up a segment of footage, allowing for the detection and subtraction of random noise artifacting from each individual raw frame. Those individual cleaned frames are then stacked together in order to construct a high-resolution composite image of the captured scene.

The first two examples I show in the frame-stacking segment were included merely to demonstrate the effectiveness of this enhancement technique when employed against raw archive footage of a known object – in this case, an Apollo Lunar Module. The first example is film footage from Apollo 9 taken in low-Earth orbit with an automatic 16mm DAC camera mounted to the open hatch of the CSM aiming “up” towards the Lunar Module (which was docked to the nose of the CSM at the time). Astronaut Rusty Schweickhart (LMP) can be seen standing on the porch of the LM, where he was conducting an EVA to test and verify the performance of the Apollo A7-L spacesuit and PLSS life support pack. A magnified split-screen closeup of the LM’s Rendevzous Radar Antenna allows for a direct comparative analysis of the raw footage versus the “stacked” enhancement as an example to demonstrate the improvements in clarity that can be gained.

The second demonstration example is not actually DAC footage, but rather is television footage from the Apollo 15 mission showing the LM “Falcon” sitting on the lunar surface, taken with the tripod-mounted GCTA-TV camera. I chose this example of raw GCTA-TV footage because it clearly suffers from rather severe noise issues, providing another good demonstration of the enhancement potential that frame-stacking can offer. As you can plainly see in both the DAC and GCTA-TV examples showing the LM, the stack enhancements offer considerable improvement in image clarity, allowing us to extract detail that in some cases may appear to not even be detectable when viewing the raw footage.

This presentation here is just the first part of a multi-part series focusing on the truth (and the lies) in the Apollo DAC footage. Hope you enjoy, and stay tuned for more to come!

Cheers,
LunaCognita

Keep them coming, LC, we be diggin’ it…

Select Apollo Highlights Dripping With Fortean Interest

Apollo 12 – Pete Conrad – SLA panel “Leaving Area at a High Rate of Speed.”

Ha ha hahaha…

So, apparently, we’re to think that discarded pieces of our spacecraft can just take off on their own, eh?

Right.

Well… as you can clearly hear… Pete doesn’t believe it for one second… “Gee whiz” indeed! Good man, our Pete. Right on, man.

Hey, NASA… Take off, eh!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_spacecraft

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Conrad

Apollo 14 , EVA 1 – “We’ve Had Visitors Again”

Edgar Mitchell and Alan Shepard on the Moon discussing the “Visitors”

This exchange always brings a smile… so matter-of-fact… so mundane… so… intriguing!

In my humble opinion, they’re being quite serious — but in a manner calculated to be taken as quite light hearted by the average listener. To hint at something that affected them deeply, (which makes me hold them ever dearer), yet still not break their military secrecy requirements. Same for the “Santa Claus” remarks and others made during the various missions.

Naturally we all want to know exactly what those words really meant; not to mention how they knew the visitors had been there in the first place; but the same loyal and patriotic quality that led to those wonderfully conceived spur of the moment quotes means that they’re not going to betray their oaths.

Although I must say that that may be starting to change in hearing commentary from Edgar Mitchell, who’s in this film, Buzz Aldrin and Story Musgrave. Maybe Neil Armstrong made a hint, but I feel very strongly that the man should be left alone, and I’ll personally clock you if you don’t. The others are willing and able. Respect our heroes.

I will never, by the way, be at all comfortable with the need for classified broadcast channels, oaths of secrecy, withholding of evidence and all the other BS on missions for an allegedly civilian agency that haunts us to this day. The government surely doesn’t think too highly of us.

Apollo 15 – TV Flyover – UFO’s  shadow on lunar surface.

Fascinating. A clip excised from one of the broadcasts this one is… and do check out that lovely hugh speed, independently moving shadow! Woot! Note that the astronaut manning the camera most definitely notices it and does his level best to track it… without mentioning it!

That is really cool.

I speculatively suppose that the command module either just happened to be flying along a regular route, as it were, or they had themselves an escort. I suspect the former as being more likely and that they were just in a right-place right-time sort of continuum…

UFO spotted outside Apollo command module window?

Now this is a good one. And a new one on me! And on a television documentary, no less… very impressive. Good find Easy!

It’s pretty bright out there, so I imagine they were still in good proximity to home, but that object is definitely not something ordinary.

You’d need to go a long way to prove it’s one of those tedious ice particles. The motion just doesn’t say ice to me. You’re welcome to try of course.

The stationary one(s) are likely reflections as far as I can tell, but might be something else as well, I suppose.

– – – –

It’s been slow of late and work is encroaching on quality Fortean time (which I suppose is a good thing =)) so I thought I’d put a few little things together for a postable post.

Many thanks to eagle-eyed Pegasus researcher Easynow for these films.

What the hell was down there?!

Yes, indeed… just what in the hell was down there?

I’d really, seriously, like to know…

Was just catching up on my reading over at SHTF411.com by checking out Ocker’s latest post called NASA’s Images and strange Lunar anomalies which presents the nice little video he just made and thought I’d share an extract from a reply therein made by the tireless Pegasus Research Consortium researcher known only as Exuberant1 which I think should, by rights, set off at least a few curiosity triggers in my reader’s heads… because Lunar (not to mention all the other bodies out there) anomaly research needs all the warriors we can muster, after all. And don’t worry, there are more than enough of them to go around.

There’s a lot to be gleaned by careful reading of the transcripts of the astronaut’s conversations during the missions, and the different copies of them, and listening to the recordings… (those that have been released, anyway), for insight into some of the things that went on up there. As you’ll see below, there are spots within them that can really set off one’s imagination.

So here ya go… dig it, droogies…

An Apollo astronaut can hardly believe it….

Sometimes the astronauts got disturbed and they just didn’t want to look down at the moon at all….

It turns out that there is so much stuff on the moon, that it is enough make a man’s head hurt:

(John Young, Apollo 16)

He wouldn’t look. There was too much he didn’t understand…

..And it had nothing to do with the albedo or sunlight.

What could possibly be down there that that would make one of our Finest not want to look at it, what did he not want to see?!

What did he not even want his friend Charlie to see? What the hell was down there?!

Perhaps it had something to do with “them”:

“Just keep on the book”

“That’s why I’m purging the fuel cell”

-Charlie already knows, and that is why he is busying himself…

So again, I ask you… just what in the hell was down there?

Apollo. LunaCognita looks at 16mm Film Anomalies.

Madonne! Oh, man, is this good, folks… wicked good, even. Yes, dear readers, once again LunaCognita has managed to knock my socks right off with this video. Needless to say, I can hardly wait for the full version… because there are objects filmed here that I’ve not seen before, and they are spectacular. Where in the heck does LC find this stuff?

I imagine they’ve been ordered from the NASA archives, but how does one know which ones to buy? Connections within the Pegasus Research crew certainly help in that regard, but still… Oh, and, we mustn’t forget that most of the film that was shot hasn’t been released, still, as far as I am aware… oh how we’d all love to see those.

There is so much material at NASA that is classified… one wonders, if there’s nothing of interest up there besides a bunch of cool minerals… then why is there a need for assigning classified status to images, film and research documents at all? Hmmm?

This film can give some insight into that conundrum.

Amusing it is how the trolls and troglodytes commenting at YouTube call this ice and junk falling off the command and LEM modules. Too funny. Junk? Right, we build such fragile craft… Ice? Umm, this is the Moon, dude… Jeez!

Enjoy the mystery…

Hi everyone,
This brief presentation you will see here is just a bit of a teaser/trailer, showing a short segment from a larger video project I am currently in the process of working on. While the full presentation is still awhile away from being complete, I have received more than a few emails asking me about when my next video was going to come out, so I thought that in the interim, I would release this short segment just as a teaser to show a taste of some of the interesting visuals I plan to include in upcoming presentations where I will provide my own analysis of some of the Apollo-era films. All of the footage you will see here was captured on film during the Apollo missions to the Moon, shot by NASA astronauts. Originally exposed on 16mm film, this footage was taken using what was known as the “DAC” – the “Data Acquisition Camera”.Hope you enjoy,
Cheers!
LunaCognita

THE “DAC”
The Maurer “DAC” cameras used to shoot this footage were modified variable frame rate 16mm motion picture film cameras that were used by the various Apollo crews throughout their missions to the Moon to film scenes of interest through the windows of the spacecraft, as well as to shoot exterior footage during lunar surface “moonwalk” operations and Trans-Earth-Coast EVA ops in cis-lunar space during that return-to-Earth phase of the missions.

When it was being used in “automatic” mode, the DAC camera could be set by the astronaut to expose the film within it’s magazine at one of three set frame-rates – 1, 6 or 12 frames-per-second. In the 1 fps mode, the DAC also could be (and occasionally was) used as a still picture camera to shoot single frames of film.

When placed in “semi-automatic” mode, the DAC camera also offered a 24 fps filming capability, although that mode was used somewhat sparingly during the Apollo program as it only allowed for a maximum 3.7 minutes of run time before a film magazine change was required. More typically, one of the three different “auto” modes were used in order to take advantage of the frame-rate control capability to optimize film usage. These slower frame rate settings of course means that when filming in one of those modes, the DAC was functioning more as a sequential still camera rather than a true 24fps motion picture camera (I realize all motion picture film cameras are essentially stop-motion sequential still cameras, so I am referring to the frame-rate playback issues here). The DAC camera could be used as a hand-held movie camera or it could be hard-mounted to various points inside or outside the spacecraft (or to the LRV or the MET during lunar surface ops) in order to provide a stable platform and hands-free filming capability.

LunaCognita
January 20, 2010

YouTube commenter VideoGearHead said… (I thought this was nice…)

1:38 WTF?!!
1:48 busted-up glass dome?
2:21 fractured moon?
Wowa!

5 million stars!

One more thing…and this frosts my jaw the most…I watched the missions to the moon. I remember when I was in the Boy Scouts spending two bucks to have my name put on the Voyager craft. I remember waiting in anticipation to see really cool pictures of our own solar system – Saturn etc. – and remembering them not being what I expected and having to wait YEARS to see them.

Thank YOU for your vision!

Luna. 1969. Moltke. Roads. Triangular Roads.

Spotted by easynow at ATS, this new videoclip by LunaCognita is pretty wonderful.

Okay… first, though… stare awhile at and contemplate the above image. It’s an image of the “crater” called Moltke, from the Navy space program, i.e. the real one, (Shhh!!!) from the Clementine craft, specifically. Not one of the high-res ones, but hey, it serves the purpose for here I think. Yes, it is blue. Yes, that’s the right color. Glowing, even. Pretty flat. With at least three buildings.

And… roads!

Roads?! Whaddaya mean, roads? Says who? Some nutjob tinfoil blogger dork?

Nope.

Apollo 11 Command Module Pilot Mike Collins. Note that the roads are described as being triangular. Triangular? Triangular? Yeah. That’s what he said… Triangular roads.

I’m still attempting to visualize just what, exactly, that characterization means… all the scenes I’m coming up with are pretty rad, but I just know that ‘paling in comparison’ to what these dudes clapped eyes on is the ultimate understatement.

It would, of course, be most helpful – to everyone – if the Powers That Be would simply let Mike Collins tell us what he saw, but as will become tragically clear to you from watching the video, that just ‘ain’t gonna happen’ in our lifetime… unless we… well… I’ll leave that to your imagination.

I’m hoping part 2 comes along soonest. :)

Okay… After you watch the video and are suitably filled with that sense of Whoa!, scroll back up and gaze into the depths of the picture of Moltke “crater” again.

Edit-add: You can download the audio clips for the mission. This particular one is here and the comments in question are about 2/3 of the way in.

In this examination into NASA’s “black box” transcripts, we will look at just a few of the many interesting and revealing comments made by the astronauts throughout the Apollo program that were captured by the CSM’s DSE system, as well as touch on some of the scripting protocols employed during the various TV broadcasts made from the CSM during the journey to and from the Moon and while in lunar orbit. Contrary to what many think, those TV broadcasts were in fact elegantly scripted affairs, designed to rigidly control the amount of data that we, the general public, would have available to analyze. Because of this, the DSE and DSEA internal crew conversation transcripts can provide us, in the astronauts own words, an unscripted and less-guarded insight into some of the incredible things they really witnessed during their journey to and from the Moon.

During the Apollo lunar landing program, NASA made use of two primary flight telemetry/voice recording systems aboard their spacecraft. One of these systems was inside the Command/Service Module, and the other was mounted within the Lunar Module. These two systems were known as the DSE (aboard the CSM) and the DSEA (aboard the LM). The “Data Storage Equipment” systems essentially served as Black Box cockpit voice recorders, designed to tape some of the internal conversations between the astronauts while they were out of radio contact with Mission Control in Houston. After contact was re-established during the flight, Mission Control could then dump (downlink) the recorded data from the CSM to Earth, where it would be analyzed.

Unfortunately, NASA today claims that the original DSE Black Box tapes from the Apollo missions are missing and are presumed lost. However, these DSE recordings were transcribed shortly after the contents of the tapes were originally dumped from the CSM to the Earth, and several years after the Apollo program ended, these transcripts finally were declassified and then released to the NASA archives.

In coming segments, we will examine many more impressive statements made by the NASA astronauts that were captured by the various cockpit voice recording systems utilized during not only the Apollo program, but during the earlier Gemini Earth-orbital flights as well. There is much more to come!

Cheers,
LunaCognita

All the transcript pages shown in this presentation are official source documents, the online versions of which can be accessed @
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/missi…

Enjoy. Oh, hey, this is the 100th post. Cool.