The Hackers Who Recovered NASA’s Lost Lunar Photos

[CurEus]

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/lost-lunar-photos-recovered-by-great-feats-of-hackerdom-developed-at-a-mcdonalds/?mbid=social_fb#slide-id-751001 (http://www.wired.com/2014/04/lost-lunar-photos-recovered-by-great-feats-of-hackerdom-developed-at-a-mcdonalds/?mbid=social_fb#slide-id-751001)

I wonder if anything "unusual" will be seen?


Sitting incongruously among the hangars and laboratories of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley is the squat facade of an old McDonald’s. You won’t get a burger there, though–its cash registers and soft-serve machines have given way to old tape drives and modern computers run by a rogue team of hacker engineers who’ve rechristened the place McMoon’s. These self-described techno-archaeologists have been on a mission to recover and digitize forgotten photos taken in the ‘60s by a quintet of scuttled lunar satellites.

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

I read that and it was a good article -- hope they find some cool stuff too !!

:) very excited. what if there are ancient ruins or something awesome? lol

[CurEus]

My thoughts are that their project could support Richard Hoagland's position, albeit inadvertently, if they were working with raw unprocessed images. I know little to nothing about photography so that analysis is best left to others.

Conversely they could also be supporting long standing misinformation efforts...

[rezboom]

I wouldnt hold my breath concerning the release of anything TRULY unusual, because, as the article states:

This proof of concept brought the first NASA funding in 2008, and the team recently completed processing the entire tape collection.

:-(

[Matt P]

Conversely they could also be supporting long standing misinformation efforts...

This was my thought. Nothing can be trusted from NASA. Once you've been caught lying so many times, NOTHING.
One day we'll hear some hackers found the lost moon videos and "digitized" them (i.e. "fixed" them) after enough time has passed to work them over real good.

[Atlas]

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3237/2878302406_44aceca87a_b.jpg

Some of the applications of this project, beyond accessing the best images of the moon ever taken, are to look for new landing sites for the new Google Lunar X-Prize robo-landers, and to compare the new craters on the moon today to 40 years ago, a measure of micrometeorite flux and risk to future lunar operations.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3148/2873888043_08349c698a_b.jpg

Here is never before seen high resolution image from the pre-Apollo lunar mapping project. "This photo was taken freehand; Erik Charlton holding his camera, and another guy holding the film up to the light."

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/avalon/divers/2885825885_f38ed80ec8_o.jpg




http://www.thelivingmoon.com/47john_lear/02files/Lunar_Orbiter_Tapes_Found.html (source (http://www.projectavalon.net/forum/showthread.php?p=166248))

[jake gittes]

The article is slightly misleading. In a story discussing photographs from the 1960s, describing the McDonald's as "old" conjures up images of one of the original restaurants from the same era. The one in question closed circa 2007. It's not THAT old. Also, how exactly is a McDonald's restaurant equipped to handle hazardous materials (aside from the "food" itself)? Just nitpicking, but I don't like murky reporting when so many facts are readily available at one's fingertips.

Question: Why would somebody be sleeping at this facility? (Note the sleeping bag & cushions on the floor.) Is there a little more urgency to this project than described which requires round-the-clock attention? It's probably nothing, but I'm always leery of gummint-approved released info.

[Carmody]

In the 60's, film was the deal for image capture, obviously.

In the 60's, for that kind of device, that kind of filming quality, or that kind of film quality demand, or image quality demand, the techniques in optics were well along, they were well developed in technological qualities.

Those canisters look like 70mm or 65mm film.

In that size of film frame, combined with the best that optics could do in the 60's, means a image fidelity that is easily in the range of quality of today's best digital cameras. If not slightly better.

When I say 'best', I mean greater than 8k x 8k pixels, per image, with greater ability in contrast range. Better than a 64meg camera, with higher contrast range and greater capacity for subtlety of image data, in the area of fine gradations.

So there is no doubt in my mind that lots and lots of interesting imagery is available in those film canisters.