Thread: OZ rescues NASA's butt, again,,

Originally Posted by Pedro_The_Swift

Vintage IBM tape drive in Apollo moon dust rescue

40-year-old data recovery By Austin Modine • Get more from this author
11th November 2008 06:37 GMT


An Australian scientist hopes to restore a vintage, refrigerator-sized IBM tape drive stored in a museum to recover Apollo moon mission data the space agency misplaced nearly 40f years ago.
NASA's only means of measuring moon dust during its Apollo missions has gone largely unappreciated until recently, reports Australia's ABC News. Now the trouble is getting a 1960s-era IBM 729 Mark V tape drive necessary to read the data up and running. ...

.... The tapes were kept in a climate-controlled room since then, but with no real way to unlock the data. Then SpectrumData stumbled upon an old IBM 729 Mark V tape drive at the Australian Computer Museum Society, which agreed to loan the historic metal. ...

Typical isn't it? Good thing that there are some enthusiasts who have saved some of these things, like CIRAC the CSIRO one and also one of the last functioning early generation computers in the world.

Apparently the same fate has beset the NSW RTA records, in 1991 they introduced a new computer now there isn't a computer available that can still read the old tapes from prior to 1991.

The Internet censorship the government is bringing in will take us back to the stone age of computing anyway, might as well get used to it.

G'day All, Did they actually land on the Moon, I'm a skeptical about it, when you think back on it way back in 69, now technology has moved on considerably since then, and no-one has revisted the Moon, the Japs had some fancy thing orbiting the Moon about 18 months ago, taking mickey mouse pix (and bragging about being able to see the left behind debris from previous missions) but Nothing since, now this 08, 39 years later and no-one has gone back, methinks it's a load of s**t just my thoughts and I won't change them until I see proof of previous missions i.e. something like google Moon LOL cheers Dennis
PS and good on the Oz bloke who made the gizmo to measure Moon dust..

I was a technical officer (actually A/g Senior Technician Gr. IIA) at Moree Satellite Earth Station during the first moon landing in 1969.

Pic below circa 1969:



We provided the comms back to the USA after it was sent from Parkes via our control centre in Paddington (pic below circa 1969).



Did it happen? I believe so - certainly the launch and moon trip.

This envelope was signed by all the staff at Moree on the day of the Apollo 11 launch on 17th July 1969. If you wonder why the date differs from the official date, it's because Australia was a day ahead of the USA.

My signature hasn't changed much in the past 40 years.

i suppose the machine needs a lot of work to get it going - should be a good earner for the restorer, might need a lot of dust removed!

Originally Posted by Dinty

G'day All, Did they actually land on the Moon, I'm a skeptical about it, ...

It must have happened Sam Neil was in charge of the Parkes Radio Telescope that Rob Stich made the documentary on! Isn't it funny that Parkes back in 1969 looks so much like Forbes today?

Although I'm with Ron on this one, there are too many people and many of them scientists all around the world that would have been shouting from the rooftops had it been a fraud.

I believe that it just too expensive and during the Regan years they wanted to spend money on "Star Wars defense system" and not science.

Diana

some would say that parkes is STILL living in 1969 :P

Originally Posted by EchiDna

some would say that parkes is STILL living in 1969 :P

Some may say that, however it wasn't looking 1969 enough for the Director of "The Dish" so they shot the location footage of "Parkes" township in Forbes.

Diana