Rogue scientists revive lost moon photos inside abandoned McDonald's
A group of rebellious scientists achieved what NASA thought was impossible inside, of all places, an abandoned McDonald's.
Cobbling together decades-old spy technology and extinct videotape, the scientists of "McMoon" breathed new life into photos that were once hailed as the "pictures of the century."
Below is the in-depth tale of how the enlightened rogues inside "McMoon" figured it all out.
WHAT WAS SO ASTOUNDING?
Before NASA could put a man on the moon, scientists had to know what it really looked like.
Some theorized that the lunar orbiter would sink into sand, suffocating and killing the astronauts. Another theory posited that the moon was so brittle it might break apart at the landing site and kill the astronauts.
So NASA hired Boeing and used spy technology to create Lunar Orbiter -- a satellite reconnaissance mission so technologically advanced that NASA wouldn't see its true nature for decades.
What it found was set aside and nearly lost forever.
In 2007, rogue scientists picked up where NASA left off. They collected all the modulated images, recorded on 1,470 huge two-inch videotapes.
Even though the technology to play them back didn't exist anymore, the scientists were able to resurrect pristine images of the moon from the tape.
The pictures are so clear that they rival images taken by a multi-billion dollar satellite currently orbiting the moon.
SEE THE AMAZING PHOTOS
WHAT WAS THE LUNAR ORBITER?
Remember the old instant cameras? Where the picture was developed before your eyes? Here's an ad from that same era, just to remind you.
That technology was actually created for spy satellites in the 1950s. The Lunar Orbiter used that same technology. It just made negatives, not full photos. But those negatives were on 70mm film, which is the same size as IMAX movies.
The satellite had a light beam installed to "scan" the negatives and then they would beam them back to the earth from space, one little strip at a time. It took 98 of those strips for a high-resolution image; 29 of them for medium resolution.
The image was scrambled, or modulated, and beamed to one of three places: the US, Australia or Spain, depending on which country was facing the moon at the time.
The modulated data was recorded on huge two-inch videotapes.
But NASA couldn't tap into that raw data. They could unscramble it, put it on a monitor, then take a picture of the monitor. Then they'd put all those little strips together, take another picture. Print that one, piece them together on the floor, then make another picture, blowing it up so they can see the surface better.
It's how they figured out where to land Apollo 11. Before Lunar Orbiter, they had no idea what might happen.
Once America did get a man on the moon, Lunar Orbiter was all but forgotten.
WHY WERE THE IMAGES SET ASIDE?
When America finally put a man on the moon, the astronauts had their own cameras. Equipped with 70mm color film cameras, NASA started using lunar landing photos and quit looking at the Lunar Orbiter photos.
The tapes were cast aside. Since they had to essentially make a copy of a copy of a copy, they were grainy, somewhat blurry, and not near as clean or clear as the fresh negatives taken on the moon's surface.
They simply had no way to print the photos from Lunar Orbiter like a regular photo. Eventually the tapes were all stored in a big room at the National Archives.
The room is similar to the one at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," according to McMoon's lead scientist Dennis Wingo.
The machines were set aside, too. To this day, few if any of those two-inch tape machines exist and very few of the engineers who designed and built them are alive to recreate the technology. Once they die, the technology effectively dies with them.
WHY USE A McDONALD'S
Dennis Wingo studied Lunar Orbiter in college. He heard that in the 1980s all 1,470 of those two-inch tapes were saved by a NASA employee. They were stored in Southern California at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Those machines, though, didn't exist anymore. Nobody had used that kind of tape for years.
But that same employee who saved the tapes had saved the machines. They were in her barn in Southern California. Wingo knew someone at NASA Ames who was intrigued with the idea of tapping into the tapes.
JPL wasn't convinced. Scientists there told NASA not to let the rogue group do anything. There were no tape machines and to build technology that they said would cost $6 million.
Wingo got NASA approval to try at a budget of $120,000. He needed a building to re-solder the machines and start processing. The McDonald's was free and had vent hoods to vent out the heat and the solder fumes.
Plus, being in Silicon Valley, all the retired engineers from AMPEX, the company who made the machines, volunteered to help rebuild them.
The de-scrambling technology, known as "modulating" the information, didn't exist. It was spy technology. Nobody had ever written it down, so there were no schematics.
Yet Wingo found an old mathematical formula for the "modulator" signal. The AMPEX engineers used that and hand-built a card.
When they fired up the machines inside "McMoon," they heard the voices of the listening stations from 50 years ago come through.
WHAT’S WITH THE PIRATE FLAG?
Believe it or not, any "pseudo-sanctioned" or unsanctioned NASA project is stamped with a pirate flag. It seemed particularly appropriate that McMoon have the flag. Their six-figure budget was far lower than JPL's proposed budget, which was near $6 million.
WHAT MADE THIS SO AMAZING?
These were the very first images, from up close, of the moon itself, taken from space. Even telescopes in 1966 couldn't see the full surface features of the moon.
It was also the first time humanity saw the earth from space. When the first photos of the earth, Time and Life magazines each dubbed them the "pictures of the century."
WHY DO THIS?
Beyond the historical value of the photographs themselves, there is also value to studying many of the photographs taken by Lunar Orbiters I-V.
Shots of the Earth’s geological features can aid studies in climate change and drought.
Views of the moon can also help planetary scientists track its evolution over the past 50 years.
On top of that, these photos, which caused a gigantic stir, are creating new interest and discussion of lunar missions, Martian missions and discussions of NASA, science and technology.