Apollo 11's TV Camera - "the FIBER OPTIC LIE!"

Still a nice little video!

About the main document shown in this movie:

I can't find this thing anymore on the NTRS server. This is not entirely surprising; the server has recently been off-line for a "content review" but of course that's just a coincidence.

The NASA technical reports server will be unavailable for public access while the agency conducts a review of the site's content to ensure that it does not contain technical information that is subject to U.S. export control laws and regulations and that the appropriate reviews were performed. The site will return to service when the review is complete. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Thank you! I may still have a copy of this document on my old computer, so I will post that if I can find it. Meanwhile, I noticed that according to Tom Kelly, fiber-optic technology was also used in the Apollo Lunar Mission Simulators.

We placed the LM simulator under contract a year and a half after Grumman's go-ahead, once the preliminary design of the spacecraft firmed up. It was a complex computer controlled flight simulator with accurate replication of the LM flight station, controls, and displays. Realistic lunar surface scenes were projected onto the windows by an optical system developed by Farrand Electrical Company. This innovative system used a small fiberoptic camera that "flew" over a three-dimensional plaster model of the lunar landing site (or the Earth for Apollo 9), remotely driven by computer commands that matched the LM's flight path.

Thomas J. Kelly in Moon Lander, (link)

See also this topic here: Moon Models

Cheers,
MP

UPDATE: Still no luck with the TRS server but I found another copy of the Lunar Television Camera PIA Test Plan document, here: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/MSC-SESD-28-105.pdf

Here is a copy of the paragraph that is shown in LunaCognita's video:

For some background information on fiber-optics, take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_optics

I was surprised to learn that fiber-optics was a relatively "old" invention, but as you can see in the Wikipedia article, the practical application of fiber optics for television did not appear until the late fifties and early sixties. This confirms that NASA literally used "state of the art" technology, which was way ahead of what was available or known publicly.

NASA used fiber optics in the television cameras that were sent to the moon. At the time, the use in the cameras was classified confidential, and only those with the right security clearance or those accompanied by someone with the right security clearance were permitted to handle the cameras.

Yes that's very informative thank you, but obviously the real question here is WHY did NASA need to put fiber-optics technology in their Apollo 11 Lunar Surface TV camera? And I say "need", because they wouldn't take something to the Moon unless they absolutely needed to, for some reason.

Now, in thinking about this, I suppose their could be a number of "innocent" explanations that could account for the fact that NASA chose to use this technology. One example would be that it was to save weight, very important when you're going to the Moon. That sounds logical but in that case I don't see any reason to classify the technology to the point where nobody can get near it without supervision. That doesn't make sense. The argument that they did it to improve or ensure good quality television transmission doesn't really make sense to me either because the Apollo 11 TV footage is possibly the worst of all, in terms of quality.

I'm no expert on TV cameras but I can imagine that there could possibly be other "benefits" to using fiber-optics technology, and it may be the case that NASA decided on it because it had some kind of "other" purpose?  

Optical fibers are widely used in fiber-optic communications, which permits transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths (data rates) than other forms of communication. Fibers are used instead of metal wires because signals travel along them with less loss and are also immune to electromagnetic interference.

Should we be suspicious?  

Cheers,
MP

Excellent posts Max Peck, Thank You!  

This is indeed a fascinating topic and You've inspired me to do some more research on this subject. Will post again when possible.

In the meantime, here's that video showing the cameras ...





edit to add:
I don't know if it's just me or if anyone else is also having trouble, but the pdf quotation image you posted doesn't seem to be working anymore? and is causing the thread to load slowly. Can you re-upload that image to another hosting site and repost it ? Thanks.

edit: nevermind the image finally displayed so I made a copy
link - https://i.servimg.com/u/f55/15/84/15/12/bny710.jpg