NASA Film Processing Mistakes

[Brian Sims]

In today's NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/sc...ttom-well&_r=0

One would think that if you were processing film from a NASA moon shot, you'd be a bit more careful.

[ckeith]

You do know that the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft carried wet chemistry on board and took the picture on film, developed the film on orbit, then scanned the film and sent the resulting data back to earth. So the film was processed by automatically. If remember right they had to take the pictures every so often so the wet chemistry would work right. Not bad for 1968.

[Daniel Stone]

[ghostcount]

You do know that the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft carried wet chemistry on board and took the picture on film, developed the film on orbit, then scanned the film and sent the resulting data back to earth. So the film was processed by automatically. If remember right they had to take the pictures every so often so the wet chemistry would work right. Not bad for 1968.

Indeed, not bad for in-flight processing. To think 65 years before that, the first powered flight happened.

[Jim Andrada]

Well, along the lines of self processing, when I worked at the US Naval Weapons Lab in 1962 - 63 we were using "advanced display technology" that had originally been attached to our 1951 era NORC (Naval Ordnance Research Calculator) - a "super computer" with 2000 words of storage using CRT tubes as the memory technology (Williams tubes if you want to look it up.) It was such a great device that we migrated it to our new IBM 7030 supercomputer which we installed in 1962.

It was about 6 - 8 feet on a side and maybe 7 feet tall with a 2 x 3 ft screen, The way it worked was that there was an oscilloscope inside on which you could output a plot, a 35mm camera, and a bunch of processing gear. The camera photographed the face of the tube, the film advanced through the processing steps, and then ran through a sort of modified slide projector which projected the image on the rear projection screen. IIRC there was a 12 frame lag between photo and display. We used it mainly as a "high speed" printer by writing a page of text onto the oscilloscope and spooling the film which we could review on a sort of microfiche viewer.

It was a dinosaur, but it really worked quite well. A bear to program though.

Times have changed!

[Jerry Bodine]

I was involved with the structural analysis of Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft. Here is a photo of the Kodak (a subcontractor on the program) camera and "wet lab" contained within its shell. The "flap" that you see in open position above the lens opening is a protection system that could be closed over the lens opening to prevent damage from micrometeoroids which could "frost" the optics. We had no data about the statistics/chances of such impacts (e.g., particle sizes/speed, etc.). It was a very exciting time to see the first televised low-resolution images coming back to earth from so close to the moon.

More info on the orbiter here.
And here:
The photographic system was provided by Eastman Kodak and derived from a system, provided by the National Reconnaissance Office, designed for the U-2 and SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft.The camera used two lenses to simultaneously expose a wide-angle and a high-resolution image on the same film. The wide-angle, medium resolution mode used an 80 mm F 2.8 Xenotar lens manufactured by Schneider Kreuznach, Germany. The high-resolution mode used a 610 mm F 5.6 Panoramic lens manufactured by the Pacific Optical Company. The film was developed on-orbit, and then scanned by a photomultiplier for transmission to Earth.

The imaging system used 70-mm film and a developing process similar to that of Polaroid instant cameras.

[Brian Sims]

Ooops. My mistake. I had only skimmed the text and assumed it was from the Apollo mission. So I take my snide comment back. Not bad quality given the limitations and challenges.

[Jerry Bodine]

...If remember right they had to take the pictures every so often so the wet chemistry would work right. Not bad for 1968.

Reminds me. 1968 was about the time I started 4x5 work and bought some Polaroid color film, did some set-up tests using electronic flash. The only variable was switching from one box of film to the next. I saw radical changes between the last sheet from one box and the first sheet from a new box, all fresh film. Polaroid replaced one box, but I never used any more of their color film as a result. The b/w films were great though!

[BrianShaw]

That's not a processing mistake, Young Daniel... That is a perfectly exposed image of the dark side of the moon.

[goamules]

The advances to photography made by the space program, civilian and military, are truly amazing. I've been involved with some of them, and there was typically a 10-20 year delay between what was on the consumer market, and what had already been done for aerospace. Much of Kodak....was for the military. Much of all of those companies. The helical scan head that became the VHS tape, on and on.