The NASA Whale Oil Connection and the lost
Moon Landing tapes: It is known that in the
1970s and 1980s, NASA had a shortage of data tapes and
erased about 200,000
of archived tapes and reused them.
That is apparently how the original better quality Slow Scan SSTV footage of the famous
Apollo 11 moon landing footage was accidentally erased.
What's not as well known is that missing Apollo tapes were manufactured with
whale oil and the 200,000 tapes were primarily selected for
reuse
because whale oil was used in the manufacture of
those tapes.
The whale oil allowed the tapes to remain more stable by aiding in the fixing of
the oxides
to the tape more securely.
The newer tapes made without whale oil (due to a Federal Environmental law) had
excessive
oxide flaking and were deliberately bypassed in favor of
the whale oil tapes for
reprocessing and reuse on later Apollo and Skylab
missions.
Asteroid 1999 AN10
On August 7, 2027 asteroid
1999AN10
will pass the Earth
within or at the orbit of the Moon with a very high speed
of over 58,000 miles per hour relative to the Earth.
This asteroid is almost 3/4 of a mile wide.
.COM
