Rene-NASA-Mooned-America

The TV Coverage / Chap. 2 p. 16
to magnify the picture. The price paid was in clarity. First, there was a more than proportional loss in
brilliance of the screen. And second, the picture was composed of giant grains with the inevitable
result of dim blurry pictures.
Within 72 hours after the splashdown of the Apollo 11, Bantam Books in conjunction with the
New York Times, had the presses running on John Noble Wilford's We Reach The Moon. On the
inside front cover is one of those blurry pictures that show Neil Armstrong's foot about to hit the
Moon. The only way to take that shot was by either having a moon photographer lying on his belly or
by having a camera attached to the adjacent landing leg. Mr. Wilford, according to his book, was an
insider. Here is a quote found on the publishers page.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOHN NOBLE WILFORD is the leading aerospace reporter for The New York Times.
He has covered every phase of the space program and every Apollo shot leading up to
the epochal moon landing. WE REACH THE MOON is Mr. Wilford's definitive
account of the incredible space achievement, from its beginnings with the faint beepbeep
of Sputnik to its conclusion at the Apollo 11 splashdown.
On the frontispiece adjacent to this picture is a boxed blurb that reads:
ABOUT THE COVER PHOTOGRAPHS
Front cover photograph (NASA): left to right-Neil A. Armstrong, Michael
Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr.
Inside cover photographs were taken directly from television screens, which
provided the first visual documentation that man had landed on the moon. A:
Neil Armstrong steps onto the surface of the moon. B: Buzz Aldrin stands on
the moon. C: First moonscape taken by man on moon. D: Aldrin and
Armstrong in front of the module on the moon. E: The American flag goes up
on the moon.
Now why did NASA institute this "picture-of-a-picture" policy when they easily could have
popped in some coaxial connectors and jacks so that the TV crews could take copies of the broadcasts
directly before optical magnification destroyed the originals Oversight Extreme stupidity Or the
cunning of the fox loose in the chicken house
Why didn't the experienced TV news people show the NASA technicians how simple it would be
to correct the pictures Why did the networks let them get away with this Why didn't they take their
complaints to the public if NASA officials refused to listen And why didn't they get direct copies of
the clearer pictures which NASA must have taped as they arrived in Houston (whether such pictures
were actually from the Moon or previously prepared simulations) Even after all these years, we have
never seen the clear pictures which NASA must have stored in their archives. Why has the media
seldom attacked this sacred
NASA MOONED AMERICA / Rene