Tim Dodd

They stored data, they stored video, they stored telemetry data.

It was all a direct backup in case the link to mission control went down.

Right.

So if, so from that downlink, something happened and all of a sudden, because then from the downlink, like for instance, Goldstone, Australia was one of the receiving places.

Right.

It then had to get relayed to mission control in Houston for them to be able to receive the data.

So if something happened in that link, in that chain, and Houston was no longer receiving data, and let's say there was a catastrophic problem with the spacecraft and they lost the crew, that was the only thing they had to be able to look at the raw data.

Hmm.

All of it was still being recorded in Houston.

All of the data, all the telemetry, all the video.

However, it wasn't the highest quality video because it wasn't on that raw.

What they were doing in order to transmit data or video data was basically, and this is a common thing at the time, they were using a kinescope recorder where they're basically pointing a camera at a monitor.

Uh, no, they actually distributed it for them.

So they would give them, they would point the camera at, because it's using slow scan that the, the, the camera type of system they're using to broadcast from the moon back was slow scan in order to get it onto national television.

It had to be an NTSC format, which is actually kind of what we still use today to nine, nine, seven.

And so in order to even convert it, the easiest thing to do is literally take a monitor, kind of have this like enclosed box and they literally film that monitor.

Right, right, right, right, right.

And the first time that they specifically did that on Apollo 11, it isn't good.

It's very poor connections.

They, it's not great, but it was good enough, you know, and no one thought anything of it at the time.