Space Forum / Space History / February 2004

The guy has some questions, if anybody's interested.

----- Original Message -----
From: Grant Cameron
To: joberg@houston.rr.com
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 4:54 PM
Subject: Apollo Transmissions

James

From time to time people will come forward claiming to have heard Apollo
transmissions and discussion of UFOs or Santa Claus. Another is about to
surface, so I have the following questions for you.

You are correct that as a space folklorist I remain fascinated with this
social and cultural phenomenon.

Was there a special classified channel for transmissions?

To the best of my knowledge and that of my historian-associates, no. All
radio gear was in the designs and documentation -- it had to be, to be part
of the power and thermal budget. During periods of Private Medical
Conferences and Private Family Conferences, the voice signals were
physically re-routed from a control room in the Mission Control Center to
specific special rooms where doctors or family members were present. These
sessions, as far as I know, were neither recorded nor transcribed.

Were the transmissions delayed or in any way sanitized prior to the public
hearing them?

I discussed this with veteran PAO's Terry White and Charles Redmond in my
1982 book, 'UFOs and Outer Space Mysteries', and they told me there probably
was an audio-kill button at the PAO console but they had no recollection of
it ever being used. The only delays they recalled were short and due to
signal processing and retransmission, and for synchronization with video
signals, which did take 3 to 5 seconds to assemble for viewing.

Could people pick up the transmissions using short wave radios?

People could, and this was described in back issues of CQ Magazine, the
radio amateur publication. It took a substantial investment in equipment,
such as a parabolic dish antenna at least several meters in diameter, as
well as technical knowledge of where to point it in the sky. All such
reports seem to describe the same audio signals being released in the NASA
press centers, where hundreds of reporters had access.

Is there an official place where I can get the NASA transcripts for a
particular mission - the official log so to speak.

See the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal project at
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/ for annotated and
triple-checked transcripts during lunar portions of missions. Hardcopy
transcripts were produced soon after the actual missions but often had
spelling and interpetation errors, especially on technical terms and
acronyms.

Have you or has anyone else written an article on the UFO transmission
controversy?

Yes, for example, "Shuttle TV: Is What We See What NASA Gets? "

http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/phenomena/shuttle_tv_991227.html

Hope you can help.

A 'high-octane' discussion group of space historians e-congregates at the
sci.space.history usegroup, accessible (I believe) via Yahoo.com (I access
it from Outlook Express on my PC). I will post this message there for them
to contact you directly, or hopefully you can visit there. Also highly
recommended: the www.badastronomy.com discussion groups.

Grant

Here are some other relevant URLs

Garry Henderson false quote

http://www.beyondroswell.com/roswell/conterfeitufo.html

Debunking Chatelain

http://www.ronrecord.com/astronauts/mchatelain.html

and

http://home-1.tiscali.nl/~karel/ufo/news/articles/0230.html

Apollo-11

http://www.debunker.com/texts/apollo11.html