We are about to commemorate a historic moment for humanity. In July of next year we will mark the 50th anniversary of the landing on the Moon, and although we have lost much material related to the mission, there are still invaluable documents at our disposal. A good example is the Apollo 11 audio recordings, digitized, cataloged and archived by the Houston audio control at the Johnson Space Center. These records have been backed up on the Internet Archive for almost eight years, and anyone interested in the history of space exploration should study them more closely.
With the end of the Apollo program, humanity has not returned to deep space. Dreams of returning to the Moon or making the titanic effort to visit Mars remain intact, but difficulties accumulate, and the will of the political class to finance these exploration missions is null. Our memories travel toward Apollo 11 and everything we learned from that adventure led by Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins. Neil left us six years ago, in August 2012, but the two pilots of the mission are still with us, and with a bit of luck they will be part of the celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary in 2019. As a preview (if you wish) we are going to share something very special: the Apollo 11 audio recordings.
The audios were digitized by the Houston audio control at the Johnson Space Center, and uploaded by user John Stoll (audiovisual archivist at NASA) to the Internet Archive at the end of 2010. Unfortunately there are no official descriptions about the content of the files, but in the list there are MP3s with more than three hours of duration. Most of that time is occupied by static and other transmission noises, however, with the help of the waveform graph it is possible to locate the astronauts' dialogue. In some passages you can even hear them whistling.
I imagine that in all this audio backup must be the famous "One small step" of Armstrong, and your mission, if you decide to accept it, is to locate it. Apollo 11 was a success (although there were special preparations in case it wasn't), and having at our disposal, free of charge and in the public domain, such an archive is a true privilege. Is the audio not enough for you? Then, how about exploring the Apollo 11 source code?
Access the Apollo 11 audios: Click here
