Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project - Expertise and Facilities

Expertise and Facilities

In February 2007 Dennis Wingo visited the four Ampex FR-900 tape drives for the first time in Nancy Evans' garage. Each drive was about 6 feet (1.8 m) tall, 3 feet (0.9 m) wide, as deep as a refrigerator, weighed 600 pounds (270 kg) and was coated with a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. They were stored with a pallet of manuals and schematics for the tape drives, along with hard copies of data related to the lunar images. Meanwhile, the tapes were stored safely in a climate-controlled warehouse. There were about 1,500 tapes, all packed into boxes, stacked four deep on pallets, and shrink-wrapped.

Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing, a former NASA employee and President of SpaceRef Interactive, Inc. now served as co-leads the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP). Both Cowing and Wingo provided the funds required to get the project started. They spent about a year looking for funding, facilities, documentation and expertise. Dr. S. Pete Worden, NASA Ames Research Center Director, agreed to store the tapes drives and tapes in unused warehouse space until funding and facilities could be found to begin the restoration project. In April 2007 NASA JPL released the tapes to the custody of Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Nancy Evans also transferred ownership of the FR-900 drives to Wingo and Cowing. Wingo and Cowing rented two large trucks, loaded up the tape drives and documentation into one truck, and loaded the pallets of analog data tapes into the second truck. Cowing and Wingo then drove the trucks up to Mountain View, CA from Burbank, CA. The drives and tapes then sat in storage for the next year or so as funding for the project was sought.

Since the team required a facility with proper heating and cooling and a sink, available vacant buildings outside the gate at NASA Ames were whittled down to two: a barber shop, and a McDonald's that had closed weeks before. The barber shop was relatively small, so working there would require that the tapes be stored at a remote warehouse. On the other hand, the McDonald's was much larger, had good lighting, adequate power and air conditioning and excellent parking. It turned out to need some improvements in the electrical wiring. By July 2008, the team had moved into the McDonald's, (Building 596), now dubbed "McMoon's".

Wingo and Cowing quickly found expertise in the person of Ken Zin, an Army veteran who has a lifetime of experience in working with analog tape machines, including the FR-900 series. By coincidence, Zin's brother worked at NASA Ames Research Center and it is via this coincidence that Wingo and Cowing initially got in touch with Zin. With the assistance of Ken Davidian at NASA Headquarters funding was eventually obtained in 2008 for a pilot project to show that the drives could be repaired and that an image could be recovered from the original tapes. The first task was to methodically disassemble and clean the tape drives. Meanwhile, Ken Zin began testing the systems of the tape drives and making lists of devices to replace and refurbish. Parts for the drives were bought on eBay, online electronic parts stores, and other places.