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Time-Travel Breakthrough: A.I. Reveals Astronauts on Moon Like it Was Shot on an iPhone 13

Artificial intelligence software turns grainy old images — like film shot by astronauts on the moon — into video so sharp you’d think they shot it on an iPhone 13.

Extracting History: Apollo AI

Artificial intelligence software turns grainy old images — like film shot by astronauts on the moon — into video so sharp you’d think they shot it on an iPhone 13. [Example video appears below.] This mind-blowing technology is a virtual time-travel breakthrough that reveals hidden history in high def living color for a new generation who imagine our dusty past in black and white. 

See Apollo A.I. video reconstructions at this YouTube channel. 

Video above hosted at Rumble. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fIHLXrugLc

Bill Whittle, Stephen Green and Scott Ott create 260 new episodes of Right Angle each year, fueled and funded by our Members, who run their own blog, forums and vigorous conversation in the comments. Join them now. To contribute without joining, make a one-time or recurring donation with your credit card or PayPal. Thank you. 

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44 replies on “Time-Travel Breakthrough: A.I. Reveals Astronauts on Moon Like it Was Shot on an iPhone 13”

Along these same lines , I been seeing AI software taking historic images and statues and bringing them to life. Quite interesting to have Alexander the Great looking at you and moving his gaze around. They are over on utube and very engaging.

Amateur astrophotographers (and the Pros too) have been using something similar for quite a while now.

I have software that allows me to “stack” images. I take 100 plus shots of a night sky object (planet, nebula, whatever) and stack all those shots on top of each other digitally, then the software mates the features in the photo one atop another and combines it all into a single photo.

This renders dim, blurry objects in amazing clarity and brightness.

If you’ve ever seen a photo of the night sky with the Milky Way blazing in colors you’ve never seen at a brightness that you can’t even imagine … That’s how it’s done.

It would still be nice to have links mentioned in the shows available here. This has happened several times, where a show says that a link will be included below, but isn’t.

If ever you see that, please use the Contact link above and send the URL of that page. I’ll fix it.

I have a little Rylo 360 Camera I take with my on Kayaking adventures. The stabilization of this camera’s software is much like the A.I. Bill is describing. I put the camera on a mount on my Kayak. As you paddle, the kayak sways left to right and back again. When I edit the footage, you can see both the unstablized, and stabilized version and pick which one you want to edit for a completed project. The unstabilized version is nearly unwatchable. Nauseating – motion sickness inducing with the horizon tilting left, right, left…. (urp!). Not anything like I remember when I was piloting across a High Sierra lake. But viewing the software stabilized version of the same footage, the horizon is still and the nose of the kayak is tilting just as I recall in my minds eye. All of that was done by moving pixels around to make the final images “look” like it was real, and anyone viewing it (without seeing the unstabilized version) might think it’s quite real, yet it was assembled in software. This technology is good and helpful and enjoyable…..however…..
About a year or more ago the R/A guys talked about an emerging tech where, much like the metaverse, a video can be modified to make lips move in ways which were not moving when the video was originally shot. Coupled with an Adobe software prototype where speech samples of someone, lets say a guy named Brandon, can be used to make text to speech sound like the real person. Fake words coming from fake moving lips. At that point, hopefully, somone will invent a filter where you can quickly ascertain if the image/audio is real or machine generated. If not,…well, then we won’t be able to believe anything we see unless we see it in person.

I don’t think it used the latest type of AI software, but I’m surprised the example of Peter Jackson’s movie “They shall not grow old” did not get a mention. To make the movie (which was very gripping because of all of the things Bill mentioned), they had to take silent black and white footage segments with blotches, scratches, uneven brightness and varying frame rates and upgrade it to modern standards (as much as possible), and add color. Then they added sound, using Foley artists (I would like to shake the hands of every one of them) and voice actors to recreate the speech. It was an amazing experience and I highly recommend it to history buffs. It made “the great war” come home with a realism I would not have expected. Here is a trailer for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrabKK9Bhds

They discussed that movie on the Backstage segment. It didn’t make it to the RA.

The moon landing is a ploy of the patriarchy (all white men.) I know we never went to the moon because there were no astronauts of color, just astronauts colorized by AI. Besides NASA would have had to exploit people of color to get them to the moon. AKA, Catherine Johnson Mathematician. … Lets see do I have the modern societal view correct ?

Yes, you have the modern societal view correct but … Be careful. Trying to think like those people can be hazardous to your grasp on reality.

Wow! The first thing that comes to mind, in this day of Democrats cheating and lying on basically everything, is how they might use this to try to change history.

Hollywood is already doing that for them. I watched “The Eternals” last night and about blew a cork over how they treated Hiroshima’s atomic destruction.

The moon-buggy footage is stunning. You can SEE how much fun the guy’s having. The buggy’s effect on the moon, the moon dust cascading out of the wheel wells … wow.

Yes it was , I just was thinking if it were me driving we would have had to delete the scene where I accidently ran into the legs of the lunar lander ; knocking it over. oooOps ! My bad.

Bill, you say “with a high degree of accuracy.” I disagree. A better phrasing would be “a high degree of believably.” And the issue is when we confuse the two – because the more believable it looks, the less likely we are to question the assumptions made in calculating the images.
We are NOT creating detail… we are overlaying our best guesses over the existing detail.
What gets worrisome is when the details start saying things that weren’t there in real life. Think the infamous grainy photo from the Rittenhouse trial.
Scott, it could still be the “mustard castle.” After all, mustard was in black and white back then, too.
But if you’re going to talk about seeing things in color, I have to link one of the greatest country songs ever written.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYGwxf1gCC4

Well said – I was thinking the same thing while listening to the podcast on a walk (and couldn’t wait to get home to see the video). A similar analogy to Scott’s “flip book” story. One might fill in the pages with the stick figure walking to the chair and sitting down. Another might have the stick figure performing a parkour flip on his way there. Either is possible given the starting and ending point.
It’s great for engaging people in history, and I loved the moon rover video. But it’s one more bit of uncertainty as we attempt to hold fast to the definition of “reality.”

Don’t want to sound like a wet noodle on this, but the technology scares me. The saying “Do you believe me or your lying eyes?” could have a whole new dimension….. does this AI have the ability to also simulate non-reality? Will the evil folks create their own “truth”?

Hey , Don’t worry everything we see is fake anyway, We are just catching up to how it is being accomplished.

You know how they edit Presidential speeches now, just wait. They can make Trump actually say what they claim he does. There was a reason Trump only allowed the media to have one camera location at his speeches and rallies and also always had a motion picture screen behind him. One of the best ways they edit tapes of live speeches is by changing from one camera to another, so you can’t notice the cut and paste they did.

Sorry, this is not good news. Imagine what the Jan6th congressional chop shop will do with this teck. “Hey Look! that insurrectionist tried to destroy fill-in-the-blank. And it must be true because the computer says so!”
Also, the hope that scientists of the future will be able to extract more data from filmed environmental events, eg the Mt St. Helens footage you showed, will be Destroyed. To fill in missing images, you have to make assumptions. Those assumptions control the fake/supposed reality you are creating. If the original footage, with sparce shots is discarded because “its not exciting enough for children”, then we are never going to learn what “really happened.”
If you want to sharpen up your own photos, fine. But “Realler than real” tech is a slippery slope.

All tech is a slippery slope. From the invention of the wheel to the most modern cutting edge tech. If you apply your argument to the wheel, somewhere in the dawn of history …

“Oh no! The wheel! Now our enemies can make carts to transport more rocks to use to throw at us and they’re not limited to just what’s laying on the ground where they attack us! We’ll never win a battle again, we’re doomed!”

Tech is tech, it’s not going away and it’s not possible to unlearn how to do something. Nor is it desirable to try to regulate new tech to only ever be used for what someone considers good or legitimate applications.

Like anything else, be it guns, the internet, or vehicles, it’s not the tech that is the issue. It’s the human minds and hands that are problematic.

I’m not saying there is no tech that should not be banned or avoided on moral grounds either. Things like harvesting aborted fetuses for stem cell research come to mind as something that should not be done. Those sorts of moral arguments do not apply to photography and videography just because someone might do something bad with them.

One of the good aspects of this modern tech is that the originals do not need to be, and won’t be, destroyed. There’s no reason to do that when you know that future tech might make those originals even more useful. There’s no reason at all that you wouldn’t make exact copies of the originals and every reason why you would.

There’s also no way that anyone works on original material. The way that’s done is to make copies of the originals and work on the copies. Unlike Ted Turner’s colorization folly, exact copies of original materials are now possible. In fact, the original has to be copied and converted to a digital format to even work on them at all.

I’m not slagging on you for what you said. I’m old and grumpy myself. I learned a long time ago that wanting to freeze technical innovation at a point I’m comfortable with just isn’t a realistic, applicable viewpoint. Trying to do that is just magical thinking.

This new video tech Bill is addressing in this article/video is a result of increased computing power. Someone figured out a way to use that increased computing power as it can apply to visual images.

If we’re ever going to survive our own errors we are going to need massive amounts of computing power.

Just last year in August the world’s first controlled fusion reaction that generated more power than it consumed was achieved. This is a major milestone in the quest for fusion powered reactors. Which are a sort of “Holy Grail” for energy production. That took an astonishing amount of computer power to achieve.

All of that said, the same massive computing power can be used for good or evil. Just like anything else mankind creates. It’s not the tech of itself that’s evil, it’s what evil or just plain old misguided people do with it.

I worked in Hollywood and I was told that the studio refused to pay the midgets so they took the film they were in and destroyed it. The studio needing them reshot the scenes using new technology, color film, and in the original release it the only color part of the movie.

Ok, I’ll ask the Mr. Wizards the question of the day. At the beginning of the example piece of film, the bottom of the American flag moves around. Not because of air currents, but inertia or something?

That’s not the question. I mention that because it seems to prove that the flag is not plastic or wood or some immobile construct. So, if it can move, then why does it stay straight out horizontally when it’s “at rest?” There is gravity on the moon, so why doesn’t it slowly collapse down next to the flagpole?

(Ok, it’s probably stays or something in the borders of the flag. But even then, it sure seemed to whip around a lot at the beginning.)

The moon flags had a pocket in the top hem, where a thin pole went in to hold the flag up in a flying position. It was only in the top, so the bottom flops around a bit while it’s being moved.

What George Freeland said plus I’ll add that the flagpole is very thin, flimsy material, every ounce of weight was shaved off every possible item that went aboard those rockets/spacecraft. So both the flagpole and the stay through the top of the flag are very “springy” and vibrate or move at the slightest touch.

Likewise the flag was made of very lightweight materials. I think it was Mylar or something similar.

In fact, the reason the flag moves around so much at the beginning is that there is no air to damp down its movement.

Scott, regarding the impact of black and white in a movie turning into color, I recommend the film Pleasantville. It has (IMO) a nice story, as well.

I have recently downloaded some software … on my android phone! … that does this with still photos. It is amazing with low res, or even slightly out of focus shots. Mind blowing.

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