Man, isn't this amazing. The original moon landing film is lost, and NASA has been searching unsuccessfully for it for the past year!
Original moon landing film lost [Washington Times]
One would think that if for nothing else, these particular films would be saved! Beside the unrivalled historical value, some of these could be useful for future missions to the Moon?
& nobody cared to take care of these magnetic tapes? I guess, having studied enough about "computer" peripheral devices, my hopes are not that high about their state that many years after these recordings were taken...
Very sad.
& given all this, why exactly should I not join the people who suspect that there was a conspiracy here and nobody really landed on the Moon?
"The original film footage of astronaut Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon, one of the most important artifacts of the 20th century, has been lost.
The television broadcast seen by about 600 million people in July 1969 is preserved for posterity, but the original tapes from which the footage was taken have been mislaid, most likely in NASA's vast archives at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
The footage could transform our view of the moon landings, offering images far sharper than the blurred, grainy video shown around the world. It also could lay to rest the conspiracy theory that the landings were faked on a Hollywood soundstage.
Despite its iconic status, the television footage was the equivalent of a photocopy of a photocopy. It came from a camera that had been pointed at a black-and-white monitor on Earth. The image on the monitor, in turn, had been stripped of much of its detail.
....
Rather than prizing the tapes as vital recordings, NASA simply filed them away. As personnel retired or died, the location of the tapes was forgotten. "
P.S.: And talking of astronomy, I will miss Pluto! They decided to downgrade it from "real planet" to "dwarf planet" yesterday :-(.
[Technorati: Landing on the moon, Conspiracy theory]
