WASHINGTON — NASA could put a man on the moon but didn't have the sense to keep the original video of the live TV transmission.
In an embarrassing acknowledgment, the space agency said Thursday that it must have erased the Apollo 11 moon footage years ago so that it could reuse the videotape.
I've got one thing to say about this:
I'm still trying to wrap my brain around this concept. Here you have perhaps the defining moment of an entire generation - man walking on the moon - and no one thought to preserve this? Folks, video taken at my wedding is better preserved - at least that's in a fire- and water- proof safe. And yet not one of the eggheads at NASA thought, hey, let's preserve this for generations to come???
Rumors that the tapes were used to record episodes of Hee Haw are unconfirmed...
That is all.
7 comments:
I've long argued that the NASA of old died long before Challenger, and now exists only to support its own existence.
We basically went from walking on the moon to jumping in the space shuttle, praying that it didn't blow up on launch, taking a look around space to say "erm, still empty, ok we're good", and now we are praying that it doesn't break apart on re-entry.
I was supposed to have Jetson cars by the time I was 25. We haven't even made it to Mars yet.
Remember that we're talking about the same agency that lost a 125-million-dollar space probe because someone forgot to convert between inches and centimeters.
In this case, I'll bet somebody assumed there was another copy somewhere and that the tape in question was only a backup.
The sad thing is, the original broadcast footage was a camera recording a TV screen because the camera on the lunar lander wasn't compatible with TV at the time. The real footage was of excellent quality and clarity according to all who saw the feed broadcast from the moon.
Actually there may be A set in the boxes from Australia. Or at least we can hope. That was the site that had the best downloads.
I'm sure the crows that insists that the Lunar landing never happened, and was staged is having a feild day with this revelation.
The government can't keep track of one videotape, and they want to run national health care? The mind boggles...
Yeah, don't count on Hollywood either. Someone at NBC had all the kinescopes of the original "Tonight" show burned, to free up shelf space.
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