Fly Me To The Moon

Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins pose in business suits following a press

conference at the Manned Spacecraft Center (January 10 1969)

Zeitgeisters,

Can this really be on the money? A report from Reuters claims the original video tapes of the moon landing are lost:

The U.S. government has misplaced the original recording of the first moon landing, including astronaut Neil Armstrong's famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," a NASA spokesman said on Monday.

Armstrong's famous space walk, seen by millions of viewers on July 20, 1969, is among transmissions that NASA has failed to turn up in a year of searching, spokesman Grey Hautaloma said.

The tapes also contain data about the health of the astronauts and the condition of the spacecraft. In all,some 700 boxes of transmissions from the Apollo lunar missions are missing, he said.

"I wouldn't say we're worried -- we've got all the data. Everything on the tapes we have in one form or another," Hautaloma said.

NASA has retained copies of the television broadcasts and offers several clips on its Web site. But those images are of lower quality than the originals stored on the missing magnetic tapes.

So they can put a man on the moon, but they can’t remember where they put the tapes? Heh!

Stand by for conspiracy theorists saying this proves that Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins didn’t really go to the moon.

And for those of you who are interested, the above image comes from the rather excellent Apollo Archive. It is image S69-16682. If you are interested in space-related photography, generally NASA tends not excercise copyright over these images and gives general permission for them to be used on personal websites.

Another good site is the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth, which is as it sounds. Go there to see images from the Mercury program through to pics downloaded from the International Space Station.

Go Spaceheads!

Mr Trivia