Apollo 11 TV Tapes Go Missing

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 13, 2006 @11:22AM from the check-the-roswell-basement dept.

Richard W.M. Jones writes "On July 21st 1969, Honeysuckle Creek observatory brought us the first TV pictures of men on the moon. The original signals were recorded on high quality slow-scan TV (SSTV) tapes. What was released to the TV networks was reduced to lower quality commercial TV standards. Unfortunately John Sarkissian of Parkes Observatory Australia reports that 698 of the 700 boxes of original tapes have gone missing [warning: large PDF] from the U.S. National Archives. Even more worryingly, the last place on earth which can actually read these tapes is scheduled to close in October this year. The PDF contains interesting comparisons which show that if all you've seen are the TV pictures from the landing, you really haven't seen the first moon walk in its full glory."

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Re:How can you "lose" 698/700 boxes??? by m874t232 · 2006-07-13 14:09 · Score: 1, Offtopic

Ok, seriously, how can you lose ~99% of the data from something that is such a HUGE part of history?

Simple: instead of employing archivists, librarians, and imaging experts, the government has been cutting budgets and spending money on sending soldiers to Iraq instead. In different words, if people vote for presidents that promise to reduce "the size of government" and increase the size of the military, that's what they mean. The American public got what the majority voted for.