Web Guy 303

Browsing around Sitepoint.com today I found an interesting tidbit. Even NASA loses old archives of stuff. Very important stuff.

Sound familiar? I know a friend that lost all kinds of important stuff too that should have been archived. But they had no backups.

Since today is the 40th anniversary of the moon landing in 1969, I guess this is appropriate.

From Sitepoint:

All that remains are the poor-quality television broadcast videos. These were captured by a camera pointed at a wall monitor at mission control, Houston. The original two hours of data was stored on 45 one-inch telemetry tapes, but a four-year search for the archives has been unsuccessful. NASA suspects that the tapes have been lost forever and were probably recycled. In the 70’s and 80’s, it was common practice to overwrite old tapes with electronic output from orbiting satellites.

Nice.

A commenter points out that some of the original footage was actually uncovered in Australia. But it was just a short comment without a link, so I’m not sure what the facts are on that one.

I did find this tidbit over at Yahoo news though:

The studio wizards who restored “Casablanca” are digitally sharpening and cleaning up the ghostly, grainy footage of the moon landing, making it even better than what TV viewers saw on July 20, 1969. They are doing it by working from four copies that NASA scrounged from around the world.

So, basically, Hollywood is helping NASA out here. Kinda ironic since a lot of people think the whole thing was fabricated, and maybe filmed, in Hollywood.

Another good quote from that article:

“It’s surprising to me that NASA didn’t have the common sense to save perhaps the most important historical footage of the 20th century,” said Rice University historian and author Douglas Brinkley. He noted that NASA saved all sorts of data and artifacts from Apollo 11, and it is “mind-boggling that the tapes just disappeared.”

My thoughts exactly.

Now go back up your files, don’t be like NASA!

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