Missing Moon Tape Update

According to the AP, NASA announced Tuesday that it was beginning an official search for the missing tapes from the Apollo missions.

Red-faced because the best pictures of its glory days are missing, NASA said Tuesday it was launching an official search for more than 13,000 original tapes of the historic Apollo moon missions.

What's missing are the never-before-broadcast, clear, original videos - not the grainy, converted pictures the world watched on television more than three decades ago.

The tapes aren't lost, says the NASA official in charge of the search. But he doesn't know where they are.

Most likely they are somewhere at the sprawling Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., which misplaced the tapes originally. But they also could be stored somewhere else.

Well, it looks like NASA certainly has some good leads....

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Something that coverage of this story rarely mentions: There are hundreds of really, really good photographs of the moon walks.

Part of me hopes that this is a cynical marketing ploy, and that in a few weeks NASA will "find" the tapes and start taking orders for a special DVD series to fund the recovery efforts.

Hell, I'd buy a set . . .