This week’s stupid thing may actually be one of the most mind-bogglingly stupid things of all time, and that’s no exaggeration. As Associated Press reported yesterday, NASA — this is so unbelievably stupid and incompetent it’s hard to even type it — OK, start over. NASA erased the original video of the live television transmission of Apollo 11 astronauts on the moon. Better yet, they didn’t just erase it, they “taped over it,” like it was an old episode of CSI or something. That’s right, they “taped over,” as historian Douglas Brinkley says in the AP story, “perhaps the most important historical footage of the 20th century” — footage of a landmark event in human history that they themselves had accomplished! Somehow, “WTF?” doesn’t quite say enough. Luckily, NASA did manage to find copies of the original footage elsewhere, and they’ve convinced restoration experts in Hollywood to digitally clean it up so it will be much clearer than the ghostlike images that we baby boomers and our elders saw live, 40 years ago. Which is great, but still, jeez, just how stupid can you be? (Photo of Neil Armstrong taking first step on the moon courtesy of NASA.)
This article appears in Jul 14-21, 2009.
It is interesting to note that nasa hired a hollywood company to restore this priceless footage. However, that hollywood company then hired a Indian firm to complete the task, basically cutting the american worker out of another opportunity to work an honest day for an honest wage. Tax dollars hard at work once again. Why didn’t nasa just cut out the hollywood company all together and save a few dollars by cutting out the middleman?