Original Tapes of '69 Moon Landing: Erased

A good example of why "government-run" anything is a bad idea.

NASA released the first glimpses of a complete digital make-over of the original landing footage that clarifies the blurry and grainy images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the surface of the moon.

The full set of recordings, being cleaned up by Burbank, California-based Lowry Digital, will be released in September. The preview is available at http://www.nasa.gov.

NASA admitted in 2006 that no one could find the original video recordings of the July 20, 1969, landing.

Since then, Richard Nafzger, an engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, who oversaw television processing at the ground-tracking sites during the Apollo 11 mission, has been looking for them.

The good news is he found where they went. The bad news is they were part of a batch of 200,000 tapes that were degaussed -- magnetically erased -- and re-used to save money.

Maybe it's better that we not know the name of this "rocket scientist" who decided that the originals of this historic event should be erased and re-used. It is almost beyond belief that anyone could be that short-sighted and ignorant.

But that's bureaucracy for you. Bureaucrats know the price of everything and the value of nothing.