I just learned this yesterday at dinner, but I’ve finally been convinced. That footage of the moon landing of Apollo 11 was not the real footage. We’ve been believing a lie!

No, I’m not one of those “Moon Conspiracy Freaks”, now. But the footage we’re all familiar with is NOT the original footage, its footage of a television monitor.

The reality was, the original footage was taped, as it aired, and was taped again on a video monitor. We are all watching a Television screen on our television screens.

The original footage, taken directly from the moon and beamed to deep space network observatories in Australia, has never been seen by the general public or NASA officials.

The world watched fuzzy, ghostlike images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon. Only a handful of technicians saw the good stuff live, sharp enough to see Armstrong’s reflection in Aldrin’s faceplate, said Stan Lebar, the retired Apollo TV camera manager.

Now here is the dillema, the original footage is “lost”.
Okay, its not “lost” but they don’t know where it is.

The tapes are not lost, insists the NASA official put in charge of the search. But he does not 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.

And the technology that can read these lost tapes is about to be destroied.

Until Tuesday, the search for the tapes was a spare-time deal and retirement hobby for Nafzger and the 81-year-old Lebar — not anything organized. Now with news reports of the lost tapes and NASA wanting data for its new lunar missions, the agency ordered a search of its cosmic attics.

Nafzger hopes the hunt can be wrapped up in less than six months with five workers and a bit of travel. Stored in more than 2,000 boxes, each tape lasts only 15 minutes. Everything from all 11 missions — from launch to splashdown — is on the tapes, Lebar said.

There are 15 reels — three boxes — for just Apollo 11′s stay on the moon, Lebar said.

I wonder if these tapes are Y2K compliant.