NASA Fail

I'm sure most people are at least mildly aware that this week is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. I'm sure at least some of you are also aware of the supposed "moon landing conspiracy" - the idea that it never actually happened and all the footage/photographs were staged on a Hollywood back lot.

To me, the moon landing means 3 things:

1. The most (and also probably the last) significant achievement of NASA; winning us the Space Race over the Russian Commies

2. The most (and probably only) significant and lasting achievement of the Kennedy Administration.

3. The most awesome thing ever. That was a human being, walking around on the surface of another planetary body. Of all the uncountable gazillion living things to ever walk the surface of the earth, mankind was the first to be able to go walk on the face of something else.

Anyways, I don't particularly believe in the whole "we faked the moon landing story", even though I am willing to accept the premise that the government did have a pretty good incentive to make sure the mission succeeded. And it did take place during the Nixon Administration, so its not like the idea of lying to every single American was beyond comprehension by the people in charge.

But now, there's another reason to think, maybe, possibly, somehow, someway, we have been deceived for all these years. NASA has announced that they "accidentally" taped over the original footage of the landing, so a Hollywood film restoration company is now making a new film out of restored footage from a number of secondary recordings of the event.

So here's what I'm thinking. Let's just assume for the moment that the whole thing was faked. Now, with the way technology has advanced, NASA realises that when that original footage is all over the place to celebrate the 40th anniversary this week, people might be able to find some more revealing "flaws" in the film. So, to make sure everything is okay, they are having the tape "restored" (read - digitally altered to remove questionable evidence).

Again, I don't buy all this, but it certainly doesn't make the conspiracy claims go away.

Then again, there's also these photos to consider. They seem to indicate that something landed on the moon in July 1969, but I guess there's no way to prove there were people inside it.