As has been widely reported, NASA have lost the original tapes of the first steps of man on the moon.  Oops.  I’ve lost one or two things before, but I’ve never really managed to lose one of the sole records of a defining moment in human history.  So I feel I’ve done quite well over the last twenty-one years, and it makes me feel better about the occasional bit of kit I might have lost at school.

Luckily, copies of the footage still exists.  The stuff that was shown on TV is clearly still around, but that’s grainy.  NASA, who were technologically advanced enough to send man to the moon, were not technologically advanced enough to work out how to directly broadcast their lunar footage on TV, and so had to show the footage on a TV monitor, which was then filmed by a TV camera, leaving the image somewhat grainy.  And, so it would appear, no-one’s bothered working on a solution to the problem over the last 37 years, so we’ve still not seen the original footage.  And now they’ve gone and lost it.  Probably taped over it with the Dick Van Dyke show, or something.

Now, wonderfully, internet conspiracy theorists are claiming with all the conviction they can muster that this doubtlessly proves that the moon landings were faked.  Of course it does.  The loss of a tape in an archive of tens of thousands clearly outweighs the evidence of the (albeit grainy) film footage, photographs, and samples of the moon that the astronauts brought back.

Anyway, in my experience, if they stop looking for them they’ll turn up.  And then they can make a fortune by airing the ‘lost footage of the moon landings’ in some TV special. 

In fact, you know where they probably are?  Right alongside Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and 150 Home Office PCs.  Wherever they might be.