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Over at Cliopatra, Oscar Chamberlain bewails the amazing loss of NASA’s original tapes of the Moon landing. See the original report by John M. Sarkissian (warning: big PDF) for the full gory details. The films in question were of much higher quality than the versions eventually broadcast. Some hope that this could finally stamp out the conspiracy theories about the moon landings being faked, though to me this idea seems to show a certain naivety. Chamberlain complains that: ‘The real crime here is that NASA seems to have no historian, which is truly extraordinary. And quite sad.’ He’s echoing The Telegraph, which reported:

‘I just think this is what happens when you have a large government bureaucracy that functions for decade after decade,’ said Keith Cowing, the editor of the website Nasa Watch.

‘It’s not malicious or intentional, but I think it’s unfortunate that Nasa doesn’t have maybe just one more person whose job it is to look back at its history.’

But NASA has had a history programme — and an official chief historian — since 1959. The current encumbent in Stephen J. Dick. So there must be some miscommunication here somewhere.