They Lost the Moon Landing Tapes

Here's a story some of us were talking about recently where the government lost the moon landing tapes.



Wired 15.01: One Giant Screwup for Mankind:

"THERE ARE 4 MILLION musty boxes at the Washington National Records Center, a squat brick building in Suitland, Maryland, that's been housing inactive federal records since 1967. The boxes are stacked on gray girders that rise about 20 feet and would cover the equivalent of 14 football fields of cold concrete bunkers. 'We have income tax records, passport applications, patent records, trademark records,' says Alan Kramer, division director at the center. 'And we have records from NASA, too.'

The building grows more crowded every day. In 1950, the federal records totaled 45,000 cubic feet. Today they cover 25 million, and bureaucrats add more than 500,000 cubic feet every year. Digital migration was supposed to lighten the load. It hasn't. 'People don't trust computers, so they print out everything,' Kramer says."

Sounds like Raiders of the Lost Ark.