I worked at a university where a lot of various research in physics, computer vision, and structural engineering was done.

Often researchers and tenured staff held on to such artifacts but eventually retired or died.

Their offices were emptied out by random staff who had no clue of the significance of their possessions and thrown out of left in a collection bin in the hallway.

I've got a few gems I rescued from such situations, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was what happened, even if not, it's worth knowing that this happens :(

I used to keep a box of eight-inch floppy disks in my office. Whenever a colleague would ask to borrow a blank disk (in the 3.5" era) I would give them one of these eight-inch disks. Many of my colleagues were so young they didn't even know what it was, not ever having used even a 5.25" floppy. It was always a great conversation starter.

Until the era of thumb drives came along...

> Why did the FBI come looking for it years later? Embarrassment?

I'd wager it has more to do with the... significant overlap between rocket guidance and long range missile guidance. Nothing to stir up a good panic like the thought of the latter ending up in North Korea's hands - how much good it'd actually do NK being entirely besides the point.

Probably just to determine if it was still US Government property.

After Apollo 11, President Nixon presented moon rock samples as gifts to various countries and states. Over 180 of them are now missing, and the FBI investigates people who are allegedly selling them (hint: they're usually fakes)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_and_missing_moon_rocks

The original footage of the moon landings was actually erased and recorded over when NASA had a shortage of data tapes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes. So yeah there is definitely some pragmatism at NASA.

You're forgetting about all the other Apollo landing missions. The later ones have fantastic color video footage, remastered in full HD for episode 4 of the fantastic documentary series When We Left Earth.

The whole 6 part documentary series are worth watching for anyone remotely interested in space, but here's a small sample of the quality of the moon landing video footage: https://kristofferR.com/files/moonlanding_footage_HD.mkv

it's as if they want you to forget what happened.

Let's just focus on a space station and travelling to the red planet we know little about. What footprints on the moon?

Only the original footage was lost. It was still broadcast to millions and there are multiple recordings of these broadcasts. If you read the article you'd find that NASA actually released a restored version of the footage. So no, they don't want you to forget what happened. Lastly I know it's pretty hip to be a conspiracy theorist, but there's a really good video rebutting common claims for it being faked here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU

I don't think he was implying that we never landed on the moon, just that the NASA manned program's priorities today have a misguided set of priorities. There was a scathing article posted about it last night

I got a different impression from "What footprints on the moon?" At least to me it doesn't make sense that NASA would want to forget one of humanity's biggest achievements, especially considering what an accomplishment it was for America during the space race. If you can still find the article it would be great if you could link it so I can maybe get some missing context.

> it's pretty hip to be a conspiracy theorist

I've never observed this to be the case, and I collected conspiracy theories for a good few years. The people who credit them tend in my experience to be a rather close-mouthed lot, not least because they're accustomed to ridicule, and probably the very last word I'd choose to describe them would be 'hip'. I'm curious what you've seen that leads you to consider otherwise.