There has been quite a bit of space news lately because of yesterday's 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. Here is an eclectic collection of related stories:

• A Cold War perspective of the Apollo landing, with Sergei Khrushchev, son of Premier Nikita Khrushchev (Scientific American).
• Moonlanding for kids (NixonLibrary.gov).
• You haven't take your meds and you want NASA to explain the hoax, again (NASA.gov). Oh, what was I thinking? Of course you won't believe a NASA explanation. How about the Mythbusters moon hoax episode via the Discovery Channel? You can't argue with that combo (Discovery.com).
  
• Human space flight, the next 40 years (Space.com).
• Apollo 11 image gallery (Space.com)
• Experience the Apollo 11 moon landing in real time (mashable.com).
• Moon landing facts (NationalGeographic.com).
• Neil Armstrong remembers (CNN.com).
• Yah! the space toilet is fixed (Space.com). See yesterday's related FFO post.

Do you remember NASA's embarrassing 2006 episode of the missing video tapes of the moonwalk? These were high-resolution video recordings. The images seen back home on television were reduced resolution (a standard TV camera recording off a hi-res monitor, BION). The cited Wiki article is a bit confusing because of serial editing, but in June of this year the tapes were found in a Perth, Australia storage site. One tricky bit is that the video recording format is so old that restoration was difficult.

:drum roll: NASA has announced it will hold a briefing on Thursday (July 16, 2009) to release the restored Apollo 11 moonwalk video.

Two interpretations:
--Our space enthusiasts: Yah!
--Our cynical curmudgeons: why'd it take Disney so long to produce these tapes?