Posted on 05/23/2017 7:11:56 AM PDT by simpson96
Shortly after Neil Armstrong took "one giant leap for mankind" by stepping on the surface of the moon, he did what any tourist does: He collected a souvenir.
Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the lunar surface, scooped some lunar rocks into a bag, then placed it into another bag, and put it in the pocket of his space suit.
From there, the outer sample bag, containing traces of moon dust, took a long and torturous path before it was mistakenly put out to public auction and scooped up by a suburban Chicago lawyer for $995. Now, the incredibly rare artifact will go on auction, and auctioneers expect it to fetch $2 million to $4 million.
Because NASA's lunar objects generally are prohibited from being privately owned, curators at Sotheby's auction house believe the moon dust bag to be the only privately held object of its kind in the world.(snip)
Like many baby boomers who watched the lunar landings as kids, the bag's owner, Nancy Lee Carlson, an attorney from Inverness, was fascinated by the Apollo missions.
She came across the bag, labeled "lunar sample return," on an online federal auction site,where it ended up after a bureaucratic misunderstanding. After no one bid on it in three initial auctions, she bought it in February 2015.
She initially kept the object in her bedroom closet, then sent it to NASA to verify its authenticity. NASA officials verified that the bag indeed contained moon dust, a dark-gray fine powder, like graphite, that one astronaut described as smelling like gunpowder.
But once officials knew the bag came from the moon, they confiscated it as government property. Carlson filed a federal lawsuit, and in February, a judge concluded that she had legally acquired the moon bag and was entitled to keep it.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Yeah, but do you have any like I do that look like Elvis? I'm asking $400,000.
Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the lunar surface, scooped some lunar rocks into a bag, then placed it into another bag, and put it in the pocket of his space suit.
Why can't the media strive for accuracy even for otherwise noncontroversial topics?
Armstrong didn't want a 'souvenir.' He was the mission commander carrying out the mission plan ie to get a contingency sample in the event of a shortened or aborted lunar landing that would have prevented full collection of moon rocks. Untold dollars, man hours and a few precious lives were spent in launching Apollo 11 and nothing was left to chance.
The point of the damn thing was to explore and study the moon. Which he did.
True enough.But then there have been several Federal judges in recent months who believe that the President of the United States doesn't have the power to determine who can enter this country.
And a few years ago there were at least several Federal judges who believed that the 2nd Amendment only applied to "the Militia".
I understand NASA's position. We all paid for this, so it's unfair for any individual to own or profit from it. It has long been understood that anything collected from the Moon belongs to NASA and it is a crime to own or claim to own it privately. It sounds like this woman lawyer got lucky. I haven't read the case, but assume the court determined her to be a bona fida purchaser for value without notice and awarded her ownership on that basis.
Nobody would be able to tell the difference between the moon dust on my mantle and the dust that's already there.......Of course I could always take my finger and write "moon dust" in it.
Non sequitur. If Uncle Sam sold me something from earth that is a valid sale.
Part of the reason NASA was trying to keep the stuff is because we weren’t sure at the time what was in the “moon dust.”
The first thing they did was isolate the crew and go over them fine toothed for three weeks to make sure they were not carrying something we had no idea what it was from the moon. So introducing dust into the civilian world was like giving it the bird flu. It might have killed millions.
rwood
Of course over countless years meteor hits on the moon had been blasting moon dust into earth’s atmosphere.
It’s a sterile ball, no more harmful than most earth dust.
There is no special law applicable here. Only ordinary laws about integrity of transactions.
Bump
Although I'm not a lawyer I,for one,can easily imagine that there's a relatively obscure passage in a relatively obscure SCOTUS decision from,say,50 years ago which states that there's a way for such a transaction,one involving a thing belonging to the US Government,to be declared legally invalid.
How about you?
I have a bag of star dust. Wonder what I could auction it off for?
Lunar rock and dust brought back from moon is very rare and other than a few samples is held by US govt and scientists.
Lunar rock that was ejected from surface of moon by meteor strikes and then captured by earths gravity and survived entry through earths atmosphere, and found on earth is also rare but not as valuable usually. There are only 71 meteorites classified as lunar meteorite’s. I am one of those few people who own a small piece of lunar rock. NWA 5406 Lunar Meteorite.
I bought it from a large meteorite collector years ago when he cut a lunar meteorite and then sold a few chips that broke off during the cutting. I had a second piece of lunar rock which I sold 2 years ago. I also have Mars rock, small samples. NWA 1068.
I enjoy meteorite collecting and meteorites value keeps going up. My largest meteorite is a piece of iron meteorite found in Egypt. About the size of a cantelope.
My Mars meteorites. ....
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?sea=NWA+1068&sfor=names&ants=&falls=&valids=&stype=contains&lrec=50&map=ge&browse=&country=All&srt=name&categ=All&mblist=All&rect=&phot=&snew=0&pnt=Normal%20table&code=17116
Any other FReepers collect meteorites or Opals which I also collect?
“It’s a sterile ball, no more harmful than most earth dust.”
Yes, we know that now. But at the time they didn’t and if they had to isolate the crew members for three weeks to make sure, but let the bag get into the population, I’d say they screwed up and could have allowed something in the dust to get into our population. Soil can hold illnesses and since it was isolated on the moon for so long, they didn’t have any more idea what was in the soil than they did on the crew. Not real bright letting it get into the population unless it was done after the crew was released from isolation and we knew it wasn’t tainted. But if it had been checked independenty, it would have been on record at NASA and wouldn’t have reached the population as the article said they were very good at keeping everything. Obviously they didn’t do well with this.
rwood
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