[meteorite-list] Moon Rocks: Precious, Illegal To Own ... and Missing

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Sep 22 12:43:06 2005
Message-ID: <200509221641.j8MGfrL13138_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=92540&ran=116298&tref=po

Moon rocks: precious, illegal to own ... and missing
By JOANNE KIMBERLIN
The Virginian-Pilot
September 22, 2005

HAMPTON - You'd probably kick it out of your path. Just a grayish,
charcoal-size lump of lowly rock. Nothing to get worked up about, or
even notice.

Fact is, this rock is worth nearly 10 times its weight in top-grade
diamonds.

But you can't buy it - at least not legally - no matter how much money
you have.

Thirty-three years ago, the last men to walk on the moon plucked it from
the lunar surface, wrestled it into their spacecraft and carried it
238,857 dark and frozen miles back to Earth.

At the time, it was part of a much bigger rock - a 6-pounder collected
for one special task: uniting the people of this planet.

Dubbed the Goodwill Rock, it was cut into precisely measured, pea-sized
pieces that were given to 135 countries, friend and foe alike, as
symbols of hope for future harmony in a Cold War-world.

Each of the 50 states received a tiny share of the Goodwill Rock as
well. A limited number of larger, left-over chunks went on display
around the globe. One found its way to the Virginia Air & Space Center
in Hampton.

There, it winks under a spotlight, sealed inside a NASA-built,
nitrogen-filled container, protected by an outer cube of thick
plexiglass and its own, personal alarm system.

"It's very much our little jewel," said Allen Hoilman, the museum's curator.

Scarcity makes moon rocks extremely precious on Earth. From 1969 to
1972, six Apollo lunar landings ferried back 842 pounds of rock,
pebbles, sand and dust. Since then - with the exception of the gifts to
governments - NASA has kept nearly every speck under its control.
According to the space agency, none has ever been sold or given away -
not even to the astronauts who fetched them.

All of which makes moon rocks a red-hot commodity on the black market.
While NASA says it can account for nearly every ounce of its share, most
of the rocks given to other countries have vanished over the decades -
many likely absorbed into the underground collections of the ultra-rich.

Famed-auction house Sotheby's held the only legal sale of moon rocks
ever recorded. The 1993 sale offered a few grains weighing a total of .3
grams - less than 1/100th of an ounce - part of a three-quarter-pound
load retrieved by unmanned Russian probes during the race to space. The
gavel banged at $442, 500.

Hampton's rock weighs 159 grams - nearly 6 ounces. At Sotheby's rates,
it's worth about $230 million. That's more than two times the cost of
the most expensive masterpiece ever sold at auction - a Picasso that
went for $104 million.

All that was news to Hoilman. As a curator, he tries not to think about
sale prices.

He rubbed his jaw slowly, staring at the humdrum-looking rock with new
reverence.

"Oh my God," he said quietly. "I need a bigger alarm system."

The Space Shuttle has made travel into the cosmos seem almost routine.
Going to the moon remains anything but.

Shuttle craft have a top altitude of 400 miles. The moon is nearly 600
times f arther. Only 12 men have ever stepped on its dusty surface. It's
been more than three decades since anyone even tried.

President Bush has announced intentions for America to return. Last week
, NASA briefed Congress on its plans to do so.

If approved, a lunar outpost could be established by 2020, a stepping
stone for extending the human reach into the solar system. Moon rocks
could become run-of-the-mill, particularly if commercial expeditions
start carting them home.

Collectors, however, say Apollo rocks will always be coveted. History
blends with nostalgia to make them more than mere objects from outer
space. More than 70 found-and-confirmed meteors have landed on Earth
from the moon and Mars. But they don't command nearly the price, or
evoke nearly the emotion.

"The Apollo rocks represent what many have called the greatest
achievement of man," said Robert Pearlman, author of a Houston-based Web
site, collectspace.com, a regularly cited source in the industry.

The first moon walk on July 20, 1969, remains a milestone memory for
millions of people - an almost magical, black-and-white moment when "one
small step" redefined the word "impossible."

"There are only a handful of global events where you always remember
exactly where you were when they happened," Pearlman said. "This is the
only one that doesn't involve tragedy."

NASA considers its Apollo stockpile "America's treasure." Most of the
motherload - close to 657 pounds - remains in near-pristine condition
inside a specially built complex at Houston's Johnson Space Center.
Another 109 pounds is in remote storage at the space agency's White
Sands Testing Facility in New Mexico - a precaution against man-made or
natural threats at Johnson, like Hurricane Rita, bearing down on the
Gulf Coast .

Lewis Parker spent much of Wednesday battening down the hatches at the
space center . As a manager on NASA's moon rock team, he helps safeguard
the nation's stash.

"Taxpayers paid for the space program," Parker said, "so the rocks
belong to them."

Much is still being learned from the lunar material, thanks to
ever-better analytical instruments. Similar to some Earth rocks, but
with slightly skewered atoms, moon rocks could someday spill secrets
about the birth of the solar system.

They come from a place where yesterday looks very much like today.
Geologically dead for roughly 5 billion years, the moon has no molten
core, no shifting plates and no weather. Only the occasional asteroid
strike - or human footprint - disturbs its desolate stillness. Dynamic
Earth, on the other hand, is constantly repaving itself, and hiding its
history.

Each year, NASA doles out some 300 moon-rock test samples to chosen
members of the scientific community. Experiments have destroyed more
than 31 pounds. About one ounce has been lost in the mail, the typical
method of transportation between labs.

Just less than 43 pounds has been released world wide for exhibits like
Hampton's. In each case, NASA retains ownership, loaning rocks under
tight contracts. Institutions on the receiving end face tough scrutiny.
NASA must OK the rock's setting and security, a process that can take
several years.

Round-the-clock observation - electronic or live - is part of the deal.
Rocks must be moved to a vault when not on display. Only a select few
can know the vault's combination. Insurance, however, is not required.

"I know it seems strange, that something as priceless as the Hope
Diamond isn't insured," Parker said. "But what are they going to do if
something happens? Give us money? It's not like we could spend it going
to the moon to get more."

Even so, few museums can pass muster. Only 61 have earned a chunk of the
moon, mostly big-name, big-city institutions. In Virginia, there are
two: Hampton's Air & Space Center and NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
near Chincoteague, with a 64-gram specimen - less than half the size of
Hampton's.

Hampton inherited its rock in the early 1990s, when NASA Langley opted
for tighter security at its gates, closed its
visitors' center and sent many of its artifacts to the city's new
downtown museum. These days, some 438,000 people stop in every year.
None has ever made a move against the moon rock.

In fact, the only outright heist took place in 2002 at NASA itself, when
three interns at Johnson swiped a safe containing lunar samples from
every Apollo mission. An undercover FBI sting caught the interns trying
to sell the samples on the Internet, asking $1,000 to $5,000 per gram.
The rocks were recovered and the interns found guilty, with the
ringleader sentenced to eight years in prison.

NASA has not kept track of the more than half-pound of rock used for
commemorative gifts - the bits of moon that were embedded in small
acrylic spheres, mounted on plaques, and given to states and foreign lands.

Those haven't been guarded nearly so well.

With former President Richard Nixon handling the honors, tokens of the
moon were handed out twice - after the first lunar landing in 1969 and
the last in 1972. Each time, the astronauts went up prepared, taking a
stack of miniature national and state flags that would ultimately be
paired with chips of rock on the plaques.

The first round, known as Small World plaques, offered BB-sized grit
scooped up with a shovel by Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission.
The second round gave slightly larger nuggets of the Goodwill Rock
retrieved by Harrison Schmitt on Apollo 17.

As it goes with gifts, the international rocks left America with no
strings. They were dedicated to the people of the receiving countries.
The expectation was that they would be proudly displayed.

Instead, they've been pocketed by dictators, slipped off the desks of
kings and looted as countries crumbled. In Malta, a thief ripped that
country's Goodwill Rock off its plaque and walked out of the museum in
broad daylight. Romania's Goodwill plaque is believed to have been
auctioned off along with the possessions of executed ruler Nicolae
Ceausescu .

Joe Gutheinz, a retired NASA investigator, has been trying to pin down
the whereabouts of the foreign plaques. He concentrates on the Goodwill
gifts. So far, he's only located 14 of the 135.

Some, he believes, have simply been mislaid over the years - buried in a
cluttered back room or forgotten in some fading display. Greed, however,
likely plays a bigger role.

"I heard Nicaragua's sold in the Middle East for between $5 million and
$10 million," Gutheinz said. "I'm not sure if it's true, but no one in
Nicaragua can say where theirs is."

Gutheinz headed a sting that ultimately restored Honduras' Goodwill
gift. The plaque had vanished from that country's presidential palace
sometime in the 1990s, its rock surfacing in the United States in 1998,
with an asking price of $5 million. Gutheinz posed as a buyer, arranged
a meeting in a Miami bank vault, then seized the rock. He remembers
flying back to Houston with it tucked inside his pants pocket.

"I was afraid to put it in my briefcase in case someone snatched it," he
said. "I knew my pants weren't going anywhere."

The rock wound up in court, with the seller claiming he was its rightful
owner, having purchased it from a Honduran military officer for $50,000
and a truck. The lawsuit led to what is surely one of the most oddly
titled cases in judicial history: "The United States of America v. One
Lucite Ball Containing Lunar Material."

It took five years to decide the dispute, but in the end, a judge ruled
that the rock belonged to the people of Honduras. In February 2004, it
was remounted on its plaque and returned.

Rocks given to states have fared somewhat better.

"At least they can usually put their hands on them when push comes to
shove," said Gary Lofgren, NASA's moon rock curator, "though they
haven't always been displayed very well."

Virginia's Goodwill plaque resides in Richmond in the state's science
museum, where it's well protected, and considered "the most precious
thing in our collection," said staff scientist David Hagan.

The state's Small World plaque, on the other hand, sat in a crowded,
glass display case in the Capitol for decades. With the building now
under renovation, the plaque is being stowed in storage, along with
other artifacts.

"That glass cabinet always made me nervous," said Linwood Holton, the
state's governor when the Small World plaques were distributed in 1970.
"I mean, you don't have a piece of rock from the moon every day. I
thought we ought to maybe have a guard standing over it."

Harrison Schmitt, now 70 and living in Albuquerque, said he never
imagined such moon madness when he was a young astronaut scooping up
rocks in an alien world.

"We only thought about their scientific value," Schmitt said.

Schmitt did not support a recent, failed drive in Congress to honor
astronauts with their own moon rocks. The effort stumbled on the
realization that it would be impossible to ensure the rocks would never
wind up for sale. Instead, the Ambassador of Exploration Award was
established, where astronauts select a NASA-approved museum to display a
moon rock in their name.

"It's not appropriate for us to have them," he said. "There are too many
people more responsible for our success than we were."

Dollar signs make the idea of ownership more tempting for others. Back
at Johnson Space Center, Parker warns of con men who sell fake moon
rocks to the unsuspecting. He has an offer for anyone who thinks they've
bought the real thing.

"Go ahead and send it in," he said. "We'll test it and you'll get either
good news or bad. Actually, there won't be any good news. Because if
it's real, you'll be paid a visit by some federal agents. You've got
some 'splaining to do."
Received on Thu 22 Sep 2005 12:41:52 PM PDT