[meteorite-list] Apollo Moon rock sample on eBay?

From: Murray Paulson <murray.paulson_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 20:02:46 -0700
Message-ID: <AANLkTim6mrE05Ukjv6QrFY=YiXRKCiZ34_-A8rkoWjZv_at_mail.gmail.com>

Ya, I know, it should have been a "meteorologist" and he would have
slipped through ...

Murray ; )

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 7:26 PM, tett <tett at rogers.com> wrote:
> Total B.S.
>
> As soon as he wrote, "I showed it to a geologist.." I knew this was fake.
>
> Cheers!
>
> Mike Tettenborn
>
> On 03/02/2011 7:52 PM, Matson, Robert D. wrote:
>>
>> If the sample is real, it is an extraordinarily large one (comparatively
>> speaking).
>> As such, it's surprising that someone would be dumb enough to try to sell
>> it
>> on eBay. ?--Rob
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Thunder Stone [mailto:stanleygregr at hotmail.com]
>> Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2011 4:42 PM
>> To: mike; Matson, Robert D.
>> Cc: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>> Subject: RE: [meteorite-list] Apollo Moon rock sample on eBay?
>>
>>
>> All:
>>
>> Appears it is illegal to own one - but as to it being real - probable?
>>
>>
>>
>> http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2009/07/can-you-legally-own-a-piece-of-the-moon/
>>
>>
>> Can You Legally Own a Piece of the Moon?
>> A Moon rock on Mt. Everest: Not for keeps Mr. Ian Sheffield of Edinburgh
>> Scotland is miffed. He claims to have not one, but two dust samples of the
>> Moon-one from the Apollo 11 mission and another from the Apollo 15 mission.
>> He explains that he bought these lunar samples "from a dealer" about 3 years
>> ago. The article does not indicate how much he paid for them, but he does
>> allow that each is valued at "around ?2000" (about $3300) each.
>> A problem arose when he planned to display his samples to the public. He
>> apparently wrote to NASA asking if he could exhibit them. To his
>> astonishment, NASA refused to give him permission and demanded the return of
>> the samples, claiming that the lunar dust in his possession was property of
>> the United States government.
>> Mr. Sheffield's story of how the samples came into his possession is
>> interesting. He states the dust came off a camera film pack to which a
>> technician in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory was accidentally exposed.
>> Because no one was sure the lunar samples would not contain some possible
>> primitive (and pathogenic) organisms when the Apollo 11 crew first returned
>> to Earth, they had to spend three weeks in quarantine. Anybody in the LRL
>> exposed to lunar material was compelled to join the astronauts in their
>> quarantine. The technician who was exposed went into isolation and (the
>> story claims) upon his release, "was given the dust as a memento."
>> My antennae went up at this point. No lunar samples are "given" to private
>> individuals. Each piece of the Moon returned by the Apollo astronauts is
>> carefully accounted for and resides in the Lunar Curatorial Facility in
>> Houston, where they are kept in two separate hurricane-proof vaults. Many
>> lunar samples are loaned to scientific institutions for study. The only
>> lunar samples given away (of which I am aware) were to about a hundred
>> national leaders during President Nixon's 1969 world tour. The beautiful
>> "Space Window" in the Washington National Cathedral, honoring man's landing
>> on the Moon, holds a 7.18-gram basalt from Mare Tranquillitatis, on loan to
>> the Cathedral. Other moon rocks were presented to the Apollo astronauts (and
>> Walter Cronkite) in 2004. However, each plaque came with a catch: the lunar
>> samples can not be personally held by the recipients, and must be displayed
>> at a local school or museum. Recently, Astronaut Scott Parazynski was loaned
>> a sample of the Moon's regolith that he carried to the summit of Mount
>> Everest.
>> Some diplomatic gifts of lunar samples have found their way onto the black
>> market. A notorious case is a sample presented to the people of Honduras
>> back in 1969. This sample turned up during a NASA Inspector General "sting"
>> which was designed to catch dealers of fake lunar samples. To the agents'
>> surprise, they were offered a genuine lunar rock: asking price, $5 million.
>> A meeting was arranged and the rock (and presumably, the seller) was seized.
>> Another lunar sample was stolen from a museum in Malta between 1990 and
>> 1994; it was recovered in another sting operation in 1998.
>> The federal government forbids private ownership of any Apollo sample.
>> Yet, such samples show up every now and then. The most common form they take
>> is dust stuck to adhesive tape (an easy way to "clean" the surface of some
>> exposed sample container, tool, or space suit used on the lunar surface).
>> Mr. Sheffield's sample is likely to be one of these pieces. Its status, I
>> was surprised to find out, is legally uncertain. Although NASA has sued in
>> court to recover any such bootleg sample, no prosecution has succeeded,
>> except for those caught (literally) in the act of theft. In an embarrassing
>> incident for NASA, a summer intern and two companions carried a safe full of
>> lunar samples out of a building at Johnson Space Center (as Dave Barry would
>> say, I am not making this up). They were apprehended while trying to sell
>> them at bargain basement prices and subsequently prosecuted.
>> It was rumored for years that several of the Apollo astronauts held
>> samples from their respective missions. If they did, it was probably
>> inadvertent-the lunar dust is extremely adhesive and it is possible that
>> smudges of lunar dust clung to personal items returned from the Moon in
>> their Personal Preference Kits. Alan Bean, who documents the Apollo
>> experience through his oil paintings, is said to add ground-up patches
>> retrieved from his lunar space suit to his works. His reasoning is that
>> because his suit was dirty with lunar dust, some of that dust must find its
>> way into his paintings, giving them a true "lunar" ambiance.
>> So Mr. Ian Sheffield of Edinburgh may be home free. I might suggest to him
>> that given their quasi-legal status, he is probably better off not calling
>> attention to his possession of these unique artifacts. In fact, although
>> NASA frowns on owning stolen Apollo lunar samples, there are dozens of lunar
>> samples available for sale on eBay. A number of meteorites recovered on
>> Earth, came from the Moon. Although most of them belong to national
>> governments that sponsor the recovery of meteorites from Antarctica, several
>> are in private hands and can be bought and sold, just as any commodity.
>> Right now, there is a very nice anorthositic breccia from the lunar
>> highlands for sale. Better hurry though - the sale only lasts another day.
>> Oh yes, the asking price: a mere $144,000.
>> By the way, over the years, I have been asked to look at a few "lunar"
>> samples that were in fact, lunar fakes. Caveat Emptor!
>>
>> ----------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 18:40:06 -0500
>>> From: meteoritemike at gmail.com
>>> To: ROBERT.D.MATSON at saic.com
>>> CC: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Apollo Moon rock sample on eBay?
>>>
>>> Hi Robert and List,
>>>
>>> I saw that listing last night. I'm not 100% certain, but I think it is
>>> illegal to sell such a specimen. And I think it might be illegal just
>>> to own it. And even if it's legal, there's no way to tell if it's
>>> real, based on the photos and description.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> MikeG
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Mike Gilmer - Galactic Stone& ?Ironworks Meteorites
>>>
>>> Website - http://www.galactic-stone.com Facebook -
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>>> http://meteorite.gotop100.com EOM -
>>> http://www.encyclopedia-of-meteorites.com/collection.aspx?id=1564
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> -
>>> On 2/3/11, Matson, Robert D. wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Probably impossible to tell from the pictures, but what are the odds
>>>> that this is truly Apollo material?
>>>>
>>>> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150557455015
>>>>
>>>> --Rob
>>
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Received on Thu 03 Feb 2011 10:02:46 PM PST