Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Neil Armstrong's customs form for moon rocks (2016)

magazine.uc.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 204 posts

Re: Neil Armstrong's customs form for moon rocks (2016)

#3

Post by elijaht »

jleyank wrote: post #2

I think at least one astronaut needed to file a request for tax deadline extension due to being “out of the country” at filing time. Didn’t have an entry in the system for “off the planet” I guess…

Ha, that was actually Apollo 13: https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/john-swigert-jr

Re: Neil Armstrong's customs form for moon rocks (2016)

#5

Post by ceejayoz »

> Who would have guessed the regulations would have been enforced so rigorously in 1969 when three men returned to the U.S. from a rather long business trip – to the moon and back.

I mean, I'd imagine it was mostly done for the joke aspect.

edit: https://www.space.com/7044-moon-apollo-astronauts-customs.ht...

> "Yes, it's authentic," NASA spokesperson John Yembrick told Space.com. "It was a little joke at the time."

Re: Neil Armstrong's customs form for moon rocks (2016)

#6

Post by perihelions »

These things were mainly publicity stunts. The supposed biohazard quarantine for returning Apollo astronauts was a theater performance, too.

https://www.livescience.com/space/the-moon/the-apollo-moon-l... ("The Apollo moon landing was real, but NASA's quarantine procedure was not")

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/science/nasa-moon-quarant... ("A review of archives suggests that efforts to protect Earth from contamination by any organism brought back from the lunar surface were mostly for show")

Re: Neil Armstrong's customs form for moon rocks (2016)

#7

Post by more_corn »

ceejayoz wrote: post #5

> Who would have guessed the regulations would have been enforced so rigorously in 1969 when three men returned to the U.S. from a rather long business trip – to the moon and back. I mean, I'd imagine it was mostly done for the joke aspect. edit: https://www.space.com/7044-moon-apollo-astronauts-customs.ht... > "Yes, it's authentic," NASA spokesperson John Yembrick told Space.com. "It was a little joke at the time."

No. This is one example of many. NASA astronauts have to fill out government business travel paperwork for travel to the ISS. The rules must be followed even if the rules don’t make sense.

Re: Neil Armstrong's customs form for moon rocks (2016)

#9

Post by ceejayoz »

more_corn wrote: post #7
ceejayoz wrote: post #5

> Who would have guessed the regulations would have been enforced so rigorously in 1969 when three men returned to the U.S. from a rather long business trip – to the moon and back. I mean, I'd imagine it was mostly done for the joke aspect. edit: https://www.space.com/7044-moon-apollo-astronauts-customs.ht... > "Yes, it's authentic," NASA spokesperson John Yembrick told Space.com. "It was a little joke at the time."

No. This is one example of many. NASA astronauts have to fill out government business travel paperwork for travel to the ISS. The rules must be followed even if the rules don’t make sense.

The article covers that.

> Space station crews launching on Russian Soyuz spacecraft have to make their way to the Central Asian spaceport of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. No matter what the mission, even astronauts have to go through customs, NASA officials said. As part of their routine airline flights to other countries and back, they of course encounter airport customs.

It's not to/from the ISS that's the issue there.

A US-only crew on a US-launched spacecraft that lands in US territory won't need to do it. (ISS may add a few complexities, but if you stay on, say, the Shuttle, you're not leaving US-controlled territory.)

Post reply on HN