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

magazine.uc.edu

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

#161

Post by School-Cotton »

ofalkaed wrote: post #154
School-Cotton wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still technically illegal to go to Cuba without a specific whitelisted reason (and tourism isn’t on the list). It’s just not strictly enforced.

So it is not illegal? you just need to go through the proper bureaucracy as you do with every countries. Last I looked into it a few years back it was easy to get the paper work, one person I found who went there just signed up for guitar lessons in Havana to study Cuban guitar, showed the paperwork for the guitar classes and was good to go because it was for educational reasons even if the guitar lessons only accoun…

The point is nothing has changed about the legality. It has always been allowed to go for one of these whitelisted reasons, you just had to apply in advance.

Now it is still legal to go for exactly the same set of reasons, they just don't bother actually checking. There's no "paperwork" you need to get; you just tell the check-in agent which legal reason you fall under.

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

#162

Post by RandomBacon »

jcranmer wrote: post #100
School-Cotton wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do US Navy sailors in international waters have to go through customs on returning to port in the US? I don’t know the answer, but that’s probably the closest analogy.

I don't think so, but you do need to fill out a customs form to ship a package to someone on a US Navy ship.

If you're shipping the package from the U.S., that is incorrect.

I ordered Amazon packages addressed to me on U.S. Navy ships.

Ships have FPO addresses which are treated and formatted like a domestic ship.

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

#163

Post by stinkbeetle »

dmix wrote: post #143
GCA10 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father was one of the scientific Principal Investigators (PIs) who analyzed the Apollo 11 lunar samples, back in 1969. Flipping through some of his notes from back then, it sounds as if a rotating assortment of bureaucrats injected themselves into the chain-of-custody with weird and embarrassing effects. To wit: Some Agriculture Department folks decided that their legal authority to quarantine soil samples brought…

> They insisted on building a three-week quarantine facility with slivers of lunar samples There was a ton of money flowing in for space and it was the big new thing of the future. Makes sense other agencies would try to insert themselves and try to seem relevant to the new popular thing in the news and latch themselves onto any future spending/authority.

Yep, government bureaucracy has always been horribly corrupt, incompetent, and self-serving, unfortunately.

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

#164

Post by GuB-42 »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #120
perihelions wrote: post #6

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 con…

It's funny. You want to blame NASA for the ridiculous publicity stunts, but they were totally right that a loss of public interest was one of the biggest risks to the program. Neil Armstrong stood on the moon in 1969, but by 1971, Nixon had cancelled Apollo.

I didn't feel like the original author was blaming NASA. The entire Apollo program was a publicity stunt. That doesn't make it less awesome. A moon landing definitely earns you the right to show off.

Not sure about the quarantine, but the customs form is a nice touch. Cheap, simple, effective and harmless.

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

#165

Post by 486sx33 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #140
ofalkaed wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not even civilians need to do that. Ultimately the only time you have to is when there is documentation of your being in the a foreign country and if there is no documentation you probably don't want to draw attention to yourself. This is why so many people where able to go to and from Cuba when it was technically illegal, US and Cuba agreed to not document/stamp the passports of private citizens.

It is still technically illegal to go to Cuba without a specific whitelisted reason (and tourism isn’t on the list). It’s just not strictly enforced.

[dead]

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

#166

Post by ofalkaed »

School-Cotton wrote: post #161
ofalkaed wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it is not illegal? you just need to go through the proper bureaucracy as you do with every countries. Last I looked into it a few years back it was easy to get the paper work, one person I found who went there just signed up for guitar lessons in Havana to study Cuban guitar, showed the paperwork for the guitar classes and was good to go because it was for educational reasons even if the guitar lessons only accoun…

The point is nothing has changed about the legality. It has always been allowed to go for one of these whitelisted reasons, you just had to apply in advance. Now it is still legal to go for exactly the same set of reasons, they just don't bother actually checking. There's no "paperwork" you need to get; you just tell the check-in agent which legal reason you fall under.

I have only researched this from the standpoint of going there by private boat which is different and has some extra work including getting approval from the USCG but what I picked up about general travel is that doing the paper work allows you to take a direct flight, can save you from headaches down the line and offers some protection from headaches caused by how this changes in the future. What changed is how the law is enforced, not the law itself and this changes every decade or so.

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

#167

Post by Gracana »

dmix wrote: post #144
nickff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one of the Apollo documentaries (I can't remember which one), the astronauts joked that it was the least effective quarantine ever; they talked about how there was a stream of ants going in and out of the Airstream they were in.

They quarantined in an Airstream van? That's hilarious. Very 1960s Found the wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_quarantine_facility

You can go look at one up close at the Udvar-Hazy Center in VA. I highly recommend a visit there if you are in the area and interested in aerospace stuff. They've got a ton of amazing exhibits.

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

#168

Post by rogerrogerr »

tsimionescu wrote: post #114
joezydeco wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems incongruous to take your national heroes and make them sit in a hot trailer for a few days "for show" instead of whisking them home for their debrief and ticker-tape parades. Unless it was not for the benefit of the astronauts, but the skeptical public back home? Hmm.

A quarantine is never for the sake of those you quarantine, it's for the sake of the public, by definition.

Except after the 2019 strain of coronavirus was identified, then we turned it all upside down and said “stay home, stay safe” as loud as possible for two years straight.

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

#170

Post by dotancohen »

jki275 wrote: post #136
thescriptkiddie wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an interesting implication of this is that the government probably didn't want to issue them life insurance because then they would have to explain why they don't do that for all military personnel

The US government does issue life insurance for all military personnel. It's a nominal cost (20 bucks a month IIRC) for something like 400k of coverage. It's been around since 1914[1]. As far as I know all of the astronauts were military at that time, so they probably would have been covered by this program. There could be any number of nuances I'm not aware of though. [1] https://benefits.va.gov/benefits/infographic…

I don't know about any of the other Apollo astronauts, and I wasn't around at the time, but I do remember once reading that a big deal was made about Neil Armstrong being a civilian when he landed on the moon.
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