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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)

#191

Post by philsnow »

Gracana wrote: post #167
dmix wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The USS Hornet is the ship that picked them up, it's permanently docked in Alameda, CA and has been transformed into a museum. They have footprints painted on the floor to show the astronauts' path walking (across the deck) into the Airstream. You also get to walk on the (wooden) flight deck and see the jet elevator, etc.

https://www.wired.com/2009/07/hornet/

https://uss-hornet.org/

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

#192

Post by johannes1234321 »

lsllc wrote: post #92
lucianbr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't they split it into "Oil platform part 1" "part 2" and so on? Or "Oil platform metal parts" and such. Kinda seems like one object being too large in some measure for a single message is a predictable edge case.

I think Customs is on to that -- that was how Saddam Hussein got the precision parts of his "supergun" out of Europe into Iraq, the parts were all labeled as oil industry related.

While that is to circumvent arms export control, which may be executed by customs officers, but is mostly a topic for special departments, often requiring government permission.

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

#194

Post by jeremyjh »

peeters wrote: post #188
arrowsmith wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about the US, but in the UK you can definitely say "D-Day" to mean "an anniversary of the original D-Day", not strictly 6/6/1944. It's not wrong. Just like you can say "Independence Day" to mean July 4th of any year, not only the specific historical date on which the US declared independence.

Hmm I'll take your word for it that that's true, but I would say the examples are very different. Independence Day is a title/holiday retroactively created to commemorate the event (which apparently might not have even happened on July 4). Whereas D-Day was something soldiers used to describe that specific day even before it happened. And you would hear things like "D-Day plus 23" to describe points in time, you woul…

That was the original usage but there is no reason to think usage hasn't changed in Britain, if a British person is saying it is now used this way.

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

#195

Post by robertlagrant »

lazide wrote: post #183
stinkbeetle wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Good thing corporations don’t have different divisions vying for relevancy by being super important to the new hotness ( cough AI cough ), and this is just the government being weird eh?

As long as they're wasting profits from people giving them money voluntarily and not taxes taken on pain of imprisonment, it's fine.

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

#196

Post by whycome »

voidUpdate wrote: post #182
whycome wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they said they were away on the moon that would be a lie.

I believe he was simply "abroad", which is true, since he wasn't in the US at the time (I think... How high do countries reach?)

As in apollo13 didn’t make it to the moon.

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

#197

Post by arrowsmith »

nemomarx wrote: post #141
arrowsmith wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about the US, but in the UK you can definitely say "D-Day" to mean "an anniversary of the original D-Day", not strictly 6/6/1944. It's not wrong. Just like you can say "Independence Day" to mean July 4th of any year, not only the specific historical date on which the US declared independence.

This would make sense if there's often D Day ceremonies. In the us I think that's all moved to memorial Day, so D-Day pings only as the original event here

You could say e.g. "today is D-Day" to mean "today is June 6th".

But if you said "D-Day" without context people would assume you meant the event in WWII. So yeah, I guess the original headline is definitely misleading, if not strictly inaccurate.

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

#199

Post by pyuser583 »

throw8449485 wrote: post #181
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…

Ok, just some facts: - moon dust has very fine particles. It is very irritating for skin, and there was a very good chance it could damage lungs like azbestos. - Electronics and dust do not mix well - electrostatic properties were not known, it could stick to every surface and coat it, perhaps prevent vacuum seals etc... Look at images from inside capsule, before and after landing! And that was just dust, brought on…

>It is very irritating for skin, and there was a very good chance it could damage lungs like azbestos.

and

> it had horrible smell

We shouldn't know what it smells like. That's forbidden knowledge, just like the taste of uranium.

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

#200

Post by pyuser583 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #87
gmueckl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that customs declaration in the context of the Outer Space Treaty from 1967. It stipulates that outer space cannot be appropriated by by any nation. My hypothesis here is that the political message underneath this customs form stunt is an acknowledgement that the crew has left the United States and returned. However, I have nothing that supports this claim.

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.

The US Space Treaty rejected using the high seas as a legal metaphor. Instead it went with Antarctica.

The high seas are easy to use commercially, but also very prone to conflict. Wars are fought over tiny straits, and understandably so.

The Antarctic treaty decided the antarctic was too useless to fight over, so the signers decided to make it difficult to use in exchange for making it difficult to fight over.

Obviously space is a more like the seas. But nobody wanted a war over outer space (just look at the reaction to the Star Wars programs in the 1980s).

Antarctica is just a legal dead zone. What happens if a scientist on a station murders another scientist? On an American station, it was unclear until the 1980s. What happens if a passenger on a cruse ship murders another passenger? The FBI has people on standby - you'll be arrested when you return to your home port. Probably sooner.

The legalities are space are difficult because we decided to make them so. This is changing, and fast. Which is good.

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