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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)

#31

Post by Scoundreller »

9dev wrote: post #23
magicalhippo wrote: post #15

Reminded me of when I got to see one of the customs declaration for an off-shore oil platform built here in Norway. It was a single-item declaration: one oil plaform. However, the elecronic customs message format didn't have enough digits to fit the item value, over a billion NOK IIRC. After some calls with customs, they had to send it with a fictitious item value and add the true value in a free-text field. This wor…

LOL. I’m on the receiving end of these customs declarations, and stories like this are the reason the copies are so notoriously hard to parse programmatically… lovely, thanks for sharing.

What’s the “escape value” that triggers people to read the free text field? Or is it just zero?

And if zero, how often do they just get mistakenly processed as zero value?

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

#32

Post by jedberg »

yardie wrote: post #20

I did a 1100m passage from Puerto Rico to Miami. Anchored in the Bahamas bank but didn't step on land. And when we arrived in the US we weren't required to clear in since our last port of departure was PR. Pretty sure they were tracking us by drone, blimp, AIS, and radar the entire way because they weren't suspicious enough compared to my previous experiences. Curious why Apollo 11 would have to clear customs since t…

Due to international treaty the moon is considered international land, like Antarctica.

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

#33

Post by sidewndr46 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #9
more_corn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

For travel to Kazakhstan it makes sense to show a passport of some kind as they want to know why someone is entering the country. Traveling to Baikonur of course being a legitimate reason to enter the country. There's one aspect of this I don't understand entirely. What if the astronaut travels to the ISS from Baikonur, then used some of form return vehicle that lands in US territory? How would we handle that?

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

#34

Post by refulgentis »

montjoy wrote: post #28
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…

This. Also, maybe setting legal precedent?

No. They're saying it was a stunt. Not setting legal precedent. There was no practical value.

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

#35

Post by refulgentis »

skeezyboy wrote: post #27
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…

allowing the "to be determined" answer sat at odds with the implied dilligency of the customs agency

Unlikely, it was a stunt.

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

#36

Post by oaththrowaway »

skeezyboy wrote: post #30
ceejayoz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me a bit of when the UK accidentally invaded Spain on a training exercise. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-invade-spa... > Lord West said: "It wasn't one of the best days in my time. I had a phone call from the military commander saying, 'Sir, I'm afraid something awful's happened.' I thought, 'Goodness me, what?' And he said, 'I'm afraid we've invaded Spain, but we don't think they've notic…

the british armed forces are atrocious. i simply cannot fathom how britain controlled so much of the planet at one point

Because the food was so bad and the women were so ugly that they had no choice to but leave

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

#37

Post by guywithahat »

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…

[flagged]

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

#38

Post by lucianbr »

glimshe wrote: post #25
peeters wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Passports please! British paratroopers met by French customs after D-Day airdrop Err, D-Day anniversary airdrop. That headline has only one correct literal interpretation, and it's wrong (not ambiguous, wrong).

I'm not a betting man, but I were, I'd bet on most readers having understood it correctly. I suspect it was meant to be click bait, though.

The headline definitely didn't make any sense to me (I was thinking maybe an Onion article?) before reading the rest.

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

#39

Post by potato3732842 »

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."

It's easier to just have them fill out the form than get a common sense exception.

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

#40

Post by potato3732842 »

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.

If the rules don't make sense for a situation why do they apply? Why isn't there a carve out?

It's easy to screech about potentially unforeseeable future cases and precedents but it's not like this stuff is free.

The cost of this attitude applied at scale is mind boggling.

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