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

51–60 of 204 posts

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

#51

Post by ahazred8ta »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #33
ceejayoz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

On a couple of occasions, cosmonauts came back from the ISS on the shuttle. A US immigration clerk came to stamp their passport.

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

#52

Post by pyuser583 »

medstrom wrote: post #17
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…

"First Sea Lord" is such a great rank.

One of my favorite.

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

#53

Post by ceejayoz »

lucianbr wrote: post #41
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…

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'd be worried about that raising money laundering flags, like someone splitting transactions into a bunch of $9,999 chunks.

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

#54

Post by npteljes »

whatever1 wrote: post #11
guesswho_ wrote: post #8

[flagged]

The equipment that is left on the moon and you can literally see by yourself with a good enough telescope is also an illusion plotted by the government

You can not "see by yourself", as the equipment left behind is pretty small. But multiple lunar satellites photographed it since.

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

#55

Post by sidewndr46 »

ahazred8ta wrote: post #51
sidewndr46 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

On a couple of occasions, cosmonauts came back from the ISS on the shuttle. A US immigration clerk came to stamp their passport.

That'd be really awkward if they were denied a visa and had to go back the way they came.

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

#56

Post by sidewndr46 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #42
sidewndr46 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Probably a bit like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_Free_Library_and_Opera... > Until 2025, patrons from Canada were permitted to enter the United States door without needing to report to customs by using a prescribed route through the sidewalk of rue Church (Church Street), provided that they return to Canada immediately upon leaving the building using the same route.

it says "most Canadians from entering via the main entrance in March 2025, except for Canadian patrons with a library card" - this is probably the only documented case of a library card being valid for international travel

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

#57

Post by lucianbr »

ceejayoz wrote: post #53
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'd be worried about that raising money laundering flags, like someone splitting transactions into a bunch of $9,999 chunks.

Since they were talking it over with customs, they would clear any flags as "we agreed on this solution because the item cost was too large to fit the message format".

It's not like Google, where there's automatic inhuman consequences. And even Google can make exceptions if they want to, just they usually don't care.

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

#59

Post by pinkmuffinere »

hammock wrote: post #44
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…

>These things were mainly publicity stunts. The supposed biohazard quarantine for returning Apollo astronauts was a theater performance, too. Wow. What else about Apollo was theater performance?

It feels as if this question is intended to make a strong implication, but I'm not sure what the implication is -- Can you clarify? I almost think you are suggesting the moon landing was fake, but that's very stereotypical, so I don't want to assume.

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

#60

Post by Lammy »

refulgentis wrote: post #34
montjoy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Also, maybe setting legal precedent?

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

The practical value is reinforcing among the general public the idea that humans should not be able to move freely around their own planet. In the future only money will have that right. The modern passport didn't even exist until World War Ⅰ: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521634938 / https://archive.org/details/pdfy-S0NQwPjPkMlzZ2eS/mode/2up
Post reply on HN