How an Intern Stole NASA's Moon Rocks 123
schwit1 submitted a story telling the strange tale of how in 2002, rogue NASA interns stole millions of dollars in moon rocks from a building designed not to let that happen. I'd suggest taking the whole thing with a little bit of salt.
Re:salt not required (Score:5, Insightful)
I was about to say the same thing - this is actually a pretty well known incident. Had the poster taken the minuscule effort required to click on any of the links in the article, he'd have found the news stories supporting the article.
Looking for better interns? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure why they choose people like this for cool internships. It sounds like the kind of guy that had good grades in college and all kinds of extracurricular activities, but not the kind of guy you'd actually choose as an intern!
Obviously I don't know anything besides the ridiculous, surely augmented account of TFA, which I did read. But I simply don't understand how people like that get internships, while people like me and others I know have a hard time. We don't have 4.0s and tons of extracurricular activities, but as any science nerd will tell you (and which I hope scientists and researchers at NASA know as well - maybe the blame for selecting people like that lies with HR), that's not what you should look for when you need a science/nerd intern!
Re:I'll ask the same question I always ask (Score:4, Insightful)
Because smart and dumb are not always or never qualities. In this case, the thrill-seeking aspect of his personality meant that the smarts were dedicated to achieving difficult but spectacularly stupid accomplishments.
The part about the neoprene suits (Score:5, Insightful)
Also: "... and by paying careful attention to the absorption of the powder it is possible to tell which finger came down first and so forth."
Maybe... if you are talking about a key that was pressed twice. Otherwise, forget it.
Yeah. About a teaspoon of salt. One grain for each embellishment.
Re:It says I can disable ads (Score:3, Insightful)
This is true in all sports - and makes sense when you think about it. The primary function of the league is to generate income. Anything that gets in the way of that is counter to the reason they exist.
Re:Millions of dollars? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, you could easily put a price on the cost of getting moon rocks, I mean, the whole trip to the moon, landing and taking off and getting back on earth thing isn't cheap. Sure they brought a lot of it back, but if you priced it out, it would've been quite expensive per unit of mass. If we just consider Apollo, and how much the entire program cost, and divide by the amount of moon rocks, it won't take much rock to reach millions.
After all, it's not like you can find real lunar regolith on Earth. And it's not like a common person with an interest in space can easily go and buy some from NASA.
Posted on the Internet?? (Score:3, Insightful)
The proper thing to have done (outside of not pulling this stupid heist in the first place, or course) would have been to flee to another country in the eastern hemisphere and sold them there, making enough money in the process to never have to come back to the US again.
Another good one (Score:3, Insightful)
As the seconds crept onward, Thad continued to struggle with the code, so he quickly moved to plan B, which involved unbolting the heavy safe from the ground, loading it on to a small dolly and carting it back out to the car. It wasn't easy, but within the remaining time allotted to them, the two managed to slip out of the vault,
In less than three minutes they unbolted a heavy safe from the floor and hoisted it onto a small dolly. No doubt they had a couple of big wrenches, plenty of WD-40, and maybe even some paint stripper, in case there was an annoying coat of enamel on the bolts. Bad TV yet again.
Mythbusters? Bleah. (Score:5, Insightful)
What BS. The other night they "proved" that Robin Hood couldn't have split an arrow with another arrow by using cheap factory-made lathe-turned arrows with grain running every-which-way. Since every arrow hit broke following the irregular grain near the nock they decided that NO ONE EVER could have split an arrow. I've actually seen a hand-made straight-grained arrow that had been split from nock to head, with the other arrow still embedded, so I know for a fact that their show was BS.
Even worse was the show where they tried to debunk the story of someone mounting a RATO (Rocket Assisted Take Off) bottle to their old Chevy Impala back in the 60s (when you could buy them surplus from the Air Force). Not having access to an actual JATO bottle, and too lazy and cheap to examine the actual plans and make a replica, the bozos cobbled together some POS rocket that probably didn't have enough thrust to get itself off the ground and put it on a car instead. Not surprisingly it failed, and now thousands of people believe that the story has been debunked.
I certainly don't object to the IDEA of their program, in fact I think it's a great idea. I just wish that they had hired someone who could actually do it RIGHT.
Re:Millions of dollars? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know, it's probably literally closer to "priceless", which isn't infinitely valuable, but a market can't be established, therefore a value/price cannot be determined (see the description of "Neoclassical Value" on the Wikipedia link, lots of artwork is priceless in this sense, even though it sells for a specific value) [wikipedia.org].
What you're describing is the cost, not the price or value. If I blew $100K on rebuilding a fully restored mint condition Ford Fiesta from 1994, doesn't mean that I could sell it for that, or that it represented the value. It means I blew $100K, and now had a car that is probably worth 1/10th at best. That's just a guess.
Even if you were going to present it that way, it's not like the rocks are the only thing that came out of that money. So if you want to determine if it was "worth it", or "profitable" to go to the moon, the rocks aren't the only thing of value to come out of all that money being spent.
Kirby
Re:Mythbusters? Bleah. (Score:1, Insightful)
Who cares, Kari Byron is hot.
Mythbusters Sucks! (Score:2, Insightful)
Thank you so much for your post. I thought I was the only geek that saw through the bullshit that is Mythbusters!
A quick search on YouTube for "split arrow" debunks their claim of it not being possible to pull off the "Robin Hood" shot. They sure didn't try very hard.
I have yet to see an episode of Mythbusters where I didn't have a major problem with their methodology.
It makes me sad that so many people think these guys are applying scientific rigor. They are doing a great disservice to geeks everywhere.