Apollo 11 Flag Swatch Goes Unsold At L.A. Auction 120
According to an Associated Press report, a "strip of fabric shorn from the flag planted on the moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts pulled in a top bid of $60000 at a Los Angeles auction, but didn't meet a minimum price so it won't be sold." Another $35,000 would have nabbed it, but — caveat emptor — the strip of fabric under discussion is one that never went to the moon itself, but rather was snipped off before the rest of the flag was stuffed into a tube for the mission.
Re:Who cares? (Score:0, Informative)
Redirects to http://www.essayservices.co.uk/ [essayservices.co.uk]. Better than goatse I guess (don't know, just used Unshorted to get the real address). Anyone else think sites should prevent the use of shortened URLs in comments? They got real old real fast.
Neil Armstrong autographed photo plus scrap (Score:4, Informative)
well that *is* a lot of money for a scrap of cloth.
Actually you get a little more than the scrap of cloth.
"Moser said he had Neil Armstrong sign a photo of the flag planted on the moon when the astronaut returned to Earth and he kept the picture and his rescued scrap of flag together in his NASA office until he retired in 1990. But after hanging onto the photo and flag-swatch assemblage all these years, he finally decided to put them up to auction.."
http://news.yahoo.com/swatch-moon-bound-flag-unsold-la-auction-032542272.html [yahoo.com]
Actually its from the guy who made the moon flag (Score:5, Informative)
Just like the 1000's of flags that came off the same roll of fabric. This little bit is also just a bit of that roll that stayed behind. Sure, it has a sig, but it could just as well be another flag that was signed. Guess it is worth what a fool will pay for it.
Actually this scrap comes from the guy who was in charge of creating the moon flag apparatus. So the scrap does have a pretty good paper trail as coming from the flag that made it to the moon.
"Mr. Moser, then a 30-year-old mechanical engineer, was put in charge of designing a flag mechanism that could not only fit into the lunar module and survive the flight, but also make the flag appear to fly on the windless moon. His solution involved two sections of a staff, a telescoping tube and a nylon flag bought at a local housing goods store (Sears, he thinks). But in order for the flag to fit the staff, its edges needed to be trimmed. “They were throwing it all in the trash,” Mr. Moser recalled of the remnants in a recent interview, “so I picked it up out of the trash can, mounted it and had Neil Armstrong sign it.” Forty-two years later, Mr. Moser is auctioning off those flag remnants."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/science/space/10moon.html [nytimes.com]