NASA Missing Hundreds of Moon Rocks 132
New submitter Minion of Eris writes "It seems NASA can't keep track of its goodies. A recent audit discovered that moon rocks have been missing for 30 years, loaned displays have gone unreturned, and book-keeping has been generally poor. From the article: 'In a report issued by the agency's inspector general on Thursday, NASA concedes that more than 500 pieces of moon rocks, meteorites, comet chunks and other space material were stolen or have been missing since 1970. That includes 218 moon samples that were stolen and later returned and about two dozen moon rocks and chunks of lunar soil that were reported lost last year. NASA, which has lent more than 26,000 samples, needs to keep better track of what is sent to researchers and museums, the report said. The lack of sufficient controls "increases the risk that these unique resources may be lost," the report concluded.'"
Very Rare Regolith Missing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm guessing they're not missing but rather have long been stolen and sold on the black market.
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe,
the "people" they stole them from, took them back home.
Re:Very Rare Regolith Missing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Old NASA was well run? (Score:1)
Re:Old NASA was well run? (Score:5, Interesting)
People talk about NASA in the time of the Apollo program as a well oiled machine that could do no wrong. Well, here's evidence that it was a bureaucratic disaster. It's easy to look back with rose colored glasses and say the shuttle era was a mess, but in reality maybe it was always that way?
Bureaucracies are always a mess. Strip the facade behind any complicated human activity and you will find confusion, graft, incompetence and sloth. NASA has 'lost' lots of things - Apollo tapes, pieces parts, data. They've made grevious engineering errors (ie, Apollo 1 [wikipedia.org]).
Archival processes are very expensive and when you are more focused about doing things than preserving what you did, it isn't surprising that you can't account for everything.
Old NASA was well run. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, back in the day it was exactly the opposite. Everyone was totally focused on one goal -- getting to the Moon by 31 December 1969. Since neither the task at hand nor the time to complete it were changing, plenty of people were hired and plenty of money was spent, to be sure, but that situation also meant that any bureaucratic baloney was ignored, sidestepped, or waived. People's reputations were on the line, and nobody wanted to be part of the group/division/company/organization that kept the country from reaching the moon first. Whoever was deemed responsible for that could look forward to a lifetime of testimony before congressional investigative committees, not to mention the nation on a never-ending series of Walter Cronkite prime time Special Reports.
Not to mention not being able to get another job in your profession for the rest of your life. Being Steve Bartman [wikipedia.org] would be a step up.
After 1973, however, NASA was a different entity. When a pie is growing, as NASA was in the 1960s, nobody bothers to erect any bureaucratic fences, since there's plenty of work for everyone. When the pie shrinks, however, people start trying to stake out their remaining territory, and the end is near.
Re: (Score:3)
Not all were stolen. http://news.yahoo.com/former-resident-sues-claim-alaska-moon-rocks-071955850.html [yahoo.com]
If this is a real moon rock someone just threw it away at one point. One person's valuable rock worth millions is another thing you can just pick up outside.
Re: (Score:2)
Not all were stolen. http://news.yahoo.com/former-resident-sues-claim-alaska-moon-rocks-071955850.html [yahoo.com]
If this is a real moon rock someone just threw it away at one point. One person's valuable rock worth millions is another thing you can just pick up outside.
It's all probably very Gary Larson-esque - the fat kid with the crew cut and circular glasses, who cleans up at night, swept them up and put them all in the bin. Nobody likes an untidy lab.
The only Moon rocks I've seen were already cut in very fine slices and placed in plastic holders. So moon "rocks" may be imprecise, Moon Samples is probably better.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Why don't they just get ILM to make them some new ones?
Re: (Score:2)
Why don't they just get ILM to make them some new ones?
Pfft. ILM can't do a decent rock to save their lives. Not only does the first one come out with a lot of unknown minerals, except one old salt who hasn't done nowt in years, but the others are spread out over years and years and then there's a big break while the ones they've already made get a bit spiffed up unecessarily, but then the pre-rocks come out and nobody even likes them, including the green one, which everyone says reflects poorly on a certain bit of strata.
Don't even get me started on Dreamwor
Re: (Score:2)
They would probably just replace the rocks with potatoes.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080684/trivia [imdb.com]
I wouldn't worry too much about it (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure there are billions and billions of moon rocks out there.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Want to solve the problem?
Do just one mission to go to the moon and bring back a few tons of the stuff, then scatter them around the planet.
Sell grains of moon dust for $1 each.
Stop pretending they're magical and reduce them to the dirt they are.
Re: (Score:2)
I can't believe that the story of the Texan intern who stole and sold lunar samples from NASA and then had sex on top of them with his girlfriend
That's one space age way to get your rocks off.
Re: (Score:3)
Funny, I was thinking the same thing. We *can* get more.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
NASA is taking a leaf out of De Beers book, keeping Moon Rocks artificially scarce, stockpiling them in orbit, just to keep the value of them high.
Lack of sufficient controls.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Moonstone for Elven and Glass Armor (Score:2)
I know where they are, the Elves took them.
Cave Johnson (Score:4, Funny)
Nah, we learned that moon regolith is the perfect material for shooting a portal gun at. Quoth Cave Johnson:
Clearly that's where it all went.
Simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Go get more. The reason nobody was paying much attention in the 1960's is that they never expected the supply of moon rocks would dwindle. We need to maintain permanent residence whatever we go. We went to the moon, we need to establish a base there. If we go to mars, we need to establish a permanent base there too. If we don't force ourselves down this path, we're never going to get off this rock.
Re: (Score:2)
If we don't force ourselves down this path, we're never going to get off this rock.
There will probably never be large numbers of people living anywhere but here on Earth. The notion that mankind has a "destiny in space" is a false hope at best and a potentially dangerous distraction if we permit it to interfere with needed steps to preserve our planet for future generations. For those interested in the details, may I suggest the following two articles from Do the Math [ucsd.edu]: Galactic-Scale Energy [ucsd.edu] and Why Not Space? [ucsd.edu]
Bissell Vacumm lady (Score:2)
Anybody has cared to check the vacuum's bags?
Less than 2%? (Score:1)
Correct me if I am wrong, but 500 out of over 26k samples is a very very small portion of the samples they have. While I am sure the value, both financially and as to how they could contribute to science, could vary greatly between each individual sample, this doesn't appear to be some terrible blundering of recordkeeping.
Re: (Score:1)
They loaned out over 26,000 of these, and that's all that's gone missing? That's not bad at all. Maybe they should go into the mortgage business.
The story that really irked me is the scientist who just had it sitting on his desk for years and years, and never bothered to do any research.
How much more research could you possibly do beyond "Yup, it's a rock."?
Re: (Score:1)
How much more research could you possibly do beyond "Yup, it's a rock."?
Surface structure, chemical composition, searching for embedded items (micrometeorites?), trying to make some sort of concrete out of it to build a moon base from, helping to determine age / history of that moon area, etc, etc, etc.
For some research a surrogate might do, but then you'd still have to compare with the real thing once in a while. Since we have so little actual moon material, of course that is worth its weight in gold (well no, much more actually since only way to obtain more is to go back to t
Re: (Score:2)
How much more research could you possibly do beyond "Yup, it's a rock."?
Surface structure, chemical composition, searching for embedded items (micrometeorites?), trying to make some sort of concrete out of it to build a moon base from, helping to determine age / history of that moon area, etc, etc, etc.
For some research a surrogate might do, but then you'd still have to compare with the real thing once in a while. Since we have so little actual moon material, of course that is worth its weight in gold (well no, much more actually since only way to obtain more is to go back to the moon - pretty expensive undertaking).
Everything you've listed either has been done with other samples, wouldn't be useful, or would result in the destruction of the sample.
So if some scientist had one sitting on his desk for ages and did nothing with it, I'd say he made the right choice. It's most valuable uses are as a paperweight or as a conversation starter with dumb chicks you want to bang.
Re: (Score:2)
And of course there's no possibility of technology changing in an unexpected way for people to suddenly say "hey, I wonder if moon rocks can do ..."
Re: (Score:2)
Reminds me of this: http://www.eatliver.com/img/2007/2517.jpg [eatliver.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Exactly what I thought. So they lost like 2% of their stock over 30 year period. That's like a 20th of one percent per year. Surely there's room for improvement given the cost involved in recovering material from the moon, but it's not like they've done a horrible job.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know. Surely at this point, given our robotic technology and the distance to the moon, we really should be arranging for more sample return missions (seeing as how there's also huge interest in doing the same thing from Mars and other bodies around the sol system).
Whats so unique? (Score:1)
it's not as if they can't go fetch some more... (Score:5, Insightful)
is it?
Back in the 1960's they had to start with a clean board and design the technology in less than a DECADE to fulfill the promise made by a dead president.
Now we have the knowhow, we have the technology, what's the single insurmountable obstacle to returning to our nearest solar neighbour?
Politics.
It's not even as if the technology has been locked away and forgotten, either. NASA's new launch vehicles will have first stage boosters based on the J2 engines. The manned capsules will be based on the Gemini and Apollo capsules. The Mercury-Atlas and Gemini booster stages are still in use for heavy lifting high-risk and military payloads. It just seems a sad waste to me, that such high adventure was shitcanned so fast after all those "firsts" - landing on the Moon, walking on the Moon, driving on the Moon, playing golf on the Moon. Was all that really done just to piss off the Russians? I have a difficult time putting it down to merely that. Our destiny is in space. We shouldn't let petty disagreements over distribution of finite resources stand in the way of that, or we as a species will die in our crib.
Re: (Score:3)
NASA's new launch vehicles will have first stage boosters based on the J2 engines.
The J-2X is intended for upper stage stuff.You're thinking of the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) which is a different beast.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
what's the single insurmountable obstacle to returning to our nearest solar neighbour?
Patrick Dempsey.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, you have it backwards.
The only way we could afford to do that then was politics.
We were willing to spend anything to perform a circus stunt to one-up the rooskies.
The cost of it was astronomical, and the psychological effect was that we believed we really could do anything we wanted. Then we tried to leverage it with 30 years of the shuttle program, but that just became another vast money sink that robbed us of the opportunity to do anything else, and the only thing we could think to do with it a
Re: (Score:2)
Our destiny is in space.
Incorrect. Our destiny, whatever it may be, will be played out here on Earth. If you doubt that then the following two articles from Do the Math [ucsd.edu], Galactic-Scale Energy [ucsd.edu] and Why Not Space? [ucsd.edu], should make it clear that any promises of a "destiny in space" are false at best and may even be dangerous if they distract us from solving our pressing problems here on Earth.
Re: (Score:2)
That's the urban legend. In reality, development of the F-1 engine (that ended up in the first stage of the Saturn V) got underway in 1956. Development of the Saturn family got underway in 1957. Development of the Apollo CSM got underway in early 1960. The first serious stabs at designing a LM got underway in early 1961.
That's why Kennedy chose t
Re: (Score:1)
The rocket scientists weren't nazis first and foremost. They were guys who wanted to be rocket scientists so badly they were willing to sell out to nazis.
Not that it makes them good people. Just sayin'. So perhaps the punchline should be, "find somebody who cares so much about their craft that they'll damn morality all to hell so they can practice it".
Re: (Score:2)
honestly? (Score:3)
just as long as the government has a slightly better handle on where all the plutonium is (contemporaneous cold war artifact)
i'm not too concered about escape dusty basalt
math (Score:1)
"missing for 30 years"... "missing since 1970"... [current year: 2011] ...doesn't that mean that they've been missing for over 40 years?
Re: (Score:1)
Not surprised (Score:4, Funny)
Well, thats it. (Score:2)
huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Um... why would they report the number as "500" and include 218 samples that were "returned". Wouldn't those, by definition, no longer be "lost"?
Thats nearly half.... so only 282 missing,
Re: (Score:2)
Now you're understanding why they couldn't keep count before.
Re: (Score:2)
Touche, even worst, seems every one they did get back seems to weigh just a little less than half of what their records show in lbs.
Re: (Score:2)
Um... why would they report the number as "500" and include 218 samples that were "returned". Wouldn't those, by definition, no longer be "lost"?
Thats nearly half.... so only 282 missing,
Seems the ability to keep track of things is rather infectious. Just reporting about it makes you get lost in a sea of "missing", "stolen", "borrowed", and "returned".
Re: (Score:2)
Possibly Intentional (Score:2, Insightful)
I've worked for companies that, for book keeping reasons, would not let you as an employee take a single thing for personal possession. However, if an item was old and no longer usable, management would "turn a blind eye" if you walked out the door with it. Honestly, if it was large enough, they would help you usher it out the door.
I know moon rocks aren't the same but I wonder how many items were "lost" to the hands of astronauts and key mission controllers because they frickin' changed the world in bei
Re:Possibly Intentional (Score:5, Interesting)
Short answer: of course.
There was a bar near the Johnson Space Center in Houston called The Outpost. It was torn down this year, but when the place was jumping you had a reasonable chance of finding some old guy who would be happy to show you his collection of space artifacts, including lunar samples.
Oh Waa, NASA Doesn't Have Any More Moon Rocks! :( (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, it's NASA's fault~
Please explain to your son congress controls that, and tell him it's important to vote for people who understand how critical space exploration is.
Re: (Score:2)
I have to believe it is NASA's fault, they're smarter than we are, ask'em. For starters, ISS could be used as a space platform to assemble space vehicles, it's not. The moon has more Helium3 than common sense allows for; laying on the ground. One would think that after 50 years, there would more human presence on the moon than a foot print. Post Space Shuttle development? Looks like someone went to the baseme
Easy to find.... (Score:1)
And we all know NASA will never get more (Score:5, Interesting)
So, out of eight hundred kilos of moon rocks, some beancounter at NASA is having apoplexy about a half-kilo of rocks not having proper paperwork to document where they have gone?
He's right. These samples are unique. As long as the bureaucrats rule, NASA doesn't have a chance in Hell of going back and collecting another 800 kilos of rocks. This guy knows that these samples are irreplacible becasue he knows that NASA will never be able to do what they did back when engineers called most of the shots.
Let him rant. Just like rare earth metals, in a few years we will be able to buy all the moon rocks we want, from the Chinese.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes the samples are unique, but so is any other rock. I had a million unique snowflakes melt on the top of my house yesterday!
The real issue is what is this moon rock witch hunt costing the taxpayers, and to what end.
Plenty more... (Score:3)
...where they came from
Use them to wipe out the deficit (Score:2)
Little Critters (Score:1)
"Missing" Moon Rocks? (Score:1)
From what I understand NASA was handing Moon Rocks out like party favors back during the Apollo missions because they though that space/moon travel was going to become commonplace. Unfortunately things changed and now these rocks are a precious commodity. Because they were handed out in such a cavalier manor I find this whole "they're government property" claim to be rather dubious. Its like some rich guy handing out hundred dollar bills while he's swimming in money, and when hard times hit he claims all
Aperture Science (Score:2)
They had to make that conversion gel somehow.
A Sad, sad state of affairs (Score:1)
I have never understood why the United States does not have a Museum of the Moon - just for the moon and NOTHING ELSE. For God's sake, it's the only other planet people have walked on.
All of the stuff we brought back from that other planet and all of the stuff we used to get there and back should be showcased for everyone in the world to see. The moon rocks should be right up there with the Constitution or Old Ironsides. Heck, those things should be enshrined like pieces of the True Cross. THIS IS THE BIGGE
Having been into the lunar sample vault... (Score:5, Interesting)
I did an internship with a space industry contractor in the summer of 2005 and worked alongside their DBAs, mostly working on the database that was being used for inventory management. Partway through the summer, the lab in charge of the lunar material contacted the group I was working with regarding an update to their database. They wanted to migrate everything they had from the, I believe, late '70s DEC machines that they were still running with a hierarchal database system I had never heard of (I recall seeing some output that looked vaguely COBOL-like) to MS SQL Server 2000. There had been a failed attempt to migrate to FoxPro sometime in the early '90s, from what I heard, but they had scrapped it and just stayed with what they had in the end. At the time they were calling us, they were worried that something might fail and that they'd lose it all.
In order to better understand their organizational system, we got to don bunny suits and head into the vault where all of the samples are kept at Johnson Space Center. It was pretty fun getting a chance to go around, peek into cabinets, and just see how it was all stored in perfect condition. Since the samples they loan out to scientists need to have their origins tracked and new samples are created by breaking old ones, the samples are labeled with an increasingly long identifier as they are broken down. To give a quick (and slightly oversimplified) example, an initial sample brought back from the moon may have been labeled A. After it was broken in two, the two samples were A-1 and A-2. When the first one was broken in three, it became A-1-a, A-1-b, and A-1-c. Each of those is referred to as a sample, even though they may have originated from a single sample, and since samples can be created outside of the immediate vicinity of NASA's personnel, it's not really surprising that some samples have gone missing. Hell, NASA requires that every speck of dust be returned as a sample as well.
At the time, I think they had said that roughly 90 or 95% of the samples brought back are still in pristine, untouched condition, and are being preserved in a nitrogen-rich atmosphere to prevent oxidation. So even with all of these samples lost, the vast majority of it still exists and has yet to be studied by anyone.
Also, I didn't realize it, but NASA has all of the samples that the Soviets brought back from the moon with their unmanned lunar missions. Those are kept in one part of the vault, separate from the ones retrived by the American missions. Neat little fact that I didn't know at the time that I went into the vault.
Re: (Score:1)
Also, I didn't realize it, but NASA has all of the samples that the Soviets brought back from the moon with their unmanned lunar missions. Those are kept in one part of the vault, separate from the ones retrived by the American missions. Neat little fact that I didn't know at the time that I went into the vault.
Wonder how that happened ...
"Hey, anyone speak Russian? I've got a "Boris" on the phone here. I think he's saying something about trading rocks for a green card and a bottle of vodka ..."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I can confidently say that it wasn't FORTRAN. One of my earlier internships in the space industry had me learn FORTRAN for a weather modeling and meteorological app I was helping to support (I don't think they use FORTRAN much these days), which, strangely enough, has come up as being useful a number of other times (e.g. I later was the TA for the FORTRAN course the last semester it was offered at Texas A&M University). Plus, as I said, this was some output from a database, so it wasn't a programming la
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
ADABAS ?
Re: (Score:2)
Unlikely. As I said, I don't remember much, but I believe they were DEC machines, which Wikipedia doesn't mention as being supported by ADABAS, and we were also going to have to write our own custom migration scripts since we couldn't just output some SQL files, which ADABAS can apparently do. I do recall that it was a hierarchal database, since that struck me at the time as unusual, given that I had only dealt with relational databases up to then.
Re: (Score:2)
Spot-on! Now that I've heard the name, I recognize it, since I mistakenly heard it as "Datatree" back when it was first mentioned on the job. I recall being embarrassed when I later found out it was "trieve" not "tree".
Thanks!
Re: (Score:1)
To give a quick (and slightly oversimplified) example, an initial sample brought back from the moon may have been labeled A. After it was broken in two, the two samples were A-1 and A-2. When the first one was broken in three, it became A-1-a, A-1-b, and A-1-c.
Ah, the migrations may have failed in the past, but we have the technology to do the sample management efficiently now! Simply replace the existing sample management system with Bitcoin technology. It works the exact same way! Plus, it wouldn't affect the actual worth of Bitcoin in any way. Everything would stay just as speculative!
I need them for my (Score:2)
googlephonics system.
Lost? Yeah right (Score:2)
That's what I'd say if I'd led the world to believe I brought back lots of rocks from the moon while they were in fact little moonturtles that simply escaped from my lab.
moon rock? Prove it (Score:2)
"Wanna see my moon rock? take a look at that!"
"What do you mean it looks like a piece of gravel from the driveway?"
"Where did i get it? off ebay, why?"
end scene:
So the whole point of having a moon rock is showing it off, like a diamond. The act of proving it's a moon rock (e.g. sending it to a lab for testing) would probably end with it being confiscated from you. If you can't prove it's a moon rock, it might as well be any old piece of gravel, of which we have trillions right hear on earth.
Punishment (Score:3)
Well are they using them for anything? (Score:1)
Well are they using them for anything or are they just sitting in warehouses gathering dust? Because I wouldn't feel too bad stealing a moon rock which isn't currently doing any good or garnering any attention in some box Raiders-of-the-lost-ark-style. If I knew they were actively being used for Science(tm) then I would be a whole lot more apprehensive about it.
From the article:
In two cases, one researcher still had nine lunar samples he borrowed 35 years ago and another had 10 chunks of meteorites he kept
I know where start... (Score:2)
Cat litter (Score:3)
I'm just hoping they won't end in a litterbox.
So I'm not the only one who's getting old (Score:1)
Go back to the fucking moon and get more (Score:1)
Sheesh
Sell the damn things on ebay to pay for it.
No problem. Get more. (Score:1)
Buy Replacements? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)