Alabama Man Sold a Priceless Apollo-Era Lunar Rover Protoype For Scrap Metal (vice.com) 241
Jason Koebler writes: An Alabama man allowed an Apollo-era lunar rover prototype to rot in his backyard before ultimately selling it to a junkyard for scrap metal last year, according to documents acquired from NASA as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. NASA spent much of 2014 attempting to acquire the priceless artifact for display in a museum, but it was ultimately destroyed before the agency could recover it.
I'll bite (Score:4, Funny)
one joke, one explaination (Score:5, Funny)
2. Huntsville.
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What the heck was he doing with a lunar rover prototype in Alabama?
1. up on blocks.
2. Huntsville.
Obligatory: "You might be a space redneck if ..."
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In 1961, when President John F. Kennedy envisioned an American on the moon by the end of the decade, NASA turned to Marshall Space Flight Center to create the incredibly powerful rocket needed to turn this presidential vision into reality. Since its beginning in 1960, Marshall has provided the agency with mission-critical design, development and integration of the launch and space systems required for space operations, exploration, and scientific mis
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I love telling people we have the Nazis to thank for our space program.
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Obligatory xkcd comic.
I love telling people we have the Nazis to thank for our space program.
And international criminal investigations/law enforcement. Interpol was run by SS generals for some years, including the likes of Reinhard Heydrich, the Butcher of Prague.
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including the likes of Reinhard Heydrich, the Butcher of Prague.
Quit a feat, as he died in 1942
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"Following Anschluss in 1938, the organization fell under the control of Nazi Germany, and the Commission's headquarters were eventually moved to Berlin in 1942.[10] From 1938 to 1945, the presidents of Interpol included Otto Steinhäusl, Reinhard Heydrich........
Who'd have thunk it......thanks...I thought you had him confused with Reinhard Gehlen or something....my bad
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Even with it under Nazi control, you'd expect it to have been run by Kripo (police) exclusively. Two of the Nazi-era leaders were (as well as being SS), but the other two were purely SS.
In Nazi Germany, everything was under Nazi control. The idea that organisations like the army, police or Universities were somehow free from Nazi influence is something that people in the army, police or Universities tried to push after WW2 ended, for obvious reasons like not wanting to be hanged for war crimes..
Apparently, it turns out there were almost no Nazis in Germany at all.
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*whoosh*
No, I think the fucking smiley face shows he was joking.
Re: I'll bite (Score:2)
Which joke? All of them?
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Also, the person who sold it for scrap inherited it when the "owner" (who presumably acquired it from NASA and knew its value) passed away. NASA dragged its feet contacting the new owner, who apparently didn't know its value.
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He was using it as a meth lab.
Re:I'll bite (Score:5, Funny)
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According to this site:
http://www.astronautix.com/cra... [astronautix.com]
It weighs 450 kg, a little less than half a ton. Maybe he disassembled it and shipped it home one piece at a time?
Re:I'll bite (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure NASA dragged it's feet. But I wonder if the historian walked over to the neighbor's house, knocked on the door, and mentioned that he though the guy had a piece of priceless artifact from NASA's history just sitting there. Even if the guy wasn't interested in contacting NASA right then, at least he would have known before he just scrapped it.
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What about the scrap yard workers? You'd think that somebody along the line would recognize such an icon of American history, and get the idea that it might be worth more than scrap. It just boggles the mind.
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Depending on it's condition, it might have just looked like a backyard project or a "dune buggy" type vehicle. Based on the picture in the Motherboard link, I wouldn't have guessed it was a lunar rover prototype. Now maybe if it had NASA painted in giant letters across it...
Rocket City Rednecks? (Score:3)
Huntsville Alabama is where they hid Von Braun so he wouldn't get lynched. As a result, a lot of Space Research happens there. See "Rocket City Rednecks", a bad reality TV show where some NASA engineer spends his weekends making dumb shit out of junk with his redneck buddies.
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They chose Huntsville because a nazi wouldn't stick out.
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Huntsville has a TON of NASA engineers and supporting cast. Auburn University has sent more astronauts to space than nearly any other university.
Just because it's "Alabama" doesn't mean it's redneck. That's stereotyping at it's finest.
The guy who died likely worked at NASA in the lunar program and possibly even designing the rovers. ...Frankly, it could have been this guy's: http://www.oanow.com/news/aubu... [oanow.com]
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Just because it's "Alabama" doesn't mean it's redneck. That's stereotyping at it's finest.
This should teach a useful lesson in tolerance to the citizens of that State.
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It was looking for signs of intelligent life.
Re: I'll bite (Score:2)
Why, in this age of political correctness and sensitivity, does nobody bat an eye at hate speech about people in the south?
Re: I'll bite (Score:4, Insightful)
Just look at the treatment to Lee's battle flag recently, that is pure racism against the people who fought for state's rights. (hint, the average southerner had nothing to do with slavery, the slave owners were too wealthy to fight in the war).
Racism is ok (to the Democrats) when it is white people that are the butt of the joke, they also don't like Asians for some reason, so making fun of natives of India, and China, is perfectly acceptable, but talk about how 90% of gang violence is black people, or that there are crimes being committed against the Hispanics crossing the border (as Trump did), and suddenly you are a terrible racist.
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The secessions before the Civil War were because those states were afraid Lincoln would be able to restrict or abolish slavery. Secession was more or less popular depending heavily on whether there were more or fewer slave owners in the area. States' rights had very little to do with secession.
The Civil War was not itself about slavery, although it was certainly a factor. The claim that the war was about slavery was very useful, in that most of the other countries that might intervene could not realis
He probably has a grudge (Score:5, Funny)
He probably has a grudge against NASA for proving that the Earth isn't flat [nasa.gov].
Re:He probably has a grudge (Score:5, Insightful)
You think it's funny to laugh about the 'ignorant' Alabama-man because it is easier than wrapping your brain around the fact that Alabama put man on the moon.
no you didn't (Score:5, Funny)
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Alabama and a bunch of former Nazis
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More relevant title (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA Agency Bureaucracy Lets Historic Antique Slip From Their Fingers
If it didn't take them six months to reach out... Even a quick call "Hey, this is NASA. We heard you have one of our rovers. Could we just send someone over to verify?"
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I'd immediately know the call was fake. Now if it went, "Hey, this is Hollywood. We heard you have one of our rovers from the moon landing movie, and would like to buy it back ..."
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What about their foremost priority? (Score:2)
That's not what the head of NASA, Charles Bolden says. Mr. Bolden explains their top three priorities as:
When I became the Nasa administrator, he [Obama] charged me with three things.
One, he wanted me to help reinspire children to want to get into science and math;
he wanted me to expand our international relationships;
and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good
Just like Southpark episode (Score:4, Funny)
And... (Score:2)
Not a loss - this is the correct outcome. (Score:3, Insightful)
I like NASA. I like space exploration. However, I don't like NASA spending its limited time and resources to buy up antiques when it could be working on MORE space exploration.
Re:Not a loss - this is the correct outcome. (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is an extremely short-sighted viewpoint. Money isn't everything.
I'm afraid that statement doesn't make much sense to a great number of Americans these days.
Anything over 90 days is long-term, and money is how we keep score...the one with the most wins.
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Money isn't everything.
You're right, there's also power.
And, except on slashdot, sex. With another person.
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Also, a lot of a the original documentation for the rovers and the design process has been lost over the years. It was a long time ago... So having a prototype on hand could be quite useful for designing new rovers.
It's the same with a lot of hardware, e.g. the Saturn V. We couldn't just build a new one, we would have to reverse engineer a lot of it from the ones we have left over.
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Then perhaps one of the dozen or so prototypes scattered around in museums would serve the purpose rather than this 8000 lb 21 ft x 15 ft behemoth? This one didn't look anything like the real rovers, it was a test unit for a direction that wasn't taken.
Here are the locations of the existing prototypes, I am sure the Smithsonian would allow some people to take measurements if needed to make a new one:
http://www.collectspace.com/ub... [collectspace.com]
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It's the same with a lot of hardware, e.g. the Saturn V. We couldn't just build a new one, we would have to reverse engineer a lot of it from the ones we have left over.
It's the old IKEA problem. You never keep the instructions.
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I like NASA. I like space exploration. However, I don't like NASA spending its limited time and resources to buy up antiques when it could be working on MORE space exploration.
It's PR, which NASA has to do to secure funding - if you don't like NASA doing PR, then give them a guaranteed funding source that's not subject to the whims of the government that changes funding priorities every 4 years for projects that take decades to complete.
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They do the "space exploration" thing like, well, rocket scientists.
They do the "management/administration" thing about as well as Margaret's Knitting Knook.
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Well said, sir!
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What's more prototypes per se don't necessarily have any particular historical value; it depends on the role the specific prototype played in the program that led to the actual devices used. Without the documentation of what the particular hardware was for and how it was used, a device like that is a mere curiosity.
For example 30 years ago I worked in a lab where about 10% of our floor space was taken up with a prototype manned Mars rover. It was by no means a serious essay on what would be required for a
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So what "inspired" the Apollo missions?
Yuri Gagarin.
Alabama Man... (Score:2)
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Is this anything like the phenomenon where if there is a natural disaster the on location news crew finds the dumbest guy within 100 miles to put on the air.
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Nope. Not really. That whole area is its own special kind of special. I say that because I care - I do own a house in Florida and I have shared some of the many things I've seen there. Nope, they're definitely unique in some ways and this is one of those ways. It could be selection bias, I guess, but I don't think so.
Put it this way... I own a house in PCB, the home of Spring Break - really. They have a week long period, out of sync with the rest of the country, that they call FAG week. FAG is "Florida, Ala
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Andy Griffith (Score:3)
Andy had the right idea. Build a rocket, go to the moon, and bring back all the scrap NASA left behind. Can't get over how much this mirrors "Salvage 1".
Now all we need is some Monohydrazine.
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dibs! (Score:2)
I call dibs on the ones on the moon.
There's three of them up there, just waiting to be salvaged.
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I'll pay 1,000,001. I'll even help you offload it into my garage - and I'll buy you beer. All the beer, and bacon, you can consume in a weekend.
spent much of 2014 attempting to acquire (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA spent much of 2014 attempting to acquire the priceless artifact for display in a museum
Sounds like they didn't try too hard if they couldn't compete with a scrap yard.
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NASA spent much of 2014 attempting to acquire the priceless artifact for display in a museum
Sounds like they didn't try too hard if they couldn't compete with a scrap yard.
The senate oversight committee is probably still deciding whether to approve NASA's first bid
The headline is all wrong! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: Well (Score:2)
It's illegal to sell some things like this (moon rocks, etc.). That either creates free (aka "black") market pressures, or for the fully law-abiding, incentives to dispose.
It's like kidneys - there's both a massive abundance and a massive shortage because the price mechanism is made illegal in the market. As usual, people suffer and die when the politicians get involved.
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It's illegal to sell some things like this (moon rocks, etc.). That either creates free (aka "black") market pressures, or for the fully law-abiding, incentives to dispose.
It's like kidneys - there's both a massive abundance and a massive shortage because the price mechanism is made illegal in the market. As usual, people suffer and die when the politicians get involved.
In addition, the anti-free market, statist "murder is a crime" laws artificially inflate the cost of hiring a hitman.
Wanker.
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Who, the junkyard guy that considers the stuff in his junkyard to be... you know... junk? Or the NASA administrator that considered a historic relic under his care to be junk?
The Bigger Tradegy (Score:2)
...is that there is not a current lunar lander model people can look at...as in circa 2015.
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This. Absolutely this. Very few people would give a rat's ass about an ancient prototype if we had rovers being driven around on the Moon today.
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http://www.collectspace.com/ub... [collectspace.com]
There appear to be many of them around, the Smithsonian Air and Space museum has one, and ironically Marshall in Huntsville, Alabama has one.
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Not unless they have reclining bucket seats.
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GORTON: Now, since my yellow light is on, at this point my final question will be this: Assuming that the recommendations that you made on January 25th of 2001, based on Delenda, based on Blue Sky, including aid to the Northern Alliance, which had been an agenda item at this point for two and a half years without any action, assuming that there had been more Predator reconnaissance missions, assuming that that had all been adopted say on January 26th, year 2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9/11?
CLARKE: No.
Richard Clarke's sworn testimony to the 9/11 commission [americanrhetoric.com]. Clarke was President Clinton's terror czar [wikipedia.org]. Too late by the time the Bush Administration took over. Per President Clinton's own terror czar. I know, facts and sworn testimony are always an issue when you have a political axe to grind...
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Further, contrary to the lies of those in the Bush administration, the outgoing Clinton administration did leave them a comprehensive plan. We know this because it's been declassified [gwu.edu].
If you like, I can keep going with the facts which show
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More like per your slight-of-hand. Or didn't you think anyone would notice that you're using a quote about bombing Afghanistan when the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia to suggest that 911 couldn't have been stopped by the FBI?
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Have you heard of lying to save face? You don't learn this in political school, it's just part of the basic entrance examination before you can even attend.
Or do you think they would stand up and take responsibility? If so I have one thing to say "aaaaahahahahahahahahahahhaahha"
Now show me evidence of the first conversation being "we're going to have an attack in 6 months but there's nothing we can do about it", because I've seen nothing of the sort.
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How so? Nothing came through the baggage and the planes were hijacked with box cutters, which were an allowed carry-on. I used to travel with the pocket knife that lived in my pocket - I think the blade limit was something like 3 inches.
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So Bing,
Which part of my narrative do you disagree with?
Yes the moon landings were real.
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The invasion of Iraq was not about oil, that is a conspiracy theory, and is frankly so asinine as to be on the same level as the moon hoaxes. Saddam would have loved to sell the US oil, we were refusing to buy his oil, so he had to find other buyers. Before the attack on Iraq, Saddam was acting like he was building a nuclear weapon, and was refusing access to the nuclear inspectors to the sites that were suspected of being bomb making sites. It was a widely held belief by many in government that he reall
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The article clearly states that the guy who sold it inherited the item after the previous owner passed away.
If he had never been told what it was, he probably just assumed it was some weird project from his relative (possibly parent) that was taking up space. It'd be something that one might would even throw away except that anything large and metallic has scrap value so basically you get paid for your "trash".
My dad and uncle went through a lot of this after my grandfather passed away. Behind his house h
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If you've ever seen these lunar prototypes up close, you'd understand how it could get sold for scrap. Everything that was "space age" in the 1960's looks primitive today.
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If you've ever seen these lunar prototypes up close, you'd understand how it could get sold for scrap. Everything that was "space age" in the 1960's looks primitive today.
Yes, that. And in addition, it was a "prototype" and as such may have been just frame and wheels, which could be mistaken for just about anything. The first picture in the article looks nothing like the actual lunar rover other than having a stupid looking antenna on top. It looks like 1000s of other homemade dunebuggies.
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The Space Age itself looks primitive today, but some Space Nutters cling to the ancient ideas like a religion.
You lack of faith disturbs me.
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Your lack of an "r" disturbs me.
I'm saving them for talk like a pi_ate day.
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Probably looked like some broken dune buggy project to them.
I would think even in Alabama an all-electric dune buggy with 5-foot wheels would stand out a bit.
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You, my friend, have never been to Alabama. Or Florida. Or Georgia. ;-)
That whole little part of the country is its own sort of special. I have a house in Florida. I visit often. I am greatly amused. I am also easily amused. I'd not actually be surprised to see a moon rover going down the road in Alabama. What would surprise me is if it were the real one and not a mock-up. Hell, seeing a parade of the things wouldn't even make me bat an eye. I've seen swamp buggies (the platform type that are like ten feet
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I would think even in Alabama an all-electric dune buggy with 5-foot wheels would stand out a bit.
Yeah - they don't hanker to that commie electrical powered vehicle shit.
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Just pointing out...
The one that actually went to the moon stayed there.
The rovers on the moon are priceless too... though are apparently worth less than the billions of dollars it would take to retrieve them.
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When you can't outbid a scrap metal dealer (or, if you must, can't convince the scrap metal dealer in question to flip the item to you for a quick 100% profit), how much effort were you really putting into this?
It's kind of hard to outbid a scrap dealer when you aren't aware of the sale.
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If all the scrap at NASA had to be 'preserved' we would have to clear out every building in D.C. that isn't the Smithsonian to store it all in.
Hmmm, that's not a bad idea.
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Nah, they marry their (proper spelling, by the way) in the hills of West Virginia. And, oddly, Portugal. You can marry your sister in Portugal. :/ At least that's what the news said quite a while back - 'twas on Fark as I recall. No, I have no idea why. Well, no... I know why it was on Fark. I don't know why they allowed it. It was a rather specific amendment, as I recall.
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Well, to be fair, lots of stuff gets destroyed because nobody recognized the future value. Also, they thought they'd be going back. It probably was a pretty trivial piece of trash to them that took up space and an uncoordinated man named Donald kept stubbing his toe on it.