For Sale: Moon Dust Collected by Neil Armstrong | Hacker News Reader

For Sale: Moon Dust Collected by Neil Armstrong

atlasobscura.com

54 pointsrntn27 comments

Apparently moon dust is very bad for your lungs if inhaled.

It is also an excellent Portal conductor.

It's almost like an entire planet made out of asbestos. Dust control will be a top concern for any colony.

Take one last look at your precious human moon. Because it cannot help you now!

That moment when you go "surely not..." and then see the little glint from the portal opening is way up on my favorite moments in gaming, ever.

Ground up moon rocks are pure poison.

To bad you can't use it to make lemonade.

Of course not. You cannot make lemonade with cheese.

A recent study published in the April (2018) issue of the journal GeoHealth examined exactly how dangerous that dust can be on a cellular level — and the results are as ominous as the dark side of the moon. In several lab tests, a single scoop of replica moon dust proved toxic enough to kill up to 90 percent of the lung and brain cells exposed to it.

https://www.livescience.com/62590-moon-dust-bad-lungs-brain....

This feels very "pop sciency".

A scoop is not a well defined amount (is that a gram? a fl oz?). I'm also not sure what happens to brain cells when they are exposed to most other things.

In the article Harrison Schmidt ended up with allergy symptoms after breathing in an undefined amount of moon dust. He seemed to recover after a day and not have his lungs wrecked thereafter.

Yeah, actually, I think your assessment is correct. Thank you for the observation.

From the auction site:

5 Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) aluminum sample stubs, each topped with approximately 10 mm diameter carbon tape containing Apollo Moon dust,

So, this is truly a vary thin "layer" of moon dust. Maybe less than a mg per sample. I wonder if there's even enough there to smell it.

Soon we will be able to buy it on Amazon by the bucket after Jeff Bezos privatizes the moon.

And then NASA conveniently forgets they ever gave away that stuff or the court verdict, and their SWAT team comes kicking in your door to reappropriate "stolen goods".

It happened before [1], it can happen to you.

[1] https://www.ibtimes.co.in/neil-armstrong-gift-sees-nasa-swat...

"Bonhams auctioned the Apollo 11 moon dust for $504,375 as part of its Space History Sale held Wednesday (April 13) in New York. The amount, which included the buyer's premium, fell short of Bonham's pre-auction estimate of $800,000 to $1.2 million."

https://www.space.com/bonhams-apollo-11-moon-dust-auction

Guess I will have to settle for visiting the Moon Trees (two near SF!) https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/01/nasa-moo...

TIL that moon dust apparently tastes and smells like gunpowder.

https://www.spaceanswers.com/solar-system/five-things-you-di...

Now you don't need to buy the moon dust, you're welcome

From the description, moon dust is very much an inhalation hazard. The sharp edges means it will embed into lung tissue and the composition likely causes silicosis.

Someone should file an OSHA complaint! World's biggest superfund site.

> NASA planetary mineralogist Roy Christoffersen used these six aluminum cylinders to test the lunar dust under an electron microscope to verify it was collected during the Apollo 11 mission.

Heh, weird to see the name of an old coworker in this context.

The price per ounce/kg/whatever must be about as close to infinite as you can get (for a physical object).

You're only thinking in terms of supply but you still need sufficient demand!

Lies! Lies! Everyone knows the Moon is made of cheese.

Moon landing was fake though, so this dust is fake too.

Pays 1 million dollars for a couple grams of moon dust...

2 decades later Elon Musk starts mining the moon and moon dust becomes a commodity going for 10$ to the kilogram

Photography didn't make the Mona Lisa worthless.

Exactly, this will always be the first batch of moon dust as long as the chain of providence can be proved.

Someone once told me that, at one point, the most valuable jewel in the King of England's crown was a flake of aluminum.

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