Neil Armstrong's purse: First moonwalker had hidden bag of Apollo 11 artifacts | Hacker News Reader

Neil Armstrong's purse: First moonwalker had hidden bag of Apollo 11 artifacts

collectspace.com

94 pointsantr15 comments

"In September 2012, one month after Armstrong died, President Barack Obama signed into law a bill that confirmed the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts had legal title their mementos."

Which explains why he never told anyone about them, their ownership was unclear and while deeply significant to Armstrong the artifacts could easily have been confiscated by NASA and put in some dusty vault to rot away like the suits they wore mostly did before being rescued.

> their ownership was unclear

It was NASA's property and the astronaut stole it.

The items would have been lost (probably forever) when the LEM was crashed back onto the moon, so where's the harm? Other people did know that Armstrong had the items - as the article states, he reported the bag to Collins, who in turn told NASA about it, so he wasn't exactly being sneaky about it. I suppose you could argue that it wasn't really "trash" but NASA obviously considered the articles "disposable" once they'd served their purpose.

Armstrong stuck the bag in a closet for 40 years. At least he didn't try to sell them. NASA turned a blind eye to Mercury and Gemini astronauts taking personal items (and things like stamps, paper money and coins) into space, because they gave them to family and friends. Only when these "space flown" items started being sold for considerable sums of money did NASA try to put a halt to the practice. I'm sure Armstrong's "mementos" could have been sold - either above or below board - for large amounts, but I doubt that's something Armstrong would have ever considered.

In fact I think remember hearing (in When We Left Earth) one of the Mercury astronauts say they made a military pilot's salary (which while not bad, probably wasn't in line with what they were doing) so they sold those space mementos to put their kids through college. They weren't trying to get rich, just trying to do what any reasonable parent would do.

Yeah, and his life was his property, but he risked it for one of the greatest missions of mankind on behalf of NASA.

So that kind of makes it even.

Or let's put it this way: this man did more for mankind than the collective sum of those who would accuse him as a thief over that that it makes them as insignificant as fruit flies in comparison (and I'm not even American).

Some proof? Perhaps his boss gave it to him. Perhaps it was thrown away. Perhaps it is a replica. Who cares.

Lots of people care, actually.

Well at least he didn't steal an election like George W Bush did.

I'd love to see you try to prosecute Neil Armstrong in an American court for stealing a bag that belonged to NASA from a spaceship that was about to be deorbited into the moon, which he just left at the height of the Cold War.

It's interesting to compare the waist tether (http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-020615h-lg.jpg) from this article with locking carabiners used by rock climbers (http://www.rei.com/product/722360/black-diamond-rocklock-twi..., http://www.rei.com/product/722353/black-diamond-rocklock-scr...). I wonder what the design requirements were -- it seems surprising to me that the only locking part of the waist tether is a button. It seems like that button could get accidentally hit, causing the tether to unlock and become unsafe; that is, unless the button has a spring forcing it to the "lock" position.

Interestingly, there is a new carabiner on the market whose locking mechanism is more like a button (http://www.rei.com/product/840193/black-diamond-magnetron-ro...): the difference being that the mechanism must be activated from both sides (via pinching the purple parts in the image), and has magnets forcing the carabiner into the "locked" state when not being held unlocked.

Also interesting is that the waist tether is adjustable. That could be a point of failure -- imagine floating off the end of your tether. Although I can't tell whether the waist tether is designed to attach astronauts to the spaceship, or just tools to astronauts. Howstuffworks.com implies it attaches astronauts to the spaceship (http://science.howstuffworks.com/spacewalk4.htm), but brighthub.com implies it's for tools (http://www.brighthub.com/science/space/articles/126178.aspx).

Interesting story. They shy away of actually saying he stole the objects. I wonder how nostalgic he was about the trip to the moon for the rest of his life...

Are you familiar with The Overview Effect? It's a reported experience that many astronauts have after viewing the Earth from space:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect

http://vimeo.com/55073825

I found this on a NASA site about the purse:

"Finally, in a 13 July 2005 e-mail, Neil Armstrong says that the flown Apollo 12 purse " looks just the way I remember it - but it looks cleaner than the one on Apollo 11."

Sneaky guy.

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a12/A12Flown-Purse.html

Can't remember who exactly, but think it was Gus Grissom who brought along rolls of coins along during his Mercury mission as a money making scheme.

Remember reading this in The Right Stuff, and it was likely in the movie as well.

Could have been titled, "Neil Armstrong purse snatcher."

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