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How an Intern Stole NASA's Moon Rocks
schwit1 submitted a story telling the strange tale of how in 2002, rogue NASA interns stole millions of dollars in moon rocks from a building designed not to let that happen. I'd suggest taking the whole thing with a little bit of salt.
Haven't read TFA yet, but the general story is true. I worked at JSC and knew Shae.
The samples were in a floor safe that they rolled out of the building on a dolly. The sting was set up as if a Belgian rockhound wanted to buy some of the samples, and they agreed to meet in Florida. The 3 other interns crossed state lines for the sting. Shae stayed in TX that weekend to attend scuba classes.
I particularly like the bit where the interns in question laid the moonrocks down and a mattress and screwed on top of them, thereby making the contamination of the spent samples even worse. Made me wonder who was on the bottom.
Seriously, though, the thing read like a synopsis of a bad TV movie. It may or may not be true, but it's telling that the perp has a book coming out that is an 'augmented' account of the heist, that the author of the linked piece is summarizing what was told him by the perp.
IOW, don't take it with a grain of salt. Kill it with Na fire.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Not only is it somewhat painful to read, as far as I can tell it is mostly fiction, no fact checking at all. And it also seems partially plagiarized from this article:
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-moonrocks23jun06,1,1392690.story?coll=la-home-magazine
And that one is by an actual reporter with actual fact checking. Obviously some of it is left up to how the perpetrators described it, but it doesn't have stupid made up stuff like a nitrogen filled lab and thermal suits and such. I would guess the crime played out more like the LA Times article, rather than this embellished piece of pulp fiction
My father used to work for ILC-DDC, a chip manufacturer out on Long Island. Some of their chips went to use with NASA. As I recall it, years ago, we children were given a tour on a "factory open to families" day, and they had a NASA space suit on display in the hallway. Well, it turns out that (1) this suit had been on the moon, (2) this suit hadn't been cleaned properly, and (3) NASA eventually recalled the suit to have any errant moon dust sucked out of it, and never let them have the suit again. At least, that's the story I was told.
My point exactly. "I just stolen several million dollars worth of moon rocks... what do I do with them now? I know! I'll sell them on eBay! They'll never think to look for them there!" Not exactly the thought processes of a genius. More like something out of a Three Stooges movie. And yes, most of the Mission Impossible stuff is bullshit, although I do believe they got an ex-employee to give them access codes.
I once worked at a USAF AWACS station, where the regulations said I was not allowed in the radome without an escort, since my security clearance was still pending. My first day there, one of my coworkers said "Here's the keycode to the door. Behave yourself." At other jobs, I've been able to access computer accounts I was not supposed to be in because the administrators made the passwords so complicated that their subordinates simply wrote them down and stuck them in their desk drawers. The point is, anybody who has dealt with bureaucratic bullshit long enough is perfectly willing to bend the rules to help their coworkers actually do their job. These interns got help from lots of people who assumed they were just doing their job. Needless to say, none of them is going to volunteer a "Oh yeah, I helped these kids get in" after the fact.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
is probably completely bogus. As was clearly shown on Mythbusters, neoprene (even thicker than the mentioned 2mm) simply does not work against thermal sensors.
Also: "... and by paying careful attention to the absorption of the powder it is possible to tell which finger came down first and so forth."
Maybe... if you are talking about a key that was pressed twice. Otherwise, forget it.
Yeah. About a teaspoon of salt. One grain for each embellishment.
yeah yeah this isn't fark, but how often do we get cute female cat burglars to ogle at?
http://www.baylor.edu/biology/index.php?id=32089 /would hit it
What BS. The other night they "proved" that Robin Hood couldn't have split an arrow with another arrow by using cheap factory-made lathe-turned arrows with grain running every-which-way. Since every arrow hit broke following the irregular grain near the nock they decided that NO ONE EVER could have split an arrow. I've actually seen a hand-made straight-grained arrow that had been split from nock to head, with the other arrow still embedded, so I know for a fact that their show was BS.
Even worse was the show where they tried to debunk the story of someone mounting a RATO (Rocket Assisted Take Off) bottle to their old Chevy Impala back in the 60s (when you could buy them surplus from the Air Force). Not having access to an actual JATO bottle, and too lazy and cheap to examine the actual plans and make a replica, the bozos cobbled together some POS rocket that probably didn't have enough thrust to get itself off the ground and put it on a car instead. Not surprisingly it failed, and now thousands of people believe that the story has been debunked.
I certainly don't object to the IDEA of their program, in fact I think it's a great idea. I just wish that they had hired someone who could actually do it RIGHT.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I don't know, it's probably literally closer to "priceless", which isn't infinitely valuable, but a market can't be established, therefore a value/price cannot be determined (see the description of "Neoclassical Value" on the Wikipedia link, lots of artwork is priceless in this sense, even though it sells for a specific value).
What you're describing is the cost, not the price or value. If I blew $100K on rebuilding a fully restored mint condition Ford Fiesta from 1994, doesn't mean that I could sell it for that, or that it represented the value. It means I blew $100K, and now had a car that is probably worth 1/10th at best. That's just a guess.
Even if you were going to present it that way, it's not like the rocks are the only thing that came out of that money. So if you want to determine if it was "worth it", or "profitable" to go to the moon, the rocks aren't the only thing of value to come out of all that money being spent.
Kirby