Apollo 13 Mission Manual Pages To Be Auctioned

astroengine writes "On April 13 — the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 accident — Bonhams in New York City will auction off pages from the Apollo 13 mission manual, with handwritten notes by flight commander Jim Lovell. I'm thinking the chances of actually outbidding a rich space enthusiast are slim to none, but having a chance at owning a piece of spaceflight history should be popular nonetheless." Here is an item listing page at Bonhams for one of those pages, which, as Gizmodo notes, saved three astronauts' lives.

Comments

Why are these not being given to a Museum?

[vtechpilot]

Gee if only we had a government body charged with the preservation of important historical documents. Oh wait! We do! I don't understand why these items aren't going to the National Archives. Its not like they are gonna raise enough money for a rocket or anything. The Smithsonian Institution would be a better home than some private collection.

Re:Why are these not being given to a Museum?

[roman_mir]

well, when it's in private collection it is still possible to negotiate with the owner to look at it when necessary, probably for a fee.

Re:Why are these not being given to a Museum?

[trurl7]

Oh you 'tire', do you? Well thank you, King Lear, for that bit of input. When you're done playing with yourself as you think about Ayn Rand, maybe you can get back to the real world? You actually tried to apply social Darwinism to a museum...how's that "let's monetize everything, including our history" thing going for ya?

Also: did you miss the whole "distribution of wealth" bit? Let me break it down for you: top %5 of wealth-holders possess roughly 60% of all wealth in the country. This is 2004 figures, so with the economic unpleasantness it's probably shifted a few points, so may be closer to 65% now. (top 10% hold 70+% of all wealth). So, your solution is that private citizens (and here, that would be the 90%-95% of the people NOT in the top bracket) would compete with the top 5-10%'s purchasing ability (specifically their disposable wealth) to subsidize museums and other public institutions to preserve our history. Do you have an analytical problem or an arithmetic problem?

Re:Why are these not being given to a Museum?

[vtechpilot]

I hope you are being ironic but I can't tell. If you're serious then it requires rebuttal. If a museum doesn't have interesting artifacts, then they don't attract visitors. If they don't attract visitors they don't have admissions income (or in the case of free museums have a hard time justifying the public funding they receive). Without income, they can't acquire interesting artifacts. It is a catch 22. If museums had to be run as a business and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, we wouldn't have any museums. All the great museums owe their existence to gift or public grant: The Louvre, The British Museum, The Smithsonian, American Museum of Natural History.

If these items are currently NASA property then transferring an asset from one government body to another has zero cost and the museum should not have to pay to acquire them. If these are not NASA property then there are one of two possibilities. 1) They are stolen US Government property. 2) NASA was wrong to transfer them to private ownership in the first place.

Re:Why are these not being given to a Museum?

[eth1]

More like they're taking something valuable and interesting, created with our tax money, and taking money to make it inaccessible to the people it actually belongs to.

Re:Why are these not being given to a Museum?

[Ragzouken]

You're talking as if donating to them to a museum rather than throwing them away or auctioning them would be inconceivable.

These belong in the National Archives/Smithsonian

[Genom]

Is it wrong that I'm a little dismayed at this? IMHO these belong in the National Archives, or at the Smithsonian's Air & Space museum, not in the hands of the highest bidder. They're a part of our space program's history, and deserve to be preserved.