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

Who is selling and why?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Whoever it is selling this deserves a lot of pity. Whether it be NASA who needs the money or an old NASA employee (maybe astronaut?) who needs the money or an old collector who needs the money or the estate of an old collector or NASA employee that needs to liquidate it, there really must be a sad story behind the selling of an item that belongs in a museum.

Even better

[Amiralul]

Every Level 9 visitor of Johnson Space Center can hold in his hands the (original) Apollo 11 Lunar Surface Operation Plan, probably used and touched by Gene Krantz and others, while visiting the historical Apollo mission control room. It's on the left side of the room, stockpiled with other various files.

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Gee if only we had a government body charged with the preservation of important historical documents.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?

[Jawn98685]

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.

Let's see... You wan't to have the government place these items in some government run institution, so we can all "share" equal access to them? Instead of letting the free market "take care" of priceless historical artifacts?
Sounds kind of like communism to me.

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.

Re:What moon landing?

[pedestrian crossing]

Fake or not, Apollo 13 didn't land on the moon. (Yes, I know, whoosh....)

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.

proof it was all fake - no DYRWT switches

[Locutus]

Nowhere do you see any "do you really want to..." switches. I mean really, who would build such a space craft and only have a switch or button which doesn't have a secondary switch or button labeled "do you really want to?"(DYRWT) to be sure the operator wants to throw that switch? Or _really_ sure for that matter. It must be fake.

LoB

You can see it right now

[Comboman]

In effect, no one will ever see it again. Why can't NASA give it to a museum?

If you want to see it, go to the item listing page at Bonhams. You can see a high-resolution photo of both sides of the sheet. For the purposes of research or curiosity that's a much closer look than you would get if it were behind glass in a museum. Besides, even though the Air & Space museum is huge (they've got a Concorde, 727, SR-71, Space Shuttle, etc), they don't have room to preserve and display every piece of paper that an astronaut ever wrote on. This is ONE PAGE out a binder with hundreds of pages, which is one of thousands of binders NASA used in the space program. It's autographed on one side by Lovell, so I suspect this is from his personal binder and a some point he was using pages out of it for autographs instead of using photos. Just because something is collectible, doesn't mean it's historically significant.

Re:Houston we have a problem

[RevWaldo]

Actually - they did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape#Usage_in_spaceflight

NASA engineers and astronauts have used duct tape in the course of their work, including in some emergency situations. One such usage occurred in 1970, when the square carbon dioxide filters from Apollo 13's failed command module had to be modified to fit round receptacles in the lunar module, which was being used as a lifeboat after an explosion en route to the moon. A workaround was made using duct tape and other items on board Apollo 13, with the ground crew relaying directions to the spacecraft and its crew. The lunar module CO2 scrubbers started working again, saving the lives of the three astronauts on board.

Ed Smylie, who designed the scrubber modification in just two days, said later that he knew the problem was solvable when it was confirmed that duct tape was on the spacecraft: "I felt like we were home free", he said in 2005. "One thing a Southern boy will never say is, 'I don't think duct tape will fix it.'"[3]