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Alabama Man Sold a Priceless Apollo-Era Lunar Rover Protoype For Scrap Metal (vice.com)
Jason Koebler writes: An Alabama man allowed an Apollo-era lunar rover prototype to rot in his backyard before ultimately selling it to a junkyard for scrap metal last year, according to documents acquired from NASA as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. NASA spent much of 2014 attempting to acquire the priceless artifact for display in a museum, but it was ultimately destroyed before the agency could recover it.
What the heck was he doing with a lunar rover prototype in Alabama?
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
1. up on blocks.
2. Huntsville.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
He probably has a grudge against NASA for proving that the Earth isn't flat.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
NASA Agency Bureaucracy Lets Historic Antique Slip From Their Fingers
If it didn't take them six months to reach out... Even a quick call "Hey, this is NASA. We heard you have one of our rovers. Could we just send someone over to verify?"
According to TFA is was worth "maybe $15,000 to $25,000,"
A glorified dune buggy is considered "priceless"? It's not like it went to the moon or anything.
And clearly there were better models that should be even more priceless, since it was just a prototype.
Who, the junkyard guy that considers the stuff in his junkyard to be... you know... junk? Or the NASA administrator that considered a historic relic under his care to be junk?
When you can't outbid a scrap metal dealer (or, if you must, can't convince the scrap metal dealer in question to flip the item to you for a quick 100% profit), how much effort were you really putting into this?
Not anymore...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
norhing of value was lost.
I like NASA. I like space exploration. However, I don't like NASA spending its limited time and resources to buy up antiques when it could be working on MORE space exploration.
...is sure giving Florida Man a run for his money lately!
The article clearly states that the guy who sold it inherited the item after the previous owner passed away.
If he had never been told what it was, he probably just assumed it was some weird project from his relative (possibly parent) that was taking up space. It'd be something that one might would even throw away except that anything large and metallic has scrap value so basically you get paid for your "trash".
My dad and uncle went through a lot of this after my grandfather passed away. Behind his house he had a ton (well, actually many, many tons) of old tractors, plows, cars, etc that after they broke he just tossed in the woods behind his house (still on his property - just off of the cleared portion). After my granddad passed away just in the process of cleaning up the place they hauled off pretty much all of it and took in quite a few thousand dollars in scrap value.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Andy had the right idea. Build a rocket, go to the moon, and bring back all the scrap NASA left behind. Can't get over how much this mirrors "Salvage 1".
Now all we need is some Monohydrazine.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
So how did the old owner come in possession of the lunar rover prototype ? This is the interesting question.
What's next, hillbilly finds an old Mercury capsule in his backyard and NASA wants it back ?
Huntsville Alabama is where they hid Von Braun so he wouldn't get lynched. As a result, a lot of Space Research happens there. See "Rocket City Rednecks", a bad reality TV show where some NASA engineer spends his weekends making dumb shit out of junk with his redneck buddies.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
America put a man on the moon, we just used your real estate so if anything went wrong, nothing important would be damaged.
Probably looked like some broken dune buggy project to them.
I would think even in Alabama an all-electric dune buggy with 5-foot wheels would stand out a bit.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If you've ever seen these lunar prototypes up close, you'd understand how it could get sold for scrap. Everything that was "space age" in the 1960's looks primitive today.
...is that there is not a current lunar lander model people can look at...as in circa 2015.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Considering the percentage of people who still voted for Bush after he ignored six months of daily warnings of an impending attack and allowed the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history to take place, then compounded his incompetence by letting Bin Laden because he refused every request by troops on the ground for more troops to block Bin Laden's escape at Tora Bora, or the fact he then set out on an unprecedented lying campaign to justify invading and occupying Iraq which had nothing to do with the attacks, I will agree with you... You need no further proof that you can't fix stupid, and it isn't limited to Alabama.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I call dibs on the ones on the moon.
There's three of them up there, just waiting to be salvaged.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
GORTON: Now, since my yellow light is on, at this point my final question will be this: Assuming that the recommendations that you made on January 25th of 2001, based on Delenda, based on Blue Sky, including aid to the Northern Alliance, which had been an agenda item at this point for two and a half years without any action, assuming that there had been more Predator reconnaissance missions, assuming that that had all been adopted say on January 26th, year 2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9/11?
CLARKE: No.
Richard Clarke's sworn testimony to the 9/11 commission. Clarke was President Clinton's terror czar. Too late by the time the Bush Administration took over. Per President Clinton's own terror czar. I know, facts and sworn testimony are always an issue when you have a political axe to grind...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
If you've ever seen these lunar prototypes up close, you'd understand how it could get sold for scrap. Everything that was "space age" in the 1960's looks primitive today.
Yes, that. And in addition, it was a "prototype" and as such may have been just frame and wheels, which could be mistaken for just about anything. The first picture in the article looks nothing like the actual lunar rover other than having a stupid looking antenna on top. It looks like 1000s of other homemade dunebuggies.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
What axe? I'm stating a fact. Bush had six months of daily warnings of an impending attack, INCLUDING Clarke's own statement a few days after Bush was sworn into office, and a briefing statement titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States".
Further, contrary to the lies of those in the Bush administration, the outgoing Clinton administration did leave them a comprehensive plan. We know this because it's been declassified.
If you like, I can keep going with the facts which show a) Bush had been warned, many times, prior to the 9/11 attacks, both from the outgoing Clinton administration, Richard Clarke who spanned both administrations and daily briefings, b) Bush was warned one month before the attacks that Al Qaeda was planning to hijack planes to attack the U.S. and c) Bush ignored everything until the last second when, on 9/4, he finally had a meeting to discuss what Clarke and others had talked about months prior.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
NASA spent much of 2014 attempting to acquire the priceless artifact for display in a museum
Sounds like they didn't try too hard if they couldn't compete with a scrap yard.
It's illegal to sell some things like this (moon rocks, etc.). That either creates free (aka "black") market pressures, or for the fully law-abiding, incentives to dispose.
It's like kidneys - there's both a massive abundance and a massive shortage because the price mechanism is made illegal in the market. As usual, people suffer and die when the politicians get involved.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I remember one (A rover) in the Saturn V hall.
... I'll have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster with a side of Plutonium Nyborg
[OUTRO... roll credits... R.E.M's "Man on the Moon" ...if you believed they put a man on the moon....
]
Should read..."Alabama Man Removes Junk from His Yard". Of course, no one would believe it.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
Per Clarke - it was already too late to stop it. Nothing that could have been done based upon information available and recommendations/intelligence from the Clinton Administration. It's what Clarke stated in sworn testimony to Senator Gorton - copied above.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
unless he STOLE the rover, the fact that he has it, and NASA doesn't, probably means that nobody in NASA cared for 50 years.
So don't be too hard on this guy just cause he didn't care -- after all, neither did NASA
The Space Age itself looks primitive today, but some Space Nutters cling to the ancient ideas like a religion.
You lack of faith disturbs me.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Your lack of an "r" disturbs me.
I'm saving them for talk like a pi_ate day.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Yes, that. And in addition, it was a "prototype" and as such may have been just frame and wheels, which could be mistaken for just about anything. The first picture in the article looks nothing like the actual lunar rover other than having a stupid looking antenna on top. It looks like 1000s of other homemade dunebuggies.
If it looked like the picture in the article, I'd probably agree with you. However, FTA: The rover was apparently massive: NASA notes that the Local Scientific Survey Module, as it was called, "weighs more than 8,000 pounds, is 21-feet long, 15-feet wide and has 6 wheels with 5-foot diameters."
I don't know of too many people who would build something like that at all, let alone for a homemade dune buggy.
You, my friend, have never been to Alabama. Or Florida. Or Georgia. ;-)
That whole little part of the country is its own sort of special. I have a house in Florida. I visit often. I am greatly amused. I am also easily amused. I'd not actually be surprised to see a moon rover going down the road in Alabama. What would surprise me is if it were the real one and not a mock-up. Hell, seeing a parade of the things wouldn't even make me bat an eye. I've seen swamp buggies (the platform type that are like ten feet tall) tooling down Rt. 98 in Panama City Beach. It's nowhere near the swamp, really. No, I'd not bat an eye.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
What is your sort doing in this discussion? You doubtless also believe that there was never a Moon Landing, so this 'lander' was just a prototype of a movie studio prop and not historic. The whole Federal Government is a conspiracy to steal your dollars.
Perhaps find another place to peddle your idiotic conspiracy theories.
Well, moon rocks are illegal to sell. Scrap metal from NASA prototyping uses? We'd be buried in it if scrappers weren't allowed to sell it to China. That's probably where the scrap metal ended up, incidentally.
How so? Nothing came through the baggage and the planes were hijacked with box cutters, which were an allowed carry-on. I used to travel with the pocket knife that lived in my pocket - I think the blade limit was something like 3 inches.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I would think even in Alabama an all-electric dune buggy with 5-foot wheels would stand out a bit.
Yeah - they don't hanker to that commie electrical powered vehicle shit.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Seriously, who doesn't just ask the guy, "how much for that?" I know I would have if I knew what it was. For scrap value, just bust out the wallet; square up with NASA later or keep it if they don't. I always taught my kids to, at least, ask. You would be surprised what happens when you do. I could have had a rover or the country could have had a rover back, but either is better than scrap...
heard about the Internet or eBay in the neighborhood.
Nah, they marry their (proper spelling, by the way) in the hills of West Virginia. And, oddly, Portugal. You can marry your sister in Portugal. :/ At least that's what the news said quite a while back - 'twas on Fark as I recall. No, I have no idea why. Well, no... I know why it was on Fark. I don't know why they allowed it. It was a rather specific amendment, as I recall.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
That's not what the head of NASA, Charles Bolden says. Mr. Bolden explains their top three priorities as:
When I became the Nasa administrator, he [Obama] charged me with three things.
One, he wanted me to help reinspire children to want to get into science and math;
he wanted me to expand our international relationships;
and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good
So Bing,
Which part of my narrative do you disagree with?
Yes the moon landings were real.
46137
More like per your slight-of-hand. Or didn't you think anyone would notice that you're using a quote about bombing Afghanistan when the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia to suggest that 911 couldn't have been stopped by the FBI?
So what? The government gets those kinds of warnings all the time. The president should not be trying to micromanage that kind of stuff.
Have you heard of lying to save face? You don't learn this in political school, it's just part of the basic entrance examination before you can even attend.
Or do you think they would stand up and take responsibility? If so I have one thing to say "aaaaahahahahahahahahahahhaahha"
Now show me evidence of the first conversation being "we're going to have an attack in 6 months but there's nothing we can do about it", because I've seen nothing of the sort.
The invasion of Iraq was not about oil, that is a conspiracy theory, and is frankly so asinine as to be on the same level as the moon hoaxes. Saddam would have loved to sell the US oil, we were refusing to buy his oil, so he had to find other buyers. Before the attack on Iraq, Saddam was acting like he was building a nuclear weapon, and was refusing access to the nuclear inspectors to the sites that were suspected of being bomb making sites. It was a widely held belief by many in government that he really did have WMD, not just some rumor that originated with one person.
http://politics.slashdot.org/c...
This guy goes through and cites tons of quotes of people talking about the WMD including Clinton. Are you calling Clinton a liar?
Saddam also had already previously shown that he was more than willing to use WMD of a different type when he gassed the Kurds, an ethnic group in the area that has been routinely put down by most countries in the area, including Turkey who is currently letting ISIS kill them due to their hatred of them.
Stop acting like your total lack of knowledge about world affairs gives you the right to try and call Bush a liar. Learn history, look at the events surrounding the invasion of Iraq. But then again, you were probably a child when the invasion happened.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
It's illegal to sell some things like this (moon rocks, etc.). That either creates free (aka "black") market pressures, or for the fully law-abiding, incentives to dispose.
It's like kidneys - there's both a massive abundance and a massive shortage because the price mechanism is made illegal in the market. As usual, people suffer and die when the politicians get involved.
In addition, the anti-free market, statist "murder is a crime" laws artificially inflate the cost of hiring a hitman.
Wanker.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Per Clarke - it was already too late to stop it. Nothing that could have been done based upon information available and recommendations/intelligence from the Clinton Administration.
You're completely misreading this testimony. It's not a question about if anything could have been done to prevent 9/11, it's a question of whether killing or capturing bin Laden would have prevented 9/11. Why would a hypothetical drone strike on OBL in July of 2001 have stopped 9/11 if the plan was already in progress and the hijackers were already in the US? What does that have to do with anything?
It was only "too late" to prevent it in January 2001 if you think killing Osama bin Laden is the only possible thing that could have been done to stop the hijackings, unlike, say, arresting or killing the hijackers themselves, which would have assuredly stopped them from hijacking airplanes.
http://motherboard.vice.com/re... The junk yard had kept it because they somewhat knew what it was.
"they offered me everything but money"... "so I still have it".
Owell. Wonder what his price is? If NASA doesn't want to cash him, maybe someone else will. If anything, barter for some of those "perks". $1000 for free lifetime tickets to usually off-limits NASA facilities would be a killer deal.
or eBay it...
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.