Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
If all the scrap at NASA had to be 'preserved' we would have to clear out every building in D.C. that isn't the Smithsonian to store it all in.
Hmmm, that's not a bad idea.
Nope. Not really. That whole area is its own special kind of special. I say that because I care - I do own a house in Florida and I have shared some of the many things I've seen there. Nope, they're definitely unique in some ways and this is one of those ways. It could be selection bias, I guess, but I don't think so.
Put it this way... I own a house in PCB, the home of Spring Break - really. They have a week long period, out of sync with the rest of the country, that they call FAG week. FAG is "Florida, Alabama, and Georgia." They double down on the cops, take the jails and empty them by shipping them to the annex up in Destin, and call in special Beach Police. Not because they're violent or mean. They just do some really stupid things. When you hear about all the deaths during Spring Break - check the week that it happened. It was probably during FAG week.
They do have alligators so, there's that. And manatees. My place is pretty close to a special area that they've got signs telling people that, "Molesting the Manatees is a Serious Offense."
No, I am not kidding. I love the place. They've got character.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
So what? The government gets those kinds of warnings all the time. The president should not be trying to micromanage that kind of stuff.