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Junkyard Owner Saves Lunar Rover Prototype (vice.com)
An anonymous reader writes: On Tuesday, Slashdot users learned that a man in Alabama sold a lunar rover prototype for scrap metal. We now learn that the junkyard owner has saved this important piece of scientific history. The man claims that, upon receiving the prototype at his scrap facility, he set it aside because he knew exactly what it was.
Considering that junkyards today are pretty detailed about separation of items depending on metal type and sometimes even alloys they need to identify what they are working with to put stuff in the right bucket. Unusual devices requires extra consideration not only from the perspective of metals but also from hazardous material.
Junkyards are no longer a local hobo operation but actually pretty detailed in what they do - and regulated. So if stuff ends up from someone that do have some unusual labeling like NASA or so then they will at least take a second look. They usually want to make sure that they avoid the Cobalt-60 incident from December 1983 in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico and similar.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.