How Many Moon Rocks Have You Seen?

None as far as I know. Maybe I saw one at Tribune Tower.

San Diego Aerospace Museum has one.

Crummy little lump of grey rock…but, damn! We went to the moon to bring it back, and that’s impressive as anything!

I worked at the National Air and Space Museum for 12 years, and for much of that time my office was about 100 feet from the touchable moon rock. I would go out and touch it once a month or so, just because I could. The museum has others on display in the Apollo to the Moon exhibit. Naturally, I’ve seen all of those, and the one at the National Cathedral, too.

I’ve been to almost all of the museums mentioned in this thread: Chicago, Houston, Huntsville, San Diego, KSC, Seattle, Toronto, etc. I can’t swear that I clapped eyes on the moon rocks in every one of those places, but I will if that means I win the thread. :smiley:

A bunch - including the ones in Britian and Ireland, at the Air & Space Museum, Natural History Museum and Kennedy.

I’ve also seen three magna cartas and two Gutenberg bibles. We take our kids places and they are so jaded - “ho hum, another Magna Carta” “More pages from da Vinci’s notebooks”

(We travel a lot and spend a lot of that time in museums - I saw my first U Boat last weekend in Chicago.

WOuld Lunar meteorites count? Because then I’ve seen about a dozen.

Otherwise, 3.

For purposes of this thread, I’m really defining it as moon rocks returned by an Apollo mission.

Two, one at the Kennedy Space Center, one at the Ames Research Center in California.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the one at the Smithsonian, but I would have been about 9 or 10 at the time and recollections are vague.

I have seen and touched the one at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

How does it feel?, you may wonder. It feels like a rock that has been touched 100 million times. It may be the most touched object on Earth.

There’s a possible meteorite in Saudi Arabia that has probably been touched more.

I believe that you are correct. That stone had a head start.

I grew up in Philly and so got to stand there and gaze upon The Franklin Institute’s Lunar sample.

The Smithsonian’s Moon Rock can be touched as well as seen !!

Then there’s the more intriguing sample I got to handle about 18 years ago. It was about the size of a marble, rather coarse, and sitting in a simple lucite box. On the bottom was a dirty label that read, " Please return to S. Kubrick, Elstree Studios, Shenley Road, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire ".

:wink:

Joking aside, I do own this. A 1st Generation positive roll of 120 color film. The original strip was shot by a Hasselblad camera during the Apollo 15 mission.

Those rolls have never been touched by human hands. Using a state of the art lab built INSIDE of Johnson Space Center in Houston, all 35mm and 120 film rolls were developed and an internegative was struck. The originals are in a safe environmentally friendly area.

Off of those internegatives positive film single images and rolls were struck. My father was a science writer in the 1960’s into 1970’s and as such was sent a lot of material by NASA. Last spring I came upon a box I’d not seen before in Mom’s house. ( Dad passed in 2005 ). Inside was a metal round cannister and inside of THAT, well… was something that blew my mind.

An uncut sequence of images from a roll that was partially shot on the Moon, partially shot over the Moon and partially shot on approach to the Command Module.

Priceless.

I’m looking at having long color prints struck of the entire sequence. Working with a professional lab in the photo district here in NYC.

:slight_smile: