“What makes this autograph extra special, said Eaton, who recently sold a signed copy of the famous tongue-wagging photo of Albert Einstein, is that Armstrong included his rarely used middle initial. It was one of only three times he signed his full name, Neil A. Armstrong, during the Apollo 11 mission. [COLOR=“Blue”]The other two times were on a customs declaration after reentry and on a plaque left on the moon, according to the RR Auction staff.”[/COLOR]
This has got to be BS. What! he had to declare the Moon samples he brought back? How was the duty payable split up between the three astronauts, and who put a valuation on the samples? Did he have to take his passport to the Moon also?
What about the equipment he “exported”? There was the Saturn V and the Moon lander and all the other expensive equipment he took out of the country, did he need special export license?
Tell me this isn’t bureaucracy gone mad and that I read the story wrong.
WAG: since they splashed down into the middle of the Pacific Ocean, they would technically have had to enter the US through a border crossing, probably at the return port of the USS Hornet, the ship that picked them up. Everyone on the ship, including the astronauts, would probably have had to do at least a basic custom’s clearance, at the minimum signing that they hadn’t brought anything back. Besides, making astronauts returning from the moon sign a custom’s declaration is funny, and I doubt the humour was lost on everyone involved.
There’s plenty of anecdotes of NASA astronauts filing for the government per-diem for each day they were in space. They had tried claiming mileage, but then got billed for transportation costs.
I don’t think the astronaut had to file for an extension. IIRC, the astronaut mentioned during an interview that he was late in filing his taxes, and when President Nixon got on the radio to talk to the astronauts during the mission, Nixon told him that he would be granted an extension.
Yep, it was just a joke. An even better one was the towing bill that engineers at Grumman (builder of the lunar lander) sent to North American Rockwell (builder of the command module) after Apollo 13. Because of the explosion on the spacecraft, astronauts had to use the lunar module as a lifeboat to get themselves back to Earth - so it made sense to the Grumman guys that they should bill for the service: $4.00 for the first mile, $1.00 for each additional mile.
I believe that was Jack Swigert, the CM pilot for Apollo 13. Jack was initially the back-up pilot for the mission, but he was moved up after Ken Mattingly had been exposed to german measles. I would assume he had planned to file before April 15, but he suddenly got very busy, couldn’t file before lift off on April 13.
Nixon did grant him an extension, as he was “most decidedly out of the country.”
** Just a note **
Contrary to the portrayal in the movie, the crew of Apollo 13 was very lucky to have him on board. He had written most of the procedures for the CM, and probably knew the spacecraft better then any astronaut.
There was a paperback NASA-themed humor book that was published about 25 years ago that I heartily recommend to all space-program geeks. It wasn’t simply a space-oriented edition of a conventional joke book – i.e., full of general jokes about space travel – but a journalist’s compendium of all the insider NASA/Bell/McDonnell/Grumman/Lockheed/etc. (but mostly NASA-based) humor, gags, pranks, accidentally funny outcomes of actual events, etc. from the earliest days of the space race to the early Shuttle era. There were even one or two chapters devoted to the Soviet side of the space race! A fantastic find (library book sale) and a real cult item.
Strangely enough, I don’t think it included the Apollo 13 invoice gag.
Alas, I sent it to my brother and sis-in-law, who are actual aerospace engineers who’ve worked in the Shuttle program. I’m such a schmuck sometimes.
I’d prefer to think the crew paid for the fuel at their own expense (Fill her up. It’ll take about 5,000,000 lb of Aerozine 50 and Nitrogen Tetroxide.) and claimed it back afterwards, but sadly it probably didn’t happen that way.
