What Neil brought home

[onebigmonkey]

Fascinating article at the ALSJ:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11ReturnedEagleArtifacts.html

Some of them are obvious choices, but others...??

[Luke Pemberton]

...but others...??

I have to agree. Some just make me think 'why?'

[onebigmonkey]

...but others...??

I have to agree. Some just make me think 'why?'

"See that helmet tie down strap...I'm bloody well having that..."

[Luke Pemberton]

"See that helmet tie down strap...I'm bloody well having that..."

I can understand the waste management cover, in a strange sort of way. I guess being cooped up in a small space for over a week, one might get intimately attached to such an article.

[onebigmonkey]

Oddly that was the first thing I saw that I liked - never even spotted a whole DAC!!

I also like the article for the meticulous detective work involved in tracing down each component and it's place in the mission. Congrats all round for that.

[Luke Pemberton]

Oddly that was the first thing I saw that I liked - never even spotted a whole DAC!!

I also like the article or the meticulous detective work involved in tracing down each component and it's place in the mission. Congrats all round for that.

I wonder if Jay, ka9q, Bob B and sts60 (and others that I may have missed ) can take a look at the first photo and get them all without looking at the list. That's a challenge.

[Dalhousie]

I could never understand Jack Schmitt not bringing his hammer back.

[Bob B.]

I wonder if Jay, ka9q, Bob B and sts60 (and others that I may have missed ) can take a look at the first photo and get them all without looking at the list. That's a challenge.

I would certainly fail that challenge.  I've studied Apollo from more of a macro perspective.  I haven't gotten into the minutiae enough to be able to identify a pile of random small parts.  There's probably not more than 4 or 5 items in that pile that I recognize. 

[Luke Pemberton]

I would certainly fail that challenge.  I've studied Apollo from more of a macro perspective.  I haven't gotten into the minutiae enough to be able to identify a pile of random small parts.  There's probably not more than 4 or 5 items in that pile that I recognize.

That's 4 or 5  more than me. 

[onebigmonkey]

This article is now getting widely circulated as it's been picked up by the media, and after chewing it over for a bit I think the pieces in the bag aren't that odd.

If you think about it, what would there have been in the LM that wasn't securely nailed down or too big to take away? The bits in this McDivitt purse (and I'd bet in Buzz's as well) are probably those that were easiest to pick up and small enough (and light enough) to fit in the bag. Anything else is moon dust now.

[ka9q]

I could never understand Jack Schmitt not bringing his hammer back.

Probably because the checklist called for it to be left on the lunar surface to save weight. Most or all of the Apollo 11 items I see here would have been carried back to lunar orbit. Arguably they should have been left in the ascent stage after docking, but I'm guessing the CSM had more more liberal propellant margins than the LM.

[Kiwi]

There was a pretty awful report of this on New Zealand's TV3 News tonight.

Look at the heading on the website, and the errors and implications in the report:

Neil Armstrong's stolen space mementos on display
Tuesday 10 Feb 2015 6:15 p.m.
By Richard Wybrow
   When Neil Armstrong returned from mankind's first trip to the moon in 1969, it seems no one checked his carry-on luggage too closely. Decades later, Mr Armstrong's widow found his luggage was full of historical treasures in a closet at home.
   There was one small thing missing from Mr Armstrong's famous declaration as he stepped on the moon and said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The word "a" was missing; he was supposed to say, "That's one small step for a man."
   As it turns out, that's not all that went missing from the Apollo 11 lunar mission. After Mr Armstrong's death, his wife found a secret stash of mementos the spaceman had brought back from the moon.
   Hidden in a closet, inside a bag that had been supplied by NASA, were items like the waist tether used by Mr Armstrong. There were also utility lights, netting, an optical sight used to help with docking and even the very camera that caught the moment Mr Armstrong first walked on the moon.
   Now, Mr Armstrong's moon stash has a new home at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
   These items were supposed to have been left on the moon back in 1969 and Mr Armstrong never told anyone about them over the next four decades. The reason they stayed hidden so long is because no one knew they were missing.

3 News

Read more: http://www.3news.co.nz/world/neil-armstrongs-stolen-space-mementos-on-display-2015021017#ixzz3RJz07sTP

I get annoyed at this "for a man" stuff.  Armstrong pronounced that exactly the way I would if I quickly said to someone, "Come for a walk."

No, I wouldn't carefully and individually pronounce "for" and "a"  like a BBC announcer might, but it would still be distinctly two syllables which is exactly what I can hear Armstrong saying, more like "firrer".  A few years ago some sound techs analysed the audio of Armstrong and said there are definitely two syllables.

And I think that at the time it was heard in the UK, Patrick Moore repeated, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

JayUtah also said years ago that "f'ra" is a common pronunciation in midwestern states.

[Kiwi]

...These items were supposed to have been left on the moon back in 1969 and Mr Armstrong never told anyone about them over the next four decades...

Assuming that the Temporary Stowage Bag (TSB or "purse") and it's contents reached the Armstrong home soon after Apollo 11, it's hard to believe that Neil would not have shown wife Janet and sons Mark, 6 and Ricky, 12, any of the items. Surely it would be any boy's dream to handle some of them, and almost a crime for any father to not show them.

And as for the claim that Neil "never told anyone", this page at the ALSJ,
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a12/A12Flown-Purse.html
tells about the Apollo 12 TSB that Al Bean has in his possession, and at the bottom mentions an email from Neil:

Finally, in a 13 July 2005 e-mail, Neil Armstrong says that the flown Apollo 12 purse "looks just the way I remember it - but it looks cleaner than the one on Apollo 11."

I wish I was more capable than I am right now of writing a scathing reply to Richard Wybrow, commenting about his mean-spirited heading and asking him where he got his information from and how much did he just make up. I've got lots of things in the bottom of wardrobes and cupboards, but that doesn't mean they are necessarily "secret" or "hidden" at all.

I wonder if he even knows that if Neil hadn't souvenired the items they would have most likely ended up destroyed when the LM eventually crashed on the moon. And whether he recognises that neither Neil nor second wife Carol put them on Ebay to see what they could "make" out of them.

Google shows that Wybrow is apparently a "Canadian-kiwi TV producer, writer, and journo. Auckland, New Zealand."

Edited to add: Yahoo!  Smartcooky got stuck into Wybrow about 35 minutes ago:

smartcooky

Neil Armstrong's stolen space mementos on display

Discussion on  3NewsNZ • 4 comments

@Mr Wybrow, what sort of journalist are you? I would, say you are one who does not have the word "research" in his vocabulary. If you weren't so busy interviewing your own laptop, you could have taken the two minutes it took me to find out that these were not "stolen" as you stated, but were were surplus items that were originally planned to be left left in "Eagle" (the Lunar Module) after Armstrong and Aldrin transferred back to Columbia (The Command Module). Instead, they were transferred with the crew, who were allowed to keep them.

Where's that applause smiley?

Smartcooky: I'm not registered at TV3, nor on any of the other services they quote (Facebook etc.)  Could you post a link there to this thread so that interested people can at least get the facts instead of Wybrow's nonsense?

LunarOrbit: If Wybrow keeps up that sort of crappy journalism, you're welcome to have him back in Canada, although I don't imagine you would want him.

Perhaps he should be getting stuck into Al Bean for having the Apollo 12 TSB, but I doubt if he's heard of Al Bean, or knows he's still alive.  It's just so much "better journalism" to pick on the more famous astronaut who isn't alive to defend himself against false accusations of theft.

[smartcooky]

Kiwi

I picked up a reply from some HB called "Steve" who brought up the usual array of stuff that that has been debunked multiple times in the past; the LLR reflectors could have been dropped remotely, the computers weren't powerful enough to navigate to the moon, the Russian were winning the space race etc.

Then before I had a chance to reply this evening, I found that my son in law had jumped in and taken him down, point by point. And a good job he made of it too!!.

[Kiwi]

...I found that my son in law had jumped in and taken him down, point by point. And a good job he made of it too!!.

Yep, he did indeed.  Please pass on my congratulations.  We need more like him, and as polite as him too.

[Could he perhaps do an appeal to TV3 about getting the author to delete "stolen" from the heading? It's going much too far in my opinion -- outright muckraking regarding a good, honourable and true world hero.]

And as for the HB, he replied:
Steve > Ryan Anderson  • 9 hours ago 
Saw a text wall and gave up but thanks for the mammoth post.

A whole 29 lines, narrower than these, is a wall of text, according to him.  Hell, the poor sod obviously couldn't handle my posts at Trade Me the last two nights regarding last night's meteor. Some are many more lines than that.  At least I got a few replies from interested people. (I'm dbb at Trade Me, which is only accessible to members).

Because of all the useless reports everywhere, and a frustrated astronomer who couldn't do a triangulation for the meteor, I started a thread called "How to Report a Meteor, Fireball, or even a UFO".
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Community/MessageBoard/Messages.aspx?id=1521107&topic=5

My first ever report of my biggest fireball yet got a Palmerston North astronomer going, but it was a year or two after the sighting (because I originally didn't know how to do a report) and he couldn't find any more reports even though it was on 27 December 1990, 11:40pm NZDT.