[meteorite-list] Moon Memorabilia Auction

[JoshuaTreeMuseum]

We'll see how this one goes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/science/space/10moon.html?_r=1&hp

Shreds of Moon History on the Block
By DOUGLAS QUENQUA
Published: July 9, 2011
  a.. Recommend
  b.. Twitter
  c.. Sign In to E-Mail
  d.. Print
  e..
  Reprints
  a.. ShareClose
    a.. Linkedin
    b.. Digg
    c.. MySpace
    d.. Permalink
    e..

It was two weeks before the liftoff of the Apollo 11 mission when Thomas 
Moser's boss walked into his office at NASA and announced, "We're putting a 
flag on the moon."

Enlarge This Image

Goldberg Coins and Collectibles
At bottom, remnants of the American flag that went to the moon, signed by 
Mr. Armstrong, are expected to bring $100,000 at auction.

Enlarge This Image

NASA
Buzz Aldrin in a photograph taken by Neil Armstrong.

Mr. Moser, then a 30-year-old mechanical engineer, was put in charge of 
designing a flag mechanism that could not only fit into the lunar module and 
survive the flight, but also make the flag appear to fly on the windless 
moon.

His solution involved two sections of a staff, a telescoping tube and a 
nylon flag bought at a local housing goods store (Sears, he thinks). But in 
order for the flag to fit the staff, its edges needed to be trimmed. "They 
were throwing it all in the trash," Mr. Moser recalled of the remnants in a 
recent interview, "so I picked it up out of the trash can, mounted it and 
had Neil Armstrong sign it."

Forty-two years later, Mr. Moser is auctioning off those flag remnants. The 
expected selling price: $100,000.

"There's so much attention on the manned space program right now that the 
timing may be good," Mr. Moser said, referring to the final launching of the 
space shuttle Atlantis on Friday.

Mr. Moser's flag shreds are the star lot of an extensive space memorabilia 
auction being held in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday. Other notable items 
include the astronaut Deke Slayton's handwritten training notes from the 
Mercury program and dozens of heat shields, crew patches and other ephemera 
that once transcended earthly bounds.

For collectors, the remnants of the space flag are "comparable to a Betsy 
Ross flag or the flag flying over the port in Baltimore in 1812," said 
Michael Orenstein, who is overseeing the auction for Goldberg Coins and 
Collectibles. Two days before the auction, online pre-bidding for the lot 
had reached $49,999.

But trading in space nostalgia can be a dangerous business. In June, 
investigators confiscated a triangular nub of transparent tape an eighth of 
an inch wide from an auction house in St. Louis because it contained tiny 
particles of moon dust. Selling moon rocks, no matter how small, is illegal, 
as is selling NASA property that the agency has not willingly disposed of.

Mr. Orenstein said that his auction contained no moon particles, and that 
all NASA property in the sale had been discarded by the agency long ago. A 
NASA spokesman declined to comment on the status of the items.

There are also economic concerns. The collectibles market tends to follow 
the overall economy; when money is tight, even avid collectors are less 
likely to spend money on memorabilia. But Mr. Orenstein said he believed 
that rule did not apply to one-of-a-kind items like the flag remnants. "Just 
give me two flag collectors who can't live without it," he said.

As for Mr. Moser, he does not plan to attend the auction, but he was at 
Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday to watch the Atlantis lift off. "I 
spent most of my life developing the shuttle," said Mr. Moser, who retired 
from NASA in 1989 after 25 years with the agency. "I was there from sketch 
pad to launch pad."

A version of this article appeared in print on July 10, 2011, on page A15 of 
the New York edition with the headline: Shreds of History, Going on the 
Block.

-------------------------
Phil Whitmer