$5M Moon Rock Stolen From Malta Museum

On 21 May 2004 15:58:08 -0700, (Rusty B)
wrote:

$5M Moon Rock Stolen From Malta Museum

$5M Moon Rock Stolen From Malta Museum

POSTED: 10:49 am EDT May 21, 2004

VALLETTA, Malta -- A tiny moon rock believed to be worth about $5
million was stolen from a museum in Malta, 30 years after President
Richard Nixon donated it to the Mediterranean island nation.

The theft from the Museum of Natural History in Mdina was discovered
Tuesday during a routine check, officials said. A protective cover of
plastic had been forced open to take the rock, which was the size of a
raisin.


snip

I used to be a regular visitor to Malta, and have stood in front of
that very rock. When I last saw it, about ten years ago, it was under
a plexiglass case on a plinth in a corridor.

I looked at it. It looked at me. There was nobody about (there never
seemed to be anyone in the museum whenever I visited). I considered
how easy it would be to steal it - and came to the conclusion that it
would be spectacularly simple. If I wanted to actually *plan* to steal
it, then it would be very easy to make a small fake to leave in its
place; I doubted that anyone would notice for a very long time.

Of course, I left it alone - much as I'd love a piece of moon rock, I
didn't fancy one I couldn't tell anyone about, or sell, and which
could land me in a lot of trouble. But were I to have a good reason to
steal a bit, I couldn't think of a better target.

R

In article , Rupert
Goodwins wrote:

If I wanted to actually *plan* to steal
it, then it would be very easy to make a small fake to leave in its
place; I doubted that anyone would notice for a very long time.

Certainly the most recent thief didn't notice. If you see a 'Moon
rock' advertised on e-bay that looks exactly like a broken shard of a
coffee mug, you know where it came from.

--
David M. Palmer (formerly @clark.net, @ematic.com)

Hi All,

I was just wondering, we have a 10~20 gram stone worth 5 million. Surely
someone could design a robot to go to the moon and pick up 20 kilo of rock
(pebbles, dirt, etc. it probably wouldn't matter). Assuming that the value
of the rocks would decrease in value as much as 90% due to the fact that
they would be on the open market, 20 kilo of rocks could be worth as much as
500 million dollars. One should be able to build and launch a probe for
that much.

Terry

"Robert Pearlman" wrote in message
om...
LooseChanj wrote in message news:
Where in the world did they get the "$5 million" figure from?

$5 million was the asking price by a Miami businessman whose Honduran
moon rock was allegedly smuggled into the U.S. and was subsequently
confiscated when he tried to sell it to undercover agents:

http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-062902a.html

--
Robert Pearlman, Editor
collectSPACE - The Source for Space History & Artifacts
http://www.collectspace.com/

In article , says...

snip

There was even an early-70s proposal to commercially finance a final
Apollo mission, although it didn't get very far, at least partly because
NASA's reaction was total hostility.

Oh, yeah -- Project Harvest Moon. It was proposed in late 1971 to have
the Apollo 15 crew revisit Hadley-Appenine, using the original Apollo 15
H-mission LM/CSM combo (prior to the cancellation of Apollos 18 and 19
and the re-assignment of the first J-mission hardware to Apollo 15).
They would retrieve pieces of the Rover and Falcon's descent stage, as
well as the original flag, and collect about 100 pounds of rocks. The
rocks abd artifacts would be sold to finance the project.

I think one of the biggest problems the organizers had was that they
made initial inquiries about the costs and such, then made their
announcement -- all without actually inquiring about whether NASA was
*willing* to sell the hardware and rent the control center, controllers,
astronauts, etc., for this little project.

I'd say the animosity was justified.

Doug

Terry Goodrich wrote:


I was just wondering, we have a 10~20 gram stone worth 5 million. Surely
someone could design a robot to go to the moon and pick up 20 kilo of rock
(pebbles, dirt, etc. it probably wouldn't matter). Assuming that the value
of the rocks would decrease in value as much as 90% due to the fact that
they would be on the open market, 20 kilo of rocks could be worth as much as
500 million dollars. One should be able to build and launch a probe for
that much.


I now have a sneaking suspicion about that Chinese lunar sample return
mission.... :-)

Pat

In article ,
Terry Goodrich wrote:
Let's see, a Soyuz booster around $30 million or so...

The old Luna sample-return missions maxed out the Proton -- in fact, they
needed Proton performance enhancements and reduction of safety margins --
to return a few hundred grams of sample. Yeah, the hardware was pretty
crude stuff and we could do better, but it's a demanding mission, and
trying to squeeze maximum payload out of a mass-limited system will get
expensive fast.

This leaves the descent and ascent module along with recovery systems and
guidance system, which I have no clue on cost.

They are, alas, the key systems. It's a propulsion-intensive mission, and
needs precision guidance en route and for landing, and at least a minimum
of guidance for the return trip.

Hmm, 20kg payload. Perhaps: 5kg of packaging, 10kg heatshield, 5kg
parachutes, 5kg main structure, 5kg misc. subsystems. That's 50kg at
reentry. 5kg of electronics, 5kg midcourse maneuvering, 5kg power and
misc. gives 65kg payload for the ascent stage.

5kg engines, 5kg controls, 5kg tanks and general structure, with the
payload handling guidance, gives 80kg dry mass for a pretty light ascent
stage. Assuming unimpressive pressure-fed propulsion, mass ratio is going
to be 3 or so, giving lunar liftoff mass of 250kg.

25kg of cameras and sample handling etc., 25kg engines, 10kg controls,
50kg tanks and general structure (including structural bracing for the
ascent stage so it can be lightweight), 15kg of landing guidance sensors,
25kg RCS and maneuvering, 25kg power and misc. subsystems, 25kg legs and
shock absorbers, gives a landed mass without main propellants of 450kg.

Surveyor landed about 30% of its launch mass. With similar descent
propulsion performance, we need 1500kg at post-TLI separation.

Add 100kg for general margin, and we are right at the limit of what a
Molniya (Soyuz with an injection stage) can inject to a lunar trajectory.

Almost all of those numbers are wild guesses. Some of them I think I
could beat. But there are probably things I've forgotten, and I might
also have been optimistic here and there. At this by-guess-and-by-golly
level, 100kg margin out of 1600kg is uncomfortably small. I'd say we're
marginal here for a Molniya launch; it could easily need something bigger.

How much all this will cost is unclear. Not very much of the hardware is
available off the shelf. Much will depend on how confident you want to be
that the first one will work. Surveyor (less ambitious mission, but also
using a lower technological base) cost maybe $3G in today's dollars, and
that is the sort of number you'd be looking at for business-as-usual
development with a reasonable chance of first-attempt success.

What could be done with a leaner development philosophy... is unclear.
The cheap-satellite community hasn't done landers or major propulsion
much, so we lack calibration data. Moreover, for something this novel,
there's going to be a considerable debugging period. That is to say, with
a low-cost approach, the first few attempts probably won't work.

Wild guess, assuming sweet-talking the Russians into a steep discount for
a bulk buy of Molniya launches, *and* assuming it doesn't threaten too
badly to outgrow Molniya, *AND* assuming upper management that will bite
its lip and keep quiet when attempt after attempt fails, $250-300M gets
you ten attempts of which two or three should be full successes.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

Henry Spencer wrote:

They are, alas, the key systems. It's a propulsion-intensive mission, and
needs precision guidance en route and for landing, and at least a minimum
of guidance for the return trip.

Hmm, 20kg payload. Perhaps: 5kg of packaging, 10kg heatshield, 5kg
parachutes, 5kg main structure, 5kg misc. subsystems. That's 50kg at
reentry. 5kg of electronics, 5kg midcourse maneuvering, 5kg power and
misc. gives 65kg payload for the ascent stage.

5kg engines, 5kg controls, 5kg tanks and general structure, with the
payload handling guidance, gives 80kg dry mass for a pretty light ascent
stage. Assuming unimpressive pressure-fed propulsion, mass ratio is going
to be 3 or so, giving lunar liftoff mass of 250kg.


The Soviet sample return missions had no midcourse correction ability;
the return stage was launched toward the zenith of the Lunar heavens
over where the lander was positioned, and gravity did all the rest to
get it back to mother Russia. The landing sites had to be precise to
allow this to work, and in fact a specific launch time from Earth meant
a specific landing site on the Moon- badly limiting the areas that could
be sampled. The ascent stage carried just gyro stabilization systems
that kept its ascent vertical and accelerometers to permit motor
shutdown at the correct velocity for its return trip Earthwards.
I think this gets discussed in "Challenge To Apollo".
The mathematician who came up with the idea for this mission trajectory
was very well thought of in the U.S.S.R.; AFAIK, the U.S. never
developed this idea independently.

Pat

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
The Soviet sample return missions had no midcourse correction ability;
the return stage was launched toward the zenith of the Lunar heavens
over where the lander was positioned, and gravity did all the rest to
get it back to mother Russia...

Yep. Too much of a single-point design for my taste, especially given
modern electronics. Full guidance and a capability for small midcourse
corrections just isn't that big a deal any more.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

(Henry Spencer) wrote in message ...
The old Luna sample-return missions maxed out the Proton -- in fact, they
needed Proton performance enhancements and reduction of safety margins --
to return a few hundred grams of sample. Yeah, the hardware was pretty
crude stuff and we could do better, but it's a demanding mission, and
trying to squeeze maximum payload out of a mass-limited system will get
expensive fast.

If you use an ion-drive to get to lunar orbit and back and a tether to
collect samples, you don't need to be so mass-limited in your design
and you could bring back much more lunar mass. The difficulty of having
the end of the tether pickup some samples seems much less than having
a couple more rocket stages. An easy mass margin design should be much
easier on R&D money. A Falcon-V would be plenty of LEO launch capacity.
Yes, you would still need to plan on some failures. Having a few backup
winch/tether/scoop modules seems easy. Even loosing all your tether lift
ability after lifting only 1/10th of your expected 10,000 Kg would still
have you well ahead of the non-tether design. So if your goal is to make
a profit returning lunar samples, using a tether to pickup samples from
orbit seems a less demanding mission that will return far more product.

-- Vince

PS For future keyword searches: "Lunar Sample Return via Tether"

In article ,
says...
(Henry Spencer) wrote in message ...
The old Luna sample-return missions maxed out the Proton -- in fact, they
needed Proton performance enhancements and reduction of safety margins --
to return a few hundred grams of sample. Yeah, the hardware was pretty
crude stuff and we could do better, but it's a demanding mission, and
trying to squeeze maximum payload out of a mass-limited system will get
expensive fast.

If you use an ion-drive to get to lunar orbit and back and a tether to
collect samples, you don't need to be so mass-limited in your design
and you could bring back much more lunar mass. The difficulty of having
the end of the tether pickup some samples seems much less than having
a couple more rocket stages. An easy mass margin design should be much
easier on R&D money. A Falcon-V would be plenty of LEO launch capacity.
Yes, you would still need to plan on some failures. Having a few backup
winch/tether/scoop modules seems easy. Even loosing all your tether lift
ability after lifting only 1/10th of your expected 10,000 Kg would still
have you well ahead of the non-tether design. So if your goal is to make
a profit returning lunar samples, using a tether to pickup samples from
orbit seems a less demanding mission that will return far more product.

I think you're *really* underestimating the difficulty of designing and
building a tether that can hold up to the conditions it would encounter,
as well as the difficulty in operating a scoop at the end of such a
tether on what are predominantly rolling and hummocky terrains.

Remember, our one and only attempt to deploy a long tether in LEO met
with failure and near-disaster. I'm aware that the conditions in lunar
orbit are different than in LEO, but still, it seems to me that until we
demonstrate something as simple as deploying a 20km tether in LEO, we're
talking out of our asses when speaking of 100km tethers pulling up lunar
materials from orbit.

I'd really like to see a materials engineer chime in on this one...

Doug