Apollo 11: Earth sucks...

Making history!

Back in 1969, the Space Race hit the heights and the Apollo 11 mission headed off for the Moon on the back of the biggest bullet ever made...Saturn 5:

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The guys made universal history and touched base on that chunk of rock a quarter of a million miles away; a rock we call Moon...

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Unbelievably, when they got back home, some pen-pushing dufus from Customs and Immigration had them sign a form!

'Departure from: Moon. Arrival: Hawaii. Cargo moonrock and moondust'

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John Greenwald Jr's Black Vault: Apollo 11 Declaration Form.

Imagine coming back from the cutting edge of history and having to sign your name for the pen-pushing, fat-ass bureaucrats on Earth? Surreal or what?!

Quarantine might not be so bad if it kept the idiots at a safe distance. Their expressions say it all.

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reply to post by Kandinsky


S & F Kand

Unbelievable isn't it? GD paper pushers..

reply to post by mydarkpassenger
Finding the doc was a coincidence. I'd been listening to an old Strange Days Indeed 2007 podcast that mentioned it. Just a half hour later, Greenwald had uploaded it.

Small details like this FOIA doc show the failings of the Moon-landing hoax brigade.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Good Lord. This was a joke. It was for fun. Are you guys this humor impaired? They had fun with it; why can't you?

reply to post by schuyler
Are you so humour-impaired that you didn't pick up on the humour in the OP?

This > is used to denote humour.

Funny but I believe it was meant as "tongue-in-cheek."

The form was posted to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Web site this week to mark the Apollo 11 mission's 40th anniversary. A copy was obtained by SPACE.com and verified by NASA. "Yes, it's authentic," NASA spokesperson John Yembrick told SPACE.com. "It was a little joke at the time."

It's more humor than fact because Apollo 11 splashed down 920 miles (1,480 km) southwest of Hawaii and 13 miles (21 km) from the USS Hornet, a Navy ship sent to recover the crew. It took a two more days for the astronauts to actually return to Hawaii on July 26, where they were welcomed with a July 27 ceremony at Pearl Harbor.

( Note I fixed quote formatting from article.)

www.space.com...

"Yes, it's authentic," a NASA rep says of the document, which lists a starting point of Cape Canaveral with a stopover on the moon. "It was a little joke at the time." Nowadays, with the space program an international effort, astronauts are clearing customs for real as they travel the globe for training on disparate systems. “They do have to go through customs,” the rep says. "Just like the rest of us."

www.newser.com...

Even if it was a joke at the time that's got to be one of the most interesting documents in world history. Where is it now? Should be on display in the U.S. National Archives imnho.

I really love this document, and want it for Christmas. Look at the line: "Departure from" (filled in "Moon"), and the rest of the wording. Must repeat my contention that this should be in one of the wall frames in the main room or close surrounding hallways of the United States National Archives. I haven't been there in a long time, but my memory of it is that some important documents were displayed in the large halls leading off the main exhibit room where the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are displayed. Does anyone else like this document, just for its historic value alone (then mixed with satire - literally priceless imnho).