For sale: Apollo 11 moon dust

Recode Daily

Recode

Science, Technology, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A tiny sample of dust collected by Neil Armstrong will go up for auction tomorrow. And thanks to an unusual series of events, this will be the first time moon dust verified by NASA has been sold legally. Recode’s Rebecca Heilweil explains. Read Rebecca’s story: https://www.vox.com/recode/23003221/nasa-apollo-11-auction-moon-dust Today’s episode was produced by Taylor Maycan, engineered by Jon Ehrens and hosted by Rani Molla. Support Recode Daily by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today on the show, we're taking you back to 1969.
0:17.0	Astronaut Neil Armstrong is about to be the first man on the moon.
0:23.6	He has just a few things to do before making history.
0:26.8	Like, look down.
0:40.8	And find a place for his foot.
0:49.8	Today, of course, we know much more about the surface of the moon than Armstrong or NASA did at the time.
1:05.8	Like that powder, he mentioned.
1:07.8	It's actually really sharp.
1:09.8	It's like tiny pieces of glass, so it's not particularly pleasant.
1:13.8	That's recodes Rebecca Hyalwile.
1:15.8	And Moon Dust's wrap hasn't gotten much better.
1:18.8	We actually do know what it tastes like.
1:20.8	It tastes like gunpowder.
1:23.8	And it's also really sticky, so it gets on everything.
1:27.8	The dirt adheres in the fine layers like a butter charcoal to the spool and inside of my boot.
1:40.8	So to sum it up, Moon Dust is painful, sticky, and basically the glitter of the galaxy.
1:46.8	And tomorrow, for the first time in history, it's going on sale to the public.
1:51.8	The hammer's up.
1:53.8	That's yours.
1:54.8	Twenty thousand five hundred well done.
1:57.8	You want to guess how much it's going to cost?
2:00.8	Oh man, people will pay money for anything, so I'm going to have to aim pretty high.
	...

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