this happened in 2002, if someone wondered
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025
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I was genuinely worried it happened again.
Yeah 23 years ago and we get a present tense headline.
I swear I remember reading about this before...
edit: God fucking dammit I'm old:
More than 23 years ago, NASA intern Thad Roberts hatched a daring plan to steal 17 pounds of m
Lunatic? :)
Imagine stealing $21M in Lunar rocks, and not realising moon rock dust makes ideal portal gun surfaces.
that had to hurt.
moon rocks be made of razors yo.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/breathing-moon-dust-regolith-toxic-cancer
Hopefully they didn't breathe during.
Cave Johnson here. It turns out that moon dust isn't in fact cocaine. I am now terribly ill.
Goddamn, now that is a headline!
My inner J Jonah Jameson is impressed, hire that man immediately!
He already works for us?
Perfect!
Never let him know what we pay anybody else!
Weird way to spell "Cave Johnson."
I mean, I'm not super familiar with how he's characterized in the comics, but he is characterized this way in the... I guess now the 'older' Spider Man movies.
Your link is showing a 404 error. This seems to be the current link.
Strange for a 23 year old story....
Nypost is not a credible source. Please don't link to it
Meh, it's a human interest story that's decades old.
NASA was just upset that their moon rocks were getting more action than their scientists.
After his arrest, Roberts admitted to also stealing dinosaur bones and fossils from the Natural History Museum in Salt Lake City.
Checks out.
why would you steal dinosaur bones from salt lake when they're just laying in the ground a few hundred miles east
That... Is from like 30 years ago or something? I was a kid when I read about this
I mean, you can just buy lunar meteorites and not have to risk the jail term, if you're that into the idea of "having sex on the moon". Hell, you can buy Martian meteorites, or outer space meteorites for that matter. The small slices aren't even all that expensive.
On the flip side, this creates evidence for Panspermia.
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Probably because this happened at least 20 years ago...
I mean, I guess it could have just happened again, but after the first time they stepped up security
So with inflation, it would be $500 million worth of moon rocks today?
If I'm remembering it right, the act substantially ruined their value...
Like, not just money, it contaminated the samples and made them basically worthless scientifically.
I could be wrong tho, it was a while ago
Respect.
Oh yeah, I watched a documentary about that.
What doc? I need to watch it!
I think it's called The Great Moon Rock Heist. I know it was from NatGeo.