[HN Gopher] Neil Armstrong's customs form for moon rocks (2016)
___________________________________________________________________
Neil Armstrong's customs form for moon rocks (2016)
Author : ajuhasz
Score : 226 points
Date : 2025-07-23 15:37 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (magazine.uc.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (magazine.uc.edu)
| jleyank wrote:
| I think at least one astronaut needed to file a request for tax
| deadline extension due to being "out of the country" at filing
| time. Didn't have an entry in the system for "off the planet" I
| guess...
| elijaht wrote:
| Ha, that was actually Apollo 13:
| https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/john-swigert-jr
| whycome wrote:
| If they said they were away on the moon that would be a lie.
| Bluestein wrote:
| I mean, _technically ..._
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Who would have guessed the regulations would have been enforced
| so rigorously in 1969 when three men returned to the U.S. from a
| rather long business trip - to the moon and back.
|
| I mean, I'd imagine it was mostly done for the joke aspect.
|
| edit: https://www.space.com/7044-moon-apollo-astronauts-
| customs.ht...
|
| > "Yes, it's authentic," NASA spokesperson John Yembrick told
| Space.com. "It was a little joke at the time."
| more_corn wrote:
| No. This is one example of many. NASA astronauts have to fill
| out government business travel paperwork for travel to the ISS.
| The rules must be followed even if the rules don't make sense.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The article covers that.
|
| > Space station crews launching on Russian Soyuz spacecraft
| have to make their way to the Central Asian spaceport of the
| Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. No matter what the
| mission, even astronauts have to go through customs, NASA
| officials said. As part of their routine airline flights to
| other countries and back, they of course encounter airport
| customs.
|
| It's not to/from the ISS that's the issue there.
|
| A US-only crew on a US-launched spacecraft that lands in US
| territory won't need to do it. (ISS may add a few
| complexities, but if you stay on, say, the Shuttle, you're
| not leaving US-controlled territory.)
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| For travel to Kazakhstan it makes sense to show a passport
| of some kind as they want to know why someone is entering
| the country. Traveling to Baikonur of course being a
| legitimate reason to enter the country. There's one aspect
| of this I don't understand entirely. What if the astronaut
| travels to the ISS from Baikonur, then used some of form
| return vehicle that lands in US territory? How would we
| handle that?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Probably a bit like this.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_Free_Library_and_Op
| era...
|
| > Until 2025, patrons from Canada were permitted to enter
| the United States door without needing to report to
| customs by using a prescribed route through the sidewalk
| of rue Church (Church Street), provided that they return
| to Canada immediately upon leaving the building using the
| same route.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| it says "most Canadians from entering via the main
| entrance in March 2025, except for Canadian patrons with
| a library card" - this is probably the only documented
| case of a library card being valid for international
| travel
| 9rx wrote:
| Remember when you could travel between USA and Canada
| with nothing more than a nod? Such a sad state of affairs
| we've found ourselves in nowadays.
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| On a couple of occasions, cosmonauts came back from the
| ISS on the shuttle. A US immigration clerk came to stamp
| their passport.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| That'd be really awkward if they were denied a visa and
| had to go back the way they came.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| Would CBP pay the travel costs? :)
| potato3732842 wrote:
| If the rules don't make sense for a situation why do they
| apply? Why isn't there a carve out?
|
| It's easy to screech about potentially unforeseeable future
| cases and precedents but it's not like this stuff is free.
|
| The cost of this attitude applied at scale is mind boggling.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There are carve-outs. They're just pretty general so human
| judgement can be applied to the odd edge cases - "at the
| discretion of the Secretary of State" sort of things.
|
| Random example:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/31/101.8
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It's easier to just have them fill out the form than get a
| common sense exception.
| zhobbs wrote:
| Yeah, I think we're over analyzing it in this thread. Seems
| pretty light hearted and fun.
| perihelions wrote:
| These things were mainly publicity stunts. The supposed biohazard
| quarantine for returning Apollo astronauts was a theater
| performance, too.
|
| https://www.livescience.com/space/the-moon/the-apollo-moon-l... (
| _" The Apollo moon landing was real, but NASA's quarantine
| procedure was not"_)
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/science/nasa-moon-quarant... (
| _" A review of archives suggests that efforts to protect Earth
| from contamination by any organism brought back from the lunar
| surface were mostly for show"_)
| skeezyboy wrote:
| allowing the "to be determined" answer sat at odds with the
| implied dilligency of the customs agency
| refulgentis wrote:
| Unlikely, it was a stunt.
| montjoy wrote:
| This. Also, maybe setting legal precedent?
| refulgentis wrote:
| No. They're saying it was a stunt. Not setting legal
| precedent. There was no practical value.
| Lammy wrote:
| The practical value is reinforcing among the general public
| the idea that humans should not be able to move freely
| around their own planet. In the future only money will have
| that right. The modern passport didn't even exist until
| World War I: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521634938 /
| https://archive.org/details/pdfy-S0NQwPjPkMlzZ2eS/mode/2up
| refulgentis wrote:
| Purple prose tripe re: some personal hobbyhorse
| masquerading as relevant commentary. Their obvious plan
| to subjugate hasn't come to fruition 50 years later, so
| its time to adjust your priors.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| "modern passport not existing in past" [?] "free human
| movement"
|
| borders have largely had guards, who had no obligation to
| let people through, or even to treat them fairly and not
| rob them. frontiers had bandits who existed solely to
| prey on travelers.
|
| even if you could move to a different settlement, you did
| not have the same legal rights as citizens of that city.
|
| the "modern passport" has done more for free human
| movement than anything that came before.
| csomar wrote:
| Cities had guards. There was no border pre-1900 because
| there was no tech to enforce it. If you moved from one
| place to another, you were mostly at the whims of thieves
| and pirates.
| Alupis wrote:
| Pre-1900? Are you aware of how many wars were fought
| around the world just in the 1800's regarding border and
| territory disputes?
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Insanely misinformed.
|
| What kind of tech do you imagine is needed? Have you
| heard of Hadrian's Wall? The Great Wall of China?
|
| Or more generally: forts, outposts, coastal batteries,
| scouts, patrols?
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Do you think they will be shocked to find out color
| wasn't invented in the 1900's?
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| It has always existed in the merry old land of Oz.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> What kind of tech do you imagine is needed?_
|
| Agriculture, at very least. Before we created that tech
| you'd be way too busy trying to find something to eat to
| have time to stand around defending artificial borders.
| 1900 BCE mightn't be perfectly accurate, but close enough
| for a stupid comment on the internet.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > 1900 BCE
|
| Nothing in the comment that we are talking about
| indicates that "pre-1900" is referring to 1900 BCE. It
| sounds squarely like it's referring to 1900 AD to me.
| Which is why people are saying it's ridiculous.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> It sounds squarely like it 's referring to 1900 AD to
| me._
|
| What part of _" If you moved from one place to another,
| you were mostly at the whims of thieves and pirates."_
| suggests 1900 CE to you? Have you never looked at a
| history book?
| codetrotter wrote:
| There was plenty of pirates around still in the 1800s AD.
| Aka "pre-1900" AD.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy
| 9rx wrote:
| There are still plenty of pirates around to this very
| day; a "significant issue" according to your own link.
| Despite that, the aforementioned statement doesn't make
| me think it has anything to do with today. What,
| specifically, makes you think it has something to do with
| the time leading up to 1900 CE rather than 1900 BCE?
| codetrotter wrote:
| > What, specifically, makes you think it has something to
| do with the time leading up to 1900 CE rather than 1900
| BCE
|
| Normally when someone says "1900" they are referring to
| 1900 AD. Unless BCE had already been mentioned, which
| here it had not. And if they were referring to 1900 BCE
| they normally would specifically say 1900 BCE. That's
| why.
|
| And furthermore, the parent comment above the one talking
| about "pre-1900" was talking about modern passports. Why
| would anyone immediately jump from modern passports to
| 1900 BCE? That don't make no sense at all. Jumping to
| 1900 AD however, that does make sense. You see?
| 9rx wrote:
| Absent of any other context one might reasonably assume
| "1990" Refers to 1900 CE. But we have additional context,
| such as:
|
| "Cities had guards.", "you were mostly at the whims of
| thieves and pirates."
|
| What in that speaks to 1900 CE over 1900 BCE? There is
| evidence of pirates in both time periods, so that feature
| alone isn't telling. But the context doesn't end with
| that feature in a vacuum, does it?
| hammock wrote:
| >These things were mainly publicity stunts. The supposed
| biohazard quarantine for returning Apollo astronauts was a
| theater performance, too.
|
| Wow. What else about Apollo was theater performance?
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| It feels as if this question is intended to make a strong
| implication, but I'm not sure what the implication is -- Can
| you clarify? I almost think you are suggesting the moon
| landing was fake, but that's very stereotypical, so I don't
| want to assume.
| schneems wrote:
| Not OP but: The very essence of the program was publicity.
| As soon as the public lost interest (mission
| accomplished!), the program was canceled. We built Saturn V
| rockets that we never launched.
|
| That being said, I know a lot of things were unknown. We
| didn't know if the surface of the moon would interact with
| the atmosphere inside the capsules to combust. Some of
| these unknowns were downplayed. Some others were played up
| for dramatic effect.
|
| The whole process of getting a person to the moon took
| hundreds of thousands of involved workers and the.
| coordinated effort of a country's politicians and populace
| to fund it. I think it's unfair to boil it down to "just
| publicity" but it is a big part in keeping it afloat.
| ta1243 wrote:
| The entire thing was theater. It was to show off American
| technical superiority (the US having already lost the space
| race in terms of first sub-orbital flight, first satellite,
| first animal in orbit, first man in orbit, first spacecraft
| to the moon, first woman in space, first spacewalk etc)
| AdamN wrote:
| The expense report for mileage was another one. Kind of cute
| and an interesting insight into the time period but it wasn't
| really needed.
| whycome wrote:
| What aspect of the review suggested that it was mostly for
| show?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Considering the source, the source is probably the only thing
| that "suggested" it, as they are known to do.
| cynicalkane wrote:
| Are you claiming the New York Times is more likely than a
| comparable newspaper to fabricate random suggestions about
| astronauts? This is something they are "known to do"?
|
| If you actually read the article, they include a direct
| link to the sources they cite and explain specifically what
| those sources say.
| whycome wrote:
| Okay I didn't have access to paywalled article before.
|
| The NYT article is about one specific study that's a
| review of archival material. It doesn't actually seem to
| suggest that it was a "publicity stunt" or "theater" as
| OP suggested. Rather, it says that NASA believed that the
| threat was very real. The threat was real enough to hold
| a "high level conference" (held by National Academy of
| Sciences). The outcome there was also that "the risk was
| real and the consequences could be profound".
|
| So, the major spending on the quarantine system wasn't
| out of nowhere.
|
| The study conclusion seems to be more that it would be
| nearly impossible to contain the threat if it existed.
| But, that wouldn't mean that the precautions taken were
| only for show -- just that it would be really fucking
| hard to stop. And with the hypothetical microbe, they
| couldn't know anything about means of transmission or
| lifespan -- so the precautions could have some value.
|
| Even in the failure of their quarantine procedure, it
| still demonstrated that they thought it was (in
| principle) important:
|
| "24 workers were exposed to the lunar material that the
| facility's infrastructure was supposed to protect them
| from; they had to be quarantined"
|
| It wasn't security theater so much as it was just
| quarantine procedure that had many gaps, failures, and
| trade offs.
| shayway wrote:
| The source paper for both articles is paywalled, so maybe it
| has a better argument than the articles. But to call it theater
| or a publicity stunt is to imply it didn't have a point beyond
| public relations, which isn't the case.
|
| Microbes can't be completely contained - easily, anyway - and
| we knew that perfectly well back then. But we also knew to
| minimize contact with potentially infected people. Put it this
| way: if there were lunar germs that the astronauts took back
| with them, would it have been better to skip the containment
| procedures, as inadequate as they may have been? Of course not.
|
| NASA played up their ability to contain extraterrestrial
| microbes for sure. But the containment procedure itself was the
| best that could be done. If 'absolute isolation' is the bar to
| which containment is held, by that logic everything short of
| just not visiting other celestial bodies is theater.
| cgriswald wrote:
| The actual claims of the paper are not that this was 'for
| show', but that NASA considered the risks unlikely and
| prioritized the more likely risks to the astronauts lives. I
| see how the authors got to 'so it was all for show', but it
| simply isn't true.
|
| There is plenty of evidence that the risk was taken seriously
| (regulations and treaties surrounding the issue, ICBC
| activities in the years prior to launch, the expense on things
| the public would never have known about, medical and biological
| testing done for the first three missions, NASA's openness with
| the ICBC about the imperfection of the system and the existence
| of contingency plans...).
| nickff wrote:
| On one of the Apollo documentaries (I can't remember which
| one), the astronauts joked that it was the least effective
| quarantine ever; they talked about how there was a stream of
| ants going in and out of the Airstream they were in.
| bawolff wrote:
| A stream of ants would not necessarily render a quarintine
| ineffective.
| ben_w wrote:
| If you're protecting against the possibility of an
| unknown hypothetical pathogen that can survive on the
| moon, but which you have no specific reason to think
| favours or disfavours any randomly selected Earth life,
| you want something that can at the very least stop ants.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| That's right, it made it completely a joke.
| dmix wrote:
| They quarantined in an Airstream van? That's hilarious.
| Very 1960s
|
| Found the wiki
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_quarantine_facility
| joezydeco wrote:
| Seems incongruous to take your national heroes and make them
| sit in a hot trailer for a few days "for show" instead of
| whisking them home for their debrief and ticker-tape parades.
|
| Unless it was not for the benefit of the astronauts, but the
| skeptical public back home? Hmm.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| A quarantine is never for the sake of those you quarantine,
| it's for the sake of the public, by definition.
| scottyah wrote:
| I assume the "hot trailer" was better than the small
| capsule in space, which was also just "for show".
| gmueckl wrote:
| I see that customs declaration in the context of the Outer
| Space Treaty from 1967. It stipulates that outer space cannot
| be appropriated by by any nation. My hypothesis here is that
| the political message underneath this customs form stunt is an
| acknowledgement that the crew has left the United States and
| returned. However, I have nothing that supports this claim.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Do US Navy sailors in international waters have to go through
| customs on returning to port in the US? I don't know the
| answer, but that's probably the closest analogy.
| csours wrote:
| Following this line of thought - this is may be the exact
| analogy that NASA wanted to counteract.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Why? What's the difference between a US spacecraft in
| international space and a US watercraft in international
| waters?
| csours wrote:
| NASA wants space to feel non-militarized.
|
| US Service Personnel don't follow the civilian process
| for Customs, so making astronauts actually follow the
| civilian process reinforces the non-militarized feeling
| for space.
| quartz wrote:
| Since the astronauts were up there planting flags... I'd
| think it's less about the vessel in space and more about
| making it clear that the land visited isn't considered
| claimed as part of the US.
| nrb wrote:
| If the distinction is that the US watercraft are military
| and as such are not subject to customs, then making it
| clear that returning astronauts are not on a military
| mission sends a diplomatic signal.
| jcranmer wrote:
| I don't think so, but you do need to fill out a customs
| form to ship a package to someone on a US Navy ship.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| If you're shipping the package from the U.S., that is
| incorrect.
|
| I ordered Amazon packages addressed to me on U.S. Navy
| ships.
|
| Ships have FPO addresses which are treated and formatted
| like a domestic ship.
| agagagag wrote:
| Of course not, if we did they'd find my dog I bought in
| Vietnam
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I don't think so because the ship is technically US soil
| afaik.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| No, not even civilians need to do that. Ultimately the only
| time you have to is when there is documentation of your
| being in the a foreign country and if there is no
| documentation you probably don't want to draw attention to
| yourself. This is why so many people where able to go to
| and from Cuba when it was technically illegal, US and Cuba
| agreed to not document/stamp the passports of private
| citizens.
| umanwizard wrote:
| It is still technically illegal to go to Cuba without a
| specific whitelisted reason (and tourism isn't on the
| list). It's just not strictly enforced.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| So it is not illegal? you just need to go through the
| proper bureaucracy as you do with every countries. Last I
| looked into it a few years back it was easy to get the
| paper work, one person I found who went there just signed
| up for guitar lessons in Havana to study Cuban guitar,
| showed the paperwork for the guitar classes and was good
| to go because it was for educational reasons even if the
| guitar lessons only accounted for a tiny portion of their
| time there. The white listed reasons are fairly broad and
| easy to work within, sure you can't just hop on a plane
| for a weekend visit but that is true of many countries
| that no one would say it is illegal to go to.
| umanwizard wrote:
| The point is nothing has changed about the legality. It
| has always been allowed to go for one of these
| whitelisted reasons, you just had to apply in advance.
|
| Now it is still legal to go for exactly the same set of
| reasons, they just don't bother actually checking.
| There's no "paperwork" you need to get; you just tell the
| check-in agent which legal reason you fall under.
| jki275 wrote:
| If we make port calls anywhere outside the US we definitely
| go through customs on return.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I met an AF cargo loadmaster once who told me that they can
| smuggle anything back to the US that they can fit in the
| plane. He was importing E-bikes from Japan.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| It's funny. You want to blame NASA for the ridiculous publicity
| stunts, but they were totally right that a loss of public
| interest was one of the biggest risks to the program. Neil
| Armstrong stood on the moon in 1969, but by 1971, Nixon had
| cancelled Apollo.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Because it was done. The goal was to win the race against the
| Soviets. The future mission plans were mostly budget padding
| to ensure that was accomplished.
| xattt wrote:
| I can imagine a bunch of short-sleeve wearing dudes, sitting
| around and shooting the shit to come up with absurd formalities
| for theatre. It would have been fun.
| GCA10 wrote:
| My father was one of the scientific Principal Investigators
| (PIs) who analyzed the Apollo 11 lunar samples, back in 1969.
| Flipping through some of his notes from back then, it sounds as
| if a rotating assortment of bureaucrats injected themselves
| into the chain-of-custody with weird and embarrassing effects.
| To wit:
|
| Some Agriculture Department folks decided that their legal
| authority to quarantine soil samples brought into the U.S.
| applied to lunar soils, too. They insisted on building a three-
| week quarantine facility with slivers of lunar samples, exposed
| to "germ-free mice born by cesarean section." Only after the
| mice survived this ordeal was it safe to release the fuller
| batch of samples.
|
| Another character insisted that the aluminum rock boxes be
| sealed, while on the moon, with gaskets of indium (soft, rare
| metal) which would deform to create a very tight seal. The
| geochemists on earth protested, in vain, that this procedure
| would ruin their hopes of doing any indium analysis of the
| samples themselves, shutting down an interesting line of
| research. No luck in changing the protocol. Turns out that the
| indium seals didn't work, and the rock boxes reached the earth-
| based quarantine facilities with normal air pressure anyway.
|
| There's more silliness about trying to keep the lunar samples
| in a hard vacuum while designing rigidly mounted gloves that
| could be used to manipulate/slice/divide the samples without
| breaking the vacuum. Maybe we know today how to sustain
| flexible gloves in such an environment. We didn't, back then.
| dmix wrote:
| > They insisted on building a three-week quarantine facility
| with slivers of lunar samples
|
| There was a ton of money flowing in for space and it was the
| big new thing of the future. Makes sense other agencies would
| try to insert themselves and try to seem relevant to the new
| popular thing in the news and latch themselves onto any
| future spending/authority.
| DataDaemon wrote:
| I wonder if they checked their social profiles?
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Yes 100% these astronauts were extensively vetted to ensure
| compatibility with the ruling power of their day.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| Semi-related:
|
| _" Passports please! British paratroopers met by French customs
| after D-Day airdrop
|
| British paratroopers recreating an airdrop behind German defences
| to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day were met by French customs
| officials at a makeshift border checkpost.
|
| Moments after the paratroopers had hit the ground and gathered up
| their chutes, they formed an orderly queue and handed over their
| passports for inspection by waiting French customs officials in a
| Normandy field."_
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/passports-please-britis...
|
| Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7ZY4rlAQus
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Reminds me a bit of when the UK accidentally invaded Spain on a
| training exercise.
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-invade-spa...
|
| > Lord West said: "It wasn't one of the best days in my time. I
| had a phone call from the military commander saying, 'Sir, I'm
| afraid something awful's happened.' I thought, 'Goodness me,
| what?' And he said, 'I'm afraid we've invaded Spain, but we
| don't think they've noticed.'
|
| > "They charged up the beach in the normal way, being Royal
| Marines--they're frightfully good soldiers of course, and jolly
| good at this sort of thing--and confronted a Spanish fisherman
| who sort of pointed out, 'I think you're on the wrong beach.'
| medstrom wrote:
| "First Sea Lord" is such a great rank.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| One of my favorite.
| skeezyboy wrote:
| the british armed forces are atrocious. i simply cannot
| fathom how britain controlled so much of the planet at one
| point
| bigyabai wrote:
| > i simply cannot fathom how britain controlled so much of
| the planet at one point
|
| Boats, optionally guns.
|
| When you reflect on how easily America became an
| imperialist crybaby, it can't have been hard for Britain
| either.
| lenkite wrote:
| Because they had a good officer corps producing some
| ridiculous military geniuses in their age of empire. As an
| example, the Duke of Wellington (Arthur Wellesley) was a
| monster who was unstoppable in the military conquest of
| India. Many other British commanders failed battling Indian
| states, but he seemed to win just about every battle, at
| times being both outnumbered and outarmed.
|
| I would go on to say that it wasn't for that man, it is
| likely the British conquest of India would have been
| confined to only a limited territory. Indian states were
| modernizing and militarizing rapidly (relatively for that
| era), so any delays in conquest would have made India a
| hard nut to crack.
| bee_rider wrote:
| This was 2002. They are friendly countries, seems like
| everyone responded appropriately.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Swiss soldiers have accidentally crossed into Liechtenstein a
| few times. Similarly, nobody made a fuss.
| ahi wrote:
| "Juan Carlos Juarez, the town's mayor, said at the time:
| "They landed on our coast to confront a supposed enemy with
| typical commando tactics. But we managed to hold them on the
| beach.""
|
| I would not have been able to get this out without giggling.
| bitwize wrote:
| These French customs officials seemed more on the ball than the
| one I encountered. (Checked my passport, but didn't stamp it,
| causing problems for me upon landing for my next leg in
| Helsinki.)
| metabagel wrote:
| I don't think there is any requirement to stamp passports.
| Some people specifically ask for a stamp, because they want
| the memento.
| ta1243 wrote:
| In the Schengen area, if you are a non-EU person, until
| recently you needed to ensure you are stamped in and out
| otherwise you'll run into issues with them thinking you may
| have overstayed.
|
| After UK went all freedumb and left the EU this caused a
| lot of issues, I have a UK colleague that visited his
| wife's family in Poland over a Christmas, didn't get a
| stamp on the way back, then ran into problems a few months
| later as they argued he had been in Europe for months.
| bitwize wrote:
| The stamp is acknowledgement of your tourist visa. Maybe EU
| citizens don't need one, but as an American entering France
| I certainly did. If I didn't, I sure wish the visibly armed
| Finnish lady who led me back near one of those beat-you-up
| interrogation rooms had known, it could've saved us both
| some hassle and me a major scare.
| peeters wrote:
| > Passports please! British paratroopers met by French customs
| after D-Day airdrop
|
| Err, D-Day _anniversary_ airdrop. That headline has only one
| correct literal interpretation, and it 's wrong (not ambiguous,
| wrong).
| glimshe wrote:
| I'm not a betting man, but I were, I'd bet on most readers
| having understood it correctly. I suspect it was meant to be
| click bait, though.
| simonklitj wrote:
| Made me do a double take for sure.
| lucianbr wrote:
| The headline definitely didn't make any sense to me (I was
| thinking maybe an Onion article?) before reading the rest.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| I don't know about the US, but in the UK you can definitely
| say "D-Day" to mean "an anniversary of the original D-Day",
| not strictly 6/6/1944. It's not wrong.
|
| Just like you can say "Independence Day" to mean July 4th of
| any year, not only the specific historical date on which the
| US declared independence.
| nemomarx wrote:
| This would make sense if there's often D Day ceremonies. In
| the us I think that's all moved to memorial Day, so D-Day
| pings only as the original event here
| wat10000 wrote:
| Strange article. Of course you have to go through passport
| control when you cross an international border.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Reminded me of when I got to see one of the customs declaration
| for an off-shore oil platform built here in Norway.
|
| It was a single-item declaration: one oil plaform.
|
| However, the elecronic customs message format didn't have enough
| digits to fit the item value, over a billion NOK IIRC.
|
| After some calls with customs, they had to send it with a
| fictitious item value and add the true value in a free-text
| field.
|
| This worked fine since there were no duties or taxes on exporting
| oil platforms, so no cross-checks that would fail.
| 9dev wrote:
| LOL. I'm on the receiving end of these customs declarations,
| and stories like this are the reason the copies are so
| notoriously hard to parse programmatically... lovely, thanks
| for sharing.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| What's the "escape value" that triggers people to read the
| free text field? Or is it just zero?
|
| And if zero, how often do they just get mistakenly processed
| as zero value?
| bdamm wrote:
| Whatever it is is likely to be part of the endless arms
| race between customs agencies and smugglers, so I doubt
| you'll get the privilege of finding out.
| 9dev wrote:
| Zero; or an arbitrary number; or a number that was destined
| for another field, but the commanding officer misread and
| filled the form wrong; or null; or as many digits as fit in
| the field. Any of these.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| In a case like this, they usually call ahead to let customs
| know, and follow up with the declaration ID once it has
| been sent.
|
| Apart from that, customs is very tight lipped about what
| triggers manual processing of a declararion.
|
| Though for example a large discrepancy between weight and
| value typically would lead to it getting flagged for manual
| processing, as I understand it.
| lucianbr wrote:
| Couldn't they split it into "Oil platform part 1" "part 2" and
| so on? Or "Oil platform metal parts" and such. Kinda seems like
| one object being too large in some measure for a single message
| is a predictable edge case.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'd be worried about that raising money laundering flags,
| like someone splitting transactions into a bunch of $9,999
| chunks.
| lucianbr wrote:
| Since they were talking it over with customs, they would
| clear any flags as "we agreed on this solution because the
| item cost was too large to fit the message format".
|
| It's not like Google, where there's automatic inhuman
| consequences. And even Google can make exceptions if they
| want to, just they usually don't care.
| lsllc wrote:
| I think Customs is on to that -- that was how Saddam Hussein
| got the precision parts of his "supergun" out of Europe into
| Iraq, the parts were all labeled as oil industry related.
| Lovesong wrote:
| They can, the problem is that if you declare this as
| different parts then you will have to pay taxes accordingly
| to the chosen HSCode for each one in the declaration.
|
| If you search for the HSCODE you will find that offshore oil
| and natural gas drilling and production platforms have their
| own, 8431434000, which means if you declare only this one you
| will pay no taxes.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| In my experience they're also a bit particular about
| declaring things as they are on the border.
|
| An oil platform getting towed into place is _one_ piece,
| not an IKEA kit or similar.
|
| That said, could very well be the local customs officer was
| just totally unprepared and this was the solution they came
| up with on the spot. I've seen other cases where different
| companies have gotten directly contradictory instructions
| from different customs offices on the exact same scenario.
| Lovesong wrote:
| Yes, the final say is always on the particular custom
| where the goods will get the clearance, so they will call
| the shots on the way the procedure should be done.
|
| The IT system in place is just there to accommodate how
| customs should proceed, so if they have different ways to
| solve the problem, the customs officer will just find the
| one he's more used to.
|
| But you're right that if there's a HSCode for something
| _built_ , furniture vs wood for example, then the more
| "accurate" should be used, as they will have different
| tariffs too.
| yardie wrote:
| I did a 1100m passage from Puerto Rico to Miami. Anchored in the
| Bahamas bank but didn't step on land. And when we arrived in the
| US we weren't required to clear in since our last port of
| departure was PR. Pretty sure they were tracking us by drone,
| blimp, AIS, and radar the entire way because they weren't
| suspicious enough compared to my previous experiences.
|
| Curious why Apollo 11 would have to clear customs since the moon
| isn't a foreign country and they just did a there and back.
| tempodox wrote:
| They could have smuggled moonshine.
| jedberg wrote:
| Due to international treaty the moon is considered
| international land, like Antarctica.
| lucianbr wrote:
| You think some other country would have objected to the US
| not requesting cusoms declarations from their own citizens,
| reasoning it breaks the treaty obligations?
| jedberg wrote:
| I think it was more about the US insisting the rules get
| followed no matter what. Sort of like how astronauts today
| going to ISS have to fill out international travel forms,
| even when they leave from the USA.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| Under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the moon is considered
| international territory ("province of all mankind"), so
| technically they were returning from outside US jurisdiction,
| triggering customs requirements.
| soneil wrote:
| That's the whole point of the parent comment - you don't
| trigger customs requirements by leaving and re-entering the
| country. You trigger them by entering from another country.
|
| for example - you don't need a passport to travel from the US
| mainland to Hawaii. It doesn't matter that the aircraft cross
| international waters, it matters what country you were in
| last.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| You are entering from "another country" if you are coming
| from the Moon.
|
| For this purpose "country" has to be interpret as stepping
| on any land outside of the US.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> For this purpose "country" has to be interpret as
| stepping on any land outside of the US._
|
| "Land" is legally (and generally) defined as pertaining
| to planet earth. In this case the crew did not step on
| any land outside of the US. The moon does not have land.
| vntok wrote:
| > "Land" is legally defined as pertaining to planet
| earth.
|
| Interesting. Where have you read this? Intuitively, it
| seems very weird for a lawmaker to specify the planet the
| law would apply to.
| bdamm wrote:
| This is all kind of too reductionist.
|
| The US DHS agents in the US make a choice not to fuss over
| the airplanes or even cruise ships sailing from US ports to
| Hawaii and back. They could, but they don't. They probably
| validate the ship or plane's location via transponder, but
| it wouldn't even surprise me if they don't do that for
| regular commercial transport.
|
| This kind of local and specific policy is great and it is
| enacted in lots of places within US jurisdiction.
| umanwizard wrote:
| The trip as described passed through foreign territorial
| waters and probably also international waters.
| csomar wrote:
| > Pretty sure they were tracking us by drone, blimp, AIS, and
| radar the entire way because they weren't suspicious enough
| compared to my previous experiences.
|
| Probably none of that. The border check is a bureaucratic
| operation. Modern day border checks are 0% contraband, 1%
| terrorism and 99% just messing with the public.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Makes me think of the Apollo insurance covers:
|
| "The Apollo insurance covers are autographed postal covers signed
| by the astronaut crews prior to their mission. The primary
| motivation behind this action was the refusal of life insurance
| companies to provide coverage for the astronauts. Consequently,
| the astronauts devised a strategy involving the signing of
| hundreds of postal covers. These were to be left behind for their
| families, who could then sell them in the event of the
| astronauts' deaths.[1] The insurance covers began with Apollo 11
| and ended with Apollo 16."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_insurance_covers
| I-M-S wrote:
| A country that sends men to the Moon but isn't able to
| guarantee the wellbeing of their families shouldn't be able to
| send men to the Moon.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| an interesting implication of this is that the government
| probably didn't want to issue them life insurance because
| then they would have to explain why they don't do that for
| all military personnel
| jki275 wrote:
| The US government does issue life insurance for all
| military personnel. It's a nominal cost (20 bucks a month
| IIRC) for something like 400k of coverage. It's been around
| since 1914[1].
|
| As far as I know all of the astronauts were military at
| that time, so they probably would have been covered by this
| program. There could be any number of nuances I'm not aware
| of though.
|
| [1]https://benefits.va.gov/benefits/infographics/pdfs/timel
| ine_...
| CSMastermind wrote:
| When I was in we had life insurance. Before every
| deployment they had lawyers come in and walk us through
| creating a will, explaining the benefit, etc.
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| Of course they didn't. It's just funny.
| nullbyte wrote:
| "Are you bringing with you: plants, food, animals, soil, disease
| agents, cell cultures or snails? Declare all articles that you
| have acquired and are bringing into the United States."
|
| It's interesting that they specifically mention snails
| whycome wrote:
| Plants, animals, fungi, archae....
| the__alchemist wrote:
| At least as of a few years ago, the Qataris required foreign
| aircrew (e.g. fighter pilots) operating out of bases in their
| country to do this after every mission! What a pain.
| woodpanel wrote:
| Well, you can't say _this_ is a problem you'll encounter with
| Trump
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| There's a funny story about how any new territory falls under the
| jurisdiction of the dioceses from which the expedition departed,
| so the bishop of Orlando is the bishop of the moon.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| My god's bigger than your god.
| rob74 wrote:
| _Yes, the form really does ask if a person is bringing in
| snails._
|
| Even more curiously, it asks for animals in general, and then
| specifically for snails. I wonder what it is about snails
| specifically that US Customs are/were so interested in?
| caseyohara wrote:
| Biosecurity/agrosecurity. Some snails are highly invasive and
| destructive to crops so they are banned or tightly regulated by
| the USDA.
| jlarocco wrote:
| I'm not sure what they were looking for, specifically, but
| snails can be bad news:
| https://bouldercolorado.gov/services/new-zealand-mudsnails
| aspir wrote:
| The story in the editor's note is charming enough that it's worth
| calling out:
|
| >Thanks to UC alumnus Luama Mays, JD '66, for sharing a copy of
| the declaration with UC Magazine. Mays was a pilot who befriended
| Armstrong while the former astronaut was teaching at UC and Mays
| was running an aviation company. Initially Armstrong called him,
| without even identifying himself, asking for a ride on Mays old
| "bubble-style" helicopter left over from the Korean War. It was
| exactly what Armstrong had trained on in preparation for
| operating the lunar module.
| TZubiri wrote:
| The US gets a lot of flak for still using forms instead of
| modernizing, but imagine the nightmare this would be with an
| inflexible system with dropdowns.
|
| It seems so relaxing to just be able to write whatever you want
| or draw doodles on a form and expect the operator on the other
| side ot either grok it, coalesce it into whatever other system,
| or handle it in whatever way they see fit.
|
| Never change America
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-23 23:00 UTC)