SPACE VANDALS

I was reading over at oldafsarge last night and he had a nice post about Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 and that made me wonder. I know why 11 matters so much and they made a movie about 13. What about the rest?

I delved into the mystery at our old friend wikipedia. Naturally, I started with Apollo 12. Who ever heard of it? The link is to the story of an unmanned lander that NASA bounced off the moon 3 times back in 1967. Very droll. It was there that I learned why we never hear about the rest of the Apollo missions. It turns out they were the very first space vandals and interplanetary hooligans.

Caught in the act. Astronaut vandalizing Surveyor Probe and stealing parts

As you can see from the photo, they already got the wheels off and came back for the panels. This is a full size picture from NASA.

What an awesome country we are.