jfribrg
2011-Jun-24, 03:08 PM
This article (http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20110624/sc_space/missingmoondustturnsupatstlouisauction) is about a woman who tried to auction off a few grains of moon dust. It is an interesting article, but the reason I am posting is the following :
NASA astronauts brought 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of lunar material home to Earth between 1969 and 1972, souvenirs from their Apollo moonwalking jaunts. A court has valued this stuff at $1,760 per ounce ($50,800 per gram), based on how much those NASA missions cost.
Obviously there was a really bad unit conversion calculation. I'm not sure how they came up with $50,800/gram since $1,760/oz = $62.10/gram. I thought that maybe they meant kilogram instead, but i come up with $62,075/kg which is close but not correct. Even a conversion from troy ounces to kilograms results in $56,584. One final possibility is that the material is valued at $1,760/gram, but that would result in $49,878/ounce.
That conversion issue notwithstanding (which will surely be corrected quickly), I thought it was a well written article.
NASA astronauts brought 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of lunar material home to Earth between 1969 and 1972, souvenirs from their Apollo moonwalking jaunts. A court has valued this stuff at $1,760 per ounce ($50,800 per gram), based on how much those NASA missions cost.
Obviously there was a really bad unit conversion calculation. I'm not sure how they came up with $50,800/gram since $1,760/oz = $62.10/gram. I thought that maybe they meant kilogram instead, but i come up with $62,075/kg which is close but not correct. Even a conversion from troy ounces to kilograms results in $56,584. One final possibility is that the material is valued at $1,760/gram, but that would result in $49,878/ounce.
That conversion issue notwithstanding (which will surely be corrected quickly), I thought it was a well written article.