The Dark Side of the Moon Rock Black Market: An Interview with Joe Kloc

Forty years ago, during the last Apollo space mission, two NASA astronauts —Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt — stumbled across a seven-pound rock while bouncing around on the Moon. Schmitt was the only geologist to have visited the Moon. The sample, Cernan noted, was “composed of many fragments, of many sizes, and many shapes, probably from all parts of the Moon,” estimating that it was “perhaps billions of years old.”

In the Atavist, a new multimedia platform for long-form narrative nonfiction, journalist and former Wired researcher Joe Kloc writes:

Cernan dropped the rock into his Teflon pouch, thereby bestowing upon it the honorary taxonomical distinction Sample 70017. The pair loaded their gear into the lunar module for the last time. "Close the hatch," Schmitt said. And with that, the salad days of space exploration ended. The astronauts of Apollo 17, the last crew to ride a 300-foot-tall rocket 240,000 miles to the moon using computers less powerful than a talking greeting card, brought their moon rock back to Earth.

There, President Richard Nixon, eager to wave the United States’ space exploits in the faces of those on planet Earth — especially his Cold War adversaries — ordered Sample 70017 to be split into fragments and distributed to 135 foreign heads of state, the 50 US states, and its provinces. An acrylic sphere encased each of these “Goodwill Moon Rocks,” as they would be called, mounted on a wooden plaque with the following inscription: If people of many nations can act together to achieve the dreams of humanity in space, then surely we can act together to accomplish humanity's dream of peace here on Earth.

But from there, things get decidedly weird. The eventual fate of these moon rocks is wrought with decades of mystery, potential space crimes, and geopolitical intrigue.

Kloc’s piece, titled “The Case of the Missing Moon Rocks,” details the bizarre path of how these extraterrestrial curiosities disappeared and profiles one man’s singular obsession with getting them back. I spoke with him recently to get the scoop and try to convince him to sell us moon rocks.

What happened to “lunar sample 70017” after President Nixon delivered bits of it to countries around the world as a gesture of world peace?

After Nixon sent out the samples of the rock, many of them were lost, either because of instability in those countries at the time or because the rocks were put into storage, or because the building a rock was housed in was destroyed. The whereabouts of many of them haven’t been known since the 70s. And in recent years, a sort of black market of debatable size and value has developed around them.

How much do these rocks sell for?

No one seems to agree on this question but black market sellers have valued them at up to $5 million and even $15 million each.

What drew you to the story of the missing moon rocks?

Well, they seem to attract small-time crime. In every case, the people selling the rocks on the “black” market just sort of stumbled upon them. I like the comedy that ensues when average Joes fall into the world of almost-crime to sell these Cold War artifacts that may or may not be worth $5 million.

Tell me about Joseph Gutheinz, the one-time NASA special agent but now independent investigator, who has dedicated his life to recovering MIA moon rocks. He seems like a real-life Don Quixote type, or perhaps a Sherlock Holmes solving not-quite crimes of questionable value. Why does he give such a fuck about these chunks of the Moon?

He’s an unbelievably sincere, earnest guy. Most of the time I can imagine that is difficult. He seems in constant opposition to everyone’s cynicism. But the moon rocks give him something that is really easy to justify being sincere about. On the one hand, sure, they are Cold War relics of questionable value. But they are also pieces of the Moon. If you’re going to be obsessed with something, historically speaking, the Moon is a solid choice.

What do the NASA folks think of his vigilante-like work?

Well it is clear they have a lot of respect for the work he did at NASA, and they like him as a person. But my impression from them was that they get pretty annoyed with how much he publicizes the moon rocks. Gary Lofgren, the lunar curator at NASA, told me that he thinks all this press about the $5 million dollar price tag for a moon rock puts the teachers and scientists who work with lunar samples in danger. NASA’s stance is that the moon rocks have no price. In some sense they are in opposition. Gutheinz talks about how much the rocks are worth because he wants people to care about them — NASA seems to want the opposite.

Of the three missing goodwill moon rocks you detail (Honduras, Cyprus, Alaska), which one has the strangest backstory? Was there a case that didn’t add up?

Well, Honduras had to be the strangest — a juice distributor buys a rock from an ex-colonel of an ousted Honduran dictator. But as much as such a scenario could add up, that one did. Cyprus never quite made sense. NASA seems to have pursued every rock they discovered was on the private market — but it took them 6 years to go after the Cyprus rock. I can only imagine that has something to do with the fact that the seller was a diplomat’s son — when I asked Gutheinz about that he agreed as well.

The hullabaloo around missing moon rocks — covert sting operations, violent coups, shady diplomat dealings, central American dictators, geopolitical drama — makes them seem more like illegal third-world arms or drugs than NASA relics with no inherent value.

Well yeah. I think whether pieces of the Moon should or shouldn’t have value is an interesting debate surrounding the rocks. But clearly, in practice, no matter what NASA says, they do have value. In terms of equating them to illegal third world arms or drugs, I sort of agree. But I think what really makes the story of the rocks interesting is that it is truly the minor leagues of elicit trade. These aren’t drug lords and gangsters — they are juice salesmen and retired space detectives. So the stakes are high in the sense that we are talking about potentially very valuable pieces of the Moon. But they are also incredibly low. That’s a pretty funny combination.

The “goodwill” gesture of Nixon distributing the moon rocks seemed more like a Cold War middle finger than an act of unity. What role does Cold War politics have in all of this?

I think a pretty big one. Here is one telling anecdote: the US planned to give a rock to Cyprus in the '70s. But they couldn’t because of an uprising that they helped support as a sort of Cold War power play. So their gesture of peace was foiled by their own Cold War politics. In part as an effort to foster peace on Cyprus, Bill Clinton later apologized for supporting the Greek junta that instigated the uprising. One funny little ending to that story is that, as he was making that apology he unknowingly had a moon rock in his file cabinet in Arkansas from when he was governor. It was discovered last year.

The court case involving the disputed Honduras moon rock is the most absurd case title I’ve ever heard of: “United States of America v. One Lucite Ball Containing Lunar Material (One Moon Rock) And One Ten Inch By Fourteen Inch Wooden Plaque.” What legal right does the US have to go after these keepsakes that it ostensibly gave away?

Depends on whom you ask. In that case, the seller, Alan Rosen, argued they didn’t have any right to take the rock back because they gave it away. But it’s really hard to buy that argument. It isn’t like the US was taking it back for themselves. They gave it to Honduras. The US won the case in part because the colonel who sold the rock to Rosen obtained the rock illegally in Honduras. It’s a bit complicated, but in short, the rock was given by the US to the people of Honduras. In order for it to move onto the private market there would have to be some sort of legislation authorizing the gift to the colonel. None existed. I think if the gift had been made legally the US wouldn’t have tried to seize the rock. Their overarching point seems to be they didn’t fly to the Moon and back so that some juice salesman in Florida could become a millionaire. And that’s a fair point.

What’s a moon rock worth to you personally?

Good question. I certainly wouldn’t pay millions of dollars for one. But then again I don’t have millions of dollars. If I did, I might change my tune. When you really think about it though, that these rocks came from the Moon and were brought back by astronauts, it’s easy to see how everyone who comes in contact with them seems to get intoxicated by them. All of Gutheinz’s students that I interviewed said that after hunting for the rocks for a little while they caught his “bug.” Some are even hunting them on their own now. So to answer your question I think they are obsession inducing. And people will spend endless amounts of time and money on obsessions. To me that says they are priceless.

Tell me about the Atavist platform, this new long-form journalism outlet where you published this story.

The platform enhances stories with videos, footnotes, interactive timelines, character bios, audio, and just about anything else you can think of. And you can turn these additions on and off. It sort of lets you go as deep into the story — or parts of the story — as you want.

It’s a unique platform. When the controls weren’t confusing the hell out of me, I have to say it seems to be an ideal delivery format for this type of an information-heavy story, with its timeline and interactive whatnots to keep the details straight, and with breathing room to allow for some drama build-up and a narrative arc. Kind of like an iPad-era nonfiction novella. Will Atavist save long-form journalism?

I think the most surprising thing about the Atavist and similar outfits is how well they’ve been received. Seems like a few years ago everyone was saying there was no market for long-form stories anymore. But clearly someone just needed to find a way to present long-form pieces in a way that fit into peoples’ digital lives. What impresses me the most about the Atavist is that it isn’t just long stories on your iPad — it’s stories that are actually made better because you have an iPad (or smart phone or Kindle or whatever). In other words, they didn’t fit the device to the story; they fit the story to the device.

Will you sell us a moon rock? I know you have some.

Absolutely—though all of mine are at the bottom of some swampland I own in Florida. So you'd have to buy that too.

The Case of the Missing Moon Rocks, by Joe Kloc, is available now in a variety of digital formats from The Atavist.

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