MICHAEL LIPSCHUTZ, who studied the first rocks brought back from the Moon in
1969, tells us he remembers public concern about the possibility that the rocks
might harbour pathogens. So NASA spent millions of dollars on quarantine
facilities—even after Lipschutz’s research director pointed out in a
letter to a scientific journal that, with the escape velocity on the Moon being
only 2.4 kilometres per second and the Moon being only around 384,000 kilometres
away, some Moon rocks were bound to have made their way to Earth already.
Nobody knew about lunar meteorites at the time, but NASA doesn’t…
