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00:05I'm Mike Wolfe, and I've spent my life traveling the world, chasing forgotten objects and the
00:11histories behind them. People everywhere are turning up artifacts every day, often by chance.
00:19And if you're lucky, some of these finds can be worth serious money.
00:27Tonight, on History's Greatest Picks. Collectibles that are so valuable, they're out of this world, literally.
00:37Like the first guy in space. Yuri gets all the credit, but Yvonne was there first.
00:43Or the space junk rescued from a dumpster. It's Captain Kirk's chair.
00:50And the lunar landing tapes that were nearly wiped.
00:54What Gary sees is the highest quality footage of the moon landing that any human has seen in the last
01:0240 years.
01:03From moon rocks to movie props, from the space race to science fiction, some of the wildest finds came from
01:12the final frontier.
01:13So sit back and let me tell you the stories behind some of history's greatest picks.
01:26The Apollo 11 moon landing is one of the most iconic moments in space history, captured forever in those grainy
01:35black and white images of one giant leap.
01:38Which is exactly why a flag carried by Buzz Aldrin on the moon fetches $252,000 at auction in 2022.
01:50And Neil Armstrong's bag of moon dust sells for $1.8 million in 2017.
01:57But the tapes with the original footage of the moon landing, these priceless pieces of history are headed to a
02:04trash can until fate puts them in the hands of one lucky kid.
02:12There's this guy back in June of 1976.
02:16His name is Gary George.
02:18And Gary was a hustler.
02:20And Gary liked to find things that he could resell.
02:24So NASA's having this surplus sale to get rid of a bunch of what they believe is junk.
02:30And Gary George shows up, starts going through old boxes, and finds tapes.
02:38These are broadcast tapes.
02:39These aren't the kind that a person at home could put in there reel-to-reel.
02:44So this guy thinks to himself, a thousand tapes?
02:47I can take these, wipe them, sell them to a broadcaster, make a little extra money on the side.
02:53So Gary buys this box of tapes for $217.77.
03:01Gary doesn't realize it, but this is the best investment he's ever made in his life.
03:07He wipes the tapes and then sells them to local television stations for $400.
03:14So he's already turned a profit.
03:16But he doesn't sell all of the tapes.
03:18Some of them what he does is he actually donates them to his local church.
03:21But he gets a tax receipt for that.
03:24So everybody's happy, right?
03:25No big deal.
03:27Now, the tapes that Gary had in the box, there were two sorts of them.
03:31Ones that were larger format.
03:33Those are the ones he sold and donated.
03:35But there was another set that was smaller format.
03:38And so he looks at them and he's like, well, I can't sell them.
03:41I can't donate them.
03:43I might as well just trash them.
03:45But his dad happens to see that there's a label on there.
03:49And the label has some pretty intriguing information.
03:53Apollo 11, July 20th, 1969, EVA.
03:593, 2, 1.
04:02We have a liftoff.
04:04Let's start at Apollo 11.
04:07That is the mission that landed humans on the moon for the very first time.
04:13July 20th, 1969?
04:15That just happens to be the date that they landed.
04:19EVA.
04:19That stands for extravehicular activity.
04:23That's when they get out of the spaceship.
04:26Now, you would think that if Gary sees this label on these tapes,
04:29the first thing he would do is watch them to see what's on them.
04:32But he can't play the tapes.
04:35The problem is that technology needed to watch what's on those tapes is way out of date.
04:42And Gary?
04:43Well, Gary doesn't have the equipment he needs.
04:46So for the next three decades, the picker inside of him won't let them go.
04:52He carries the Apollo 11 tapes as he moves around the country from one job to the next until 2008.
05:02Now, it comes to 40 years after the original moon landing.
05:05NASA wants to have a big party and they want to look at the best version of the footage they
05:09can.
05:09And all of a sudden they realize they can't find their version of the pristine tape.
05:14And that's when Gary's like, I think it's time for me to find a way to look at those tapes.
05:18And he finds a guy who has equipment dating all the way back to 1969.
05:24For the first time, they get to see what is on these mysterious tapes that Gary has been carrying around
05:31for years.
05:32They sit down and they hit play.
05:38And that's when it hits them.
05:40This is huge.
05:42This is so much higher quality than even NASA expected to ever find.
05:46And this is what's been sitting in his garage for decades.
05:50And we're getting a picture on the TV.
05:53Back in 1969, half a billion people all around the world watched this footage sent from the moon.
06:01But that footage that all of us know so well is the version that was transmitted all the way to
06:08Earth
06:09and then transmitted again to everybody's televisions.
06:14Depending on where you were in the world, that determined the quality of the footage that you saw of Neil
06:21Armstrong stepping onto the moon for the first time.
06:23As that footage jumps from broadcast tower to broadcast tower, basically from one generation down to the next, the quality
06:31of the footage starts to degrade.
06:33What Gary sees is the highest quality footage of the moon landing that any human has seen in the last
06:4040 years.
06:40The only other people on the planet who saw this footage with this level of clarity were the people at
06:48Mission Control at NASA that day.
06:50Okay, Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now.
06:53This is the best there is on planet Earth.
06:58You got an eye, Gary.
06:59You got an eye for boxes.
07:02Gary is smart.
07:04He chooses his moment to sell.
07:07And that is the 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing.
07:12He puts the tapes up for auction and the numbers skyrocket.
07:16Those three reels that he bought for just $217.77
07:21sell for a staggering $1,820,000.
07:28One small step for Neil Armstrong and one heck of a payday for Gary George.
07:38How much would you pay to ride a rocket?
07:42I'm talking a round trip ticket on an actual spaceship.
07:46A seat on Virgin Galactic will run you about 600 grand.
07:51To sit next to Jeff Bezos on Blue Origin cost a jaw dropping $28 million in 2021.
08:00Most of us won't be heading to space anytime soon, but we can still dream.
08:05Like the guy whose journey to the stars started in his basement
08:09with a forgotten piece of space age history.
08:15Back in 1969, Paramount Studios had this little show.
08:19This show had been running for three years, but it wasn't doing too well.
08:23It was kind of a disappointment.
08:26So they decided to ax the show, and there's a guy who works on the show,
08:29and his job is to get rid of all the sets, right? Break them down.
08:31That's it. Show's over.
08:33But in that set, he sees some pretty cool things.
08:36So he calls his buddy up and says,
08:39Hey, you got a truck? You got to get here in minutes,
08:42or else it all goes in the dumpster.
08:44Sure enough, his buddy is there with the truck,
08:46and he collects his prized possession from this set.
08:50A really bulky, ungainly chair?
08:54This failure of a show, now, was canceled, but they did 79 episodes.
09:00And in fact, those 79 episodes of the show,
09:04the particular big bulky chair was in every episode.
09:08The man is now in possession of the command chair of NCC 1701,
09:16the USS Enterprise.
09:22It's Captain Kirk's chair.
09:26Style was doing all sorts of things in the 60s,
09:29and furniture was no exception.
09:31So an American manufacturer copied the Scandinavian style.
09:37But then they built these big, blocky things around it
09:40for the side that would have light-up controls,
09:42and so William Shatner could then flip all these switches
09:44and pretend like he was firing phasers
09:46or setting red alerts.
09:48It may have looked cool on camera,
09:50but that's about as far as it goes.
09:53It's clinically uncomfortable,
09:56so much so that Captain Kirk's iconic lean forward
10:00to make a command was because if he leaned too far back,
10:03it would just topple over.
10:05But for this guy who's a fan of Star Trek,
10:08man, he now has his space throne,
10:11and he takes this sucker to his little man cave TV-watching room,
10:15and he modifies it so that he can open and close
10:18the curtains in the room.
10:20And there it lives for 30 years forgotten.
10:25The chair might disappear for a while,
10:27but Star Trek sure doesn't.
10:30In fact, over the next 30 years,
10:32it becomes a full-blown cult phenomenon.
10:35And those 79 original episodes,
10:38just enough for creator Gene Roddenberry
10:41to syndicate the show nationwide
10:43and turn a canceled series into a legend.
10:47Star Trek fans almost define what we consider modern fandom.
10:52So the show just continues to live on.
10:55After 30 years, the man who got the chair passes away.
10:59It's sat in his room, much loved by him.
11:03But for his widow, it's time to clear house.
11:06So she goes to a Star Trek convention,
11:08and she meets a cast member from the original series
11:11who played the character Mr. Sulu, George Takei.
11:15She says, hey, can you come to my house?
11:18I think I got something that you might enjoy.
11:21He goes to seize the chair, and when he sees it,
11:24he recognizes it immediately.
11:27And he's like, ma'am, uh, yeah,
11:30people are gonna value this.
11:34Nowadays, you can buy a replica of Kirk's chair
11:36with the lights, the consoles, the whole deal,
11:39the whole shooting match for three grand.
11:41Or if you're feeling ambitious,
11:42you can even find instructions online
11:45to build your own at home.
11:47But the actual chair,
11:48the one that Captain Kirk himself sat in,
11:51that's a different story.
11:52In 2002, it sold for $305,000.
11:58Not bad for a bulky, uncomfortable chair
12:00rescued from a dumpster.
12:06Want a piece of rocket history?
12:08A chunk from the Mercury program
12:10will run you about four grand.
12:12An Apollo thruster part?
12:14Roughly $22K.
12:15But if you want a rocket that actually is gonna fire,
12:18be ready to spend big.
12:24It's the late 70s, downtown Cincinnati,
12:28Kroger Building, 10th floor.
12:29It's the Kenner Toys headquarters.
12:32The cool thing about working for a toy company
12:34is that the employees get first dibs on the toys
12:38that weren't put into production.
12:40In the employee lounge, there's a box.
12:43Inside the box are discarded toys
12:45that haven't met certain standards or are defective.
12:49And so these toys are just left in the box
12:51for any employee that wants to just take one home with them.
12:56One employee is rummaging through the box,
12:59and he picks out one toy
13:02that ends up being the holy grail of all toys.
13:06In 1979, there's an arms race between toy manufacturers.
13:12There are new advances in technology
13:14that allow toys to become more sophisticated.
13:17And so toy manufacturing companies
13:19are going absolutely gangbusters
13:21when it comes to creating action figures,
13:23specifically of action movie stars
13:25and sci-fi movie characters.
13:28Every toy company wanted to make the toy for Star Wars.
13:33Kenner wins the battle.
13:35Now they have to figure out what toys are gonna hit,
13:37how do we make this popular?
13:39And they look over at their competitor, Mattel.
13:43Mattel has a license to Battlestar Galactica.
13:46And they've got toys that fire
13:48these little plastic projectile missiles across the room,
13:51and kids love them.
13:53So Kenner, they're thinking,
13:55we have to create a toy that shoots something.
13:58Kids love target practice.
14:02So Kenner decides that they're going to focus
14:04on an action figure of a new character
14:07that's going to appear in the Star Wars universe
14:08called Boba Fett.
14:12At this point,
14:13Boba Fett hasn't actually been in any of the movies.
14:16He's planned to be introduced
14:17in a made-for-TV holiday special
14:19around the same time as the toy promotion.
14:23He's a bounty hunter.
14:25He has this weathered green armor, cool helmet.
14:28He just looks awesome.
14:30The character of Boba Fett is inspired
14:32by gunfighters in old westerns.
14:35And the movie doesn't really give a ton of information
14:38about him, but fans love him.
14:41He doesn't look cool enough already.
14:43We're going to put a backpack on him
14:45that fires these rocket projectile missiles.
14:49So in the run-up to Christmas,
14:50Kenner starts rolling out the ads,
14:52starts revving up the hype train.
14:54From Kenner's Star Wars collection,
14:55Boba Fett, Star Wars villain.
14:57And they come up with the scheme of,
14:59hey, you got to buy four Star Wars action figures,
15:03and then you get a free Boba Fett.
15:06Complete with backpack that fires
15:09these rocket projectile missiles.
15:11It's going to be incredible.
15:12You need this.
15:13Don't be the kid that doesn't get one for Christmas.
15:16With the holidays coming up fast,
15:18Kenner kicks into high gear,
15:20cranking out injection molded prototypes
15:23of its brand new toy.
15:25But then disaster strikes.
15:29So it turns out that plastic missiles
15:31that shoot out are not a good idea.
15:34And Mattel found out the hard way.
15:37Kids are putting it in their mouth.
15:38They're choking.
15:39One kid actually dies.
15:42Battlestar Galactica at this point
15:43has already withdrawn
15:44all of its rocket-firing toys.
15:47And so Kenner looks at the writing on the wall and says,
15:51we can't sell this toy.
15:53How do we fix this toy
15:55so we can still kind of give it out to the masses?
15:57They glue it down,
15:58and it becomes a permanent part of his jetpack.
16:03And you wake up on Christmas morning,
16:06you unwrap your presents,
16:07and there in front of you
16:08is the notorious bounty hunter Boba Fett.
16:11And there's no button to push.
16:13There's no firing mechanism.
16:15What a joke.
16:17But it was still
16:18one of the coolest-looking action figures.
16:20Everyone has their personal favorite,
16:22but everyone knows that Boba Fett is the coolest.
16:25In Return of the Jedi, he's killed off,
16:27but he's still a fan favorite
16:29even 38 years after being killed off.
16:32It was still my favorite.
16:34That's the truth.
16:35Even though he doesn't fire.
16:37Here's the thing.
16:38The only ones that exist that have that moving piece are the prototypes,
16:42and there's not that many of them.
16:45And that employee, that's exactly what he got from that mystery box of toys.
16:52And so he takes that home, and it's basically priceless now.
16:58With only about 100 made, they become the holy grail for Star Wars toy collectors,
17:03and their value shoots straight through the roof.
17:06In 2022, one of them sells for $236,000.
17:11By 2024, when it comes up for auction, this one sells for $525,000.
17:19And just three months later, the price of a Boba Fett with a rocket that actually fires rises to $1
17:25,342,000.
17:28That is a heck of a bounty for a three-and-three-quarter-inch toy with only four lines and
17:34the entire original trilogy.
17:39In the race to be first to space, it's guys like Neil Armstrong who get all the glory.
17:45But what about the unsung heroes?
17:47The space pioneers who never got the credit they deserve.
17:51Like the guy who back in the day was the Soviet Union's top secret cosmonaut.
17:59It's the early 90s, and the Soviet Union is undergoing a financial crisis, political crisis.
18:06And so the Soviets, now the Russians, are carrying out essentially a liquidation sale of their space agency.
18:14There's one item in particular that stands out.
18:20His name is Ivan Ivanovich.
18:25Chances are, you've never heard of this dude.
18:28But 28 years earlier, this guy played a pivotal role in the first-ever manned space mission.
18:35The Cold War is in high gear.
18:38And things are about to happen that are gonna shake the world to its core.
18:45Nuclear testing is gonna go on big time.
18:48The Berlin Wall is about to go up.
18:51And we're about to have the Cuban Missile Crisis.
18:54And in the midst of all of that, there is a space race.
18:59We choose to go to the moon because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept.
19:05And one we intend to win.
19:08It's United States versus Soviet Union.
19:11Capitalism versus communism.
19:12The stakes couldn't be higher.
19:15And the Soviets are winning.
19:17Placed in orbit by a Russian rocket.
19:20One of the great scientific feats of the age.
19:24They get the first artificial satellite in space, Sputnik.
19:28They get the first living creature in space.
19:31They fly a dog.
19:33They even send the first probe to the moon.
19:36It's unmanned, but they send a probe to the moon before the Americans do.
19:41They've got a lot of wins under their belt.
19:44But a lot of that is driven due to the fact that if you're working at the Soviet Space Agency,
19:48you're driven not necessarily by glory, but by fear.
19:52Your rulers are Stalin, Khrushchev.
19:56These guys don't take no for an answer.
19:58Failure is just not an option.
20:02But now, the real victory in the space race isn't about rockets or satellites.
20:08It all comes down to which side can put a human in space first.
20:14Nobody knew what would happen to a human who went to space.
20:17Would they die instantly?
20:19Nobody knew because we'd never been able to try before.
20:23It's not just the point of getting them up there.
20:25You want them to survive while they're there and make it back to the ground safely.
20:29And the way you do that is you go through testing on Earth first.
20:39So the Soviets have their guy.
20:41He's a guy named Valentin Bondarenko.
20:43And he is in the middle of a 15-day procedure where he stays in a closed-off chamber in
20:52elevated oxygen levels just to see how that's going to affect his physiology.
20:56But the thing about elevated oxygen levels is it's also an elevated risk of fire.
21:03And, unfortunately, there's a spark.
21:07And that is the end of Valentin.
21:10After this accident, the entire program now is in jeopardy.
21:16They have their Vostok space capsule ready to go.
21:19But, you know, after the accident, who's going to get in this thing?
21:23With Valentin dead, the Soviets have only one choice.
21:27They've got to go with Ivan.
21:28And two days after Valentin's death, they have launched that rocket and sent this thing up into space.
21:35On board, there's a dog, monkey, guinea pig, frogs, and also there's Ivan Ivanovich.
21:45The Vostok performs exactly as designed.
21:49It stays in space, orbits the Earth for about 100 minutes, and then it descends to land in Russia.
21:57As for Ivan Ivanovich, he is ejected from the Vostok, safely parachutes back down to terra firma, and he lands
22:05in the middle of a Russian forest during a blizzard.
22:10Try to imagine being a peasant in the Soviet Union in the 60s.
22:13You're basically living the way people have lived for hundreds of years, right?
22:16You've got horses, you've got carts, and then this metal thing comes down from the heavens.
22:21And not only that, there's a human figure with a parachute propped up against a tree.
22:28And so one of these Russians makes their way to the cosmonaut, slowly lifts the visor, and they start to
22:36poke a little bit at the cosmonaut's face, and what they feel is very cold, but also really rubbery.
22:46On his visor was written the Russian word, mankyat.
22:52Turns out, makyat in Russian doesn't mean astronaut. It means mannequin.
22:59Now, Ivan wasn't your average mannequin. No, this was a high-tech mannequin designed to be as human-like as
23:07possible, covered with sensors.
23:09We still do this kind of thing today. For NASA's Artemis mission, Artemis 2 actually sent mannequins into space with
23:17sensors.
23:18The Soviets were already doing this. They were the pioneers.
23:22Ivan got them the data they needed, and he was the precursor to what would happen next, which was sending
23:30an actual human into space.
23:33Thanks to Ivan, the Frankenstein cosmonaut built in a lab in total secrecy is now all systems go for the
23:42Soviets.
23:43Only three weeks later, Yuri Gagarin is sent into orbit and becomes the actual first human in space.
23:56Yuri gets all the credit, but Ivan was there first. Yeah, he was a dummy, but he did get there
24:02first.
24:04Poor little Ivan is stuck in a little dusty museum in the Soviet Union. He's lost the history, pretty much.
24:12Fast forward a few decades to the 1990s, the Soviet Union collapses, and, you know, they need some dough, so
24:21they start selling stuff off.
24:24Because the Soviet space program was so wrapped in secrecy, no one really knows what it cost to build Ivan.
24:31But in 1993, he's dusted off and put up for auction in New York City.
24:36For the original space crash test dummy, the winning bid is $189,500.
24:44And the buyer, a foundation owned by billionaire Ross Perot,
24:48who then loans Ivan to the National Air and Space Museum, where he is suspended from the ceiling for all
24:55to see.
24:56A Cold War secret finally out in the open.
25:04I have always had a love for anything on two wheels.
25:07It doesn't matter if it's a bicycle, a Harley, a high wheeler, I'm all in.
25:11And there are some bikes that have sold for absolutely wild numbers.
25:15From a 1937 Elgin Bluebird to the bike ridden by Lance Armstrong in the 2009 Tour de France that sold
25:24for a half a million bucks.
25:26There is one bike that tops them all because this one, this one actually flies.
25:36So it's 1982 and there's a promotion in BMX Action Magazine for these really cool new bikes that everyone's been
25:46seeing.
25:46This couple wins the Kurohara BMX Bike Contest.
25:51This bike is for a new line meant to sort of cash in on the popularity of BMX bikes that
25:57has been helped by this film that just came out called E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.
26:05It's red and it's white. It's got gold brakes and gold rims and gold spokes.
26:10It's a cool, sharp-looking BMX bike, especially if you're an 80s kid like me. This is like the coolest
26:15bike you've ever seen.
26:17E.T. really personified this idealized version of the 1980s.
26:21Being a kid in the 80s, you're riding your bike around everywhere.
26:26After the movie, every kid wanted a BMX bike.
26:29Drive around their neighborhoods and skid out and fly across the moon the way these kids did.
26:35So the couple that wins the bike, they're not into E.T. They're not really into BMX bikes at all.
26:43So they park it in their garage.
26:46And it sits there for 37 years collecting dust. It gets flat tires. It's just there waiting for a kid
26:52like me to ride it because I would have loved this bike.
26:56The bike is put up for sale in 2019 where it catches the attention of one avid collector.
27:03There's a huge BMX community, right? Like, it's this culture of BMX enthusiasts. Like, they know everything about it.
27:10And this huge fan, just a lover of BMX, spots the bike. Now, it's a lookalike E.T. bike, not
27:19valuable. It's been collecting dust for years.
27:22But he's like, eh, it's cool. You know, I want to have it.
27:25So the guy that buys it thinks he's got a good deal, and he puts it in the garage. And
27:31then one day he's looking through old ads. He's looking through the BMX magazines of the time.
27:36He finds the 1982 BMX Action magazine, sees the promotion, notices that this bike matches all the specs, all the
27:46colors are in the correct place.
27:48But then he looks at the serial number, and the serial number is 0090. He thought this bike was one
27:53of the KZ1s produced after the film in 1983.
27:56But he realizes by looking at it and looking at the parts, no, this was a bike that was actually
28:01built before the production of the film.
28:03These were made in 81. So this was prior to the replicas. This might be the one from the movie.
28:12In 1981, while prepping for the film, Steven Spielberg decides he wants BMX bikes for the kids to ride.
28:19But he doesn't want to feature just any ordinary bike. He wants his BMX bikes to be custom made so
28:26they'll stand out on screen.
28:28He had an idea in his mind what he wanted the bikes to look like. And he wanted them to
28:32look special. He wanted them to look different. And he wanted them to have a certain vibe, certain color scheme.
28:37So he reaches out to Everything Bicycles, which is the distributor in California for Coahuahara Bicycles.
28:44And they do five sets of five. So there's 25 bikes made for the movie.
28:50When the movie wraps, they take these 25 bikes, they bring them back to Everything Bicycles, and they strip them
28:56down, they repaint them, they use it for parts.
28:59Throughout time, those bikes get cannibalized, destroyed, lost in time. But this one bike survives. And that is the picture
29:08bike, the poster bike for the promotion that's in the magazine.
29:12This is the bike that Elliot rode across the moon. This is the bike where E.T. was sitting in
29:17the basket. This was the bike.
29:20And somehow it has now survived. And now I've got it. That had to be an incredibly exciting moment.
29:31Over 40 years after it was won in a competition, the collector puts the BMX bike up for auction, where
29:37it sells to an anonymous buyer for $52,000.
29:42The seller understands the real value of the bike, keeping its authenticity down to the original tires.
29:53The most expensive book ever sold at auction is the Codex Sassoon, bought in 2023 for a staggering $38 million.
30:04It also weighs in at a very impressive 26 pounds, which is considerably heavier than one of the first books
30:12that ever went to space.
30:19There's a space auction happening. It's got an engine from a Saturn V rocket. It's got a control panel. It's
30:25got some other things.
30:26But there's this one gem that most people would totally miss.
30:35It's a set of three one inch squares. And within the squares are all these other squares. You can't even
30:41tell what's on them, but they're very, very small.
30:45In these three small pieces is not only an amazing story, but really the greatest story ever told.
30:56It's a story that begins with the Mercury program and astronaut Ed White.
31:06Ed White is something of a legend.
31:10In the Gemini 4 mission in 1965, he becomes the first American space walker.
31:22Another interesting thing about astronaut White is that his great ambition is to take the Bible into orbit.
31:35Unfortunately, Ed dies in the Apollo 1 disaster.
31:41There's an explosion on the launch pad. He's killed instantly.
31:45At NASA, one of White's good friends is an engineer named John Maxwell Stout.
31:50And so after White's passing, Stout makes it his mission to figure out how to get a Bible into space.
31:59We're not talking some dime novel here. This book is 1,200 pages.
32:04And if you want to send something that heavy and that big into space, you got a problem.
32:11There are many reasons not to take a big, thick book into space.
32:16Mostly because that book is flammable.
32:19So Stout has a pretty significant challenge here.
32:22He wants to send a Bible up, but you don't just sort of waltz into the head office at the
32:26Apollo missions and say,
32:27could you take this big, heavy, flammable thing and put it on the dashboard when you guys fly up next?
32:32That's not how it works. They're not going to allow something that big.
32:35It's like 1,200 pages. It's made out of paper.
32:37There is an exception.
32:41Every astronaut is allowed to take a personal preference kit,
32:45which is a very small bag of things they'd like to take with them.
32:49But there's limited space there, too.
32:51And he's not going to be able to say, can you just leave the pictures of your kids out of
32:54there so I can stick my Bible in there?
32:56He's got to find a way to make it as small as possible.
32:59The solution is one of the great archival inventions of the 20th century, microfilm,
33:06where you take text and you condense it down to microscopic size on a small piece of magnetic film.
33:16In this case, the entire text of the Bible on nothing larger than a one inch square.
33:23They're tiny, but they're really cool. And you can actually look on a microscope and read the Bible.
33:29It's all there, which is amazing.
33:33Three, two, one.
33:37Lift up. We have lift up.
33:40Apollo 12.
33:41Bible on microfilm goes up.
33:44But, because of a mistake, ends up remaining in the command module.
33:48Never goes down to the lunar surface.
33:51So now the Bible's been in orbit around the moon.
33:54That's not good for them.
33:57Now, Apollo 13, they brought a hundred Bibles with them to land on the lunar surface this time.
34:03But, as we all know, malfunction.
34:07Six minutes and we're holding a dead plane.
34:09And the brilliance of NASA engineers and scientists, they get Apollo 13 home with all these Bibles.
34:15It's a miracle they survived, but the Bible didn't make it to the surface either.
34:22Finally, in 1971, they pull it off.
34:26It's Apollo 14.
34:28Edgar Mitchell steps out of the spacecraft and he has a hundred Bibles in his bag.
34:35The Bible has finally made it to the surface.
34:39Fulfilling White's dream, thanks to the engineer Stout.
34:44The following year, Stout presents three of the microfilm Bibles.
34:48One from Apollo 12, one from 13, one from 14.
34:53To Ed White's widow.
34:55Mission accomplished.
34:58Only one collection like this exists in the world.
35:02Three microfilms, each from a mission that went to space.
35:06It's entirely unique and uniquely valuable.
35:09When Pat White's children put it up for auction in 2013, it sells for $132,000, which works out to
35:18more than 40 grand per square inch.
35:25When it comes to space, collectors go nuts for anything that has left Earth's atmosphere.
35:31Whether it's a lunar rock shovel, a charred fragment from the first Mercury test flight, or a lunar meteorite.
35:39But our next item, let's just say it's space junk.
35:42The leftovers of the final frontier.
35:47What makes this piece of space junk story worthy is because of the guy who had it, right?
35:53His name is Dave Scott, and he had this thing for 40 years.
36:01This device is really cool.
36:02As soon as you look at it, you know it has something to do with the flight, right?
36:07Because it's got this great little base to it, and you can see it's a joystick.
36:10You recognize it.
36:11But who would know that this was in an Apollo 15 spacecraft?
36:15This looks like something you pick up in a junk store.
36:18You know, it's nothing special.
36:20But it's actually the very piece of equipment that saved Apollo 15.
36:24Apollo 15 takes off of the moon.
36:28It's July of 1971, and the Apollo 15 command module is in orbit around the moon.
36:35And on this day, the lunar lander detaches with the two-man crew heading down to the moon surface.
36:42And in command is Captain David Scott.
36:46The module is scheduled to land on a flat surface on the moon known as the plane of Hadley.
36:54And at first, the astronauts that are in that lunar lander can't see where they're going.
36:59Their backs are facing to the moon.
37:00They're about 60 nautical miles above the surface.
37:02Then the first thing that has to happen is a rotation.
37:05At about 9 minutes, 24 seconds, we would reach the point at which the lunar module pitches forward
37:11to give the crew their first visibility of the landing site.
37:15And now they can see where they're headed, and it turns out it ain't the plane of Hadley.
37:22They are at least thousands of feet off target.
37:28Something has gone terribly wrong.
37:30Up to now, they've been guided by the onboard computer.
37:35But both Mission Control and Dave realized that if they don't change this trajectory,
37:41they're going to be at least 3,000 feet off of their target landing site.
37:47The Apollo guidance computer is pushing the lunar module towards this mountain.
37:54And Commander Dave Scott is looking out the window, and he's like, holy, we're going to crash.
37:59And so he grabs the rotation hand controllers, and he begins to navigate.
38:04And he turns it to the side so the spacecraft can start moving to where it's supposed to go.
38:10Blocks in by mountains on one side, actually on two sides, and a rail on a third side.
38:15But Mission Control has the same idea.
38:18They also start to steer the craft north toward the landing site.
38:23So what happens? You add north to north, you overshoot where you want to land.
38:28At this point, things are getting critical, right? Fuel is getting low.
38:32Minus one. Six percent fuel.
38:35Time is of the essence, because they're descending ever more toward the surface.
38:39So Dave takes full control, steers it back south again.
38:44Logical remaining.
38:461,000 feet.
38:474-5.
38:49Every single one of these missions had to be a little bit better than the one before.
38:52Everybody remembers Apollo 11, but Apollo 15 was the first one to have a lunar rover
38:57that they'd be able to drive around on the surface with.
38:59That made it much heavier and much harder to land.
39:04They get closer and closer to the lunar surface.
39:08120 feet.
39:09Minus six.
39:10Dale.
39:10And just before reaching the surface, Dave releases the controller, turns off the engine.
39:188 feet. Minus one.
39:20And the craft comes down with a hard thud.
39:23Contact.
39:26But they're there.
39:27He's landed on the surface of the moon.
39:29And he still has 103 seconds left of fuel.
39:32Only problem is, they're on a slight angle and they're on the edge of a crater.
39:36But...
39:37They're alive.
39:39Okay, you're shooting the Falconers on the plane at Hadley.
39:43Oh boy.
39:44What a view.
39:45Okay, run away.
39:47Oh boy.
39:49This is traveling.
39:51Once they've safely landed, they spend three days on the lunar surface conducting experiments and performing their mission.
39:59And when they're done, they load up everything.
40:01They get back in their landing module.
40:06They leave the lunar surface and then they dock with the command module that's still in orbit around the moon.
40:11So they've got everything into the command module and then they can jettison that lunar module because they don't need
40:17it anymore.
40:18It's junk.
40:18But Commander Dave Scott looks back and he sees the hand controller.
40:23And he thinks, I want that because that is what saved my bacon a couple days ago.
40:30This is like the greatest achievement of Dave Scott's life and the rest of the crew.
40:34So very easily, Dave is able to disassemble the rotation hand controller from the spacecraft and he takes it home.
40:41Commander Dave Scott holds onto the controller for 40 years before finally putting it up for auction.
40:48In September 2014, it sells for a staggering $610,000.
40:56Not your average piece of junk.
41:01All of which goes to prove whether it's science fiction or just plain old science, whether it's something that actually
41:09makes it into space or not.
41:12If it's collectible, the price it fetches can be astronomical.
41:29The purpose of the crew is not worth it for sale when you'rejun FPS.
41:30The control indicates that people are in space where you have to
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