Three joysticks used to fly the ship carrying astronauts to the Moon on the Apollo 11 mission have sold for over $780,000 at auction . Much to the chagrin of NASA.
Two attitude control sticks and a manual translation control of the Columbia module of the Apollo 11 mission were auctioned off this Saturday, July 18 by Julien's Auctions (Beverly Hills). Something to mark the 51st anniversary of the first human moon landing on our satellite.
The spin control handle, which was once fitted near the right hand of Apollo 11 mission commander Neil Armstrong, sold for 370,000 dollars . A second similar control stick, positioned to the right of the lunar module pilot, Buzz Aldrin, sold for $256,000 . These two "joysticks" were used to adjust roll, pitch and yaw of the command module.
Finally, a translation control stick (a T-shaped handle) used by Armstrong and module pilot Michael Collins sold for 156 $250 . It is partly this small stick that allowed the docking of the spacecraft with the Eagle module (the descent stage that landed on the Moon), after leaving Earth for the Moon.
The same handle, turned counter-clockwise, could also have been used by Armstrong in the event of a mission abort. Fortunately, he did not need to operate the maneuver.
These three controls were removed from the ship approximately two months after the astronauts returned to Earth. They were then offered to the latter, who refused the gift. The handles – mounted on a custom wooden plate – have since been in storage at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for over 15 years .
Bill Whipkey, then head of the center's machine shop, then rediscovered handles in 1985, just as he was about to retire. He would then have asked his supervisor what to do with these three sleeves, and the latter would have told him to throw them away, can we read in an audit report from the NASA Office of Inspector General, published in 2018.
But Bill Whipkey preferred to take them home. Years later, the former employee then sold them to a collector.
In 2013, when it learned that the manual control installed next to Aldrin's seat was going to be offered for auction by RR Auction, of Boston, NASA initiated a procedure to attempt to retrieve it. Means have also been implemented to try to find the other two, so as to exhibit them at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum .
Finally, after three years of fruitless research, NASA gave up.
Note that another important piece was also offered at this auction. This is the spacesuit used in the movie 2001:A Space Odyssey . The item eventually sold for $370,000, making it the most expensive wetsuit ever sold at auction.
