You can buy all kinds of memorabilia on eBay, often for a pittance. It takes a good eye and often meticulous research to know if it has historical significance, a task way beyond volume sellers. In 2010, space historian and collector Robert Pearlman paid $5.50 for a bundle of "remove before flight" tags. These are tags attached to parts of aircraft like pins and covers that are protective on the ground, but must be removed in order for the aircraft to function. He intended to use the tags, listed as from the space shuttle program, as giveaways.
About a year later, Pearlman decided to check out the numbers on the tags. Such tags are labeled so they can be inventoried before flight to make sure each component is removed. By cross-referencing the numbers with NASA records, he found the tags were removed from the doomed space shuttle Challenger before it exploded soon after launch 40 years ago this week. But NASA was in flux at the time, and Pearlman had no luck in finding out more about the journey the tags took from NASA to eBay. He hopes to trace their story before donating the tags to a museum. Read his account of these tags so far at Ars Technica. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: collectSPACE)
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