Sex on the Moon?

G’day to you! A pleasure to see your countenance grace these parts. So glad you clicked by. Fillup that mug in your fist and, be a devil, choose a treat. Did you make that recipe I geve you yesterday for Irish coffee pie? No, neither did I but I will as soon as I find that vanilla pudding or something similar I can substitute. I have another recipe I’ll run past you one of these days for ‘Sex in a pan’. Gotta be good, eh! Well, here’s a story about ‘Sex on the Moon’…sort of.

In 2002, Thad Roberts was a 25-year-old intern at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Like so many young lovers, he had promised his girlfriend the moon. Uniquely, he decided to actually deliver on the promise, and stole 17 pounds of moon rocks from the space agency that had been brought back to Earth by Apollo astronauts. He got caught selling the rocks on the Internet.

The stunt landed Roberts in prison for 100 months. Not willing to let his NASA experience or undergraduate degree in astrophysics go to waste, he spent his time behind bars contemplating the greatest mysteries of the universe, and conceived a theory to explain them. According to Roberts and his followers, quantum space theory (QST) could unify Einstein's general relativity with quantum mechanics at long last.

Robert's extraordinary story is chronicled in a new book by Ben Mezrich called "Sex On the Moon" (Doubleday 2011), which hit stores July 12. The title refers to the fact that, immediately after his out-of-this-world heist, Roberts and his girlfriend scattered the stolen moon rocks across his bed and had sex on them. Sounds … uncomfortable and, for my money, their relationship is getting off to a rocky start, eh!

Uncomfortable indeed. Personally a mattress made of Irish coffee pie would be a lot more interesting, don’tcha think?

See ya!

Bob

PS: A very happy birthday to my eldest sister, Gail Mary McKitterick, who is…a few years younger than I am.