the crew of Apollo 15 had been reprimanded by NASA for smuggling hundreds of specially stamped envelopes to the moon and back as part of a scheme to sell them privately on their return and use the money to set up trust funds for their children. Separately, fifteen of the twenty-four Apollo astronauts were reported to have been charging for autographs, at $5 a time. Nixon’s Justice Department opened an investigation into what it called the “commercialization of space.” Humiliated NASA chiefs ensured that none of the three Apollo 15 crew would ever go into orbit again, but the myth of the
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