On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted an American flag in the lunar dust — maybe the most famous flag in human history. According to the most commonly told account, about how much did NASA pay for it? $5.50 from a government supply catalog $1,200 for a custom space-rated weave It was hand-sewn by Betsy Ross's descendants for free $25,000 including the special flagpole None Before Apollo 11 launched, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins faced a very earthbound problem: no insurance company would write an affordable life-insurance policy on men riding a rocket to the Moon. What did they do to provide for their families in case they didn't come back? Congress passed a special astronaut death benefit They signed hundreds of postal covers their families could sell NASA quietly self-insured each crew for $1 million Life magazine paid their premiums in exchange for exclusive stories None On October 29, 1998, the space shuttle Discovery thundered off the pad at Cape Canaveral carrying a payload specialist who had made his first spaceflight back when Kennedy was president. How old was John Glenn when he returned to orbit? 68 71 77 82 None Roughly 600 million people watched Neil Armstrong's first step live in 1969. Decades later, NASA went looking for the original high-quality telemetry tapes of the moonwalk — the raw footage, far sharper than what TV viewers saw. What did the search conclude? They were destroyed in a warehouse fire in 1974 They were most likely erased and reused for satellite data A retired engineer had them in his garage in Ohio The Soviets stole them during a 1972 exchange program None Alone on the Moon after their historic walk, Armstrong and Aldrin discovered a serious problem inside the cramped lunar module: a snapped-off circuit breaker — the very switch needed to arm the engine that would carry them home. What ended up fixing it? A felt-tip pen jammed into the breaker slot Chewing gum and a strip of duct tape Mission Control rerouted the circuit from Houston A spare breaker stowed in the survival kit None Stumper. America won the race to put a man on the Moon — but the Soviets got hardware there first. On September 13, 1959, their Luna 2 probe became the first man-made object to reach the lunar surface. How did it "land"? It slammed into the Moon at more than 6,000 miles per hour It floated down on a parachute It bounced to a stop on inflated airbags It fired retro-rockets for a gentle touchdown None Time's up
