Thad Roberts, a NASA intern, spent 7 years in federal prison after having sex on the Moon. Well, not the Moon itself, but on a bed covered in Moon rocks he'd stolen from his erstwhile employers. Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind The Most Audacious Heist In History is the name of the book written by Ben Mezrich - the guy who also penned the non-fiction tomes that card-counting drama 21 and The Social Network were based on - which recounts Thad's story. Which is a crazy story. Because it ends with him stealing a bunch of Moon rocks and then having sex on top of them. Something which you probably didn't know and, if you did, you'd be unlikely to forget about. A University of Utah student and high-achieving NASA co-op in Houston, Roberts dreamt of becoming an astronaut himself, and floating amongst the stars. In the end the closest he managed to get was teaming up with his girlfriend and a couple of other accomplices to steal lunar samples plus a Martian meteorite from a vault at NASA's Lyndon B Johnson Space Center, before attempting to sell them on the black market, where they'd go for anywhere from $1000 to $5000 a gram. A suspicious collector tipped off the FBI before they could earn that sweet moolah, however, so instead of making a cool $21 million they pleaded guilty to theft and went to prison. Oh and Roberts had also stolen dinosaur bones from a Utah museum, so maybe he was some kind of geeky kleptomaniac?
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
