[npr] What The Apollo Astronauts Did For Life Insurance
在1969年，保险公司对阿波罗11号宇航员成功登月以及返回地球的可能性不是太乐观，因此宇航员的人身保险费用是天文数字。如果你真的无法返回地球，你的家人该怎么办？宇航员们想出了一个聪明的方法。在发射前一个月，只要有空闲时间，三名阿波罗宇航员就会坐下来在信封上留下亲笔签名。即便在没有ebay的时代，人们对于这些有纪念意义的签名也有着强烈的需求。他们每个人都留下了数百封有亲笔签名的信封，让他们的朋友在发射日和登月当天，到邮局去盖上邮戳，然后寄给宇航员的家人。这是亲笔签名形式的人身保险。在1990年代，一个阿波罗11号宇航员的亲笔签名可拍卖到3万美元。
This week, Americans have been remembering Neil Armstrong. But before he walked on the moon, he had to solve a much more prosaic problem.
“You’re about to embark on a mission that’s more dangerous than anything any human has ever done before,” Robert Pearlman, a space historian and collector with collectspace.com, told me. “And you have a family that you’re leaving behind on Earth, and there’s a real chance you will not be returning.”
Exactly the kind of situation a responsible person plans for by taking out a life insurance policy. Not surprisingly, a life insurance policy for somebody about to get on a rocket to the moon cost a fortune.
But Neil Armstrong had something going for him. He was famous, as was the whole Apollo 11 crew. People really wanted their autographs.
“These astronauts had been signing autographs since the day they were announced as astronauts, and they knew even though eBay didn’t exist back then, that there was a market for such things,” Pearlman said. “There was demand.”
Especially for what were called covers -– envelopes signed by astronauts and postmarked on important dates.
About a month before Apollo 11 was set to launch, the three astronauts entered quarantine. And, during free moments in the following weeks, each of the astronauts signed hundreds of covers.
They gave them to a friend. And on important days — the day of the launch, the day the astronauts landed on the moon — their friend got them to the post office and got them postmarked, and then distributed them to the astronauts’ families.
It was life insurance in the form of autographs.
“If they did not return from the moon, their families could sell them — to not just fund their day-to-day lives, but also fund their kids’ college education and other life needs,” Pearlman said.
The life insurance autographs were not needed. Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon and came home safely. They signed probably tens of thousands more autographs for free.
But then, in the 1990s, Robert Pearlman says, the insurance autographs started showing up in space memorabilia auctions. An Apollo 11 insurance autograph can cost as much as $30,000.
中文：http://science.solidot.org/science/12/08/31/1459219.shtml