And finally…That’s lunar-cy

Buzz Aldrin, the second man ever to step foot on the surface of the moon has this week revealed what must be one of the most bizarre - and surprisingly modest - travel expenses claims in history.

The man who followed Neil Armstrong onto the lunar surface shared the unique paperwork with his followers on Facebook 46 years after the mission in July 1969.

The records include signatures from Aldrin and a Honolulu customs inspector, and one of the most unusual itemised itineraries in history: Florida to Moon to Pacific Ocean to Hawaii, and then back home to Houston, Texas.

The official travel voucher also mentions the USS Hornet the ship that picked up Aldrin and the Apollo 11 crew after they landed in the Pacific.

Aldrin was reimbursed exactly $33.31 (about $215 in today’s dollars) for “travel expenses”—likely the costs of having to drive his own car to and from Ellington Air Force Base in Houston.

Luckily, he was not responsible for paying for actual transportation from Earth to the moon—or even to Cape Kennedy, Florida, where Apollo 11 launched, as he had a government plane for that.

Upon returning, Aldrin actually had to declare to customs the items he was bringing back from the moon: mainly rock and dust samples, said to weigh about 50 pounds in total.

The astronauts were put into quarantine for 21 days out of fear that they might be carrying undiscovered pathogens. (They weren’t).

These forms might have been done more as a joke than anything, but today, astronauts still have to go through customs in the country that they land in.