My father, who was a scientist (genius, in fact), claimed it was totally true. So with that, and other projects he was involved with i.e. transporting guinea pigs at JPL (a la Star Trek), I have no reason not to believe it.
I believe it was a little more sophisticated than that, Joe! The first one they never recovered but the second lasted about two or three hours and then died.
You may remember Laika the Russian dog that was sent into space on Sputnik 2. At the time a much heralded feat which paved the way for human space travel. At the time I did not believe what was said about the dog and it's suffering was eventually admitted. I am all for advancement, but believe due to the Space race between Russia/America at that time, much was done that was unethical. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2367681.stm
The plot thickens. As it turns out, the moon rock that was given to Holland by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969 is actually petrified wood. Read the story here.
My guess is that this one (of four) "moon rock" rice size particle specimen was misidentified as coming from the Apollo 1 mission. "An investigation showed that United States Ambassador J. William Middendorf II had presented Drees with the "moon rock" on October 9, 1969. The Apollo 11 astronauts were visiting the Netherlands at that time on a goodwill tour. Drees' grandson speculates that his grandfather formed the mistaken impression that the "moon rock" he received was from the Apollo 11 mission. When Drees' "moon rock" was received by the Rijksmuseum in 1992, the museum phoned NASA to verify its provenance and was told over the phone, without seeing the piece, that it was "possible" it was a Moon rock".. The Apollo 11 crew visited 24 countries over 37 days, between 9/29/69 and 11/05/69. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_lunar_sample_displays
This is very sad. It is difficult enough getting people to respect the advances of science without red herrings like this to cloud the issues. Some scientists share in such bizarre hoaxes. For example, the now infamous "Piltdown man" skeleton, supposedly an ancestor of modern man, was nothing but a paleoanthropological hoax. How a scientist can live with himself after perpetrating such a fraud is beyond me. Moon rock is different to any Earth rock. It's older. Much older, and the age is relatively simple to measure at any university. Why Armstrong or Aldrin would perpetrate such a hoax I cannot imagine, but the hoax does immense damage. Perhaps they were unwitting accomplices in this? Many people, instead of applying the scientific method to determine whether Armstrong walked on the moon,prefer to apply a judicial principle: That particular moon rock is fake, therefore the entire story must be rejected. In court this may be a legal reason to reject all testimony from a particular witness, but nobody can claim that EVERYTHING the witness said was false. Fortunately there are many ways to prove that man was on the moon. For example, mirrors placed on the moon in 1969 were immediately used by institutions with suitable lasers to measure, for the first time, the distance from the Earth to the Moon, within a few inches. All those people; technicians, professors, thousands of students, must now all be part of the hoax. It quickly becomes far simpler to just go to the moon, than to create a hoax involving so many people. But the fake moon rock remains embarrassing, adding fuel to the conspiracy theory.
I don't think these ceremonial presentation plaques were made by the astronauts, and the one in question was presented by the US ambassador, during their visit. I don't think it was intentional or any type of conspiracy. Working under time constraints, they did a sloppy job of putting them together, and these very small samples were handled and mislabeled by many people. I think we over analyze actions in the luxury of hindsight.
This Apollo 11 Lunar Sample report was dated 1977. https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/A11SampleCat.pdf Neither NASA, nor the US Astronauts gave that rock to anyone. It was a US ambassador. All 135 Apollo Moon Rocks that were handed out to nations were very small and massed at 1.1 grams. This fake rock massed 89 grams! It was also glued to a piece of cardboard. The official Apollo Moon Rocks were encased in plastic globes.
I just found this. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2009-08-27-moon-rock-museum_N.htm "The Apollo 11 crew were on a goodwill tour, and on their visit to the Netherlands the AMERICAN AMBASSADOR to the country presented a gift of a piece of petrified wood to the then Prime Minister. THEY knew it was petrified wood, and the PM knew it was petrified wood. Such trinkets are common in the American Southwest, and not usually found many places elsewhere on Earth. So, it was merely a representative gift from the country of the United States, not ever presented as a piece of the Moon! None of the actual Lunar samples that were gifted to foreign nations and individuals were anywhere near the size of that fist-sized rock"! The actual Lunar gifts were small grains of sand (moon dust), and were encased in Lucite plastic, and mounted on commemorative plaques.
Giving a gift is always a good idea. I guess they never imagined a time in the future when everything would be examined as a conspiracy. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories.
When I was around ten years old, we used to visit my Mum's Aunt. She had on her mantel, a chunk of petrified rock. It was around six inches square, and looked like a piece of wood cut from a tree, but it was dark brown, and weighed like it was made out of lead. I always wondered what became of it?