True Crime Book Review: Sex on the Moon by Ben Mezrich

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I picked this book up from the charity shelf of a nearby supermarket when I was doing my grocery shop, and having just now finished reading the book, I'm glad I didn't pay full price for it. I don't tend to read true crime stories, but this book is the story of a crime that was committed against NASA, and I've always been interested in space travel. I remember a few years ago hearing about a guy who stole some moon rocks from NASA - the story in the press at the time was that he'd done it to impress his girlfriend, and that he'd scattered rocks and dust on his bed so they could make love on top of it, in a sense having "sex on the moon". Like a lot that gets into the media, the story was only partially true. Written with the assistance of the main perpetrator, this is a fictionalised account of the events leading up to the theft, the crime itself, and something of the aftermath. Thad Roberts was a very talented university science student who developed an ambition to one day become an astronaut. He was enrolled in a co-operative scheme between NASA and the university that enabled promising students like himself to spend some of their time working as interns at the Johnson Space Centre. He did well as a "co op", spending some of his time working as a diver in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (where astronauts practice EVA techniques in a huge tank of water) and doing lab work for scientists, including the famous geologist Dr Everett Gibson. It was during this time that Roberts learned that Dr Gibson had Lunar samples from all the Apollo landings in a safe in his laboratory, and started to hatch a plan to steal them - apparently first as a fantasy, an intellectual exercise, but eventually he did it for real, recruiting three other students to help him. Although Roberts is presented as something of a flawed genius, the crime itself wasn't that clever - he obtained the keypad code for a door at the lab by deception, and carefully evaded the movements of the security cameras to get to the lab itself. Having obtained access to the safe, he failed to open it on the spot, so he and his girlfriend simply loaded the safe onto a dolly and wheeled it out to the car they had waiting outside, before taking it to a hotel room they'd booked and forcing the door open. They were already doomed to fail before they did the theft, because Roberts had contacted a rock collector by email to sell some of the moon rocks for $100,000. The Belgian rock collector did the right thing and contacted the FBI. The result was that when Roberts and his gang went to meet with their supposed customers, they walked right into an FBI trap. Ironically, this was on 20 July 2002, exactly 33 years to the day after the landing of Apollo 11. If I ever committed a crime, I hope I'd be less amateurish. By all accounts, Roberts was a very bright student, and had all the qualities to give him a good chance to be an astronaut one day. If he'd stayed straight, maybe he'd have been an astronaut on the ISS right now, with a good chance of making it to the Moon in a few years. But he threw that chance away on a senseless crime. What a loser. Instead of becoming an astronaut, he earned himself eight years in jail. The book reads almost like a novel, and it is definitely fictionalised, with some names changed, and details of events and conversations filled in that the author wouldn't be aware of, in order to make the story flow. It focuses very much on Thad Roberts, and the thought processes, and it's definitely structured to make the reader sympathetic towards him. The general picture drawn is of a kid who was a bit of a dreamer, always keen to impress people, and a bit naive. Looking at the facts of the case, he could just as easily be seen as a ruthless manipulator who was too arrogant to imagine that he'd get cought. Whatever the truth, he's done his time now, and managed to complete his education after being released from jail. I understand he now works as a physicist at a private think tank. Obviously there's no way NASA would ever have him back. I think the bigges disappointment for me is that - although the book focuses very much on Thad Roberts - it doesn't succeed in getting to the bottom of why he did it. Love? Greed? Wanting to prove to himself that he could get away with a big crime? Possibly even he doesn't know. This is one of those books I'll read on, but probably re-donate to a charity shop.