Moon boxes and mystery men

See the box in this photo? It's more interesting than it looks. This is a box that went to the Moon.

Astronauts used the boxes to collect and bring back to Earth nearly 50 pounds of moon rocks and soil … Each of the boxes was machined from a single piece of aluminum, "seamless except for the lid opening, which had a metalized gasket that firmly sealed when closed."

The photo comes from the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.—a research facility that participated in the Manhattan Project and later was involved in designing equipment for the Apollo Project. Journalist Frank Munger writes about Y-12 and other parts of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the Knoxville News Sentinel.

This photo, which he posted on his blog, is also interesting because nobody knows who the three guys in the photo are. Munger was hoping that Boingers might be able to offer some leads.

Read Frank Munger's blog post