'Pawn Stars' boss Rick Harrison doesn't even make an offer for 11-year-old seller's Apollo relic

Seeing young guests on "Pawn Stars" is rare, but in an earlier episode of the show, an 11-year-old hoped to get half a million dollars for the item he had brought. Maybe it could have helped him pay for his education expenses, like school and college. Unfortunately, he had to leave empty-handed as Rick Harrison did not even bother to make him an offer. He had a very good reason for doing so, too.

The guest had brought his item in a big plastic box and needed help from Harrison to open it. What he had inside was truly fascinating. It was a honeycomb-like structure that the 11-year-old believed to be the heat shield from the iconic Apollo mission that went to the moon. He said that his great-grandfather had found it washed up on the beach in the Bahamas. At the time, the Apollo program was the only thing it was used for.

If this truly was a part of the heat shield from the capsule that went to the moon, this was going to be worth a lot of money. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s mission to the moon is considered to be one of the greatest achievements in human history. The thought of a man walking on the moon still sends chills down the spines of a lot of people. While the heat shield looked cool, Harrison needed to be absolutely sure about what was in front of him.

So, he called in an expert, and in came Mark, the administrator of the Clark County Museum. “Now, the heat shield part of the space program was one of the most important parts. It’s an aluminum honeycomb, and then this is a phenolic resin is what they call it. And this was literally individually injected in each part of the honeycomb."

The amount of heat a spacecraft has to endure upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere is unimaginable. Studies suggest that it might even get hotter than the sun. To have a heat shield that reduces the temperature to something humans can endure inside is simply astounding for its time. It was considered a technological marvel, and rightfully so. However, the shield that the guest brought did not endure that.

The expert said that NASA tested several such heat shields before the actual mission to the moon was executed, and this was one of them. There were holes in the structure that should not have been there if this were the final design. The lack of charring on the surface suggested that this heat shield might have gone to the upper atmosphere but never made it out and then back in.

Since this was not from the moon mission, Harrison did not offer the guest any price. However, the 11-year-old wasn’t too disappointed. “It’s still extremely cool and I still love it,” he said, much to the pawn shop owner’s amusement.

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