ODT says:

I doubt that they “had” to go through customs; I’m pretty sure that they did this as a joke, and that the astronauts, NASA, and the U.S. Customs Department were all in on this joke. Although it’s tough to imagine any governmental department as having a sense of humor, this appears to be a historic example of the kind of imaginative, modern, science-is-fun attitude that prevailed in the US during the late 1960s and early 1970s. It’s a joke about imagining extraterrestrial travel as becoming commonplace enough to someday require a standard customs protocol. There’s also a bit of tongue-in-cheek attitude about typically pervasive governmental red tape thrown in there for good measure. I miss the days when there seemed to be actual human beings in charge of stuff like this.

anon says:

There’s no bureaucracy like American bureaucracy!

Matt Moore says:

ODT – I doubt it was a joke… more likely it was just to set a precedent, just in case space travel does become commonplace.

ODT says:

ODT – I doubt it was a joke… more likely it was just to set a precedent, just in case space travel does become commonplace.

You’re probably right. However, I do remember that people (and sometimes institutions) did things like this back then in a sort of “isn’t it cute that we still have to do this” manner, as if to demonstrate how fast everything was changing as a result of the increasingly widespread implementation of so many advanced technologies and their sometimes humorous effects on the entrenched mundanities of everyday life. This has the feel of one of those quaint up-to-the-minute Life or Look magazine articles.