ife-Cheater Steals NASA Moon Rocks, Goes to Jail: Book Review

Review by Jacob Henkoff
Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Ben Mezrich has a knack for writing
books that become movies with unlikeable protagonists. “The
Accidental Billionaires,” about Mark Zuckerberg and the
founding of Facebook, was turned into “The Social Network.”
“Bringing Down the House,” the story of 6 M.I.T. students who
made a killing in Las Vegas, was filmed as “21.”
His new book, “Sex on the Moon,” introduces Thad Roberts,
who, at age 25, stole a safe full of moon rocks from the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration while he was an
intern there in 2002.
Mezrich wastes no time with preliminaries; he opens the
book with a well-paced getaway scene which ends with the perfect
tagline for this movie-to-be, already optioned by Sony.
“He had promised to give (his girlfriend) the moon. The
only difference was, Thad Roberts was the first man who was
actually going to keep that promise.”
It sounds nice, but Roberts actually started planning the
theft before he even met fellow intern Rebecca. Mezrich is
leading the reader on, insisting there’s a scintillating
romantic adventure within this sordid tale.
It really begins when Roberts hears that as soon as a moon
rock is taken out of NASA’s pristine, high-security vault -- to
be used in experiments or displayed at a lecture -- it’s deemed
trash. An existential crisis ensues, and Roberts decides he’ll
be helping the whole world if he removes this “trash” and
sells it to fund his own research.

Strict Parents

Mezrich does what he can to pump up his story, building
suspense as he takes you much too slowly through Roberts’s life.
His strict Mormon parents kick him out of the house for having
pre-marital sex. He marries the woman with whom he transgressed,
joins the intern program at NASA, meets Rebecca and starts
cheating on his wife, then steals a safe full of moon rocks.
To top it all off, when Roberts tries to sell the rocks, an
FBI sting ends his dreams of wealth and power. After seven years
in jail teaching physics, Roberts reached out to Mezrich and
pitched him the idea of writing his life story.
NASA’s intern program is sure to get a boost in applicants
since Roberts is surrounded by incredibly attractive people
there. It’s hard to tell if Roberts is lying to make himself
look cooler, or if Mezrich is just trying to make it easier to
turn his book into a film full of Hollywood beauties.
The heist itself occurs a little more than two-thirds of
the way in, and consists of Roberts, Rebecca and another young
woman simply walking into NASA, grabbing the safe, loading it
into a car and driving back to a motel. By this time, I was so
sick of Roberts’s hypocrisy, adultery and pompous attitude that
I couldn’t wait until he got caught.
Mezrich has roped the audience in with his catchy title and
misleading catch-phrase, as if this were anything but another
cash cow. My advice: Wait for the film.

“Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most
Audacious Heist in History” is published by Doubleday (308
pages, $26.95).