It does make sense. I don’t think they wanted to set the precedent that coming back from certain types of spaceflight “didn’t count” in terms of needing to pass through customs and it was just a free-for-all. It’s the same way you still have to pay your taxes when you’re the president, a relic of an older and more adherence-to-the-system time than the modern day.
I mean, it was clearly at least partly in jest, but apparently the form was real and they really did go through customs for real.
https://www.space.com/7044-moon-apollo-astronauts-customs.html
It does make sense. I don’t think they wanted to set the precedent that coming back from certain types of spaceflight “didn’t count” in terms of needing to pass through customs and it was just a free-for-all. It’s the same way you still have to pay your taxes when you’re the president, a relic of an older and more adherence-to-the-system time than the modern day.