12 Mar
2013
12 Mar
'13
12:35 a.m.
On 3/11/2013 10:29 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
mc68010 wrote:
It does sort of say NASA on it. It is actually right on it.
I think a case could be made that these are
government property
I don't think a case can be made for that without digging up actual
records. At this point the government would need to prove that it is
their property.
Irrelevant. The government buys billions of dollars of
stuff every
year that is "never meant to be sold", and eventually it all gets
sold, unless it's classified, in which case it is declassified then
sold or scrapped. (Sometimes after declassification there's no value
other than as recyclable materials.)
I have more than one friend with stuff they shouldn't have. Stuff they
bought at auction. It is more bureaucratic error. Classified and some
even up to the nuclear level. It slips through all the time.
Even if it could be shown that they didn't explicitly intend to sell
it, they would also have to show that it wasn't abandoned, since
abandoning property with no demonstrable intent to recover it forfeits
ownership.
That was by mistake. They can have it all back. Anytime they decide to.
If they even decide to care. They rush in with FBI agents and take back
moonrocks all the time. Seriously. Every rock from the moon was just
'loaned' to whoever was allowed to hold it.
What is really amazing is how sloppy the bookkeeping during the Apollo
program was. They were in such a hurry they just didn't care.
If NASA decided they wanted them back I imagine
they could be taken
back.
Not likely. NASA surplused by public auction an incredible amount of
stuff from the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. There's no
reason to believe that this wasn't legitimately surplused.