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Moon Rock Winds Up In Court

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i'll-get-that-pesky-moon-rock-if-its-the-last-thing-I-do dept.

Lothar+0 writes "In United States v. Lucite ball containing lunar material (an actual case, I'm not making this up, folks), the feds are suing to get back a moon rock from an American who brought it back from Honduras. They're alleging that this rock from the Apollo 17 mission is stolen property; ironic considering that NASA took something that wasn't under U.S. jurisdiction."

2 of 412 comments (clear)

  1. seems pretty simple to me by jonwil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1.NASA retrieves rock from moon. US government now owns moon rock
    2.US government encases rock in lucite ball and gives ball to Honduran government. Honduran government now presumably owns moon rock (unless there was some condition attatched to rock that specifies that US government retains title in which case things are different).
    Honduran dictatorship then appears and rewrites the law giving them rights to all property of the old government, including the rock. Honduran dictatorship now owns rock (presumably).
    Now somehow the rock gets into the possession of the colnel. If the transfer to the colnel was illegal under honduran law (i.e. the colnel stole the rock) then the colnel should be charged with theft and the person who bought the rock from him should, at best, be charged with possession of stolen property (but if you buy stolen propery then you cant be found guilty of possession unless it can be proved that you knew it was stolen when you bought it). If the transfer happened legally under honduran law(because the dictatorship gave it to him) then presumable the colnel now owns the rock and therefore he can legally transfer that which he owns to someone else in exchange for money.

  2. The problem with the statement that.. by mindstrm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "IN almost all cases, owning lunar material is illegal unless you can show a clear paper trail back to nasa" is kind of scary.

    What they are implying is not that posession of moon rocks is restricted, but that, unless you can show clearly how you got it, it was probably stolen (because if it wasn't, you'd be able to prove how you got it).

    This scares me a bit, though. How long until we are required to show chain of custody documetns & receipts for every single object we own, lest the government sieze them as stolen?

    And whatever happened to posession being 9/10ths of the law?