NASA Sting Busts Woman Selling Purported Moon Rock

sgcxf949 writes "Woman attempts to sell a moon rock and gets busted by NASA. Who would have thought that NASA had undercover agents?" Evidently not the subject of this story, who offered to trade her sample of alleged lunar rock for $1.7 million.

Comments

How do you steal moon rock?

[DWMorse]

How do you steal moon rock? I hear it's a great conductor for making Portals, though.

Re:How do you steal moon rock?

[Arancaytar]

How do you steal moon rock?

The moon isn't exactly hard to find. It's right up there. Just go, break off a piece, and come back. :P

Re:How do you steal moon rock?

[The Archon V2.0]

Hm, shouln't NASA be helt accountable for the moon rocks THEY originally STOLE from the moon then?

They were going to be, but the lunar ambassadors sent to negotiate reparations were blown up by the Boston police department soon after they landed.

Re:How do you steal moon rock?

[santax]

RTFA! Sjezus. NASA previous shipped the rocks via mail. It got stolen. They are still searching for those missing parts since it had cost them about 50.000 per gram to get the rock here.

Re:How do you steal moon rock?

[e9th]

It's not just the Feds you can steal them from. From TFA:

...with the exception of two sets of goodwill gifts presented to 135 nations, the 50 states, and the U.S. provinces

According to this week-old story

A recent count showed 10 states and more than 90 countries could not account for their shares of the gray rocks.

Re:How do you steal moon rock?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would want em? Pure poison.

--Cave Johnson

Well, obviously it's fake.

[Radak]

Eh NASA? wink wink, nudge nudge.

Re:Moon Shoes

[Z00L00K]

Any buyer paying $1.7 million for a piece of rock that's supposed to be from the moon, but not sold by NASA probably deserves to part with that money.

B.t.w. as far as I know none of the material collected from the moon is for sale.

Re:Who offered 1.7 Million?

[creat3d]

I don't think finding a legit buyer would've been so hard... there are people out there with lots of money that would jump on the occasion to own a piece of the Moon, one-upping their friend's diamond encrusted hummer and the other guy's collection of Queen Victoria's used panties.

This annoys me somehow

[Omnifarious]

The idea that all the moon rock in the world is owned by the US government and any in private hands must therefor be stolen is somehow very annoying to me. Makes me wonder if you could finance a robotic trip to the moon that had the goal of returning 100kg of moonrock and selling it on the open market. Then NASA would have a much harder time proving that people didn't privately own moonrock.

Re:This annoys me somehow

[Beelzebud]

Well until you get some private investors to pony up the necessary cash to do this, I'd say it's safe to track down the lineage of any moon rocks currently on the planet to NASA.

Re:This annoys me somehow

[mark-t]

Sure you could.

It wouldn't stop NASA from probably doing an inquiry, but such an endeavor would have enough of a paper trail that it would not be difficult to substantiate your story. The hardest part of the whole thing would be making sure that the launch itself was legal, and providing sufficient evidence that your return trajectory would not constitute any sort of health or safety hazard to the general public.

NASA might not like it, because it would lower the value of the moon rocks that they possessed, but given proof of your moon rock's origins, there is nothing they could legally do to you.

Re:This annoys me somehow

[GWRedDragon]

Worse, if you RTFA you will see discussion of the fact that moon rock samples were twice given to each of the 50 states and to each existing country at the time.

There is absolutely no reason to assume that with all those countries, all of them legally prohibited the transfer of state gifts to private individuals. I'm sure several of those could be privately held, completely legally.

Of course, it would still be super rare and the owner would likely retain the gift set itself, which would pretty easily differentiate the sample from those stolen from NASA.

You can't trust even NASA...

[peppepz]

Apparently they gave a fake moon rock to the prime minister of the Netherlands a couple of years ago.

Huh?

[Outtascope]

I'm normally a big NASA supporter, but when exactly did NASA get into law enforcement? NASA agents? wtf.

Re:Pieces of it are bound to fall sometimes...

[UnknowingFool]

It is possible to own them if they fell to Earth; however, as you said, rocks of this origin are very rare. The vast majority of them came from samples taken during the Apollo missions. While they have been distributed as gifts, some have been stolen. It is more likely that this rock is one that has been stolen rather than one fallen to Earth.

Re:Government idiocy knows no bounds

[mark-t]

The point of buying an authentic moon rock would be to possess something that not very many people possess. It is something that probably only a collector of obscure paraphernalia would prize... and is not likely to be considered of any real worth by most people, except to possibly try to resell.

However, given that a person is inclined to want to own a piece of the moon, the reason to not buy a moon rock is because, considering that almost 100% of the rocks on the earth that are verifiably from the moon are very well accounted for, any private sale of an alleged moon rock is almost certainly founded on a false claim of the rock's origin, or else is stolen property.

Such an offer of sale could be trivially met with the challenge that the seller provide proof of the origins of the moon rock and its acquisition, including notarization, which would not be difficult to obtain, given the likely difficulty that one would encounter in either or both of these.

NASA as Law Enforcement.

[lorg]

NASA as Law Enforcement; If they had a rendition program they could really start using that "In space nobody can hear you scream" tag line again.

I wonder what their badge looks like .. a giant golden rocket?

Re:the moon is not a national park

[bigstrat2003]

Why can't you? That's how every scrap of land that someone owns today originated, when it comes down to it.