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NASA Sues Apollo Astronaut To Return Moon Camera
Hugh Pickens writes "The US government has brought a lawsuit against astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man on the moon, after discovering that Mitchell had approached a NY auction house trying to sell a 16-millimeter data acquisition camera that was supposed to have been left in the lunar module. Mitchell argues that too many years have gone by for the government to pursue the camera as stolen and besides, it was given to the now 80-year-old moonwalker as a gift in line with NASA's then-policies governing spent equipment. However, the government contends it has no record of the camera being given to Mitchell who elected to remove it from the lunar module before parting ways with the spacecraft and returning to Earth, and the judge has ruled that the government is not bound by the statute of limitations denying Mitchell's motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The Apollo 14 astronauts were not the only crewmates to salvage parts of their lunar module as mementos: Astronauts aboard Apollo 12 and Apollo 15 ripped off parts of their moonwalking suits' life support backpacks before they were discarded onto the lunar surface. But what makes Mitchell's case different is that other astronauts asked their bosses before each mission for permission and provided a list of items they planned to keep while apparently Mitchell didn't. 'They give me a list of things they're going to bring back,' said Deke Slayton, head of NASA's astronaut corps, who died in 1993. 'I give it to the program office and they bring 'em back.' For his part, Mitchell does not seem ready to give up the camera as the case prepares to go to trial next year."
The conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this one...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Did I just read that the government is not bound by the statute of limitations?
..and here I thought the statute of limitations was specifically there to bind the government.
"His name was James Damore."
'They give me a list of things they're going to bring back,' said Deke Slayton, head of NASA's astronaut corps, who died in 1993.
A guy who died 18 years ago is the head of NASA's astronaut corps? That explains a lot.
Should we refer to it as the astronaut "corpse" then?
#DeleteChrome
"...government is not bound by..."
This pretty much explains how we got to where we are today.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Where we shit on our heros at a moments notice over really dumb things.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Seems like a silly choice if you ask me. Especially when the guy is 80-years-old and a national hero. Moon rocks, I understand - they're in limited supply and of real research value. A camera? C'mon.
As a sidenote, Space is about the only topic outside of friends and family that can still bring a tear to this grown man's eye. For me, it's the last romantic pursuit of mankind, and one which I treat with the utmost reverence. It's a shame that it's so wrapped up in politics.
How retarded they are mad at him for not leaving it on the moon. So instead of it sitting on the moon collecting space dust it's on earth and he wants to sell it, big deal? At some point it has to simply not be worth your time to bother with. It's not like there is some sort of statement you're trying to make because we aren't ever sending anyone back to the moon again. So no one will ever be able to repeat his 'crime' of bringing back moon garbage. I swear bureaucratic astound me at how they love to enforce trivial things.
...it's stories like these that make people look at you and say "Boy, I sure am glad the government cut their funding!"
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
This astronaut risks his life to go to the moon, and now the government isn't even letting him keep a little piece of garbage (essentially, that is what it is) that he brought back as a memento. How incredibly lame.
Since the camera was meant to be left there, this alleged crime would have occurred on the moon. Does this mean that the US federal government has jurisdiction on the moon?
He's not trying to keep it, he's trying to sell it.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
You'd think anything purposely designated to be left on the Moon is about as abandoned as property can get.
It is probably not as stupid as that test pilot with a broken foot hiding the fact from the Air Force in a glory seeking attempt to be the first to break the sound barrier. That is the best one can say about the incident.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Honestly, I'm not that surprised that of all the astronauts who walked on the moon that this would be an issue with Edgar Mitchell. He's always been a bit of an odd ball/loose cannon. He's a strong believer in psychics and thinks that UFOs are actually visiting aliens. He also claims to have been involved in remote healing and ESP. He founded the very New Agey Institute for Noetic Sciences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Noetic_Sciences (some may remember them for getting some degree of reference in Dan Brown's last book.) A lot of NASA has had very little patience with him. It isn't surprising that he'd both have neglected to do something like tell the rest of NASA what he was taking back and that he would have annoyed them enough that they would not end up finding an amicable resolution of the issue.
The big question is: How did he get it through quarantine on his return 40 years ago? Like nobody noticed that he had this movie camera in his pocket at the time and said, "Hey Edgar, is that a camera in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I am just guessing but I expect its not about possessing the "discarded" gear, rather its about trying to profit from it. If it had been passed on to his kids/grandkids or put in a museum for display I doubt the government would have cared.
Since the crime took place on the moon, does the judge even have jurisdiction?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Either it goes back to it's rightful resting place, or the guy who brought it back gets to keep it. Choose.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I'm sure they'll come to a fair and reasonable agreement that all charges will be dropped if he simply puts the camera back where he found it.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
It may not be abandoned in a legal sense. For example it is my understanding that a naval vessel remains property of the navy until stricken from the navy's registry. Also it may not be abandoned in the scientific sense either. A future mission may visit the site to study the effect of long term exposure on various materials. IIRC things like this have already been done, Apollo 12 landed near a robotic Surveyor probe and recovered some parts for such a purpose. The lander may be expended not abandoned?
As stated in the article, astronauts had to receive explicit permission for what they were bringing back. That permission is apparently documented for all the other moonwalkers, who pulled-off pieces of their discarded suits as mementos, and also for small boxes of crap they were authorized to bring along (such as pennants and patches). Why should the rules that applied to all the others not apply to him, simply because he decided not to obey them?
I'm also curious to know if such a request would've been honored. How many moonwalkers were permitted to keep more than just pieces of their suits, were others allowed to scavenge instrumentation or maybe the lunar rover's gearshift knob? Or were they pretty much limited to salvaging tiny mementos from their own personal equipment?
Frankly, if he smuggled the camera back without permission, it's not his and he needs to give it back and ask for forgiveness. It was unprofessional and unethical and unfair to the others who risked their lives and didn't come back with extra souvenirs they could try to sell tens of thousands of dollars because they played by the rules.
Theft is knowingly appropriating somebody else's property for your own use. However, abandoned property is not owned by anybody, and therefore cannot be stolen.
The moon, by international treaty, is not owned by anybody, especially the United States. The camera was a part of the lunar module, which was intended (and did, though minus the camera), to be abandonded on the lunar surface (after falling down and being turned into a pile of twisted metal).
IINAL
TFA mentions other souvenirs brought back by astronauts. They were not sued, which was attributed to them asking permission first. But did they try to sell their souvenirs? I think that is the critical difference. NASA doesn't have a problem with one of their Moon heroes owning a relic from his famous mission. They don't want a market in questionable NASA artifacts encouraging a black market in stolen artifacts.
There's probably something to be said though about the fairness of letting him profit while the astronauts who didn't bring things back to sell don't. Assuming he wasn't authorized to take it (he claims otherwise, but for the moment assume NASA is right), then it's kind of a slap in the face to all the others who played by the rules and didn't just grab whatever they could carry and bring it back as well. I'd kinda like to see what other astronauts have to say about this actually....
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
>fully automated tin cans
Apollo missions were NOT repeat NOT performed in automatic mode. Many many things (like navigation, trajectory, and trans-lunar/trans-earth/lunar landing course maneuvering) relied on manual optical equipment (celestial navigation), corect hand calculation on tiny calculators, and manual performance (punching the right buttons in the right sequence, manipulating control inputs like throttles and joysticks, correctly reacting to changing flight displays like altitude, rate of descent, artifical horizon, yaw status, computer readouts).
You theoretically could have put an LM onto the moon in full auto mode, but nobody ever did (Lovell on Apollo 13 was going to try it but didn't have the chance). All Apollo landings were made with manual control over the automated flight attitude subroutines, as in "I'll point this thing, speed it up or slow it down, and decide where/how/when to land it" while auto mode kept it properly aligned in XYZ axes. Even with the automated flight and flight subroutines it was hard enough.
So, even with what computerized flight and engine controls they had, those guys FLEW the Apollo missions. Like them or not, those folks weren't just pushing buttons and drinking Tang...
...Nazi plunder. Almost 60 years after the war ended, the original owners still have a right of recovery.
What, too Godwin?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
It was a part that was created for the purpose of being destroyed. So he took it without asking his boss which seems to be the norm then. Is this a case of "If I can't have it no one can"? It's an old outdated relic that serves no useful purpose aside from being some sort of space flight museum piece.
Let the guy keep/sell it. Jesus. Do we really need to waste money on a trial for this? NASA should be spending its money to further space projects, not going after people over an item destined for destruction they saved 40 years ago as a memento.