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Posted on 01/08/2012 9:53:18 AM PST by Nachum
MIAMI — NASA is questioning whether Apollo 13 commander James Lovell has the right to sell a 70-page checklist from the flight that includes his handwritten calculations that were crucial in guiding the damaged spacecraft back to Earth. The document was sold by Heritage Auctions in November for more than $388,000, some 15 times its initial list price. The checklist gained great fame as part of a key dramatic scene in the 1995 film "Apollo 13" in which actor Tom Hanks plays Lovell making the calculations. After the sale, NASA contacted Heritage
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
NASA needs to stick to teaching Muzzies how to like themselves. They’re out of the space business. At least until Barry is gone.
NASA may have a case that it’s an official document related to the mission, and as such, government property. I’ll side with them if the persons responsible for the maintenance, inventory and custody of such documents (up to and including the chain of NASA administrators) are fined and/or punished for failing to exercise their responsibilities all these decades. Otherwise, it’s hard to contend that they were “missing” and only came to light due to the auction.
government by affirmative action... there I said it
He’s had it what, 40+ years? Odd they didn’t seem to care that he kept it..after that long I would assume it was my property too.
Let him sell the damn thing. Sheesh, he’s had it for 40 years and nobody cared.
Key word there is TOLD. Get it in writing, men.
The astronauts were probably underpaid for the dangerous work they did, so they should get some monetary reward. And, as someone else mentioned, the gummint didn't even know the stuff was missing until it got sold. Typical government inventory. Hand it out and forget about it.
Way to go, NASA! Wait until a number of astronauts have sold memorabilia over a number of years, and THEN scream bloody murder; that they didn’t have the right to sell the items; and demand that these transactions be undone, items returned, etc.; and then put the “cherry on top” by turning around and GIVING the recovered items to someone else!
This is a perfect excuse to bring out the NASA SWAT team so they can shoot his dog!
The issue I see is that if you are a government employee....anything you write or manufacture or conceive....is gov’t property (by the rules and standards that I’ve known for thirty years). Even if I came up with a great software program....it’d still be gov’t property. I think in this case...unless he wants to donate it to a museum....that’s about the only way that the gov’t would allow it to go into a 3rd party’s hands.
Screw NASA. Those eff-ups couldn’t find their asses with a flashlight and a road map.
As I stated above, if the government is going to try to make the case that they are government property (which they probably are), decades of document custodians, archivists, curators, etc. and their supervisors need to be held accountable. Government property is required to be inventoried and accounted for, and presumably, people have been signing off on these for years.
The document may be in Lovell’s handwriting, but it is not his property. It belongs to the United States government. It is not Lovell’s to sell. Shame on him for trying.
This list belongs to the people that put him in that capsule and the people that paid for it, the American taxpayer. Having said that, if NASA did not lay claim to the materials years ago, demanding it now or the proceeds would appear to be unseemly for NASA as well as for Commander Lovell.
NASA has had 40 years to get the check list from Lovell. Screw ‘em!
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