[meteorite-list] NASA sues Moonwalker Astronaut

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 19:24:57 +0200
Message-ID: <00e501cc3a6f$4bfe0020$e3fa0060$_at_de>

Hmm Mark,
for me that story sounds anyway too disgusting to be true, who knows?

But I don't know, how that would in any way affect meteorites?

Moon isn't Moon in terms of earthly laws.
Relevant for the ownership question of the Apollo rocks, that they are
indeed owned by the United States is the Space-Treaty and the Moon-Treaty -
which grants them ownership, cause they went there and picked them up for
research purposes.

In no way are lunar meteorites or any other meteorites affected which found
their way to Earth without help of NASA on a natural way.

And else.
At best the ownership of the Antarctic meteorites is still somewhat unclear
and not yet fully solved.

And as far as museum trades are concerned,
in general there are zero problems, without the very few exceptions, where
some countries gave to meteorites the legal status of a cultural heritage in
the sense of the 1970er UNESCO convention by means of national legislation
and in setting them on their national heritage lists.
Because if they concede to meteorites such a status, the national
collections become open for a flood of restitution claims for all
meteorites, where they can't document from the pit they were once sitting in
after the fall to the drawer in the depot, where they are sitting in,
without gap the chain of legal changes of ownership.
And in general almost no curator of the great historical collections can't
proof that for the very most of his historical meteorites inventory, because
until the very recent years nobody was even thinking about, that something
like a meteorite could need a documentation like an artifact or a fossil.

If they concede that status to a meteorite, UNIDROIT comes into play, and
the possibility of restitution is in that convention indeed retrograde -
would have to look - 75 years or so and in special cases unlimited.
(Here in Germany we shall e.g. restitute diverse things like the Nefertiti,
the Pergamon altar, the Priamos treasure - or remember China harassing
museums around the world to restitute their dinosaurs).

But there we don't have to worry, because of that, such countries like USA,
Austria, France, Japan - never will set meteorites onto their national
heritage lists,
because then their famous national meteorite collections would be so
endangered, that they would have in principle to be dissolved in the end.
Because at best, they have the invoices left of the dealers, they bought
their collections from the last 200 years over.

That this is a relevant problem, you saw, when South Africa made a drama,
when London traded out a piece of Cold Bokkeveld (which was handed over to
London by old Sir Herschel loooong time ago), that it would be cultural
heritage of South Africa.

To a huge problem that could become, for those countries where a longer
while ago, due to the blind hysteria of the national curators towards the
private sector meteorites were implemented into their heritage lists,
Like Australia e.g. - there nowadays based on Unidroit convention any state,
which finds there a meteorite in the catalogues of the Perth museum e.g.
having found in this state, can claim it already now back.
(Therefore I'm sometimes so excited in postulating, that the legislation has
immediately to be changed there)

(And worried I'm a little bit, if I look onto a known island with a very
famous meteorite collection, where some people in a kind of a anticipatory
obedience mix up the legal complexes and ask meanwhile procedures for their
acquisitions, as in their country as well as in the countries of the origin
the meteorites would be listed on the respective national heritage lists,
which they aren't - there I fear that they naively could run into the
UNIDROIT trap, so that the famous collection would have been to be dissolved
in worst case. Quite a bear's service - as we say in Germany (from La
Fontaine's fables)).


But all in all. Meteorites are free and have to stay free.


Martin

 


-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von Mark
Ford
Gesendet: Montag, 4. Juli 2011 17:57
An: Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Betreff: Re: [meteorite-list] NASA sues Moonwalker Astronaut


Couldn't agree more and i'm not even American! (It saddens me to see the US
slowly sliding ever downward, someone in the whitehouse really needs to take
a good east).

I never thought I would see the loss of US manned space flight in my
lifetime, yet at the end of this week that will be it!

Wonder if all the meteorite museum trades will be in question if they
started chasing all ex Nasa/Government material - one wonders where it would
end, which is why its lunacy, (and probably the result of Lawyers and pen
pushers taking over from where intelligent scientists, engineers and good
people once stood...)

Mark


 
-----Original Message-----
From: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of Michael
Gilmer
Sent: 04 July 2011 15:26
To: MexicoDoug
Cc: Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] NASA sues Moonwalker Astronaut

Hi Doug and List,

Happy Fourth of July to our astronauts who are being harassed for
having garage sales!

What an absolute waste of taxpayer money and manpower (again).

At what point did our government go an Syd Barrett acid trip and not come
back?

This kind of thing sickens me. It makes me ashamed to be associated
in any way with our mentally-defective government.

Has all common sense and decency gone out the window in this day of
lawsuits and ignorance?

The elites and their sycophants don't care that people are losing
their homes, going hungry, and going without medical care in this
country. But yet we can piss away vast sums of money to investigate,
harass, and prosecute people for selling dusty swatches of tape and
old obsolete cameras. It's friggin disgusting.

I've been saying this for 20 years and now the people are finally
catching up with what I have been saying - this government needs to be
replaced from the ground up. It's broken, it's been co-opted by
megalomaniac elitists, and the fed is being used as a tool to oppress
the people. Our founding fathers are rolling over in their graves
over 1000 things, and now this campaign of astronaut harassment makes
it 1001 things.

What message does this send to science-inspired youngsters who might
pursue a career in the space program? ---> "Hey kids! You'll retire
poor and your pension won't cover your basic expenses, so when you try
to have a garage sale, you'll be harassed for it and threatened with
criminal charges so we can prevent the spread of dirty tape and
obsolete cameras! God Bless America!"

I really need to stop reading or answering these posts before my
coffee kicks in. Is my vitriol running too freely this morning? LOL

Best regards and best of luck to our HERO astronauts,

MikeG

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On 7/4/11, MexicoDoug <mexicodoug at aim.com> wrote:
>
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/90053154?U.S.%20government%20sues%20
former%20astronaut%20over%20lunar%20camera#ixzz1R7PMDp3p
>
> Dear list,
>
> This is a very relevant case to meteorites and should not be taken
> lightly.
>
> They're at it again ... rewriting history and after 40 years of NASA's
> permission to take mementos from the Apollo era - now suing the sixth
> man to walk on the moon, Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 11, for trying to
> sell the camera they allowed him to have ... the precedent, I suspect
> is the identical one to the dust on the tape, which didn't exist, but
> they are gunning for now.
>
> Again, we are faced with the erosion of sensible property rights, a
> violation of traditional English and Roman law regarding the importance
> of possession IMO, in an effort to legislation effort from the bench at
> its finest (sarcasm). The question at hand: Can we apply today's
> standards retroactively to say NASA was wrong to allow astronauts to
> have things that were of no use to NASA at the time and with the full
> knowledge of NASA allowed to be kept by those involved. After 40 years
> of knowledge that the astronaut possessed this camera and other sundry
> things, it becomes a precedent, and NASA is even painting an American
> hero with a scarlet letter of "T" for "Thief"....
>
> From the article:
>
> "During the Apollo mission era, Mitchell said he and other astronauts
> got permission to take mementos from the spacecrafts. "We have dozens
> of pieces. All of us who flew to the moon," he said in a Palm Beach
> Post report.
>
> Mitchell's lawyer, Donald Jacobson, said, "Objects from the lunar trips
> to the moon were ultimately mounted and then presented to the
> astronauts as a gift after they had helped NASA on a mission."
>
> The government is asking the court to order Mitchell to hand over the
> camera, and declare that it has "good, clean and exclusive title" to
> the piece of space history.
>
>
> Best wishes
> Doug
> ______________________________________________
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Received on Mon 04 Jul 2011 01:24:57 PM PDT