FBI Arrests 4 College Interns For Stealing Lunar Materials 289
An anonymous reader "Today, the fourth member of a group of college interns working at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston turned herself in after being charged with conspiracy to steal government property. Click2Houston.com has an article with a video feed covering many details of the case. Apparently, three of the alleged theives went to Florida and tried to sell, online, the 5 oz. of moon rocks and meteorite material they lugged out of the JSC in a 600lb case. Here's another article from the Houston Chronicle."
What did they expect.. (Score:5, Insightful)
They deserve to get caught..
Who would buy these? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is, last time I checked, *one* moon rock in the U.S. (or the world?) that is in any way available to the public. You can go and touch it. I did. Whee. Looked like a rock, to me.
Re:Government property? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not split geopolitical hairs.
thank you, you stupid fucking intern (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Government property? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Government property? (Score:5, Insightful)
At any rate, the point here is that these particular rocks were most certainly US property, and these assholes were trying to sell them to a private collector. I fail to see any gray area.
Re:Government property? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is the US still actually a member of the UN? I thought their representative just went along to the meetings for the free cookies!
Here's what went down... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you seen the original photos? I mean the originals. The real originals.
Let me tell you a story, it's about Mars. You see, Mars has this face on it, right? It's a human face, that's how the story goes, if I recall. I saw the original feed. I had access to all of those images. Every single mars image we have ever taken, straight from the archives.
You know what? All those "Mars Face" images are doctored. In a really easy way, just playing around with overlay and contrast and you get a very nice face.
If you think that analyzing photographs and only photographs is considered real research than you really do need to take a forensics course when you get into college. If it would have been real research they would have explained and counter-proofed all the rebuttals.
Such as why there is no crater. Which I think is the stupidest one of all. We are talking landing at less than 2 feet per second. 2 feet per second. You jump harder than that dipshit. I don't see craters forming on NBA courts everywhere. Hell, I don't see craters forming out in the dirt when you jump up and down.
Anyway, go open your eyes read up on light reflection on the moon and physics, and you will see that you sound like a complete fucking moron right now trying to say this is a hoax.
Re:Here's what went down... (Score:3, Insightful)
You wouldn't happen to be their defense lawyer, would you? Because that's exactly the argument I'd take to try to make to weasel out of this. "It's ahl a gubmint cohnspeerasee yah honah! These heah rocket wizahds was TRICKED into a life ah crime!"
I'm not a lawyer, but if I recall correctly, entrapment only occurs when the enforcement organization actively initiates the transaction or crime.
For example, let's say that the FBI puts two and two together (as they're apparently good at doing) and thinks that Senator Hollings is on the take. They call him up, offer him some money in return for some legislation, and pay him off. Well, ok, that's not a great example because we already know he's on the take, so this is just a sting proving his behavior. ;-)
Instead, let's say your local police force sends an undercover officer to your house and the cop convinces/coerces you to take his gun and hold up the convenience store down the street. He goes with you and arrests you when you pull out the gun in the store. That's entrapment.
If, however, I start asking around about where I can get a gun fast and the police get tipped off and start an undercover operation to catch me doing whatever it is I'm planning, that's not entrapment.
Regardless of their original intent, at least one of these four posted an email saying they had lunar materials for sale on a web site and subsequently followed through with the theft and attempted sale. Their intent could conceivably have bearing on sentencing, but shouldn't on whether or not they're guilty of the crime. They said they had moon rocks for sale, they stole moon rocks, they tried to sell the stolen moon rocks. Period.
(And yes, I read the Chron article. [chron.com])