How an Intern Stole NASA's Moon Rocks 123
schwit1 submitted a story telling the strange tale of how in 2002, rogue NASA interns stole millions of dollars in moon rocks from a building designed not to let that happen. I'd suggest taking the whole thing with a little bit of salt.
salt not required (Score:5, Informative)
Haven't read TFA yet, but the general story is true. I worked at JSC and knew Shae.
The samples were in a floor safe that they rolled out of the building on a dolly. The sting was set up as if a Belgian rockhound wanted to buy some of the samples, and they agreed to meet in Florida. The 3 other interns crossed state lines for the sting. Shae stayed in TX that weekend to attend scuba classes.
Re:salt not required (Score:5, Funny)
I'd suggest taking the whole thing with a little bit of salt.
Isn't that what interns said... Minus the salt part.
Re:salt not required... Rocks.... (Score:3, Funny)
"The samples they took were from every Apollo mission, ever. Sometime between the heist and its resolution, Tiffany and Thad arranged the moon rocks on a bed--and had sex amongst them."
Talk about getting your rocks off....
Apply sarcasm filter.... (Score:2)
...Tiffany and Thad arranged the moon rocks on a bed--and had sex amongst them.
We can abolish this statement as heresy, in accordance with /. traditions.
The Moon Rocks were safe, as there was no 'actual' sex involved...fantasies do not count.
What?? /.!
This is
Re:salt not required (Score:5, Insightful)
I was about to say the same thing - this is actually a pretty well known incident. Had the poster taken the minuscule effort required to click on any of the links in the article, he'd have found the news stories supporting the article.
Re:salt not required (Score:4, Informative)
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I was about to say the same thing - this is actually a pretty well known incident
No kidding. And the movie Kelly's Heroes [imdb.com] was true too. I mean, seriously - can't anyone do some research on WWII? It was a pretty well known incident.
private collectors (Score:2)
There are plenty of people with money who would buy moon rocks, if they could get enough provenance to brag about it, 'specially to their friends with stolen art works.
Better written LATimes article (Score:4, Informative)
Can be found here [latimes.com].
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They also destroyed three decades worth of handwritten research notes by a NASA scientist that had been locked in the safe.
Nasa locked a research scientist in the safe for 30 years?
I don't want to RTFA!!! (Score:2)
I already have this "Indiana Jones" thing playing out in my head when they say "...in a building designed to prevent it" If I read the article, I think that image would be dashed.
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Blech (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, though, the thing read like a synopsis of a bad TV movie. It may or may not be true, but it's telling that the perp has a book coming out that is an 'augmented' account of the heist, that the author of the linked piece is summarizing what was told him by the perp.
IOW, don't take it with a grain of salt. Kill it with Na fire.
Re:Blech (Score:5, Informative)
Thad was a real type-A personality type. Very self confident and extroverted. I don't know much about how the other students got involved in the heist, but I'd imagine Thad was the ringleader.
Shae was probably allowed in on the plan because she could have supplied the scuba gear for breathing in the nitrogen-purged storage room. There's no reason they would have needed wetsuits, though.
Re:Blech (Score:5, Informative)
Actually come to think of it... I don't think any ROOMS in 31N are purged. If anything, only the samples themselves are stored in gastight purged containers.
The breathing gear stuff is probably completely salt-worthy. All I know is Shae was going for a scuba cert at the time, and that's why she wasn't in Florida with the other 3 when they got busted.
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Just a thought; If these Moon Rocks are so valuable, why doesn't NASA go and get some more? Consider the market for these items, maybe NASA could fund groups of explorer types that want to go and get their own rocks. It's not the miner that makes the fortune, its the shop keeper that sells him the Shovel.
Re:Blech (Score:5, Funny)
In a related story, NASA announced a groundbreaking discovery today, with some startling implications. The good news is, they have discovered that the Moon supports microbial life. The bad news is, it's chlamydia.
This article is hoplessly wrong pulp fiction (Score:5, Informative)
Not only is it somewhat painful to read, as far as I can tell it is mostly fiction, no fact checking at all. And it also seems partially plagiarized from this article:
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-moonrocks23jun06,1,1392690.story?coll=la-home-magazine [latimes.com]
And that one is by an actual reporter with actual fact checking. Obviously some of it is left up to how the perpetrators described it, but it doesn't have stupid made up stuff like a nitrogen filled lab and thermal suits and such. I would guess the crime played out more like the LA Times article, rather than this embellished piece of pulp fiction
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Re:This article is hoplessly wrong pulp fiction (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This article is hoplessly wrong pulp fiction (Score:4, Funny)
I think they just calculated the replacement cost.
So that's why we're going back to the Moon?
Re:This article is hoplessly wrong pulp fiction (Score:5, Interesting)
Back when I was in high school my father was the chairman of the historical society in town and someone had at one time donated a pretty large moon rock to the museum.
We looked in to selling it because the interest of the money in the bank would pay all the museums bills indefinitely.
Turns out...
NASA is the only place that can verify the authenticity of a moon rock. They would not guarantee that they would give it back. A moon rock is a national treasure. A national treasure can not be owned so it can't be legally sold.
What's funny is I had no idea of the potential value of the small object we had in our house. The rock was almost the size of a small lemon.
Re:This article is hoplessly wrong pulp fiction (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC there was some confusion on the issue awhile back in that some small moon rocks were sealed inside paperweights and given as gifts very early on. This caused some brouhaha when someone who found themselves in possession of one wanted it authenticated and NASA hadn't known about it.
Re:This article is hoplessly wrong pulp fiction (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This article is hoplessly wrong pulp fiction (Score:4, Informative)
Others have studied the rats gaseous emissions directly.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/845703 [nih.gov]
Re:This article is hoplessly wrong pulp fiction (Score:5, Informative)
I did a summer internship with NASA a few years after this incident, and of course the interns all got a nice tour of the moonrock facility.
As modemboy points out, the "nitrogen filled lab" and such is pure bunk. The moonrocks are kept in nitrogen-purged safes (and in a separate room with nitrogen-filled gloveboxes used for preparing samples to send out to researchers), but the room containing the safes isn't itself filled with nitrogen. There is an "air-lock," but it's the usual type of clean-room airlock, used to keep out dust between the changing room where you suit up in disposable clean-room clothes and the lab itself.
Re:This article is hoplessly wrong pulp fiction (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm guessing that the "Mission Impossible" bits are just there to tempt some studio to turn it into a movie - based on a true story.
My guess would be that they got the passwords by conventional means (looking over shoulders), then just walked in like they were meant to be there, maybe dressed as maintenance workers.
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Mythbusters [mythbustersresults.com] had a 2006 episode in which they tested tricks done in movies to defeat security measures. In particular, they tested trying to defeat thermal sensors, including the method of wearing a wetsuit. They even tried spraying down the suited person with a fire extinguisher to cool them.
The result? The person regained heat fairly quickly, and showed up easily on the thermal sensors.
did they try heating the room (Score:1)
one movie heated the room to 38c, so the persons heat matched the background.
Did they try this?
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I think so, but I don't think it worked for some reason. The more interesting bit was the simple technique that actually worked, holding a sheet up away from the body so it didn't get heated up and blocked the sensors.
Re:This article is hoplessly wrong pulp fiction (Score:4, Funny)
... that one is by an actual reporter with actual fact checking.
but... it makes no sense... just what business would such an individual have at the LA Times?
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The LA Times reporter got it all from wikipedia.
from TFA (Score:1)
Sometime between the heist and its resolution, Tiffany and Thad arranged the moon rocks on a bedâ"and had sex amongst them.
lol...
Why would you take the moon rocks with salt? (Score:2, Funny)
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No it's a common saying, you're not meant to take it liter.... oh
Looking for better interns? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure why they choose people like this for cool internships. It sounds like the kind of guy that had good grades in college and all kinds of extracurricular activities, but not the kind of guy you'd actually choose as an intern!
Obviously I don't know anything besides the ridiculous, surely augmented account of TFA, which I did read. But I simply don't understand how people like that get internships, while people like me and others I know have a hard time. We don't have 4.0s and tons of extracurricular activities, but as any science nerd will tell you (and which I hope scientists and researchers at NASA know as well - maybe the blame for selecting people like that lies with HR), that's not what you should look for when you need a science/nerd intern!
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You don't have to be into extreme sports or anything, but extracurricular activities *are* important. If you're a nerd, what sort of nerd activities do you do? What are you most awesome at? List that stuff on your resume.
does counter strike count? (Score:1)
Watching startrek and stargate too
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I'm not sure what country you're from. Since you say college instead of some other term I'm going to guess US. I'm not that long out of college myself. In my experience, and that of many of my friends, it's all in who you know. Very few people get internships out of the blue. It's either through family members and friends of family (church, people met at activites, etc), or something setup by your college's student employment department. At least one internship was required for us to grauate, and many
I'll ask the same question I always ask (Score:2)
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They got caught up on a common criminal snag of the self incriminating ebay ad.
'Genuine stolen moon rocks: $1 000 000 per rock.
NASA employees need not apply.'
Re:I'll ask the same question I always ask (Score:5, Interesting)
I once worked at a USAF AWACS station, where the regulations said I was not allowed in the radome without an escort, since my security clearance was still pending. My first day there, one of my coworkers said "Here's the keycode to the door. Behave yourself." At other jobs, I've been able to access computer accounts I was not supposed to be in because the administrators made the passwords so complicated that their subordinates simply wrote them down and stuck them in their desk drawers. The point is, anybody who has dealt with bureaucratic bullshit long enough is perfectly willing to bend the rules to help their coworkers actually do their job. These interns got help from lots of people who assumed they were just doing their job. Needless to say, none of them is going to volunteer a "Oh yeah, I helped these kids get in" after the fact.
I worked as a NASA contractor ... (Score:1, Interesting)
I worked as a NASA-JSC contractor for about 8 years on a number of different projects with different security requirements. These were all "man-rated" flight and control systems, not some research project with 3-D glasses and a fancy chair that moved.
I'm happy to report that not all security related work is this faulty in access control. We took our security VERY SERIOUSLY unlike the parent's team.
To my knowledge there wasn't a single mishandled classified item. Nobody shared access codes who wasn't author
Re:I'll ask the same question I always ask (Score:4, Insightful)
Because smart and dumb are not always or never qualities. In this case, the thrill-seeking aspect of his personality meant that the smarts were dedicated to achieving difficult but spectacularly stupid accomplishments.
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In this case, the thrill-seeking aspect of his personality meant that the smarts were dedicated to achieving difficult but spectacularly stupid accomplishments.
Depends on what you call stupid. What have you done with your life? Louis and Clark probably trespassed across someone's property while they were exploring. So did Henry Hudson, and Amerigo Vespucci ;-). Galileo did something real stupid: he pissed off the Pope. Jesus got his ass nailed to a cross. Not very smart by your standards.
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You're projecting some serious assumptions about how I value accomplishments. Luckily for my argument, your assumptions and my argument have very little in common and were never properly introduced anyway.
What's-his-name's accomplishments were stupid because they were simultaneously low value and high risk. The accomplishments that you assume I would scorn by Galileo, Louis and Clark, Hudson (presumably Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, et.al. were skipped for brevity) have had their claims and achievements v
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You're projecting some serious assumptions about how I value accomplishments.
What's-his-name's accomplishments were stupid because they were simultaneously low value by how I define value and high risk.
Fixed that for you. You probably also meant "stupid by my [as in your] subjective and highly moral(istic) standards".
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While I agree that judgment usually comes with perspective (and is therefore subjective), I honestly thought that this was a pretty cut and dry issue. As in, so far over into the spectacularly stupid end of the dial that there would be almost none who would disagree.
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Depends on what you call stupid.
Let's see, this thief's actions caused him to: .. The list goes on ..
- Lose a career
- Lose a girlfriend (whom he lost his wife for)
- Go to prison which will permanently be on his records
- Lose all respect
- Piss off pretty much everyone
Gained:
- Nothing
Sounds pretty stupid to me.
Louis and Clark probably trespassed across someone's property while they were exploring. So did Henry Hudson, and Amerigo Vespucci ;-). Galileo did something real stupid: he pissed off the Pope. Jesus got his ass nailed to a cross.
This self-centered a$$hole was trying to make a quick buck. Way to go comparing this low life to explorers, scientists and religious figures.
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That describes my dog. When frightened by thunder it will scratch and chew it's way through a plywood door only to find the thunder is on both sides.
I touched a NASA space suit covered in moon dust (Score:5, Interesting)
My father used to work for ILC-DDC, a chip manufacturer out on Long Island. Some of their chips went to use with NASA. As I recall it, years ago, we children were given a tour on a "factory open to families" day, and they had a NASA space suit on display in the hallway. Well, it turns out that (1) this suit had been on the moon, (2) this suit hadn't been cleaned properly, and (3) NASA eventually recalled the suit to have any errant moon dust sucked out of it, and never let them have the suit again. At least, that's the story I was told.
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Well, there was a suit, and it wasn't there a few years later and the story went that it apparently got taken back by NASA for cleaning because they left stuff on it.
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There were a lot of suits used in testing and training, pretty much identical to the ones that actually went to the Moon. Some of these extra suits were loaned out for public exhibits and displays -- I recall hearing about a suit on display at a Star Trek convention which had one of the quick-detachable gloves stolen from it.
The Command Module is about the size of a compact car internally, and it was the only part of the Apollo mission hardware that returned to Earth. The crew wore pressure suits on launch
The part about the neoprene suits (Score:5, Insightful)
Also: "... and by paying careful attention to the absorption of the powder it is possible to tell which finger came down first and so forth."
Maybe... if you are talking about a key that was pressed twice. Otherwise, forget it.
Yeah. About a teaspoon of salt. One grain for each embellishment.
Mythbusters? Bleah. (Score:5, Insightful)
What BS. The other night they "proved" that Robin Hood couldn't have split an arrow with another arrow by using cheap factory-made lathe-turned arrows with grain running every-which-way. Since every arrow hit broke following the irregular grain near the nock they decided that NO ONE EVER could have split an arrow. I've actually seen a hand-made straight-grained arrow that had been split from nock to head, with the other arrow still embedded, so I know for a fact that their show was BS.
Even worse was the show where they tried to debunk the story of someone mounting a RATO (Rocket Assisted Take Off) bottle to their old Chevy Impala back in the 60s (when you could buy them surplus from the Air Force). Not having access to an actual JATO bottle, and too lazy and cheap to examine the actual plans and make a replica, the bozos cobbled together some POS rocket that probably didn't have enough thrust to get itself off the ground and put it on a car instead. Not surprisingly it failed, and now thousands of people believe that the story has been debunked.
I certainly don't object to the IDEA of their program, in fact I think it's a great idea. I just wish that they had hired someone who could actually do it RIGHT.
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I completely agree. They too often come to the conclusion that "we couldn't do it therefore nobody can!". Especially when dealing with 1 in a million odds...
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However, the section they did about heat sensors was pretty definitive. They had automatic heat sensors as well as infrared cameras. When they put on heavy wetsuits (thicker than the 2mm mentioned in TFA), and quickly entered the room (so the suits would not have time to heat up), their heat signatures were still clearly visible on the infrared camera, and they wer
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OK.. for starters, the arrow thing. You never said you saw the arrow being split, just that you saw a "split" arrow. I could go in my shop and make one for you in about 5 minutes. They did test with cheap arrows at first, then went and found straight grain arrows to test with again. They proved that its nearly impossible to split an arrow unless it's made of bamboo. You probably missed that part while you were getting a beer.. again. This was debunked strictly because they were unable to replicate the myth,
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yeah you moderators really rock.
"How is this a troll?" is really bad trolling. What a provocative statement. The GP is going over the top with his last few words but even that doesn't really make him a troll.
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Well, I have seen one being split.
They were unable to find evidence because their researchers are lazy. Here, in just a few minutes, you've heard from two people who've seen arrows split. Visit archery forums and you'll find hundred
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They were unable to find evidence because their researchers are lazy. Here, in just a few minutes, you've heard from two people who've seen arrows split. Visit archery forums and you'll find hundreds more.
I've read the thread so far, did a casual search, can't find any evidence of a wooden arrow being split. I don't feel like searching any more so feel free to prove me wrong.
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Who cares, Kari Byron is hot.
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Mythbusters Sucks! (Score:2, Insightful)
Thank you so much for your post. I thought I was the only geek that saw through the bullshit that is Mythbusters!
A quick search on YouTube for "split arrow" debunks their claim of it not being possible to pull off the "Robin Hood" shot. They sure didn't try very hard.
I have yet to see an episode of Mythbusters where I didn't have a major problem with their methodology.
It makes me sad that so many people think these guys are applying scientific rigor. They are doing a great disservice to geeks everywhere.
Unscientific! (Score:2)
http://xkcd.com/397/ [xkcd.com]
Millions of dollars? (Score:1)
How exactly does one put a price on moon rocks? And how exactly does this figure come into the millions?
Is there a big market for moon rocks outside of ebay?
Re:Millions of dollars? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, you could easily put a price on the cost of getting moon rocks, I mean, the whole trip to the moon, landing and taking off and getting back on earth thing isn't cheap. Sure they brought a lot of it back, but if you priced it out, it would've been quite expensive per unit of mass. If we just consider Apollo, and how much the entire program cost, and divide by the amount of moon rocks, it won't take much rock to reach millions.
After all, it's not like you can find real lunar regolith on Earth. And it's not like a common person with an interest in space can easily go and buy some from NASA.
Re:Millions of dollars? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know, it's probably literally closer to "priceless", which isn't infinitely valuable, but a market can't be established, therefore a value/price cannot be determined (see the description of "Neoclassical Value" on the Wikipedia link, lots of artwork is priceless in this sense, even though it sells for a specific value) [wikipedia.org].
What you're describing is the cost, not the price or value. If I blew $100K on rebuilding a fully restored mint condition Ford Fiesta from 1994, doesn't mean that I could sell it for that, or that it represented the value. It means I blew $100K, and now had a car that is probably worth 1/10th at best. That's just a guess.
Even if you were going to present it that way, it's not like the rocks are the only thing that came out of that money. So if you want to determine if it was "worth it", or "profitable" to go to the moon, the rocks aren't the only thing of value to come out of all that money being spent.
Kirby
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We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to provide us with rocks. Rocks which we can store in nitrogen purged safes, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
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How exactly does one put a price on moon rocks?
With great difficulty since afaict none has ever been sold openly so you can't really put a market value on it.
If you price it at the cost of getting more the value would be very high indeed. According to wikipedia Apollo cost "between $20 and $25.4 billion in 1969 dollars (or approximately $135 billion in 2005 dollars).". and returned "381.7 kg (841.5 lb) of rocks and other material from the Moon" If we use the 2005 dollars (which should be reasonablly close t
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Bits and pieces of the moon come up for sale every once in a while. Sometimes legitimate, usually less so. A couple of links on the subject
http://www.geotimes.org/sept02/NN_moon.html [geotimes.org]
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0617/p14s02-stss.html [csmonitor.com]
mention a Sotheby's auction of (very small) Russian rocks; the "Goodwill Rocks" which the United States gave to each country in the world which have sometimes ended up "for sale;" and a short length of adhesive tape with moondust stuck to it. I also recall reading of a bag use
Literary License (Score:2)
The mix of the three glows under blacklight, and by paying careful attention to the absorption of the powder it is possible to tell which finger came down first and so forth. It doesn't quite make sense that Thad could use this trick to figure out the exact sequence for all the codes, based off such rudimentary information. But once Thad had eventually thrown his whole weight against the vault door, the two were inside.
This is the kind of stuff crappy TV and movie writers have to put in
Posted on the Internet?? (Score:3, Insightful)
The proper thing to have done (outside of not pulling this stupid heist in the first place, or course) would have been to flee to another country in the eastern hemisphere and sold them there, making enough money in the process to never have to come back to the US again.
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Another good one (Score:3, Insightful)
As the seconds crept onward, Thad continued to struggle with the code, so he quickly moved to plan B, which involved unbolting the heavy safe from the ground, loading it on to a small dolly and carting it back out to the car. It wasn't easy, but within the remaining time allotted to them, the two managed to slip out of the vault,
In less than three minutes they unbolted a heavy safe from the floor and hoisted it onto a small dolly. No doubt they had a couple of big wrenches, plenty of WD-40, and maybe even some paint stripper, in case there was an annoying coat of enamel on the bolts. Bad TV yet again.
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Not to mention, Mr. He-man was able to lift a heavy safe all by himself and load it onto said dolly. Because he's cool like that.
Picture of Tiffany - You know you're curious (Score:5, Informative)
yeah yeah this isn't fark, but how often do we get cute female cat burglars to ogle at?
http://www.baylor.edu/biology/index.php?id=32089 /would hit it
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But then, the entire Gizmodo story was embellished bullshit. I regret wasting time reading it.
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[HOW ABOUT NO bear picture here] /Slack muscle tone //And she did some guy named Thad
This explains everything. (Score:2)
That story is hilarious.
I hope these retards enjoy their felony convictions. If you're going to steal some rocks, make them easy ones to move on the street, like diamonds. Or better yet, steal cash.
If NASA's hiring people like these, it's pretty clear why the US space program hasn't done anything interesting since the 1970's.
Stupid sentencing (Score:1)
Talk about bullshit justice system.
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Not only at NASA... (Score:1)
In 2004, thieves did the same thing in Malta, and stole a $5M Moon Rock [space.com]
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This is true in all sports - and makes sense when you think about it. The primary function of the league is to generate income. Anything that gets in the way of that is counter to the reason they exist.
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If the game isn't perceived as fair, the sport will suffer. And the NBA has definitely suffered in the last decade or so. What does it tell you when the line in Vegas changes after certain referees (Joey Crawford, in this instance) are announced for a game?
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That's true - but I don't think preferential treatment for superstars is a huge problem and you have to weigh that against the number of people they draw. How many quit watching because Pippen gets breaks compared to how many would quit watching if he doesn't play? I don't know but my guess is the second number is much larger than the first.