Monday, January 09, 2012

Bolden Meets Apollo Vets On Artifact Ownership

NASA chief Charlie Bolden met with a handful of former Apollo astronauts today to talk about resolving misunderstandings about ownership of flight mementos and other space program artifacts.

Among them: Jim Lovell, Gene Cernan, Charlie Duke and Rusty Schweickart.

"These are American heroes, fellow astronauts, and personal friends who have acted in good faith, and we have committed to work together to find the right policy and legal paths forward to address outstanding ownership questions," Bolden said in a NASA statement.

"I believe there have been fundamental misunderstandings and unclear policies regarding items from the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programs, and NASA appreciates the position of the astronauts, museums, learning institutions and others who have these historic artifacts in personal and private collections."

The issue has been a hot topic this week. Check out the story here about NASA blocking Lovell's attempt to sell a checklist from the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. Click HERE

5 comments:

deltadog said...

If the property is worthless they can keep the property.
If it has value it is NASA simple.

deltadog said...

I wish Bolden would worry about the space program rather than worry about space junk
Simple is As Simple does

eddiestardust said...

We have few heroes today and the Mercury, Gemini & Apollo & Skylab & Shuttle Astronauts are all American Heroes!

steele-environmental said...

Those guys earned the right to keep their momentos the old fashioned way: Through blood, sweat and tears.

If any of the astronauts happened to be a Muslim, Bolden would kiss the ground they walked on and let them keep anything they wanted...have a few rocks, sir!

Bruce said...

I've had a change of heart since this morning. If NASA can erase the only high resolution images of Neal Armstrong's first step, because nobody thought about it, they don't deserve this artifact either.