Astronaut's camera

Been there, done that. No, not an astronaut. I was a nurse at a state owned hospital, during a renovation I saw some perfectly-serviceable light fixtures going into a dumptruck. After my shift and knowing that anything going into that truck was destined for the landfill; I pulled out a four-tube fixture and proceeded to place it in my pickup's bed. A hospital police officer saw me and informed me that I had state property in my truck and could be arrested on the spot. I asked him if he knew where the load was headed and he admitted that he did. I told him to go ahead and arrest me and we'd both make the evening news. I told him it was a sin to allow something like that to go to a dump if it could so easily be plucked from the truck and reused. He went about his rounds and I went home and put the light in the laundry room. That was about twenty years ago. It's the best flourescent fixture I've ever been aware of - it never seems to wear out bulbs. And no wonder...high quality hospital fixture, go figure.

I have no doubt that the former astronaut saved the camera from the trash pile nearly forty years ago. The shame of it is that if NASA hadn't sued him they would have been criticized for not protecting goverment property.

And of course your story shows only the wee tip of the iceberg of government waste. I say squeeze NASA's budget until they don't have the funds to sue this American hero. Forty years later they want their camera back. If it's so valuable to them then NASA needs to explain why they let it excape their posession in the first place. This taxpayer gets the impression that NASA is quiet cavalier when it comes to protecting taxpayers' interests.