Oh, man. This is just sick. I don’t blame NASA at large for this, but it’s been reported by ABC that someone stole a wedding ring off the remains of one of the Columbia astronauts.
Wow. Just wow.
It was probably someone on the recovery crew, but I know very little about this. I do know that people were looking for debris after the Shuttle broke up over Texas in January 2003. The bodies of the astronauts were recovered, and Laurel Clark had her wedding ring on her body. It was later gone, so it was most likely stolen. It’s possible that someone not affiliated with NASA did this — a lot of people were out in the woods looking for that debris, and the article linked above has very little detail about who found the body or was with it when the ring disappeared. But something like this will no doubt get a lot more press soon, and we’ll learn more.
Yikes.
Worse (if possible), the news was released because NASA’s Inspector General, Robert Cobb, is under withering fire from Congress about misconduct, and failure to report a security breach. That brew is coming to a head as well. According to the ABC article, Cobb tried to cover up the theft of the ring.
What a mess. And if I may, I have to point out– this is the organization that was supposed to have covered up a fake Moon landing?
Right.
Anyway, with NASA fighting for funding (and $500 million still MIA from the budget due to the "Continuing Resolution" from Congress, freezing budgets at last year’s rate) this will cause some heartburn at the NASA Public Affairs Office at the very least.
And of course, my heart goes out to the astronaut’s husband. He lost his wife in such a horrible way, and then to have this happen… I can’t imagine what he went through, and is still going through. This makes me terribly sad, and I hope this can be settled very soon.
This news comes from Fark.com, of all places.
April 4th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
This is terrible on so many levels. A NASA cover-up makes me anxious too. I mean, when did NASA appointees start acting like they were in the FBI with this and suppression of science? The only light at the end of the tunnel is that they’re no good at it.
April 4th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
On Debating Pseudoscientists…
Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy writes eloquently on debating pseudoscientists: Debunking fringe theories is usually not trivial. For example, Richard Hoagland has been making his (mistaken) claims about Mars for literally decades. The breadth and depth of…
April 5th, 2007 at 6:11 am
Proving once again that the “crime” is rarely as punishable as the coverup…
April 5th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Grave robbing has been around since before the Pharoes. It’s not nice, but it is a human thing,,,of course, even critters rob graves, but that’s just for food, which is why we bury our dead 6 feet deep,,,or cremate them.
However, this is just more proof that conspiracies can only survive when there’s only one conspirator. With two or more one will eventually blab,,,
GAry 7
April 5th, 2007 at 9:29 am
is it possible the ring was removed on purpose and put in some kind of “personal belongings” bin to be given to the family, only to have the whole bin misplaced?
NASA has a bigger history of losing/misplaceing things than it does of attempting to get away with swindles.
I have no doubt they tried to cover it up, but what did they try to cover up? Maybe they just didn’t want to admit they lost her ring?
Seems more plausable to me. What possible use could her ring be to anyone anyway, it looks like a simple wedding band, not a dimond encrusted jewel. And if they try to sell it as what it is, it’ll probably be found very quickly.
April 5th, 2007 at 9:39 am
good point kingnor, didn’t they recently announce that they’d lost the original tapes of Armstrong’s “one small step” transmission?
April 5th, 2007 at 9:54 am
I don’t even want to think about such a sad episode as this … especially since I’m reading a wonderful book called Too Far From Home: A Story of Life and Death in Space, by Chris Jones. The focus is on the three astronauts of Expidition Six who were stranded aboard ISS after the Columbia disaster. But the book also includes a potted history of the manned space program and the geopolitical forces that shaped it. Highly recommended.
April 5th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
>>>this is the organization that was supposed to have
>>>covered up a fake Moon landing?
Well… the aliens helped out with that one.
One has to raise the question: was the ring REALLY there originally? Is there a photo? Could it have fallen off on its own? Dunno… just seems like a ring could go missing easily in such an operation without assuming the worst.
Just pondering.
April 5th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
I would put very little trust in a media story like this, that is now trying to sensationalize a story because it could not sensationalize it a few years ago. This is not an important story – it adds nothing to the cause or effect of Columbia’s accident. Cobb was right – the story would be damaging to NASA. Not because it would have pointed to mismanagement of the mission, but because the media would blow it all out of proportion and shift the focus from finding the cause and caring for the grieving families to who could the media embarass. Again, I don’t trust the media, who claim to altruistic in speaking truth, but merely capitalize on minutae that will get them the best shot at breaking that ‘big story’.
Cobb sounds like somebody who would not play ball with the power elite, and so now is being chastised for doing things that everybody else does.
April 5th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
It would be nice if the family could have the wedding ring back. On the other hand the fuselage of both shuttles should be sold piecemal at auction to recover some of the cost we as tax payers have sustained from the failures. They have a collectable/memoribilia nature to them and could at least get some money from them as well as souveigneers for those of us who grew up with Columbia. People for some reason confuse the setting of tragedies for the people themselves.
April 6th, 2007 at 7:25 am
It is one of the least reported types of crime and yet one of the most common ones. Whenever there are car crashes, plane crashes, big accidents and even small accidents all sorts of valuables dissapear. The opportunity is often to tempting. Nobody will probably pay attention and if you are part of the recovery team or helping out people are unlikely to want to accuse you. It’s sad, very sad…
April 7th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Had a friend in Saudi Arabia back in 1983 that died in a headon car crash with a camel(hey, they weigh in at about 2000 lbs). When found, his body had been stripped of all his gold jewelry, of which, as was usual for us oil field trash, there was quite a bit. The worst part was, he was probably still alive at the time, since the injuries weren’t enough to be fatal, but he was diabetic and,,,you get the picture. removing dead folks jewels is not nearly as bad as taking from a still living person and then leaving them to die in that desert heat. Now, THAT’S a crime,,,
GAry 7
April 9th, 2007 at 10:09 am
I dunno. Tempest in a teapot, me thinks.
And as I think about it, if (when) my wife dies I’d be hard pressed to think of a better way. Quicker, perhaps….