Apollo 15 postage stamp incident

Post by jedberg » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 10:59 PM UTC

reitzensteinm wrote: post #10

jedberg wrote: post #6

> some said astronauts should not be allowed to reap personal profits from NASA missions. That's an interesting ethical question. At what point is it ok for someone who got paid by the government to do a job ok to make extra money because of that fact. These days most Presidents get to write books about their time in the White House and make money. Buzz Aldrin still goes to cons and signs autographs for money. So whe…

This would be more like the President renting out a room in the White House. I think the line is actually pretty clear; if you're using state resources to produce something of value to sell for private profit, you're on the wrong side of it. While 400 stamps don't weigh a lot, they'd still cost more than $1 each to launch by my back of the envelope calculations. You're effectively footing NASA with a $500 bill to poc…

Post by walrus01 » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 11:11 PM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #8

jedberg wrote: post #6

> some said astronauts should not be allowed to reap personal profits from NASA missions. That's an interesting ethical question. At what point is it ok for someone who got paid by the government to do a job ok to make extra money because of that fact. These days most Presidents get to write books about their time in the White House and make money. Buzz Aldrin still goes to cons and signs autographs for money. So whe…

It doesn't feel like the same situation. A better analogy would be running personal projects from your corporate servers, as you are using your professionally acquired access to resources you do not own for personal gain. There is little grey area there - unless you own the company, it isn't appropriate.

Post by qwertox » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 11:23 PM UTC

Post by pests » Wed, May 01, 2019, 12:27 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #14

codingdave wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't feel like the same situation. A better analogy would be running personal projects from your corporate servers, as you are using your professionally acquired access to resources you do not own for personal gain. There is little grey area there - unless you own the company, it isn't appropriate.

Not really - each astronaut was specifically given a weight allocation (in grams) for personal effects, to be chosen at their discretion, for non mission related minor cargo. It's more like your work giving you written permission for a free 1RU of space and 2 amps of power and a DIA feed described for a personal test/development/project server, you installing a personally owned 1RU server in it and doing something us…

Post by homero » Wed, May 01, 2019, 12:59 AM UTC

wyattpeak wrote: post #7

wbrasky wrote: post #4

why has the title been changed from "covers" (which is what they were) to "stamp" which is a less specific form of what they were? Why are we not just using the article title?

Because most people have no idea what covers are, and unless you collect postage stamps the difference means nothing to you. If you'd asked me before I met a friend who collects, I would have assumed that using a stamp would render it worthless. The article's talk page actually has a similar discussion over whether to call them stamps or covers in the title, so although they come down on your side its hardly a given.