Trash or historical treasures?

I love this. NASA is apparently worried that someday there will be "moon tourists" who will take pieces of NASA equipment left behind on the moon as souvenirs. According to this article at USA Today, NASA has set out "guidlines" on how a NASA landing site may be approached.

I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, and the way international law seems to work, I would think that what NASA left behind on the moon, and any other planetary body would be considered "salvage". Basically, they left "trash" literally strewn across the surface of the moon. It's my opinion that anyone who makes it back there, should have the right to do whatever they want to with it, since it was "abandoned" by it's owners. Apparently though NASA believes they still have a right to ownership of things they've left unattended on the moon since the early 1970's, like the lunar rover for instance. I'm sorry, but if I left a dune buggy sitting on the shore of a lake somewhere here in America for nearly 40 years, I doubt I'd be allowed to still claim ownership of it!

Buried Treasure - A blast from the past

A co-worker found this "ancient" camera at work today. Apparently, someone threw it into a dumpster there, and someone had dug it out thinking it might be something worth keeping. They then "rightly" decided it wasn't and threw it on the ground where he later found it. In it's day, it actually probably was a quite expensive and nice video camera. It has a I.D. plate on the bottom of it that dates it's manufacture to October of 1987! And yes, it is a full size VHS camcorder, the kind that uses VHS tapes! It's a complete kit, a gorilla case with foam inserts, camera, battery, cables, and editing dock etc.
We've got it all layed out on this table in the shop letting it dry out, as it had been raining and everything was soaked. When it's dried out, we're going to try charging the battery and see if it works. It does have a tape in the drive and we're curious to see what might be on it. I'll report back on what results we get if any in a couple of days.