You have to wonder how these things happen, really. I mean, surely NASA has a spreadsheet somewhere of all of their rocket engines, past and present, and their whereabouts. There can't be that many, can there? And yet, in the 2011 year-end Inspector General's report is an item about an RL-10 rocket appearing for sale online.
The sale price would have been enough to keep most people away (unless they had a spare $200,000 to drop on what would be just one of many parts), so maybe that's not a whole lot to worry about, right? Well, not exactly, because the person who bought it would still have an engine powerful enough to jet a Saturn rocket into space (or a long way over land), which is why the Feds got involved and tracked down the "owner" before he or she could unload the engine for a good price.
Given that no one will be going to the Moon anytime soon, it's probably an academic argument, except that the engine is actually covered by the International Traffic in Arms Regulation because it could be used to make a missile. So suddenly it's no laughing matter. This is certainly not U.S. v Progressive, in which even though the Supreme Court upheld the magazine's right to publish a step-by-step recipe for making an atomic bomb, the theory was that the full set of ingredients would be so cost- and law-prohibitive that it wouldn't matter who had that bomb-making recipe. No, this kind of engine could be used to transport a very large payload of weaponry, which is these days all too common and all too easily bought.
NASA isn't commenting on who took the engine, or how or why. It's probably enough for the rest of us to know that they were quick to react. But it is a reminder that the free market nature of the Internet, vast as it is, can harbor some devastating and dangerous things.
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