What Should You Do If You Find a Piece of China's Crashed Space Station?

[rangerrebew]

What Should You Do If You Find a Piece of China's Crashed Space Station?
By Brandon Specktor, Senior Writer | March 24, 2018 08:04am ET
 

China's defunct Tiangong-1 space station is careening through low-Earth orbit right now, and is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere sometime between March 30and April 2. Most of the 9-ton(8,500 kilograms) space station will probably burn to bits in the atmosphere — but a few thousand chunks of hot, mangled debris are still likely to survive the trip and land on our planet's surface.

Your odds of being conked on the head by any of this debris are low — about one in 292 trillion, or roughly a million times less likely than hitting the Powerball jackpot. Right now, the potential impact site of the space station covers about one-third of the planet, and a huge majority of that zone is water.

https://www.livescience.com/62112-what-if-you-find-china-space-station-debris.html

[Oceander]

Sell it. 

[Cyber Liberty]

FTA:

"All that being said," Pearlman jokes, "if a piece of debris lands in my backyard — it's mine, all mine!"

Say "Hi!" to your new cellmate for me, Mr. Pearlman.

[Cyber Liberty]

Sell it.

Unless China approves, that would be a Felony that can fetch you $10K fine and 10 years.  Finders Keepers does not apply to space garbage. 

[Oceander]

Unless China approves, that would be a Felony that can fetch you $10K fine and 10 years.  Finders Keepers does not apply to space garbage. 

Catch me if you can

[Cyber Liberty]

Catch me if you can

As a practical matter, I doubt anybody would try (unless to attempt to make an example of somebody).  The scenario of the government pressing charges in the story was about a piece of the Columbia, which pricked the emotional sensibilities of the people involved.

That said, I think only a sucker would buy on eBay something like this, simply because there is no way (on Earth) to certify its authenticity.  But, we know that old bromide often misattributed to P.T. Barnum....