Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Apollo 15 postal covers incident/archive1

Suggested blurb

This is a suggested blurb for the day this article appears as Today's Featured Article (assuming the article is promoted). Feedback is welcome. It's about 785 characters so far, and we aim for something like 1000 characters, so it needs a little more ... any ideas? - Dank (push to talk) 03:10, 20 January 2019 (UTC) Looks great, Wehwalt, and now the length is good too. - Dank (push to talk) 10:44, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Someone (not me) may comment on "about 400" and say an exact number should be used. I am indifferent to it. Kees08 (Talk) 18:49, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

The only ways of avoiding that would be to be vaguer. We have it narrowed down as much as the sources let us. Dank? Do you think there will be a problem?--Wehwalt (talk) 19:30, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Usernameunique, Moisejp, Tim riley, Jens Lallensack, SchroCat: If the blurb looks okay to you, I have no problem with "about 400". - Dank (push to talk) 19:50, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Pinging Moisejp (post needs to be re-signed to make sure the ping goes through) - SchroCat (talk) 19:54, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

As that's what the sources (dis)agree, I don't have a problem either - if the number isn't known, this is the best we can hope to do. - SchroCat (talk) 19:54, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Me neither. Tim riley talk 20:34, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

It sounds fine to me. :-) Moisejp (talk) 20:51, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

The Apollo 15 postal covers incident was a scandal involving the crew of NASA's Apollo 15 space mission, who in 1971 carried about 400 unauthorized postal covers to the Moon's surface. American astronauts David Scott, Alfred Worden and James Irwin agreed to receive about $7,000 each for carrying the covers into space. These covers were inside the lunar lander Falcon as Scott and Irwin walked on the Moon, and were postmarked both prior to liftoff from Kennedy Space Center and after splashdown. Though the astronauts returned the money, they were reprimanded by NASA for poor judgment and were called before a closed session of a Senate committee. They were removed as the backup crew for Apollo 17 and never flew in space again; by 1977 all had left NASA. In 1983, Worden sued for the return of those covers that had been impounded in 1972, and the three men received them in an out-of-court settlement. One of the covers that had been provided to West German stamp dealer Hermann Sieger sold for over $50,000 in 2014.