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    Perhaps NASA didn't even know they were supposed to pay off $400 to some random island in the Indian Ocean.
    – John Dvorak
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 22:30
  • The question "why should they refuse" might be your way of suggesting that the claim is dubious, but actually trying to determine why they refused (if they did) would be beyond the scope of this site.
    – Nate Eldredge
    Commented Aug 16, 2016 at 3:26
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    @JanDvorak: Esperance isn't an island, it's a town on the mainland of Australia.
    – Nate Eldredge
    Commented Aug 16, 2016 at 3:28
  • 5
    Apologies for that, but my point still stands - nowhere does it say (or at least not in the quoted part) that NASA actively refused to pay the fine. Perhaps they didn't get to know about the fine, or perhaps they shrugged it off as a joke. TBH, $400 seems like nothing compared to the actual damage I would expect a fuel tank falling on a city to cause. The wiki article on Skylab uses the term "facetiously fined NASA".
    – John Dvorak
    Commented Aug 16, 2016 at 3:44
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    @Bakuriu: AFAIK there is an international consense about space exploration that damage caused by an object in any case the liability to it is in hands of the one who shot it up in space/controlled it from there. Otherwise I could assume other states might not tolerate it so much letting space vehicles pass over there lands. I mean I could understand if it where Northkorea who would argue that they have no obligation to pay any fines. but this is Australia and USA. Why should this international consense here not apply?
    – Zaibis
    Commented Aug 17, 2016 at 6:46