Slashdot Mirror
Lunar Landing Historical Site?
kylv writes: "Check out this article on abcnews.com telling how a New Mexico group is trying to make the site of the first lunar landing into a National Historical Site."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Why do they want to make a covert NASA film studio into a historical site?
Read the article, then post you mindless yammering.
Because 99% of the mindless yammering on here is already clearly addressed in the article. For example:
The students don't want to claim the moon, which clearly would be a violation of the Outer Space Treaty.
Of course, I think about 75% of all posters to slashdot are violations of the Outer Space Treaty to begin with, so I guess maybe I'm hoping for too much.
Leaving aside the bizarre notion of calling an area of the *moon* a "*National* Historical Site"...
;)
The article continues...
> There seems to be no doubt the artifacts are clearly U.S. property. Even NASA says the stuff left behind by the Apollo astronauts was "not abandoned," according to documents collected by the researchers.
Not abandoned? "Oh no, we really were intending to come back for it (in a few hundred years)." We weren't really littering on the moon Sir...
Anyway, *I* have some doubt, even if nobody else does. I think the Chinese should get up there quick and grab it and then auction it off to the US administration if they really think it's theirs
Mike.
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
Of course people from New Mexico would want it declared a national historical site. After all, when they faked the landing, all the filming was done on NM's turf.
-Chris
"Abandoned" has a specific legal connotation, and NASA is correct to say that the material was not "abandoned."
By way of analogy, "flotsam" and "jetsam" are not the same thing and are legally very different. If I recall the sense correctly, "flotsam" is the floating debris (and debris washed ashore?) after a ship goes down - anyone may acquire legal possession by simply scooping it out of the water.
"Jetsam," in contrast, is floating debris that was deliberately thrown overboard in an attempt to save the ship, and with the intent to retrieve the material after the storm (or other crisis) has passed. Anyone who scoops it out of the water is stealing it from its lawful owner. Even if the ship ultimately sinks, the owner of the ship still has the legal ownership of jetsam.
(As I said, it's been a long time since I looked at the exact definitions and I may have the sense backwards.)
"Jetsam" was temporary left behind, but it was not legally abandoned. "Flotsam" was abandoned. Anything that goes down with the ship was not, and for some period is owned by the owner of the ship (or the insurance company that paid a claim), although courts have (finally!) come to their senses and said that an insurance company can't protest too much after 100+ years have passed with no attempt at recovery.
NASA, quite legitimately, is considering the material left on the moon "jetsam." They left it behind so they could get the crew home, but I'm sure in the best of all possible worlds they would have the complete lunar lander sitting in a display at the Smithsonian.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
If you had read the article, you'd have found out that the US has declared a few N.H.Ms in other countries, primarily some European battlefields. I don't know how the politics or legalities of that works out, but I'd bet that the U.S. offers to help pay for maintenance of the site. Meanwhile, the UN won't declare a "World Heritage Site" unless it's first a national monument, and knowing the ways of the UN, it would be easier to get Congress to declare Tranquility Base a national monument than it would be to get the UN to change its rule. Ultimately, the UN should have an exemption for sites in international territory, so that sites in Antarctica, on the ocean floor, and on the moon can be declared World Heritage Sites without the necessity of getting a national government to overstep its jurisdiction.
"We came in peace for all Mankind."
- Neil Armstrong at Tranquility Base, 1969
THe link notes,
> The Soviet Lunar program had 20 successful missions to the Moon and
> achieved a number of notable lunar "firsts": first probe to impact the
> Moon,
Crashing into the moon counts? THen shouldn't Microsoft be in the lunar
probe business?
:)
hawk
Well, I don't think it was "over the horizon" when it was visible in a picture from the Lunar Module [picture in direction of Turtle Rock]. Shepard estimated "the first ball went about 200 yards (183 meters) and the second 400 yards (366 meters)".