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Protecting the Apollo Landing Sites From Later Landings
R3d M3rcury writes "The Lunar X-Prize is a contest offering $20 million to the first private organization to land and maneuver a robotic rover on the moon. There is also a $1 million bonus to anyone who can get a picture of a man-made object on the moon. But one archeologist believes that 'The sites of early lunar landings are of unparalleled significance in the history of humanity, and extraordinary caution should be taken to protect them.' He's concerned that we may end up with rover tracks destroying historic artifacts, such as Neil Armstrong's first bootprint, or that a mistake could send a rocket slamming into a landing site. He calls on the organizers to ban any contestant from landing within 100KM of a prior moon landing site. Now he seems to think this just means Apollo. What about the Luna and Surveyor landers? What about the Lunokhod rovers? Are they fair game?"
We have a picture of it right? Seriously what if every time somebody did something new that spot was forbidden to be stepped on again? asinine. What if nobody as allowed to visit the beach of Columbus's first landing sites? BFD, send a plaque or something and stop wasting your time worrying about whether a footprint is going to disappear someday. It will.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
How many places would remain if all those spots are banned? There are only so much good landing sites on the Moon.
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Erosion has probably already destroyed the first footsteps on the Moon.
And keeping people away from the original "landing site" will keep them from figuring out that the first moon landing was faked by the government. (Or was it faked by our evil reptilian overlords? I can never keep that straight.)
I remember reading long ago, forget where, that official CCP policy was that if they were to arrive on the moon before the US returned, their first goal was to remove as much evidence of American landing sites as possible so as to claim the US had lied and in fact China was the first on the moon.
Probably some wharrgarbl from the intertubes stuck in my head, but who knows.
If you want to preserve Neil Armstrong's boot print, perhaps it's better to send a mission exactly there and put a pane of plexiglas over it.
"The sites of early lunar landings are of unparalleled significance in the history of humanity, and extraordinary caution should be taken to PREVENT EVER BEING ABLE TO PROVE THEY EVEN EXIST"
This is ridiculous idolatry. It's not like there is something we *don't* know about these events, there is nothing to discover there, and hence nothing to protect, as opposed to an archeological site.
Yeah.... and you know who was the best example of that? Captain Fucking James T. Kirk.
You think one of the "red shirts" got to do it with a green alien babe? Of course not. It was Captain Kirk nailing all the Intergalactic Strange throughout the Alpha Quadrant.
If we had that future, you would still be bitching. Your best option would be the overweight Bolian chick down in engineering. You would NOT want to go down to the planet. All you would ever hear about it is how Captain Kirk made it up back up with just a few seconds to spare, shirtless with sucker marks all over him, but Steve the poor S.O.B that transferred last week died a horrible death on the planet while some strange alien animal was sodomizing his corpse. Steve's parents would have to get a message about how his cause of death was "mauling by alien genitalia on Rontos 5".
So, do you feel the same about Bletchley Park? It's not a simple question. There ARE things we sometimes like to see preserved for the awe inspiring value they have for posterity. I don't know about all the sites on the moon but I'd vote for the first landing site of anything ever (Russian?) and the spot where a human being first walked.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
whether a footprint is going to disappear someday. It will
If it hasn't been already destroyed. Wasn't the photo of where he first stepped on the moon next to the lander? Wouldn't the lander module have toasted the ground around it when it fired it's engines up to re-enter lunar orbit?
Of course, what is the point of preserving a site that nobody can really go to anyway? Sure, if someone went there, they could 'ruin' the artifacts that remain, but who cares? It's not like anyone can visit the site and appreciate it. The best you could hope for would be to preserve it for future generations' camera equipped robotic lunar rovers.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
We still have Armstrong's boot alongside other historically significant foot wear such as Dorothy's red shooes. We could attach the boot to the bottom of the probe and called it a restoration project.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Perhaps somewhat, but remember that the lunar module that blasted off from the surface of the moon was only the top half of the part that landed. The bottom half served as a launch platform and probably took the brunt of the blast.
Apollo 17 lunar module ascent.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
After all we explore wrecks on the ocean floors, the landers should be afforded the same status for scientific investigation.
As it is, We've still got Neil's boot, so we can make more footprints anytime.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
So that's what happened to the Anasazi. Now, somebody just needs to go clean up the mess they left.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law