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?"

Comments

That's retarded

[nocomment]

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.

Re:That's retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

There's already a plaque attached to the base of the Eagle Lander, so... all set.

I say the rovers should drive wherever the hell the operators want. Besides, it's stupid to think that Armstrong and Aldrin wouldn't have messed up the first footprint since it was, you know, right at the bottom of the ladder and in a high traffic area.

Re:That's retarded

[Hertog]

Since the first footprint was at the end of the lunar-lander ladder, the same ladder that was used to get out and get in the Eagle again by Aldrin and Armstrong, my guess is that the very first footprint was already pretty messed up, even before they left the place...

And don't forget the blast from the rocket engine at take of.. that one was sure to wipe it of the face of the moon...

Re:That's retarded

[Psychotria]

I can't believe the current trend of comments regarding this story. Of course it should be fucking preserved. Yes, one day the footprint will disappear. I don't see any reason to accelerate natural processes though. It's kind of the same as graffiti artists (vandals) spray painting their names all over the Grand Canyon. Why should we waste our time trying to stop them, it's going to erode away anyway?

 

What if nobody as allowed to visit the beach of Columbus's first landing sites?

What if they did? Your sheltered life would probably be no worse off.

Re:That's retarded

[BarryHaworth]

What is often forgotten is that NASA has already made a start on this. The Apollo 12 mission was targetted to land right next to the Surveyor 3 lander. The astronauts removed bits of the probe and brought them back to Earth for analysis. The picture of this is one of my favourite pictures from the Apollo program. NASA didn't worry too much about preserving history back then. They were too busy making it.

Re:That's retarded

[Ihlosi]

People who spray paint anything on the Grand Canyon should be shot on sight.

Great, then you get partially-finished graffiti _and_ blood stains on the walls.

Re:That's retarded

[digitalhermit]

Ever read _A Canticle for Leibowitz_? It's one of my favorites, particularly because it pokes fun at our tendency to sanctify the innocuous. In the book an ancient relic is found, something from antiquity. Turns out to be a shopping list from a guy who works a 9 to 5 job. There's another short story called "Motel of the Mysteries" that does a similar thing, except that toilet seats become some ancient religious headdressing.

The knowledge is what we need to hold dear, not the artifacts created in search of that knowledge. It's nice in a saccharine sort of way to have tangible evidence of where someone stood, but the real treasure is what that person did. If we sanctify the artifacts we tend to lose sight of the knowledge.

100km is excessive

[someone1234]

How many places would remain if all those spots are banned? There are only so much good landing sites on the Moon.

The Consipiracy Continues

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Re:The bootprint is might be getting fuzzy by now

[mcvos]

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.

Re:Why Worry?

[MichaelSmith]

Erosion Requires an atmosphere doesn't it?

No. They can be eroded by micrometeorites and thermal changes. But that would take millions of years.

translation

[Swampash]

"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"

Idolatry

[medoc]

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.

Re:Ugh

[EdIII]

It is a shame that some people exist merely to hold the rest of us back from our ideal Star Trek future with green alien babes.

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".

Re:Why Worry?

[Sparklepony]

Other posters have already mentioned erosion via the expansion and contraction of the monthly day/night cycle's heating and cooling, and erosion by micrometeors. There's also moonquakes and electrostatic levitation of moon dust that come to mind as other natural sources of erosion.

On top of all that, there's artificial sources of erosion. Bear in mind that the footprint was made at the base of a ladder that a couple of astronauts spent hours coming and going from; it probably got stepped on a few times. And then the lander took off again by firing a powerful rocket engine, directly blasting the area with high-velocity gases. You can see in a video of Apollo 17's lander launch that quite a lot of dust and debris gets blown about in the process. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXs4tncQcAE

But frankly, even if that first footprint was still magically pristine, I don't think returning there and putting down new footprints would somehow "ruin" the historical significance. It would add to the historical significance. The site would no longer be just the site of the first manned lunar landing, it'd be the site of the first manned lunar landing and the first return to the site of the first manned lunar landing. That's pretty neat too.

Re:The bootprint is might be getting fuzzy by now

[TapeCutter]

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.