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NASA To Future Lunar Explorers: Don't Mess With Our Moon Stuff
coondoggie writes "NASA today gently reminded any future Moon explorers that any relics of its Apollo missions or other U.S. lunar artifacts should be off limits and are considered historic sites. NASA issued the reminder in conjunction with the X Prize Foundation and its Google Lunar X Prize competition which will use NASA's Moon sites guidelines as it sifts through the 26 teams currently developing systems and spacecraft to land on the Moon."
You gonna come up here and get us, NASA?
Yeah, I didn't THINK so.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Heh, it would be quite a coup for a less-than-friendly space-faring nation to bring back to earth the Apollo 11 lunar lander (descent stage) as a "trophy"!
Paid Q&A/Research
the moon landing is fake or not
Anybody up for an epic game of capture the flag?
SALVAGE.
They abandoned that stuff out there on a rock in space. They have no intention of doing anything further with it and have no authority over it. How is it not salvage to pick up some leftovers?
Do we really have to start worrying about Space Pirates?
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
Didn't you know. http://www.ironsky.net/site/ Geeze
It all starts at 0
So basically they're just asking nicely. It doesn't seem like they can actually do anything even if the new spacefarers are based in the United States, and they almost certainly can't do anything if they are based in another country.
According to TFA, there is no treaty or anything governing this. If somebody can bring stufff back and sell it for a few $million to help pay for the mission, I say more power to 'em. An archaeologist is just a pot hunter with friends at a university. Don't believe me? Google around. A lot of these guys end up not being able to house artifacts. The artifacts fall into neglect. In one case they were even dumped into a river which may simply confuse future poth... archeaologists, whatever you want to call them. They'd be better off allowing people to trade these things, and simply requiring records for the pieces they thought were important. People who pay money for something generally take good care of it. Also, you don't end up with a single point of attack for looters.
Anyone else think it's pretty cool that we've reached a point in history where we have to start seriously talking about property rights on the moon?
This is Salvage 1 - the junkyard astronautics http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079847/
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
I find humanity strange: there's an ENTIRE FUCKING PLANET completely pristine and untouched, waiting to be explored, and all people can think off is returning to a few square miles of it that's already been visited.
It's like a dog coming back to sniff its own poo when there's the rest of the garden to visit.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
There's a very legitimate question of jurisdiction. The U.S. has no legal authority over the moon, any more than they do venus or mars.
In essence, it would be kind of a dickish thing to do to mess with historical sites on the moon, but the U.S. government has no legal authority over the moon. I'd say something which has been left unattended for 50+ years would qualify as "abandoned", so it's not like theft laws should apply.
There is the issue that if the craft is a U.S.-based craft, then like ships in international waters, it might carry U.S. jurisdiction around with it wherever it goes, but if it's, I dunno, a Chinese or Russian spacecraft? What's NASA/USGovt gonna do?
other than the US arrogant annex defensive stance of a superpower hasbeen.
Are there RTG's left at the sites? That would discourage the sticky fingered types...
starting auction price will be some crazy amount!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I remember watching him on the Salvage1 tv show way back when.
I recall it inspiring me to think that someone could go if they wanted it badly enough. And that is what the X-Prize foundation is also trying to do.
How can they stay away from something that so many people have told me aren't really there?
Put a fence around it. Otherwise, it's fair game to whoever gets there next.
Obviously, our time as a Superpower is over, so now we're trying to puff ourselves up to try and scare the next generation of Moon-travelers, which will most likely be the Chinese in 2030.
Either that or Elon Musk will get it all to auction on eBay -- put you gotta use Paypal as your payment method.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
into the Nevada desert and get it back themselves? And why did they leave it there after filming in the first place..sheesh.
See subject
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I'd love to get Shepard's Golf Ball. That is the only memento I think we'd want back. The rest of that stuff is just disposable stuff. Unless the US is serious and gets back to the Moon, then how can we claim that those sites are of historic interest? It's time to start staking claims and prospecting!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Geez, NASA doesn't even follow their own rules. You may recall, part of the Apollo 12 landing involved a hike over to the Surveyor 3 landing site. They hack-sawed the camera and several other pieces off the Surveyor probe and brought them home. Still waiting to see if any of it gets posted in eBay...
(Kind of ironic that they took the camera; the Apollo 12 astronauts ineptly fried their camera by pointing it at the sun, and ruined the live TV coverage of the entire mission).
Maybe they should just paint it a gaudy orange or pink or give it a mustache, not tell NASA until next time they get there.
Having done a lot of research in space law, I'd like to dispel some of the misconceptions I see being put forth in both the summary and the comments:
1. These are not rules but rather guidelines and are only directly binding on activities conducted by NASA itself.
2. However, they are likely to become de facto conditions for any activities licensed, fully or in part, by the U.S. government or other friendly spacefaring nations. At the present, this covers basically all private space activity.
3. Under the Outer Space Treaty, to which all spacefaring nations are parties, all man-made items on the surface of the moon and other celestial bodies, as well as in orbit, continue to belong to the nations that launched them (with the possible exception of a couple of Soviet landers allegedly sold to Lord British). This policy exists to ensure that launching entities may not absolve themselves of responsibility for damage cause by their objects, on earth or in space, after their use life is over.
4. Space law does not contain notions of salvage as does maritime law. "lost" or otherwise inaccessible objects may not be removed without their owners' permission.
5. It is the U.S. government's position that the lunar landing sites remain active research laboratories studying the long-term effects of the lunar environment on man-made objects. This provides them further protections from non-interference under various space law treaties.
6. None of the other spacefaring nations, China included, are interested in disturbing these sites due to the huge negative backlash they would incur.
7. No substantive laws forbidding people form messing with these sites exist. Many have advocated extending UNESCO World Heritage Site status to the lunar landing sites, but that regime is premised on territorial sovereignty, which cannot exist in space under the OST. Under the property principles outlined above, however, the owners of space objects (here the U.S. govt.) could sue any private party that succeeded in screwing with the landing sites into the ground.
Considering these guidelines were written within the past year, I think events that happened 40+ years ago do not qualify as
not following their own rules."
Also, if you had bothered to read the guidelines, you would see that they conceive of different levels of protection at different sites (Apollo 11 of course being the most protected) with certain impacting activities allowed at lesser-protected sites for research purposes.
I'm going to build amusement parks around those landing sites.
Have gnu, will travel.
treaty.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
You sir have succinctly summarized the content of the article in a (what I think of as) non-inflamitory way. Thank you! Many others in the thread think that NASA is going to send the MiB to your door to get you for messing with their stuff but I think you are correct: I and many others like me want to have the history of humanity's first baby steps into space kept as historical evidence and reminders of how far we have progressed.
This shit is stupid (not the preservation of historic achievement part, rather the cries of nationalism).
Do we (humans) really think that the brave folks who will, eventually, risk life and limb to establish human settlements off-world will give a single fuck about Earthbound politics? Yea, 'cause, you know, when the lives of every colonist depend on things like functioning oxygen scrubbers, they're really going to care what the politicians of Nations X and Y have to say about each other.
I posit that future spacemen will have no nationality, but rather an allegiance to their colony - as it should be. Allowing Terran politics to influence space exploration and colonization is a sure-fire way to ensure that it will never be a successful endeavor.
Politicians - fucking up otherwise brilliant ideas since 2000 BCE.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
After all, it's not like the United States of America gave a shit about all the historical and sacred sites of the Red Man, "manifest destiny" apparently gave White Man the right to trample over, destroy, steal, rape and pillage, all in the name of "homesteading" so that all the money they paid France for that land didn't go to waste.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
treaty that matters in friendly PDF.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
I'm sure if it's moved, the Historical Sticklers Society will make sure that it's replaced with a replica.
That would be hilarious, more reason to go and bring it back!
IIRC, The United States deliberately did not attempt to assert the right to the Moon on the basis of the Moon landing. The phrase "we came in peace for all mankind" points that out symbolically.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Well, there could literally be astrounaut shit there. They probably didn't bring all their excrement back to earth.
In a few years we can expect a "Kilroy was here" sign standing next to the American flag. Just as long there are no goatse pics.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
A theme park, with blackjack and hookers is OK?
Richard Garriott purchased the Lunokhod 2 rover from the Russians "as is where is."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_2
So Russia at least does recognize these objects as property.
There is. It's in bags.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, there was a previous article about the Russians wanting to set a permanent base on the moon http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/05/23/1243207/russia-to-establish-bases-on-the-moon. Perhaps the NASA is concerned that they can not move a hughe section of the Nevada desert to the moon on time for the Russians to see it there once they set the base?
I think it's sad that when it comes to the manned exploration of our solar system, NASA are part of the past, not the present.
Geez, NASA doesn't even follow their own rules. You may recall, part of the Apollo 12 landing involved a hike over to the Surveyor 3 landing site. They hack-sawed the camera and several other pieces off the Surveyor probe and brought them home. Still waiting to see if any of it gets posted in eBay...
How is that not following their own rules? It's their property.
Use away. Confucius says: "Imitation is sincerest form of flattery."
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Les Stroud needs all that stuff to be there when he starts shooting his feature film to complement the series.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Wait! So NASA sent NASA astronauts to retrieve NASA gear from a NASA probe... and this is somehow similar in your mind to what the article is about?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
wait... you mean the moon landings *weren't* faked, after all??
Yeah, but who cares about Iran's puny booster, when they've developed flying saucer technology!
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
8. You shouldn't break into a Hollywood set and grab the Apollo 11 equipment. We want it to be a part of Universal Studios some day.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I wonder what Andy Griffith would have to say about that?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078681/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvage_1
You touch my stuff... I kill you.
Really?
I look forward to the pimping of the lunar buggy.
"Yo Dawg I Herd U Don't people Messing With Your Moon Stuff so I put an camera in your lunar buggy so you can watch people going to the moon while you sit at home not going to the moon!"
Right, because random people looting a site is exactly the same as bringing back some pieces for scientific purposes.
$20 million per entry.
O wait, you gotta send someone there first to build the fences. Doh!
I thought NASA's job was Muslim outreach now?
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"