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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
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?
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.
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
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?
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.
Ask the Alliance. They didn't like Malcolm Reynolds all that much.
sudo make me a sandwich
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).
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.
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.
Well, there could literally be astrounaut shit there. They probably didn't bring all their excrement back to earth.
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.
treaty that matters in friendly PDF.
Damn, that is one of the funniest posts I've seen on Slashdot for a long time. I'm going to need to use it elsewhere at some point.
wait... you mean the moon landings *weren't* faked, after all??