House Democrats Propose National Park On the Moon

MarkWhittington writes "Two House Democrats, Reps. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), have proposed a bill called Apollo Lunar Landing Legacy Act, H.R. 2617 (PDF), that would establish the Apollo Lunar Landing Sites National Historical Park at all the Apollo lunar landing sites, according to a story in The Hill. 'The park would be comprised of all artifacts left on the surface of the moon from the Apollo 11 through 17 missions. The bill says these sites need to be protected because of the anticipated increase in commercial moon landings in the future.'"

Comments

Re:No one has territory on the moon

[Capsaicin]

Maybe the folks proposing this didn't think too hard about how the word 'national' will be read outside the US.

Of all the stupid...

[Okian Warrior]

Of all the stupid, hare-brained ideas we've seen, this one has to be the stupidest so far.

We're close to exponential runaway on government spending (borrowing more, and more often). The economy is barely moving despite drenching it in money, jobs are part-time with no benefits, we jail more people than China, the government plainly tramples over all our civil rights, oil is running out, tax law is a joke, IP law is a joke, immigration law is a joke, H1B visas are a joke...

...so of course let's put a park on the moon!

I'm half inclined to start a new political movement: the "Boot" party.

Let's give these people "the boot" - vote the incumbents out! Keep turnover high until we get good people who can accomplish something worthwhile.

Re:Of all the stupid...

[artor3]

Congress can't do anything else, on account of the gridlock, so why not spend a few minutes voting on this?

And by the way, if you just indiscriminately vote out incumbents every cycle, you'll never get anyone good in office. You'll just get wave after wave of naive freshmen, easily exploited by lobbyists.

I certainly hope

[fustakrakich]

That they come up with an original name...

Re:how about

[Sir_Sri]

But how is anything the UN says gonna affect private enterprise?

Countries are subject to national laws. Countries are all part of the UN, and even the ones that aren't can be more or less forced to go along with it by the ones that are.

do all countries obey UN mandates

Insofar as anyone obeys the laws they themselves have agreed to follow (which, I take your point, is not as often as one might hope).

sooner or later SOMEBODY is gonna grab 'em.

So... making an effort towards later rather than sooner is probably worthwhile.

Certainly the UN is only as capable as its member states, who are only so capable, and eventually I'm sure law and order will break down enough for whatever reason that anyone who feels like it can go pillage historical artefacts from everyone else. But for the moment we try and avoid that.

There isn't an infinite time horizon solution. We could simply say 'free for all, first come first serve' and let the artefacts get sold, but eventually notions of private property will break down long enough for someone to steal them from their owner of the day and if they have bigger weapons than the other guy, I guess that makes it legal. But for as long as there is lawful authority (insofar as such a thing exists at all) we can make laws to try and do the best possible for now, and when we're dead the next group of people can deal with whatever their problem of the day is. Lets face it, if they find the 25th century equivalent of oil under the apollo landing sights, they're getting moved to museums, and I wouldn't begrudge my greatx20 grand children whatever choice they think is best. For the moment 'don't touch' seems like the best bet.