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Space

Lunar Landing Historical Site? 117

Posted by michael from the give-a-hoot,-don't-pollute dept.
kylv writes: "Check out this article on abcnews.com telling how a New Mexico group is trying to make the site of the first lunar landing into a National Historical Site."
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Lunar Landing Historical Site? More

Lunar Landing Historical Site?

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  • Yeah, and only since then we really knew how the moon was discovered...

    We're whalers on the moon.
    We carry a harpoon.
    But there ain't no whales
    so we tell tall tales
    and sing our whaling tune!

  • I declare that you must call RF/Moon

    You're smoking crack. Everyone I know calls it "GNU/Moon." Its pretty common knowledge that without the Gnu toolset, the Moon would just be a lifeless chunk of rock.

  • I don't get it... (Score:4)

    by Enoch Root ( 57473 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @06:30AM (#742928)
    Why do they want to make a covert NASA film studio into a historical site?

  • Did anybody bother reading the article? (Score:3)

    by rocketjesus ( 32378 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @06:35AM (#742929)
    Read the article, then post you mindless yammering.

    Because 99% of the mindless yammering on here is already clearly addressed in the article. For example:

    The students don't want to claim the moon, which clearly would be a violation of the Outer Space Treaty.

    Of course, I think about 75% of all posters to slashdot are violations of the Outer Space Treaty to begin with, so I guess maybe I'm hoping for too much.
  • The moon really isn't part of the US. Shouldn't this sort of thing be handled by the UN? They could make it a UN world heritage site, and you wouldn't have to worry about people fighting over the moon.
  • It has to be a National Historic site. Did you pause to wonder why this effort is coming from a group in New Mexico? (*X-Files Theme Music*)

    Weren't the moon landings faked someplace in New Mexico in the first place? ;-)

  • I think one would require citizens to live on the moon. Canada, for example, keeps an outposts of people (mostly scientist) in the far north in order to maintain it's claim to that land. If the people leave, the land is up for grabs.

    The same would apply to the Moon, treaties prevent that however. Although, nothing is stopping martians from moving to the moon and claiming it since they have not signed our treaties.

  • This gets me thinking ... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Mentioning the Sun got me thinking. How about national historic sites based on inventions? Like Edison's basement, etc. Now what does that have to do with the Sun. Well, I remember Robert Cringely pointing out that Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems, and Silicon Graphics were all started out of the same computer science building at Stanford. That building, along with the Xerox PARC should definitely be on the National Register of Historic Places, if they are not already.
  • It does seem a bit self-centered, doesn't it? After we (the US) left a plaque up there inscribed witht he phrase "...we came in peace for all mankind..."

    However, I really think there should be an historial preservation of the site -- the New Mexio group is on the right track, they just need to change their verbiage a bit.. maybe to a "United Nations Historical site"?
  • but a lot of the stuff has no way of being used remotely too. The rover for example...it's not doing anything.
    What about the food wrappers and the boots? do you think those are "not abandoned" too?
  • you mean...
    If you are an american and you retrieve it, don't you?

    I don't see how they'd convince some chinese guy that he has to give it back...
  • Before it can be a World Heritage site, it must be designated as a national landmark first.
  • I'm sure in due time if the Moon gets colonized someone will build a protective dome over at least Apollo 11's landing site.

    I agree. We should protect that site, as a reminder of Humanity's first steps into space. Maybe a dome covered with a diamond film coating, a la Arthur C. Clarke's 2061.

    It's not as if Muslims are going to be the next ones there and then decide that since that history was made by a non-muslim and therefore contradicts Allah or something and decide to burn it like the library of Alexandria.

    Well, it's not as if it hadn't happened a thousand times during humanity's civilization times.

    Like the Spaniards tearing down Pre-colombine buildings in order to build churches. Or Americans kicking Native Americans off their sacred lands in order to build oil lines or strip mines. Or shipping people out of some atoll in order to do nuclear tests there.

    Let's face it, Humanity still has some way to go before we can all be, well, humane to each other, and I think that's a prerequisite to intelligent space exploration. In my opinion, of course.

  • I don't really think it matters what the students WANT to do...
    The question that is in my mind is what they would ACTUALLY be doing...And I am not yet convinced that they would not be laying claim to a section of the moon IN PRACTICE.
  • From the article:
    That led ultimately to a letter from the National Park Service saying the agency lacks jurisdiction over the moon.
    I would love to have a copy of that one... "Dear Sir, In response to your recent query, we regret to inform you that we exercise no jurisdiction over the Moon. Yours Truly, John Smith, Directory of the National Park Service."

    Even more, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when that issue came up at the NPS. "Hmm...hey, Joe, we got a guy on the phone who wants to know if we can declare a national historic site on the moon..."

  • Also, it said the National Park Service rejected the request, stating,

    The United States does not have jurisdiction over the moon.


    So the official government position is, "we can't". But that would be no fun. Slashdot readers prefer posting to reading, anyway ...
    ----
  • Perhaps a larger, global organisation such as UNESCO, the UN, or else an international coalition of space agency's should declare it a protected area.

    Sites such as Quebec City, the cradle of Canada, are labled as UNESCO world heritage sites, so why shouldn't humankind's first jaunt on the moon.

    I am sure though that unesco would probably just write back a letter stating that "We have no jurisdiction over the moon"....
  • Bova's long out-of-print novel Millennium, about the fight for independence waged by a joint US-Soviet moonbase (hey, it was written over 20 years ago!), includes a visit to the Apollo 11 site ... which has been preserved with a coating of plastic, so you can walk on it without disturbing the footprints.
    ----
  • You're so stupid, you should be banned from the internet.
  • > Mount Pinatubo, Phillipines

    Naw I vote for Krakatoa ;)
  • Is that really what it says? That's a bit of a giggle.

    "We came in peace": Except that it was only the Cold War that made them do such insanely risky things in such badly-engineered rockets. And there were all the theories about space-based weapons platforms, for which the Moon would be ideal.

    "for all mankind": Yeah right. Then they plant a US flag to say, "We did it, not the Russkies". All mankind, apart from those who are Communist, Asian, African, or anyone else who isn't prepare to knuckle under when Uncle Sam throws a tantrum, apparently.

    Yes, it was a great achievement, just as climbing Everest was a great achievement. But there's no intention of claiming Everest as a New Zealand national monument, just cos Hillary came from there. Some ppl are as bad as cats: "Ooh, this is mine, I've got to mark it as being mine, so everyone knows it's mine". For God's sake, guys...

    Grab.
  • Visiting them all? Ambitious.
    There's 630 UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
    You better start travelling right now.
  • Just checked, I've only seen 8 of those sites so far in person.
  • It won't do any good to send oxygen with him, because he swears he won't inhale.

    -
  • Just read a short story last night in a collection [sff.net]. How We Lost the Moon... talks about the evacuation of lunar bases and how they saved the historic Apollo items - even digging out an Armstrong footprint. Nice read, IMHO.
  • I'm glad that this group is advancing the importance of the part of the moon that I bought a few years back. I plan to set up a Disney style exhibit there where people can go and relive that great first step on the moon. All the funding I can get. Please write your local govenment representative, and the UN.

  • ahhhh school (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    nothing important to do but make issues out of things which are pointless. Historical site my ass. get a job you hippies ;-)
  • It certainly would be a nice thing to save, but seeing as how "we came in peace for all mankind", making a US National Historic site seems a little silly. And what's the point anyways, I don't think schools are going to start making field trips there any time soon. Does it need to be protected that badly? Are the oil companies thinking of drilling for crude there or something?

    I don't think there are many countries out there with the technology to actually go mess with the site, and those that can probably won't, cause that'd just be an asshole thing to do. Meteors and whatnot may not be so selective when deciding where to slam material in to the moon's surface, but I don't think they recoginze US historical site boundries anyways.

    Nice thought, good to recognize a significant step in human history, but at least make it a global thing. Maybe some sort of new thing, like a Humanity Historical Treasure (I think that sounds sufficiently corny to work),

  • Whoever gets there first can claim the land. And to date, no other nation has been to the moon.

    Um, no. The Soviets [nasa.gov] went to the moon.

  • Not with people, they didn't (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Whoever gets their first"

    The operative word being "Who". The Soviets never sent a "who", only a "what" (i.e., robotic probes).

    The U.S. is only nation that has sent "who"s to the moon. Not to be confused with "The Who"'s Keith Moon.
  • or not at all... why does it need to be a (national|international|anything else) heritage site? Protection from rampant real estate developers and yobbish tourists? I think not.

    Ignoring for a moment the fact (if what I've read is to be believed) that the earthbound National Parks folks spend a lot more of their budget on building private logging roads than they do on preservation...

    I live not far from an overseas US National Monument, IIRC - there is a war memorial at Runymede, just outside Windsor that is a 'square mile of US soil' or something along those lines. Great big slab of a memorial, similar to the Vietnam Memorial in DC.

    Hmm - those three paragraphs don't really join up much, eh?

  • They might want to find out if the lunar landing sites could qualify as UNESCO World Heritage sites. Then it's clearly "for all humanity", and they might get worldwide support for the idea.

  • If that is the Goal of the movement then I may change my attitude that it is a total farce, but I get the feeling that it is just a one-up-manship ploy of someone to claim the moon as bieng US turf.
  • Probably voiced best by Warner Brothers The Goofy Gophers [imdb.com]:

    Mac: They're going to have a terrible time getting that Historical Marker up there!
    Tosh: Terrible, just terrible!


    --
    Chief Frog Inspector
  • Please Moderate Up the parent to this post!

    The one draw back to the World Heritage site designation to me is personal. One of my life goals is to visit all of them, and putting one at such a remote location would make acheiving that goal MUCH more dificult.

    As to the claim that it isn't part of the world, I find that legally (by Earth Law) it is. It is almost invariably described as "Earth's Moon". Under common law, after a certain period (usually 7 or 17 years) of being claimed by an individual, if the true owner doesn't come forward to claim it, ownership passes to the new claimant. With 500 years of claiming it as Earth's moon, and by planting a flag on it over 30 years ago, by Earth law it belongs to Earth. The US possibly could have staked a claim to at least the regions directly explored by Apollo, by treaty we have renounced the ability to stake such a claim.

    NOTE: I am not a space lawyer, but I know someone that is, there is actaully a specialty in it now.

  • D:C (Score:1)

    by kilonad ( 157396 )
    I hope there aren't any barcodes on the moon, because we wouldn't want the feds impinging on D:C's business model.

  • Re:A Disgraceful Idea (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I would tend to agree. The USA should attempt to get the nations of the WORLD involved in this. In other words it should be a world historic site.

    Yes we [USA] were the ones to get there but I think in the spirit of Armstrong and this nation we should give it to the world.

    If that isn't possible then the USA should attempt to protect the site by making it a national historic site.
  • Like the Spaniards tearing down Pre-colombine buildings in order to build churches.

    Come to think of it, I think even the ancient Greeks kind of did that with their own buildings. I hear the area is kind of active seismically, so they didn't all last for millennia like what is still standing, so if a structure came down, it went up redesigned with the stones of the old buildings. Not as bad, but still. There are some temple ruins in which some stones can be traced to use in like three different structures over the ages.
  • Any more wrong than the Mexicans seizing the territory from Spain, the Spanish seizing it from the natives, or each group of natives seizing it from the previous group of natives?
  • The only thing Microsoft makes that doesn't crash will be a planetary probe . . .
  • You mean the footprints that were mostly blown away when the exhaust from the LM washed over them?

    Bah - the flag even fell down.
  • Take over the damn moon then.

    We took the entire western us from other countries, why not claim the moon?

  • ? Are the oil companies thinking of drilling for crude there or something?

    If the moon had crude, that would be real news. I think that would prove that the moon once had life, since crude is a pretty complex organic mix, but I could be wrong.

    At any rate, yes, claiming the site as a US historic site would be widely perceived as yet another obnoxious move by "those arrogant Americans". IMHO, it's a really bad idea. An international treaty would be more appropriate.

  • Not until the moon has a country that joins the UN. Since no nation owns the moon, the United Nations shouldn't have any power there.
  • Most certainly, these objects are *STILL* in use by NASA - mostly to study the effects of space radiation on equipment, and there are definite plans to come back to the landing sites at some point and do an analysis on the materials.

    The last man on the moon left his Hasselblad camera lens pointing up at the stars on the lunar rover passenger seat. (Lunar astronauts were issued their own Hasselblads, and remained their property after the missions were completed)

    He was thinking, as he was packing up, whether or not to retrieve it - but decided that leaving it there on the seat, facing the stars, would be a good way to collect cosmic particles - in the *lens* of the camera - for later analysis during some future mission.

    That's how focused these guys and many of the other NASA moon hipsters were on the importance of the science they were working on.

    So to assume that just because the gear up there is not being *used* does *NOT* mean that the equipment is not part of a further scientific mission. Modern-day standards for "junk propagation" do not apply when you're studying materials, space, etc.
  • If someone (or more likely someones) decided to be boorish enough to claim the, ahh errr, artifacts at Tranquility Base as private property to be sold to the highest bidder, there is not much the US could do about it. First, You would have to be there to stop them. (not likely) Second, I think the most likely way a court of law would handle this would be to apply the same standards as salvage on the high seas. But come on, not abbandoned? Has there ever been any plan to retrive this debri? What are those plans, specificaly? I hope that by the time we are ready to return to the moon we have matured beyound the point of feeling the need to place armed guards around a pile of old litter.
  • The ball is near the javelin, that straight line in a crater. Try the text description [nasa.gov] of the image. The image is also described in this transcript of Apollo 14 EVA-2 [nasa.gov], as well as the javelin throw and golfing.
  • http://www.fre esp eech.org/sharelist/SHACTEMP/archives/000622.html [freespeech.org]
    Account of Huntingdon Life Sciences [UK]- researchers who do animal research, they suffer a daily barrage of abuse, have been firebombed and are effectively under seige from animal rights protestors.

    Genetically modified crops are frequently destroyed in the field and when in test because "We don't know what might happen".
    Guess we aren't always as enlightened as we think we are.

  • UNESCO World Heritage sites

    Hmm, maybe I'll have to scale back the goal a little bit, but I still hope to see a majority of them. Even that will be a challenge, since they keep adding them each year.

    Here is the current list Current List [unesco.org].

  • Than New Mexico for this sort of thing...

    /me thinks of Roswell


  • Badly engineered rockets?

    Couldn't have been too bad: the Saturn V used for the Apollo and Skylab missions had a 100% success rate.

    Before that, yeah, there was a bit of a learning curve.

  • Crude's pretty complex. But there's other hydrocarbons in lots of other places that most likely didn't have dinosaurs & ferns. The Jovian planets have got methane in their atmospheres IIRC.
  • That would be some hidden TV studio. Everyone knows the lunar landing was a fake.

    --

  • For GM stuff, I understand the concerns, but there is no way to know "what might happen" unless we try it, eh? From what I understand, most GM is simply an extention of hybridization, cutting down the time involved I believe. Hybridization has been studied for what? 150 years?

    Concerning the parent post, I didn't know as much about Alexandria as I thought I did.

    Basically, the point is that we mustn't destroy information simply because we don't agree with it. Everyone changes their mind over time in just about everything. One may regret their own actions after any period of time, from minutes to decades.

    Death and taxes are certain. Stupidity seems even more certain.
  • To take a nice vacation there? Sorta chilly I would think...Wear a nice warm sweater.


  • Do they mean the site where we "landed: on the moon? Or do they mean the site in Arizona where everyone knows the whole thing was faked? __________________________________
  • Right...if they had actually gone to the moon, they would have brought back all sorts of cheese and stuff...it would sell like crazy and everyone would want some..but all they brought back was rocks.

    Where the heck did they get the rocks?


  • I find it sad that humanity assumes we "own" the moon, as well as the earth, and everything else we come upon.

    In the end, we'll probably wreck it like we messed up here.
  • To make a site a historical site? Are they gonna put some plaques up there? (I know I spelled plaques wrong)

    I would like to know where they got all that crack.


  • Considering that it's not even on the planet it should be considered to be the same as say, space itself IE: not under UN juristidiction because, really, it's in space. It's not even a GLOBAL historic site- it's an INTERPLANITARY historic site, and we don't have an Interplanitary Historic Society yet.
    ----

  • More National Historic Sites (Score:4)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @03:55AM (#742986) Journal
    I'd like to nominate the following for U.S. National Historic Site designation:
    • Yucatan Meteor
    • North American Glaciers, Recent Ice Ages
    • Sun
    • West Berlin, Germany
    • North Pole of Earth
    • Mount Pinatubo, Phillipines

  • National Historical Site? Are you mad? (Score:3)

    by Mike Connell ( 81274 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @03:48AM (#742987) Homepage
    Leaving aside the bizarre notion of calling an area of the *moon* a "*National* Historical Site"...

    The article continues...

    > There seems to be no doubt the artifacts are clearly U.S. property. Even NASA says the stuff left behind by the Apollo astronauts was "not abandoned," according to documents collected by the researchers.

    Not abandoned? "Oh no, we really were intending to come back for it (in a few hundred years)." We weren't really littering on the moon Sir...
    Anyway, *I* have some doubt, even if nobody else does. I think the Chinese should get up there quick and grab it and then auction it off to the US administration if they really think it's theirs ;)

    Mike.
  • It probably wouldn't hurt to claim Arizona while they're at it. Yeehaa.
  • It would be difficult to call the moon a *national* monument. If I remember correctly, the moon is classified by the UN the same way Anartica is: no one owns it. How can the US declare something like that, if we don't own the moon. It seems to me that the UN would be required to do something like that...
  • Why don't we send in a squad of highly qualified software developers to check out all of the locations? May I suggest we start with the third?

  • But it will be the people who eventually live there [asi.org] that will decide this... not some foreign government!

    It seems like establishing a national monument on the moon or any other extraterrestrial body is a step over the line established by the various international treaties regarding space.

  • i would love to join...i think...what does the membership require? If i have to drool over natalie portman or something i don't want it...


  • We signed an international treaty where Mexico acknowledged out annexation of California and Texas. We have also signed an international treaty forswearing all claims to the Moon back in 1967. (And before you bring up the Indian treaties -- the Supreme Court ruled long ago that the American Indian polities were not foreign states under U.S. law. Therefore breaking an Indian treaty is not legally equivalent to breaking an international treaty, although it can be considered morally equivalent.)
  • Leaving aside the bizarre notion of calling an area of the *moon* a "*National* Historical Site"...

    Well, we already call areas of Mexico "Texas" and "California". How would this be breaking precedent?

    Bruce

  • Seriously, only 18 people from the entire human race have visited the moon so far. Sure, maybe there's an extra Saturn V or two locked up in Area 51 or something, but other than that, how the hell will we ever get there again?

    Seriously, a moon base will not be born into fruition until someone starts visiting again.

  • Actually, we did ratify the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, just not the Moon Treaty.

    The Outer Space Treaty was the equivalent of the original Antarctic Treaty -- no new territorial claims, no militarization, scientific cooperation.
    The Moon Treaty was the equivalent of the equally unratified-by-the-U.S. Law of the Sea, which arranged for international-socialist bodies to coordnate exploitation of the resources of space and the sea, respectively.
  • Well, I suppose the visitor's center won't be doing much business then.
  • I thought the guy from Sealand [sealandgov.com] grabbed it when no one was looking.

    -------------
  • I stand corrected then :)
  • YThis is just too choice of a comment!!!!
  • And the golf club [nasm.edu] is on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. Stepping into the main lobby of the NASM is simply awesome as they have the Voyager (1st around the world, non-stop, no refueling), X-1 (Yeager's plane), Wright 1903 Flyer, the X-15, and the Spirit of St Louis hanging from the ceiling.
  • That's a great idea, because not only is that the most important thing we could ever hope to know, but we're not able to generate gamma rays in the lab to test their effects on a US flag!

  • Of course new mexico... (Score:5)

    by the_tsi ( 19767 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @08:32AM (#743003)
    Of course people from New Mexico would want it declared a national historical site. After all, when they faked the landing, all the filming was done on NM's turf.

    -Chris
  • I thought everyone knew the Moon belonged to Radio Shack [slashdot.org].
  • Crap. If this continues, there won't be ANYWHERE on the moon to ride my dirtbike.
  • The United Nations has a program by which important sites are designated as "World Heritage Sites" (i think that's the name) for cultural reasons. Usually these are historically important things such as the Roman Forum. I think it would be more appropriate for the moon landings and indeed probably all solar system landing sites (pathfinder, viking, the melted soviet probes on Venus) should be designated as such. There are enforcement issues but it is probably the best thing to do now.
  • You forgot the bureaucratic mind. The UN can't declare a site a World Historical Site until the host country does, else you open up a huge can of worms. (As a trivial example, imagine the Arab world attempting to claim the entire city of Jerusalem is a WHS against the wishes of Israel.)

    Historically, very few historic sites are in international territory. Off the top of my head, I can only think of two - the north and south poles (historic because of the first teams to reach each). The lunar landing sites are another.

  • Flotsam and Jetsam (Score:3)

    by coyote-san ( 38515 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @03:36PM (#743008)
    "Abandoned" has a specific legal connotation, and NASA is correct to say that the material was not "abandoned."

    By way of analogy, "flotsam" and "jetsam" are not the same thing and are legally very different. If I recall the sense correctly, "flotsam" is the floating debris (and debris washed ashore?) after a ship goes down - anyone may acquire legal possession by simply scooping it out of the water.

    "Jetsam," in contrast, is floating debris that was deliberately thrown overboard in an attempt to save the ship, and with the intent to retrieve the material after the storm (or other crisis) has passed. Anyone who scoops it out of the water is stealing it from its lawful owner. Even if the ship ultimately sinks, the owner of the ship still has the legal ownership of jetsam.

    (As I said, it's been a long time since I looked at the exact definitions and I may have the sense backwards.)

    "Jetsam" was temporary left behind, but it was not legally abandoned. "Flotsam" was abandoned. Anything that goes down with the ship was not, and for some period is owned by the owner of the ship (or the insurance company that paid a claim), although courts have (finally!) come to their senses and said that an insurance company can't protest too much after 100+ years have passed with no attempt at recovery.

    NASA, quite legitimately, is considering the material left on the moon "jetsam." They left it behind so they could get the crew home, but I'm sure in the best of all possible worlds they would have the complete lunar lander sitting in a display at the Smithsonian.
  • Not all of this is a joke. There are many people (myself included) who follow the belief that the moon landing was nothing more than a hoax to feed the peaple during the "cold war".

    Thost intrigued by the idea that nasa never went to the moon should check out this [informamerica.com] little review of the film "It's Only a Paper Moon" for some facts. Mr. Rene, however, does a much better job (IMOHO) in his book "NASA Mooned America" [primeline-america.com], which is availible for $25 dollars via mail order.

    Of corse, some could argue that this guy's [nuclear.net] arguments are a little more sound... (or at least funny).

  • So, when the blokes from Proxima Centari make it here to our part of the galaxy, they are going to see that olive branch and think "Hmmm...that's the UNIVERSAL sign of peace - turn the warships around - this is a kind planet."

    Or they are gonna dissenegrate the earth because not it not only obscures their view of Venus, but because they dared make a mock idol of the precious holy olive leaf.

    Universal my ass.
  • heh.. woops. pressed "submit" instead of "preview" (I wan't done writing the response). That response was aimed at the moderators who labeled the comment as funny.

    The review I linked to noted that no astro-not has written an "I Went To The Moon" book. Although this is true from one point of view, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton helped write "Moon Shot", which was a documentary of the NASA Apollo program from the inside. It, of course, doesn't include any mention of the idea that the entire program was faked, but I thought I should bring it up before someone flamed me.

    I think the greatest evidence is the psychological (however the hell you spell that) state that many of the astro-nots were left in after the fact. When Buzz Aldran was asked (at some Dinner party a quite few years later) how it felt "to have walked on the moon", he showed a look of pain on his face, got up, and left the room crying. That alone is proof enough for me.

  • They can't make it a national historical site! They don't own the moon, I do!

    And from now on, I declare that you must call RF/Moon, so that everyone will know the great effort I put into making it available in the sky for the good of all humanity.

  • Actually, I could see someone from NASA going back to look at the original lander... and finding a ticket for littering posted on the thing.

  • Considering the age of the moon that would most likely be French cheese. It could be that those rocks they brought once actually were cheese, of course.<Rant type="slashdot, necessary"> Did anybody taste/smell them? Was he called Bill Gates? Are we talking big magic CEO/Monopolist cheese here?</Rant>

  • Re:That would be difficult (Score:3)

    by Silver A ( 13776 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @04:09AM (#743015)
    If you had read the article, you'd have found out that the US has declared a few N.H.Ms in other countries, primarily some European battlefields. I don't know how the politics or legalities of that works out, but I'd bet that the U.S. offers to help pay for maintenance of the site. Meanwhile, the UN won't declare a "World Heritage Site" unless it's first a national monument, and knowing the ways of the UN, it would be easier to get Congress to declare Tranquility Base a national monument than it would be to get the UN to change its rule. Ultimately, the UN should have an exemption for sites in international territory, so that sites in Antarctica, on the ocean floor, and on the moon can be declared World Heritage Sites without the necessity of getting a national government to overstep its jurisdiction.
  • The Moon belongs to America, and anxiously awaits the arrival of our astro-men. Will you be among them? -- 4F21 [snpp.com], The Secret War of Lisa Simpson

    sand ... sand ... SAND!

  • A Disgraceful Idea (Score:4)

    by PingXao ( 153057 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @05:58AM (#743020)
    "We came in peace for all Mankind."

    - Neil Armstrong at Tranquility Base, 1969
  • than you calling Navajo, Hopi, and the like "Mexico" . . .

    And for that matter, those aren't even accurate--the American Indians got those lands by killing off the Native Americans that were there first . . .

    [And while I'm at, it, no sillier than calling parts of the U.S> "Mexico" and "Candaa" :)]

    /hawk ducks
  • Don't we need a ribbon cutting ceremony? Send that perjuring excuse for a president up there, send him out to cut the ribbon, then while he makes one of his long-winded speeches, every else hops back in the lander, takes off, and . . .

    :)

    You see, if we leave enough oxygen & food for the rest ofhis term, he's not incapacitated, the veep doesn't take over, but he still can't do anything. We'd be safe from government for a good four months . . .

    :)

    hawk, who should probably fix his computer instead of worrying about this

  • If that counts . . . (Score:3)

    by hawk ( 1151 ) <hawk@eyry.org> on Saturday September 30, 2000 @06:08AM (#743025) Journal
    THe link notes,

    > The Soviet Lunar program had 20 successful missions to the Moon and
    > achieved a number of notable lunar "firsts": first probe to impact the
    > Moon,

    Crashing into the moon counts? THen shouldn't Microsoft be in the lunar
    probe business?

    :)

    hawk
  • Oh, yes, "world" heritage site makes a *lot* more sense. Ooh, you could get "worldwide" support. Hello, it isn't on this planet. It's not a "world" heritage site any more than it is national.

    The main reason I want to move to Mars is because it's the only place left where the UN doesn't claim jurisdiction. Please, let's try to keep it that way.

  • Re:National Historical Site? Are you mad? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, we already call areas of Mexico "Texas" and "California". How would this be breaking precedent?

    Just like the Mexicans call areas of Tenochitlan "Mexico City".

    Pot.

    Kettle.

    Black.

  • LunaCorp [lunacorp.com] is planning to send a robotic vehicle to the moon for a Grand Apollo Tour [lunacorp.com] of historic landing sites.

    This is a commercial venture and the money will supposedly come from letting people be telepresent at the location in real time (minus lightspeed lag) and even drive the rover by remote control.

    I wonder if declaring them a national monument will have any legal effect on LunaCorp's plans.

    ----

  • Golf Ball (Score:4)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @04:36AM (#743041) Journal
    The artifacts scattered across the lunar surface by U.S. astronauts include a golf ball knocked over the horizon ..."

    Well, I don't think it was "over the horizon" when it was visible in a picture [nasa.gov] from the Lunar Module [picture in direction of Turtle Rock]. Shepard estimated "the first ball went about 200 yards (183 meters) and the second 400 yards (366 meters) [nasa.gov]".

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