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Opening Arguments

To the moon, alas!

There is no place the historical preservationists won't go! Or, if you're afraid of the idea of one-world government, hows about one-solar-system government?

But for archaeologists and historians worried that the next generation of people visiting the moon might carelessly obliterate the site of one of humanity's greatest accomplishments, these designations were important first steps toward raising awareness of the need to protect off-world artifacts.

“I think it's humanity's heritage,” said Beth L. O'Leary, a professor of anthropology at New Mexico State University. “It's just an incredible realm that archaeologists haven't begun to look at until now.”

Dr. O'Leary herself had not given much thought to historic preservation on the Moon until a student asked her in 1999 whether federal preservation laws applied to the Apollo landing sites.

“That started the ball rolling,” she said.

It turned out to be a tricky question. Under international law, the United States government still owns everything it left on the moon: the bottom half of the first lunar lander, the scientific experiments, the urine bags. But 100 nations, including the United States, have signed the Outer Space Treaty, in which they agree not to claim sovereignty over any part of the moon.

Nobody gets soverignty, but we have to find a way to preserve our artifacts. Sounds like a job for the United Federation of Planets. I say we make the moon a libertarian satellite. Try a little near-anarchy for a change.

Comments

littlejohn
Wed, 01/11/2012 - 12:18am

I hope we continue to avoid the place. There doesn't appear to be anything of interest there - at least nothing we haven't already examined. And given human history, any large-scale return will surely result in the place being littered with beer cans. Consider how many urine bags that will generate.

Harl Delos
Wed, 01/11/2012 - 1:24am

The moon would be useful for solar farms. No wind or weather to contend with, no bird fertilizer to clean off.

Even more importantly, we need the asteroids. As short as this planet is of petroleum, we're even shorter of many metals, and the crunch could come with a decade, depending on the economy.

Mining low-density sources like landfills and even lower density seawater is going to be exorbitantly expensive. Fetching asteroids could be economically attractive by the time we are able to do it - and that would put the US back on top.

littlejohn
Wed, 01/11/2012 - 11:39am

Of course, there's that giant extension cord you'd have to run down from the moon.
(Just joking - I know the idea is to beam the energy down as microwaves. But the idea of solar stations in orbit has already been rejected as too expensive.)

Bob G.
Wed, 01/11/2012 - 1:24pm

Leo:
Nah, we could just focus the sun's energy via mirrors and beam it back to earth - and Lord help ALL of us is someone goofs up by less than ONE DEGREE of deflection.

(sorry, Iran...our bad)
(Oops, our mistake North Korea)

It does have practical applications.

;)

Tim Zank
Wed, 01/11/2012 - 2:43pm

By the way Leo, the headline is a classic.

Harl Delos
Thu, 01/12/2012 - 12:41am

It's not necessarily microwaves, littlejohn. They could smelt ore on the moon, and ship REALLY HOT metals back to Earth. They don't need manned spaceships for that. In fact, they don't need ships at all. They just throw rocks.

Catapults would get the cargo to us nicely; it's downhill most of the way.

Solar stations in orbit means a lot of engineered structures to hold the solar panels and a lot of fuel to keep things positioned just so; on the moon, they just lay the solar panels on the ground, and they will stay put.

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