Winston
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2009
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Kinda' obvious, PR-friendly and magnanimous solution: Work to get it designated as an INTERNATIONAL historic landmark.
Should the Moon Landing Site Be a National Historic Landmark?
Some archaeologists argue it’s essential to preserve the history of lunar exploration. But would it represent a claim of U.S. sovereignty over the moon?
https://daily.jstor.org/should-the-moon-landing-site-be-a-national-historic-landmark/
When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, the pictures sent to Earth captured a historical moment: It was the first time that any human set foot on another body in our solar system. Fifty years later, experts are debating how to preserve humankind’s first steps beyond Earth. Could a National Park on the moon be the solution to saving Armstrong’s bootprints for future archaeologists?
Flags, rovers, laser-reflecting mirrors, footprint—these are just a few of the dozens of artifacts and features that bear witness to our exploration of the moon. Archaeologists argue that these objects are a record to trace the development of humans in space. “Surely, those footprints are as important as those left by hominids at Laetoli, Tanzania, in the story of human development,” the anthropologist P.J. Capelotti wrote in Archaeology. While the oldest then known examples of hominins walking on two feet were cemented in ash 3.6 million years ago, “those at Tranquility Base could be swept away with a casual brush of a space tourist’s hand.”
But how to preserve and protect human artifacts on the moon? In 1999, the anthropologist Beth O’Leary, with the Lunar Legacy Project, proposed that Tranquility Base become a National Historic Landmark. As a first step, the group of archaeologists, curators, and physicists documented artifacts in Tranquility Base for a preliminary archaeological site plan. However, when O’Leary approached NASA, she was rebuffed: “taking steps to preserve it would be perceived as a U.S. claim of sovereignty over the Moon,” according to Roger Launius, a former NASA chief historian.
All attempts to protect sites on the moon have to grapple with space law. At the height of the Space Race, in 1967, the Outer Space Treaty was drafted, ratified, and came into force. “Both the United States and the Soviet Union feared that the other nation would claim sovereignty over a celestial body such as the moon, place weapons there, and exclude the other from those same privileges by virtue of being first,” Kyle Ellis writes in the Fordham Environmental Law Review. The treaty prohibits states from owning territory on the moon. “Space junk,” however, continues to belong to the state that sent the craft or equipment into space.
This leaves space custodians with a conundrum, writes Capelotti (the anthropologist). “If the U.S. owns the archaeological remains of Apollo 11 but not the ground underneath it, how to protect the former without disturbing the latter? Does America own Neil Armstrong’s famous first footprints on the Moon but not the lunar dust in which they were recorded?”
Even though it was U.S. citizens who left their bootprints on the moon, protecting them needs to be an international effort. It only takes a careless brush of a space tourist’s hand to disturb the fragile traces. And the solution should bring as many nations as possible on board, from those likely to reach the moon to those who will share in the joy of seeing a citizen of the same Earth set foot on the moon again. After all, the plaque left by Armstrong and Aldrin reads: “We came in peace for all mankind.”
Abandoned in Place: Interpreting the U.S. Material Culture of the Moon Race
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.152...ric-landmark&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
Should the Moon Landing Site Be a National Historic Landmark?
Some archaeologists argue it’s essential to preserve the history of lunar exploration. But would it represent a claim of U.S. sovereignty over the moon?
https://daily.jstor.org/should-the-moon-landing-site-be-a-national-historic-landmark/
When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, the pictures sent to Earth captured a historical moment: It was the first time that any human set foot on another body in our solar system. Fifty years later, experts are debating how to preserve humankind’s first steps beyond Earth. Could a National Park on the moon be the solution to saving Armstrong’s bootprints for future archaeologists?
Flags, rovers, laser-reflecting mirrors, footprint—these are just a few of the dozens of artifacts and features that bear witness to our exploration of the moon. Archaeologists argue that these objects are a record to trace the development of humans in space. “Surely, those footprints are as important as those left by hominids at Laetoli, Tanzania, in the story of human development,” the anthropologist P.J. Capelotti wrote in Archaeology. While the oldest then known examples of hominins walking on two feet were cemented in ash 3.6 million years ago, “those at Tranquility Base could be swept away with a casual brush of a space tourist’s hand.”
But how to preserve and protect human artifacts on the moon? In 1999, the anthropologist Beth O’Leary, with the Lunar Legacy Project, proposed that Tranquility Base become a National Historic Landmark. As a first step, the group of archaeologists, curators, and physicists documented artifacts in Tranquility Base for a preliminary archaeological site plan. However, when O’Leary approached NASA, she was rebuffed: “taking steps to preserve it would be perceived as a U.S. claim of sovereignty over the Moon,” according to Roger Launius, a former NASA chief historian.
All attempts to protect sites on the moon have to grapple with space law. At the height of the Space Race, in 1967, the Outer Space Treaty was drafted, ratified, and came into force. “Both the United States and the Soviet Union feared that the other nation would claim sovereignty over a celestial body such as the moon, place weapons there, and exclude the other from those same privileges by virtue of being first,” Kyle Ellis writes in the Fordham Environmental Law Review. The treaty prohibits states from owning territory on the moon. “Space junk,” however, continues to belong to the state that sent the craft or equipment into space.
This leaves space custodians with a conundrum, writes Capelotti (the anthropologist). “If the U.S. owns the archaeological remains of Apollo 11 but not the ground underneath it, how to protect the former without disturbing the latter? Does America own Neil Armstrong’s famous first footprints on the Moon but not the lunar dust in which they were recorded?”
Even though it was U.S. citizens who left their bootprints on the moon, protecting them needs to be an international effort. It only takes a careless brush of a space tourist’s hand to disturb the fragile traces. And the solution should bring as many nations as possible on board, from those likely to reach the moon to those who will share in the joy of seeing a citizen of the same Earth set foot on the moon again. After all, the plaque left by Armstrong and Aldrin reads: “We came in peace for all mankind.”
Abandoned in Place: Interpreting the U.S. Material Culture of the Moon Race
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.152...ric-landmark&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
