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Congress

Protecting the Apollo Sites

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
July 15, 2013
Filed under ,

Loony or logical? Bill favors national park on moon, Florida Today
Imagine a U.S. National Park like Yellowstone or the Great Smoky Mountains on the moon, one that would protect artifacts left behind by the Apollo astronauts. Sound crazy? It’s not as far-fetched as it seems.
A bill introduced in Congress recently would “endow the artifacts as a National Historic Park, thereby asserting unquestioned ownership rights over the Apollo lunar landing artifacts.”
U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., and Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, are co-sponsoring “The Apollo Lunar Landing Legacy Act” — also known as H.R. 2617.

Text of H.R.2617 (PDF)
Marc’s note: Protecting the Apollo sites within the legal framework of the U.S. is one thing, and might makes sense. Using UNESCO to make the sites “World Heritage Sites” is an international legal conundrum. While the U.S. is a signatory of the 1969 Outer Space Treaty it has not signed the 1979 Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. The Bill might protect the sites from U.S. citizens disturbing them but has no international legal standing. However, merely passing the Bill might deter other nations citizens from disturbing the sites.

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22 responses to “Protecting the Apollo Sites”

  1. MedicT says:
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    With it being impossible for the US to access the moon landing sites for the foreseeable future may I ask if this is necessary? Would it not be more effective to simply ask the Chinese to respect the sites when they arrive?

    • Mark Friedenbach says:
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      There are U.S. based companies that are attempting to land at or near these sites in the next few years, as part of the Google Lunar X-Prize. There are also space scientists and spacecraft engineers that would love to have information about how Apollo era hardware (and to a lesser extant, the disturbed regolith) has weathered over the last 40 years.

      The hardware is unequivocally the property of the U.S. government. But a space science team were to submit a proposal for in-situ analysis of Apollo weathering as part of a GLXP demonstration, who would they submit that request to? What agency has the authority to give approval over use of this hardware? What considerations should be taken when balancing historical preservation vs. scientific analysis though destructive testing?

      Right now, that’s not clear. Hence this bill.

  2. Anonymous says:
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    The bill is fundamentally flawed. It attempts to harmonize international law with existing federal preservation law, which are in-congruent to each other. This has also raised concern amongst foreign legal experts. It is doubtful that it will ever get out Committee.

  3. J.L. Galache says:
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    I’m concerned how the Govt. plans to send up Forest Rangers to keep watch. And will access be free on National Park Week every year? I hope they build some nice lookout points like they have at the Grand Canyon.

  4. John Thomas says:
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    Hopefully if this were to pass, it wouldn’t cause some bureaucratic office to be formed that would need funding each year.

    • Paul451 says:
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      According to the text, the NASA administrator would be in charge of overseeing the park, with assistance from the Smithsonian.

  5. hikingmike says:
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    Yeah how do you make a US National Park on land that isn’t US owned? Do we claim ownership? I like the idea but…

    • Mark Friedenbach says:
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      The park is not the land but the objects themselves.

      • Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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        The park will have to be both the objects and the land around them.

        How much land around them may be negotiable.

        • Mark Friedenbach says:
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          The legislation mentions objects only, not land. Claiming land would be in violation of the O.S.T.

          • Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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            You cannot protect them in place without controlling the land they stand on. Plus say a couple of metres.

      • Anonymous says:
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        You can’t create a park out of objects. A park as envisioned by the bill includes the entire site, including the objects and the lunar surface.

    • Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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      By treaty the US Government can authorise activities on the Moon such as construction of buildings, roads and mines. A national park is stretching this process a bit far.

  6. Gordon Caruana Dingli says:
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    There won’t be anybody disturbing these sites for a long time

  7. James Stanton says:
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    To me all this says is NASA is based around its past not the present and certainly not the future.

    • Anonymous says:
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      By considering the safety of the Apollo landing sites, the future of space exploration is being addressed, especially with commercial ventures that plan on traversing the surface of the Moon.

  8. ski4ever says:
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    Good thing we’re doing something useful while NASA’s budget is getting sliced up, we have no access to space, and no ambition to do anything perceived to have even a modicum of risk.

  9. ProfSWhiplash says:
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    Unfortunately, trying to reduce/mitigate/repair the human footprint from a lunar environment is literally worlds different than that of doing the same on an earth-land national park. For one, whether it’s some old campfire, a trail, a cabin, or even a clear-cut forest followed by strip mining….. no matter how horrible the human made scar, just give it a year, decade, century or more of non-human fiddling, and nature just erases it all (even a concrete buildings won’t last). Here, nature just whittles is all down with its tools of water & wind erosion, earth movement, even plant new-growth and animal migrations.

    But on the Moon, the place is on so many levels — DEAD: never mind the non-life… there’s no water, wind, tectonics; there’s nothing there remotely like Nature’s bulldozer — short of an asteroid impact. Once a wandering GLXP rover crosses into one of those sites, it’s all over… there’s no way to even cover those tracks even if they try to use a rake or brush or short gas bursts to erase the marks… because then they’d just leave new marks behind.

    If I may make a suggestion: If NASA and other scientists are so hot and heavy over wanting to see the effects of long-term lunar exposure of human material & equipment, might I suggest they make up their minds to chose just one (1) single sactificial site, like say, one of the middle Apollo sites (not 11, not 17), and permit that one spot to be given a going over. Or better yet, visit instead one of the has-been-there-even-longer Surveyor sites (or even one of the Ranger crash sites – if they can find one) and just go to town on it. Later, future – manned? – expeditions might even physically recover the whole thing.

  10. Anonymous says:
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    Preservation of the Apollo sites is important, but a new legal mechanism and some diplomatic efforts will be needed to secure the sites and the artifacts within. Current international space law does afford some protection, but the preservation of the sites needs to be addressed. A domestic law is the best place to start which reasserts the ownership of the Apollo artifacts and give NASA the authority to conserve them. More so, this law would encourage NASA and the State Department to work together to develop an international understanding that would allow the United States to assert authority over the artifacts and the sites that wouldn’t amount to a claim of sovereignty.

  11. Jeff Havens says:
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    I wonder if Russia is thinking about this kind of stuff, preserving the Lunokhod sites? Think they would get bent if someone brought back one of the rovers to sell on EBay? (Well, Lunokhod 1 anyways… Richard Garriott owns L-2..he’d probably sue)

  12. LPHartswick says:
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    Don’t worry …the sites are well protected…because we’ll all be long dead before another person goes there! Bothe the governmental and private sector space programs are pathetic.