Let's Make Apollo Landing Sites American Territory (Op-Ed)

[Buster's Uncle]

Let's Make Apollo Landing Sites American Territory (Op-Ed)
SPACE.com
Homer Hickam  August 2, 2013

Astrophotographer Jennifer Rose Lane took this image of the Supermoon from West Virginia on June 23, 2013.

 
Homer Hickam is the New York Times No. 1 best-selling author of "Rocket Boys" — also known as "October Sky" (Dell Publishing, 2000) following the book's adaptation to film — "Crater" (Thomas Nelson, 2012) and "Crescent" (Thomas Nelson, 2013) and a retired NASA engineer. He contributed this article to SPACE.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Armstrong City is a bustling little frontier town on the moon as imagined in my novel "Crater." Nearby is the Apollo 11 landing site which has been turned into a tourist attraction, complete with "photos of the American astronauts Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin for sale along with other souvenirs, including models of the Apollo capsule and the Eagle lander."

In the novel, a tour guide points at the truncated base of the Eagle and an American flag hanging on a pole and tells slightly bored tourists that the original flag was knocked down when the top half of the lander took off. The guide also notes the tracks winding through the site, the result of a Chinese robotic vehicle barging across it on the 60th anniversary of the Eagle's landing. With lights, signs and memorials dotting the cratered plain around and within the landing site, it is almost impossible to imagine what it had once looked like in 1969.

In "Crescent," the sequel to "Crater," I have responsible members of the lunar exploration community forming an Apollo Restoration Committee to assess the landing sites, evaluate their condition and determine what it would take to restore them, as near as possible, to their original state. When the committee visits, they find nearly all of the sites have been compromised with boot prints from poachers who removed pieces of the landers and moon buggies for souvenirs, or to sell them on eBay.

Recently, with real life more or less copying my art, members of the House of Representatives proposed the Apollo Lunar Landing Legacy Act, whereby all the landing sites would be designated as part of the United States National Park System and essentially put off-limits to exploitation by other countries or commercial entities.

Although the bill didn't go anywhere in the legislative process, I think these Congress folks were on to something good — although I would go a little further by actually claiming the landing sites as American territory purchased by the blood and treasure of these United States.

One of the remaining legacies of the Cold War is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which mostly concerned itself with keeping nuclear weapons out of space, but also went on with a high-minded declaration that the moon and other "celestial bodies" would forever be considered the common heritage of mankind and not subject to national claims of sovereignty.

In other words, none of the signing countries could plant a flag on the moon, Mars, an asteroid or any other object in the sky and claim it as theirs. Left open, mainly because it wasn't thought feasible, was whether commercial entities might make such claims.

It is my assertion that the Outer Space Treaty should be considered as moribund as the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed in 1494, in which Pope Alexander VI essentially carved up the New World between Spain and Portugal. What I would really love to see is a rush to claim territories on the moon and everywhere else "up there" because there's really only one good way to do that: Actually go there and push your standard into the dust. As it is, the United States can't even put Americans into low-Earth orbit, a sorry state of affairs which might be changed if other countries were engaged in a heavenly land grab. Well, I can always hope.

In both "Crater" and "Crescent," the moon is a raw frontier carved up between ruthless entrepreneurs reminiscent of Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller. There are also groups of people, similar to the pilgrims and the Mormons, who have fled to a harsh land to escape religious persecution. Earther ex-pats are also there, having run to the moon to escape the 22nd-century versions of the IRS or angry spouses. In other words, it's a bit like a high-tech American Wild West with a lively population of quirky people who get things done.

If real life goes on to truly imitate my art, I think we'd better lock up our Apollo treasures before our descendents turn those old landing sites into amusement parks or Helium-3 mines, erasing the high-water mark of American 20th-century civilization forever.

http://news.yahoo.com/lets-apollo-landing-sites-american-territory-op-ed-162708881.html

If it's a bad treaty, we should do something about that before taking unilateral action...

[Geo]

U.N. Moon Base Alpha. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Space: 1999 - TV intro (season 1) HQ (1975)

[bangs head]

Of course this was actually British...

[Geo]

Well, that would be a way to protect those sacrifinct dusty footprints: kick the moon out of solar orbit. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I don't think that would help.  You know, I was about 11 when that show premiered in the US, and I remember pointing out how bad the science was, even then.

Rockin' theme, but not a very good show.

[Geo]

But they created such a splendid ship for the show, even if inertia in it was showed all wrong.

[Buster's Uncle]

I liked it okay as a kid, and was surprised, when I watched a bunch of episodes year before last, at how really bad it was.  Not a little; a lot.

And they didn't understand how inertia worked for a lot more than the Eagle.

[Geo]

Perhaps some movie house should move shop to orbit for the sole purpose of creating scifi movies.
Stars in space!

[JarlWolf]

Perhaps some movie house should move shop to orbit for the sole purpose of creating scifi movies.
Stars in space!

Something close to that, there was cosmonauts that used to have films about their daily lives, actual footage and clips back when, I don't know if anyone has managed to save them though.

And Chris Hadfield, a more recent astronaut has his own youtube channel and lots of his stuff was footage of him on the International space station.

[Geo]

Yeah, I've seen "Major Tom". 

[Green1]

Not enforceable unless you can put a pressure on the surface. It would be like balboa claiming the entire coast of the Pacific for Spain. Only difference is he was at least there.

That said, I do not see any power or nationality disrespecting history. Even if the Chinese had a base near, say, Apollo 15's site I think they would respect it.

[Buster's Uncle]

Not enforceable, but that only adds to the wrongness of the gesture.  This is horrible international relations stuff.

[JarlWolf]

And its actually against international law to claim any celestial body in space as territory, please note. Any nation that does so is shooting off lots of flares against the entire world if they do that.

Space is meant for humanity to march in to united: regardless of creed, nation or ethnicity. It's our collective front, if we don't cooperate in it we won't survive in it.

[Buster's Uncle]

And as I said in the OP, the way to deal with a bad treaty -or one you've decided you don't like, anyway- is to do something about the treaty, not be a jerk and just ignore it.  The US has a bad reputation for being arrogant and an international bully.  Stuff like this isn't the biggest reason, but it's part of it, and that matters.