I’ve posted on this before but here’s another one: Man On The Moon: Saving America’s ‘One Small Step’
Images of the Apollo sites taken from lunar orbit in recent years show incredible detail that may have sparked renewed interest in preservation. NASA recently said its analysis of some of those images shows the U.S. flags are still right where they were planted decades ago — all except at the Apollo 11 site, confirming a report by astronaut Buzz Aldrin that the flag had been knocked down by the lunar module’s ascent engine exhaust.
And there’s good reason to think these landing sites could look attractive to future moon missions.
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Launius points to what happened in Antarctica as a cautionary tale. Historic artifacts left behind on the frozen continent by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated 1910 expedition have since been plundered and vandalized.
Reynolds (Instapundit) makes an analogy to the law of the sea and salvage rights and notes that a similar treaty related to space should cover messing with the stuff that’s there now. OTOH, it seemed that anyone could have claimed salvage rights to Titanic — Ballard neglected to do so after he found it — so I wonder really what sort of statute of limitations or whatever there is on that stuff.
I really liked the bit about the sites still being the way they were left (with one exception): I mean, it’s an airless, waterless void, what’s there to disturb them except for the random meteorite?
