• More Blogs
• Observations »
• Bering in Mind »
• Cross-check »
• Extinction Countdown »
• Solar at Home »
• Expeditions »
• Guest Blog »
• Anecdotes from the Archive »

As private enterprises set their sights on space, once the sole domain of the superpowers, questions are arising about who will protect historical sites and artifacts on the moon.

In an editorial last week for the Los Angeles Times, a pair of scholars from Louisiana State University (LSU) raise the point that well-meaning but inexperienced private entities targeting the moon could accidentally wreak havoc on the historic Apollo program landing sites, for instance. (Though less than 40 years old, those sites qualify as ancient in the brief history of space travel.)

Jill Thomas, an LSU grad student, and Justin St. P. Walsh, an art history and archaeology professor at the university, take aim at the Google Lunar X Prize, which offers a $20-million purse for the first privately funded team to land a robotic rover on the moon and use it to complete certain objectives. The prize's guidelines include a "Heritage Bonus Prize" of an unspecified amount for the first team whose rover photographs or videotapes a man-made artifact on the moon.

That bonus, Thomas and Walsh say, could push the competitors' landing sites dangerously close to Tranquility Base, for instance—the site where Apollo 11 touched down 40 years ago and where humankind first set foot on the moon.

But William Pomerantz, senior director of space projects for the X Prize Foundation, says that the purpose of the bonus was to stimulate just such discussion about lunar heritage among academics, cultural institutions and regulatory bodies. "We wanted to give people a context in which they could think about this issue before it was quite so immediate," he says, "before we had a rover hightailing for one of these sites or a mission with human astronauts, be they from the U.S. or another country." He notes that for an American team taking part in the competition, numerous federal agencies would have to sign off on the team's plans before a launch could take place.

"We certainly recognize and acknowledge that these sites are of unique historic value, and that's why we want people to be thinking about them," Pomerantz says. "What we aren't clear on is exactly what constitutes a respectful visit, and what we don't want to do is have us be the be-all, end-all body that comes up with the rule that says, 'Thou shalt not do the following.'"

Although the X Prize regulations require that teams seeking the Heritage Bonus submit their plans in advance to the prize's judges "in order to eliminate unnecessary risks to the historically significant Sites of Interest," the op-ed's authors maintain that more concrete boundaries should be drawn around those sites.

Pomerantz contends that the need to preserve historical sites must be balanced with the value in accessing them. "If we take analogous sites here on Earth, we don't wall off a unique historic site and say no one should ever go there," he says. "We say, you can go there, to the Great Pyramids of Giza or whatever it is, but you can only do these certain things, you can only walk on this certain path, and you can't go to that one because we're preserving it for history."

Photo of a footprint from Apollo 11 that in the absence of wind and weather may remain on the lunar surface to this day: NASA

6 Comments

1. 1. strangegoat 03:53 PM 6/9/09

   While the concerns are valid, I would imagine that with the much better Moon surveys available today than were available in 1969, it's easier to choose alternate landing sites. Sites well away from Apollo sites that is. Also, the landing targets of interest are different. Geological for Apollo, ice and H3 for current ones.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

2. 2. LunaCI 05:47 PM 6/9/09

   "We wanted to give people a context in which they could think about this issue before it was quite so immediate, before we had a rover hightailing for one of these sites or a mission with human astronauts, be they from the U.S. or another country."
   
   This is brilliant. Great to see such awareness and proactive initiation of discourse so early, and from so high on up :)
   
   ---
   Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration
   http://luna-ci.com
   
   
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

3. 3. AtlantaTerry 06:01 PM 6/10/09

   The real question should be can we trust NASA to be the pioneering group it once was? With NASA's top brass practicing CYA and no one wanting to take any risks we are most likely far better off with individuals and companies pushing the envelope.
   
   After all, it was an individual like Christopher Columbus (armed with Eric The Red's map) who sailed west to make money on the spice trade and ended up rediscovering North and South America. It was NOT a country like England or France who had the technology but not the spirit to take a risk.
   
   Let's do more to encourage individuals and companies to take us into the New Frontier.
   
   Terry Thomas...
   the photographer
   Atlanta, Georgia USA
   www.TerryThomasPhotos.com
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

4. 4. Michael Cook 10:38 PM 6/10/09

   What a trivial concern. I suspect that is a test balloon variant of the much worse idea that no private company should set foot on the moon at all because it is some type of pristine and sacred artifact in its entirety. What crap. The moon is nothing but dust and debris. Let's go mine the H3 and titanium and I hope the people who figure out how to do that best get stinking rich exploiting the dead satellite and observing no environmental protection rules whatsoever.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

5. 5. Justin Walsh 12:27 AM 6/19/09

   I think it is admirable that the heritage bonus was intended to stimulate debate about lunar exploration. This is a necessary and worthy discussion for both scholars and the public. Let's not fool ourselves, though: having the winning rover send back images of Tranquility Base would be far sexier to the general public than just a barren moon landscape -- hence the monetary incentive. But the public responsibilities of the foundation are greater than simply starting a debate. It is the X Prize Foundation's job to ensure that the competition is ethical. They set the terms of the contest, not NASA or anyone else. They therefore *must* become "the be-all, end-all body that comes up with the rule that says, 'Thou shalt not do the following,'" at least with regard to participants in their competition. Given the enormous global interest in a return by humans to the moon, it is simply not good enough for them to relinquish responsibility over potentially negative consequences of their project.
   
   None of this is to say that we think that existing landing sites should always be off-limits, as Mr. Pomerantz claims. Our point was that we humans are still in the earliest stages of exploring the universe beyond our own planet. We're still taking baby steps. All we are saying is that there is no need to rush back to any of the previous lunar landing sites before we are sure we know how to deal with them in a way that can satisfy all interested parties -- tourists, scholars, commercial interests (an awful lot of people want to sell lunar artifacts on Ebay, if commenters on the X Prize Foundation's bulletin boards are to be believed!), etc. We, as scholars, want people to be able to visit lunar landing sites in the future, just as they visit the pyramids today. We want people to share our passion for that heritage. We are not neo-Luddites, or even against the larger idea behind the Lunar X Prize competition -- in fact, I think it's a great idea to spur development of space exploration. But the world has learned a lot of lessons about the importance of cultural heritage in the time since the first moon landings, not least that a little forethought goes a long way.
   
   Once we damage a site, we cannot un-damage it. The moment a rover rolls up to (or even near) the remains of the Apollo 11 lunar module, the site will be irretrievably altered, and in ways that might be unpredictable. The X Prize Foundation should take a deep breath with regard to the heritage bonus and say, "Maybe next time." Because there will certainly be a next time.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

6. 6. CopperCowboy 04:34 PM 12/2/11

   You have but to look at the looting of the Titanic graveyard to know what will happen on the moon. I can't wait to see the price on a cast of the first lunar step.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this