Summary
The moon has been added to the World Monuments Fund’s (WMF) list of threatened heritage sites for the first time due to risks from commercial and governmental lunar activities.
The WMF highlights concerns about looting and damage to artefacts from Apollo missions, such as Neil Armstrong’s footprints and objects left on the moon.
WMF calls for international protocols to protect lunar heritage as private space tourism and missions increase.
The 2024 list also includes sites in conflict zones and areas endangered by climate change or unsustainable tourism.
In principle I agree with this. The moon has been up there, relatively unchanged for the history of our species. It’s a meaningful connection to our deep past. It may even have helped life evolve on the planet. Romantically, it’s the only thing that we all can look up at and see so it’s a common shared experience for everyone. I think this is an important piece of our heritage and does need to be looked after. Also, I don’t really understand how morally one person has a right to do things on the moon but I don’t. - who gives them the ownership?
I’m not anti-science, or anti-progress, but some things are more important than, money or individual egos.
You can do anything to Mars, or the asteroids, they’re not culturally important, but the moon is, at least the side facing us.
Reminds me of this classic from Mr Show
Commercial and mining activities on the moon are infinitely better than anywhere on Earth.
There’s no life on the Moon, there’s no environments to be destroyed, species to be displaced, no atmosphere or oceans to pollute, etc.
If we’re going to insist on continued industrialization it would be best to put it somewhere it’s not poisoning the environment, like the moon.The WMF highlights concerns about looting and damage to artefacts from Apollo missions, such as Neil Armstrong’s footprints and objects left on the moon.
This specifically is a valid concern.
Until we’ve mined so much that the ratio of mass between the Earth and the Moon causes tidal changes and eventually the Earth pulls the Moon into the Earth and all life is destroyed. How quickly do you think we can speedrun that?
The industrial revolution was about 150-200 years ago and our planet is dying because of it. Can we beat that record?
Edit: also, who gets dibs on the moon? Something tells me the vast majority of the population won’t get a say and mysteriously, somehow, it’ll be American mega-corps doing the mining
Hmm, that’s an awful lot of material to move the one way. I’d actually expect a lot of what’s built on the moon will get shipped further outward.
Right now, it’s moving a couple of centimeters away from Earth every year, so a bit of that would actually be a good thing. And depending on how they’re getting it off the surface, the effect on the orbit might be something very different.
Wouldn’t the orbit of the moon not change in height if it decreased in mass? Since it should theoretically continue to orbit at the same speed?
I’ll take “Hyperbolic & Catastrophic Exaggerations” for $400, Alex.
I’m pretty sure you’re reply is tongue-in-cheek, but that did get me thinking how long it would take to actually destroy the Moon by mining.Let’s say we used mass drivers to launch 1000kg of material from the Moon to the Earth every second, non stop, until the Moon was completely dismantled. The moon has a mass somewhere around 7.35×1022 kilograms. Dividing the Moon’s mass by the rate of removal, we get Time=7.35×1019seconds. Divide that by 35,536,000 seconds in a year, and it would take us about 2.33 trillion years to dismantle the moon.
Considering how the Earth only has, maybe, a billion years until the Sun’s natural life cycle makes life on Earth impossible, I’d wager that we’re good. Drill baby, drill.
Uh, that’s not how orbital mechanics work
And also, let’s say we have to remove 10% of the moon’s mass to noticeably affect the tides (and it’s not enough to just mine it, you’d also need to remove it from the moon’s gravity well which is… A whole thing by itself, so let’s ignore that for funsies), which is about 7*10^21 kg. I can’t find statistics for total mining activity, but we mine about 2.6 * 10^12 kg iron each year. Let’s just take the 10x value of that to be safe, 2.6*10^13 “stuff” mined each year
In order to mine 10% of the moon’s mass, it’d take roughly 10^8 years, or written out, 100 000 000 years
And, as mentioned, this is while ignoring that you’d need to actually remove the moon’s mass from its gravitational well, which simply won’t be done at this scale
Worrying about this problem is so ridiculously out of scope that it’s laughable
What’s the point in mining the Moon if we’re just gonna leave what’s been mined there? Of course it would be removed.
Where did you get that 10% is what would be required to affect the tides? Why don’t we just say it’s 90% to back your point up even more?
The point is, if allowed, we’ll fuck it up like we fuck up every environment. Why must we insist on destroying everything just so some rich people can get richer? Climate change is upon us and instead of acting to prevent it we’re looking to do similar destruction elsewhere.
When you look up at the vastness and marvel of space and planetary bodies, are you desperate to see dump trucks, bucket excavators, and orange flashing lights looking back at you?
What’s the point in mining the Moon if we’re just gonna leave what’s been mined there? Of course it would be removed.
We might use the mined materials to build stuff on the moon. Even if we were mining to bring resources back there’ll be a lot of stuff dug up that we don’t want so we’d obviously want to leave that there. We’d need to process the ore on the moon to extract the small amount of material that we’re after.
Where did you get that 10% is what would be required to affect the tides? Why don’t we just say it’s 90% to back your point up even more?
90% would be an obviously ridiculous number to use so would undermine their argument. Assuming their numbers are correct then it would take 10,000,000 years to remove 1% of the moon. And we wouldn’t remove all of the material that we mine so we’d take even longer than that to actually remove 1%.
Having said that, I really don’t agree with the sentiment of letting people do what they want on the moon because it won’t affect us. We should be more considerate of every environment just as a matter of principle.
I bet I could destroy all life with only half an A-press.
Yea! And you also have to worry about any solar panels we install on the moon reflecting more sunlight back at the Earth and heating it up!
Oh wait, no you don’t. And if you spend even 2 seconds thinking about it, you’d realize how meaningless of a concern that is.
The headline is misleading, it doesn’t appear that they want to “protect” the whole entire Moon. They’re just concerned about sites of particular historical importance like the Apollo moon landings, and the artifacts at those locations.
Basically, Americans are scared now that China is leading in the second race to the moon, they’re gonna destroy the shit the Americans left up there.
Building a moon colony and preserving it all in a museum around the lander with all the explanation text in Chinese would be such a flex though.
Like “these are archaic artefacts of an empire of old”.
Solar radiation has bleached the flags they’ve left behind, so it’s impossible to know who they were or why they left a little square with a drawing of a dick
My thoughts as well.
so safe…
The only argument I can make against it is that it might change how the moon looks from Earth if it’s all covered in smog and smoke and shit. 🤷🏻♂️
Without an atmosphere, how can you have smog and smoke?
Not having an atmosphere doesn’t mean that gases and particles will simply vanish. The moon just doesn’t have enough of a gravitational pull to keep them around for long.
You’re describing the act of something vanishing to be honest though.
The moon doesn’t have enough gravity to hold an atmosphere, it’ll always vanish.
Over time yes. But not instantaneous. So depending on the amount, it is possible to have smog on the moon.
Yes in the same way you can “survive” in the vacuum of space. The moon doesn’t have the gravity potential to hold an atmosphere, so while smog may “appear” it’s be gone just like the person who was alive in the vacuum of space for a few minutes as well.
But that doesn’t mean people can and should claim People can live in the vacuum of space now does it?
I really don’t understand what you are trying to say here. Yes, the process of diffusion is faster on the moon, but even on earth every second lighter parts of the atmosphere escapes into space (and heavier particles that pass by are attracted by gravity).
If we’re doing stuff to pump things into the surrounding area on the surface, eventually it would have an atmosphere. That’s literally how we plan to terraform Mars.
The moon doesn’t have sufficient gravity to maintain an atmosphere. Any smog will float out into space, like helium on earth.
There is an atmosphere on the moon. It is very thin but it does exist. Gasses will mostly escape, but particulate (smoke, soot, dust, the components of smog that aren’t the fog part) may hang around for a while before settling to the surface.
.0000000000000003 atm or 0.3 nanopascals of atmosphere.
On Earth, this is considered to be a very good vacuum. In fact, the density of the atmosphere at the Moon’s surface is comparable to the density of some of the outermost fringes of Earth’s atmosphere, where the International Space Station orbits.
the Moon is considered not to have an atmosphere because it cannot absorb measurable quantities of radiation, does not appear layered or self-circulating, and requires constant replenishment due to the high rate at which its gases are lost into space.
I feel like saying the moon technically has an atmosphere is like saying an astronaut has an atmosphere if they farted in space sans spacesuit because some gas lingers around them.
Except they won’t because the gravitational pull generated by a human body is so low that the gases expelled are likely moving faster than escape velocity.
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Start on the dark side.
Whatever. Fuck the Moon. Even the guy who went there hates it.
Unfortunately, it seems he hates all of us. Aldrin’s endorsement of Trump was like a gut punch when I read about it last year.
As a Nazi puncher, he has excellent taste. Maybe I should yell at the moon?
Hey Buzz doesn’t hate the moon, he just demands it know its place.
Save time and just list Humanity as a threat to everything.
The WMF highlights concerns about looting and damage to artefacts from Apollo missions, such as Neil Armstrong’s footprints and objects left on the moon.
The British Museum be like 😍
That’s nice can we get some protection for anything here on earth? Don’t give a fuck about some moon shit there’s no one there. Call me when they find dudes living on the moon, then I’ll fuckin care
The list being added to already covered Earthbound locations.
technically its not a world monument if its not on this world…
It’s a wonder that you can see from your backyard.
I can’t see any other wonders from my backyard.
Depends on your definition of world.
Gonna have to change it from “world wonders” to “solar system wonders.”
Is this a real problem? Who’s looting stuff at the moon? And so what if somebody take some of the stuff we left there? Like does the frequency of landings at the moon merit this?
Who is this worried about something we can barely visit? This is the dumbest thing.
It’s pretty easy to declare it a protected site, so why not do it before it’s a problem? China and India have already launched robotic moon missions. The Apollo landing site is a significant monument for humanity
It’s preparation.
Now that human craft have finally made it back to the moon for the first time in decades, human beings and development are set to follow.
