Columbia astronaut memorial craters Options

[Phil Stooke]

I have just noticed that the Columbia astronauts are now commemorated with crater names on the lunar farside, as are the Apollo 1 and Challenger crews, and numerous cosmonauts.

Unfortunately - well, I think it's really unfortunate, anyway - deceased Apollo lunar astronauts are still not added to this list. I believe they should be commemorated by craters near their landing sites. The Apollo 11 crew have a trio of craters near their landing site. The usual rule is, you have to be dead for three years, and Apollo 11 is an exception, but for the others I do feel that crater names near the site are appropriate after death.

The Columbia names are given to four craters south of Apollo basin inside the giant South Pole-Aitken basin. Husband, Chawla, McCool and Ramon are the four new names. The other three astronaut names (Anderson, Brown and Clark) already exist elsewhere on the moon, and the new commemoration will be added to those craters (presumably... multiple commemortations already exist).

See

http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/

for more details (link to moon, then craters).

Phil

[dvandorn]

Hmm... it would seem to me that, for the Apollo lunar crews, if you're going to wait until three years after the last member of a given crew has died, we're in for quite a wait. Assuming you want to commemorate whole crews at once.

The most reduced Apollo crew, IIRC, is 14's -- only Ed Mitchell remains alive of that threesome. Of all of the rest of the crews, either two or all three members are still among us:

Apollo 7 -- Schirra and Cunningham
Apollo 8 -- Borman, Lovell and Anders
Apollo 9 -- McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart
Apollo 10 -- Stafford, Young and Cernan
Apollo 11 -- Armstrong*, Aldrin* and Collins
Apollo 12 -- Gordon and Bean*
Apollo 13 -- Lovell and Haise
Apollo 14 -- Mitchell*
Apollo 15 -- Scott* and Worden
Apollo 16 -- Young*, Duke* and Matttingly
Apollo 17 -- Cernan* and Schmitt*

Those are the surviving members of the Apollo crews. Those deceased are (in flight order) Eisele, Conrad, Swigert, Shepard, Roosa, Irwin and Evans.

With repeats taken into account, 22 crewmen survive, while seven have died. Of the 12 men who walked on the Moon, nine (asterisked above) are still with us.

The youngest of the guys on the Apollo crews was, IIRC, Charlie Duke. He was 35 at the time Apollo 16 flew, so he would be 69 today. The rest of the guys are in their 70's now.

So, being a bit morbid, I guess it won't be more than another 10 years or so before most of the crews can be commemorated en masse. But it seems a shame that we can't commemorate Pete Conrad or Al Shepard yet.

If it were me, I would rename some of the small-scale features visited by the crews. For example, at Fra Mauro, we could rename North, Middle and South Triplet to Shepard, Mitchell and Roosa. At Hadley, Matthew, Mark and Luke could be renamed Scott, Worden and Irwin. That kind of thing.

Just my $.02...

-the other Doug

[angel1801]

Rule 3.5 - un-needed quote removed. Doug.

I saw on the IAU planetary nomenclature site that if any other nation lost people in the pursuit of manned space exploration, they too will be honored on the moon. So the IAU is not only favoring Americans!

[Phil Stooke]

I don't think it's necessary to wait to deal with a whole crew at once.

I suppose, if I wanted to make this thread relate to unmanned spaceflight specifically... I should have added this sentence:

Therefore it seems unlikely that the individual hills in the Columbia Hills will be officially named for the Columbia crew.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

This story:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=20208

appeared just after this thread began. It corrects me on one point - the three names already on the moon actually do get given to new craters in the Apollo area, but they will be distinguished by a first initial. That was not apparent on the nomenclature database when I first looked at it.

Phil



These are the craters, map courtesy of USGS

(I should have said in my first post, the Apollo 8 crew is also an exception to the 'must be dead' rule)