Google Lunar X Prize Options

[Stu]

Here's an interesting tidbit... was quite amazed no-one had thought to do this before... wish I had! It's obvious when you think about it...

New photograph of Neil Armstrong on Moon

[Phil Stooke]

People who care about the protection of these sites should contact the GLXP or take part in the forum on their site:

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/

The rules are still being worked out.

Phil

[nprev]

I don't see any point in preserving the sites if no one can see them.

I'm betting, though perhaps very optimistically, that within a century or two someone will see them...hopefully hundreds of thousands if not millions of people over the next few thousand years or so. Tranquility at least should be protected and preserved at the same level as a UN World Heritage site. Really, if you look at it over an even greater time frame then I just spoke of it will forever be a priceless archeological site...the very first time "early" Man (by then!) left Earth for another place...

I don't have a problem with a rover getting within observing distance of TB, but would not advocate it disturbing the artifacts of any of Armstrong & Aldrin's activities (yep; that means footprints, to say nothing of the hardware.) We'll set foot on other worlds someday, but there's only one first time ever, and this is it. We gotta leave it alone until we're capable of protecting it from the elements for posterity and future appreciation.

Phil, thanks for the link; registered for the forum, will post my opinions shortly.

EDIT: Just did, if anyone else would like to chime in.

[Stu]

On the Google Lunar X-Prize website, a YouTube video from one of the teams ("Astrobotic") refers to their rover "seeing, at some point, the US flag, or the remains of it... the footprints of the astronauts and, up close, the plaque..." Now, how they're going to see those things - especially "up close" - without disturbing the site is beyond me.

[nprev]

Yeah...esp. with that little robot-vacuum-cleaner-looking rover.

Starting to get a chilly feeling down my spine that TB may be much less than intact by the time the next human visits it...

[Stu]

I'm going to make Preserving Tranquility Base the subject of my next Carnival of Space entry, see what people "out there" think, try and get some debate and discussion going. I tried getting on to the GLXP forum but keep getting "Access Denied" even tho I'm logged on and everything... Try again later. I'll email Astrobotic directly tho, raise my concerns with them.

[ilbasso]

This article on Space.com discusses how difficult it will be to keep anything free of dust that's anywhere near a vehicle landing on the Moon. Incredible as it sounds, analysis of the videos from the Apollo landings showed that some of the dust was actually accelerated nearly to escape velocity by the LM's descent module engines. The article discusses how dust was forced into a small inspection hole on the Surveyor 3 camera that was oriented in the direction of the Intrepid...from more than 600 feet away, dust was blasted into that opening! Can you imagine what kind of damage could be done to the "pristine" Apollo sites by any kind of vehicle landing within even kilometers of the sites?

[nprev]

Jeez... ...thanks, ILB!

I'm sure that none of the proposed landers will use a descent engine even a hundredth as powerful as the LM's, but it damn sure is another consideration in this debate.

[ugordan]

I'm sure that none of the proposed landers will use a descent engine even a hundredth as powerful as the LM's, but it damn sure is another consideration in this debate.

A way to mitigate this would be for example the use of airbags so you cutoff descent engines at some point above the ground. In any case, we're talking really fine dust here and when the engine nozzle gets down low enough to significantly blow dust everywhere (in a vacuum, any exhaust is significantly underexpanded so it basically exits the nozzle in a hemispherical pattern, though most of the exhaust mass flow is downward-pointed), that's when terrain configuration becomes really important - a smallish hill could provide significant shielding to distant objects. Even at higher altitudes, terrain would play a big role, I imagine dust particles that get accelerated the most would be travelling radially away from "ground zero" so would have the greatest chance of re-impacting the ground soon.

Also, keep in mind any small rover landing several hundred meters from an Apollo site would produce less sandblasting than the LEM ascent stage did (apart from effects suffered by the descent stage itself, of course which just got blasted by severe exhaust).

[nprev]

Also, keep in mind any small rover landing several hundred meters from an Apollo site would produce less sandblasting than the LEM ascent stage did (apart from effects suffered by the descent stage itself, of course which just got blasted by severe exhaust).

Good analysis, Gordan. I don't think it's a show-stopper at all for GLXP, and of course TB and the other sites have to be pretty sandblasted from the ascent events, but I consider that to be part of the history of each site.

[tedstryk]

Knowing luck, we will take all sorts of drastic measures to protect the Apollo 11 site, only to find when we take our next sufficiently high resolution picture of the place that a wayward meteor has turned it into a nice little crater. The odds are long, but things like that have a way of happening.

[Stu]

Looks like others feel the same about preserving TB, too...

[jasedm]

I'm 100% behind the principle of preserving the Tranquility base site, but the cynic in me feels that human greed will triumph eventually and the site will be interfered with by private adventurers - maybe not in my lifetime, but at some point in the future.
It's in 'international waters' if you will, just as is the wreck of the Titanic, and we all know how that has been unforgivably plundered by treasure-hunters and curio-seekers.
How much would a millionaire collector pay for a piece of gold insulation from the lander? or for the remains of the flag or plaque? The sort of money generated by the sale of such items may in time themselves finance part or all of a mission to the moon.
I hope I'm wrong.

[Stu]

Sadly, I'm 100000% certain that you're right, and that one day some entrepeneur or "adventurer" will go to Tranquility Base and plunder it for financial gain. And I don't think there'll be anything anyone can do to stop it because it'll be done on the quiet, or in total secrecy, and the damage will be done by the time the pieces of foil, or scraps of flag material, are unveiled to the world's media in a flashbulb-lit pre bidding war frenzy...

But this is a high profile, public competition, and with no hardware flown yet, no landings attempted yet, and blueprints, timelines and mission plans still stretched out on desks and tables in universities, workshops and labs around the world, there's still, I feel, a chance for people, and public opinion, to influence the Teams and the competition organisers and ensure that at least on this occasion the Right Thing is done.

We have to at least try. Don't we?

From historian D.C. Watt:

“To destroy the relics of the past is, even in small things, a kind of amputation, a self-mutilation not so much of limbs as of the memory and imagination.”

[imipak]

But this is a high profile, public competition, and with no hardware flown yet, no landings attempted yet, and blueprints, timelines and mission plans still stretched out on desks and tables in universities, workshops and labs around the world, there's still, I feel, a chance [...]

Forgive a lazy[1] question - I haven't really been following this, and don't know how advanced any of the announced project teams are - but do any of them have a realistic chance of launching metal within, say, five years? If so, things are more urgent than my lazy assumptions, uh, assumed. In that case I'd be happy to provide polite, reasoned email for application where there's a chance it would help. I'd be very very surprised if someone managed a targeted sample return from an Apollo site in my lifetime, but I've been surprised before and no doubt I'll be there again...

I suspect the case for preserving all the Apollo sites is self-evident, if you were to ask the average person in the street. That's the sort of issue real-world politicians tend to support... uncontroversial ones.

It also sounds like the sort of thing the Planetary Society might get involved with. I'm a member (thanks to umsf!) but a very passive, armchair sort, not subscribed to any mailing lists where this could be brought up, etc. I'm sure many others here have more clue in that direction..?


( [1] *embarrassed cough*, to be fair there's a bit of a crunch on at work. And the dog ate my homework )