The whole Earth-side of the Moon should be protected forever

Photo: Ashley Kerlin

The New York Times has an interesting piece about museums seeking to protect small areas of the Moon around the Apollo landing sites. And a good thing too. "...the next generation of people visiting the moon might carelessly obliterate the site of one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments."

But isn't that like how Cairo almost swallows the pyramids??

Shouldn't we go further? Much further? For thousands of years, all of Earth-bound humanity will gaze up on the Earth side of the Moon. And it is exactly the same view that all of humanity ever has looked upon.
Surely that whole view is worthy of protection? After all, any changes made that are visible from here will be visible forever. There is no atmosphere and weather to cover over our transgressions in time. What is done on the Moon stays done...

I raised these concerns with a NASA engineer a couple of years ago after he gave a presentation in Canberra (at Questacon) about the (now) ill-fated Constellation project to return to the Moon.

It seemed to me that the American disposable society mantra was writ large in their plans, with leftover bits free to crashland wherever once done with. It's that sort of mentality that has got us into a spacejunk problem in Earth orbit.

I have no doubt that there will come a day - possibly while I'm still alive - that we are strip mining parts of the Moon for minerals to build spaceships and Moonbase buildings and to fuel them and outgoing missions.

But I'd like to see a commitment from all countries for this sort of permanent scarring to be limited to the far side (the often incorrectly named dark side) only. And for colonies to be positioned around the Earthside 'circumference' for minimal visual impact, while maintaining direct communications.

There should also be strict controls on escape of artificial light. Surely the sort of disgusting light pollution that we spew pointlessly upwards from our Earth fabrications should not be shining back at us one day from the Moon?

We owe our future generations that much, I believe.

And while looking back - the handheld footage of the Earthrise, from Apollo 10, right out at the Moon, to very fitting music: