this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 40 minutes ago

Reminds me of this classic from Mr Show

https://youtu.be/GTJ3LIA5LmA

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (25 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago (4 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 54 minutes ago

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 7.35×10^22^ kilograms. Dividing the Moon's mass by the rate of removal, we get Time=7.35×10^19^seconds. 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 56 minutes ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 minute ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

I bet I could destroy all life with only half an A-press.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 35 minutes ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 hours ago
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[–] [email protected] 38 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

Whatever. Fuck the Moon. Even the guy who went there hates it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 52 minutes ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 hours ago

As a Nazi puncher, he has excellent taste. Maybe I should yell at the moon?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 hours ago

Hey Buzz doesn’t hate the moon, he just demands it know its place.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 hours ago

Save time and just list Humanity as a threat to everything.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 hours ago

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 😍

[–] nevaseerius 8 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

The list being added to already covered Earthbound locations.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 57 minutes ago

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

[–] anindefinitearticle 2 points 1 hour ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

technically its not a world monument if its not on this world...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

It's a wonder that you can see from your backyard.

I can't see any other wonders from my backyard.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Depends on your definition of world.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

Gonna have to change it from "world wonders" to "solar system wonders."