Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean took this photograph of astronaut Charles Conrad examining the Lunar Surveyor 3, a craft that landed on the moon nearly two years prior to Bean and Conrad’s own arrival.
A half-century of exploration has left the lunar surface littered with discarded spacecraft, and a bevy of upcoming missions means there’s more moon mess to come
Man’s exploration of the moon has left behind over 20 tons of probes, rovers, rocket boosters and assorted other detritus scattered around the whole of the lunar surface. The moon has no atmosphere to burn up incoming objects, so once a spacecraft’s orbit decays, it will eventually end up in a pile somewhere on the surface.
At least this stuff won’t punch a hole through you like the junk that’s floating in orbit.
Well, we don’t even know what to do with all the unnecessarily generated trash here on earth. So why worry about 20t on the moon.
#1 – Way to use a viewpoint from 15 years ago. In case you haven’t noticed, the ability to build golf courses out of landfills has negated the problem. I’m sure someone will come up with a similiar tact for all of the crap on the Moon.
A golf course on the moon would be cool. Imagine a 1500 yard par 3. Time to head down to the patent office.
The extra challenge is trying to get some good distance off your drive without sending the ball in to orbit… “Add a stroke – that one’s heading for the sun”
There is no problem on the moon that Andy Griffith can’t solve…
How can there be junk on the moon when we never landed there?
FireJayPa.com –> Your home for Penn State Football
Sure, sure *wink* *wink* the “Moon” is littered with trash from all those “real” trips.
7) of course the moon is not littered with trash. As anybody that remembers the short lived TV series “Salvage 1”, starring Andy Griffin. Seems old Andy financed his new rocketship by harvesting(salvaging) the Landers and other stuff.
If we ever start building a base on the moon, I’m sure we can use all that metal for something. Unless the Republicans are in charge and refuse to recycle.
I’ll take the salvage rights for the three Lunar Rovers still there from Apollo 15, 16 and 17. I volunteer to go just so I can ‘drift’ on the moon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0wfyqQr0e0
It’s not as bad as it seems. Twenty tons of earth trash is really only like 2 tons on the moon, right?
BubbaRay – That beats the heck out of a golf cart.
#11, Brian, that’s pretty close for weight. Moon’s gravity = 0.165G, about 1/6, so 20 tons would be about 3.3 tons weight. Mass would still be 20 tons of course, but clever point ! Why didn’t I think of that ??
Does it look like alabama then? theres all sorts of broken down junk laying around alabama…
This isn’t junk, these are monuments to space exploration history visited, for now, only by a select few. I doub’t I’ll ever get to see them in their lunar environment, but I’d want to–woudn’t you?
This isn’t junk, these are monuments to space exploration history visited, for now, only by a select few. I doub’t I’ll ever get to see them in their lunar environment, but I’d want to–woudn’t you?
Let ’em be.
#16
And if you do manage to go there and find nothing, chances are that NASA will say “We didn’t shoot him in the head! It was a micrometeorite that struck him by chance!”
I am waiting for the redneck stir and anger when China gets to the moon, turns on their cameras, plant their flag on the lunar rover and start joy riding while giving USA the finger.
The US had better get it’s act together, before someone else upstages us.
HTML links are a pain in the tuckus! Please, isn’t there a better/easier way to paste HTML links?
Missions that wen to the moon:
Russian:
Luna 2 – Sep 12, 1959
Luna 3 – Oct 4, 1959
Luna 5 – May 9, 1965
Luna 7 – Oct 4, 1965
Luna 9 – Jan 31, 1966
Luna 13 – Dec 21, 1966
Luna 16 – Sep 12, 1970 – this mission had an unmanned sample-taking robotic stage that returned to earth.
Luna 17 – Nov 10, 1970 – this mission contained an unmanned rover.
Luna 20 – Feb 14, 1972 – also a sample return mission.
Luna 21 – Jan 8, 1973 – another unmanned rover mission.
Luna 23 – Oct 28, 1974
Luna 24 – Aug 14, 1976 – sample return.
Japanese:
HAGOROMO probe
American missions:
Rangers 1 through 6
5 of 7 Surveyors (#2 and #4 failed)
Apollo 11 – Jul 16, 1969 – the first manned lunar landing.
Apollo 12 – Nov 14, 1969
Apollo 14 – Jan 31, 1971
Apollo 15 – Jul 26, 1971 – first mission to use a manned rover.
Apollo 16 – Apr 16, 1972
Apollo 17 – Dec 7, 1972
That’s a lot of crap up there, not counting the many Hasselblads that are only waiting for me to figure out a way to go get them.
Do moon conspiracists believe that man did not land there, or that nothing landed there? An international conspiracy would be tough to manage.
Harrison, let’s go up, grab the Hasselblads, a couple of rovers and race to the moon’s south pole. First one there gets to see how large a beer frozen in lunar ice can spew after the ride. You get the GooTube rights, I’ll take the harmonic drives out of each rover wheel.
#18 – noname,
Hey, we finally found a point on which we can agree completely!
Oh, and for links, just paste them onto the tinyurl.com page to create a tiny URL. Then just paste that link. I’m not sure whether you’ll find that easier than the HTML syntax.
#3 – John,
Sorry, you’ll never get the patent. A member of the lunawalkers club already played golf on the moon. So, the idea is not original.
http://tinyurl.com/ymtkam
#18,20 – Geez, I’m agreeing with Scott on something! I find it depressing and disturbing that we don’t have a permanent presence on the moon right now.
noname – use shrinkster – tinyurl is blocked at my workplace 😉
#18,#21 You don’t need to use any HTML syntax to paste in a URL. Just paste it in… and if it’s too long, go to tinyURL.com and shorten it.