When a NASA
spacecraft rammed into the moon in October, it tossed up a hard-to-see plume of
lunar material.
But the
event also stirred an observable cloud of public anxiety and protests in some
quarters about "bombing"
the moon, a backlash that may hint at a rising "Friends of the Moon"
movement.
On Oct. 9,
the Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) experiment created
twin impacts on the moon's surface in a search for water ice. Scientists
remain busy at work analyzing data to assess whether water ice was kicked-up by
the event. Given a human return to the moon, such a resource could help sustain
future explorers there.
Still, not
everybody was upbeat about beating up the moon.
Bomb...bastic
term
All the
talk about bombing the moon prompted science writer Pete Spotts of the Christian
Science Monitor to make his own nose-dive into Webster's Dictionary to pinpoint
the definition of "bomb" – "an explosive device used to detonate under specific
conditions."
That
meaning incited Spotts to scold reporters, chiding them to stop misusing and
misinterpreting the word in LCROSS mission coverage.
Similar in
view is NASA's Jennifer Heldmann, lead for the LCROSS Observation Campaign at
NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.
"On LCROSS
there are no explosives...there's no bomb. So we're not bombing the Moon," she
told SPACE.com prior to the crash. In reality, the moon is regularly hit with impacts
that release the sort of magnitude of energy as realized with LCROSS.
So LCROSS wasn't
doing anything new to the moon that doesn't happen already, Heldmann
emphasized, evidenced by its cratered appearance after being hit with objects
the past 4 1/2 billion years or so.
Shock
and awe
But others
found unnerving aspects to the LCROSS slam dunk.
In the Huffington
Post, screenwriter Amy Ephron called it "NASA's own version of shock and awe"
and put in motion a "Help
Save the Moon" Twitter Page in the hope that readers "can convince NASA not to try any
further experiments of this kind," she wrote.
"Well, I for one, don't like
explosions. Call me a pacifist, call me cautious, call me an environmentalist,
or call me something worse, I don't really care," Ephron explained.
PC World
Blogger, Jeff Bertolucci, came up with his own "possible, covert goals" of why
NASA bombed the Moon. His self-admitted lighthearted look included:
To destroy
secret alien moon bases on the far side
Hate high tides?
So does NASA
NASA engineers
love demolition derbies
Others took
a less jocular view of NASA's LCROSS effort.
Lunadarity
forever
The Chicago
Surrealist Movement put its muscle behind a "Stop NASA From Bombing the Moon"
campaign.
That
crusade called for "Lunadarity forever!" and included a petition drive on Care2
– billed as an online community of people making a difference in healthy and
green living, human rights and animal welfare.
For
example, Care2 posted petitions embrace support for climate action to protecting
polar bears from global warming, as well as regulating toxic coal ash as
hazardous waste.
In this
case, the moon petition tagged the NASA experiment as "a hostile act of
aggression and a violent intrusion upon our closest and dearest celestial
neighbor."
Furthermore,
the appeal flagged the LCROSS mission as leading to "the exploitation of
resources and the colonization of territory without regard for ecosystems or
indigenous peoples, and clearly the moon is the next territory coveted by
imperialists."
At last
look, some 560 had responded to the anti-NASA bombing the moon petition, over
half-way to a 1,000 person sign-up goal.
Real
issues
"There are
real issues related to lunar preservation and silly issues. The concern about
LCROSS is in the latter category," countered Chris McKay, a space scientist at NASA's
Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.
McKay said
that impacts the size of the LCROSS crash are probably happening naturally on
the moon every few decades. "A small crater in a crater saturated surface is
hardly environmental destruction," he told SPACE.com.
But for
McKay there are serious issues still to be dealt with in terms of future utilization
of the moon.
A plan to
mine Helium 3 from the moon to power fusion energy plants that we don't even
have yet is one such issue, McKay said. Another is the preservation of NASA's
six Apollo moon landing sites.
McKay added
that "a real issue for scientists is the creation of a temporary atmosphere [on
the moon] due to rocket exhaust. I've seen estimates that it would take decades
to subside."
There is an
upshot. McKay said he doesn't think there are any serious biological issues
with either forward contamination or back contamination, so repeated travel
back and forth between Earth and the moon shouldn't pose too big a risk in that
respect.
Cultural
and natural landscape
"Whether
you agree or disagree with the protests about the LCROSS mission, it shows that
the moon is perceived as a cultural place as well as a celestial body orbiting
Earth," said Beth Laura O'Leary of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology
at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. "The moon is seen as part of both
a cultural and natural landscape that may be harmed."
O'Leary is
co-editor of a new book "Handbook of Space Engineering, Archaeology, and Heritage"
recently issued by CRC Press.
In
reviewing the feelings of those expressing LCROSS outrage, O'Leary said they saw
the mission as morally wrong. This is in contrast with previous perceptions,
she told SPACE.com.
"The idea
of sending a spacecraft -- robotic or human piloted -- to the moon was viewed
in the 1950s and 1960s as a legitimate scientific exploration, although it was
firmly set in the context of the Cold War," she said. "The sentiment... is that
it is a bomb site not a crash site and that with the LCROSS mission we are
disturbing the natural order of the universe - from changing the tides to
committing a sacrilege."
"Some feel
it is a violation of the United Nations Outer Space Treaty," she added.
O'Leary
said that what is being expressed are some current sentiments which move
parallel to, but are in conflict with, the commercial interests in exploring
and exploiting the Moon's resources in the near future.
"For space
archaeologists, the material cultural and impact area of LCROSS on the moon
exist as artifacts and features of an archaeological site. It is one of the few
recently created
sites on the moon and is part of our space heritage," O'Leary said.
LCROSS
joins other lunar locales that are cultural resources on the moon, O'Leary
added. "The event and the assemblage have many complex layers of meaning
indicative of our human historical perspective about space in the 21st
century," she concluded.
Leonard
David has been reporting on the space industry for more than four decades. He
is past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space
World magazines and has written for SPACE.com since 1999.
advertisement
