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.
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?
Edit: also, who gets dibs on the moon? Something tells me the vast majority of the population won’t get a say and mysteriously, somehow, it’ll be American mega-corps doing the mining
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 7.35×1022 kilograms. Dividing the Moon’s mass by the rate of removal, we get Time=7.35×1019seconds. 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.
Hmm, that’s an awful lot of material to move the one way. I’d actually expect a lot of what’s built on the moon will get shipped further outward.
Right now, it’s moving a couple of centimeters away from Earth every year, so a bit of that would actually be a good thing. And depending on how they’re getting it off the surface, the effect on the orbit might be something very different.
Wouldn’t the orbit of the moon not change in height if it decreased in mass? Since it should theoretically continue to orbit at the same speed?
I bet I could destroy all life with only half an A-press.
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.