Eugene Shoemaker Is Still the Only Man Buried on the Moon | Hacker News Reader

Eugene Shoemaker Is Still the Only Man Buried on the Moon

atlasobscura.com

141 pointsevo_942 comments

The article tells us a quote from Romeo & Juliet was etched on Shoemaker's lunar burial capsule. Here's the quote and more from NASA.[1]

And, when he shall die,

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night,

And pay no worship to the garish sun.

[1] https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/news82.html

RIP all you pioneer astronomers!

Translation: When he dies, turn him into stars and form a constellation in his image. His face will make the heavens so beautiful that the world will fall in love with the night and not want daylight to come.

This is hardly some abstract modern poetry requiring an explanation...

Actually, I have trouble understanding even simple poetic writing, like Shakespeare, and I'm a native English speaker with a graduate degree. I'm sure there are more like me, especially among engineers!

Took me like three reads and I still didn't get it, maybe not being a native english speaker has something to do with it

Fair enough, I might have underestimated how much a few uni literature classes may have helped me comprehend poetry.

Translating poetry into not-poetry seems like a sad hobby.

It's also part of the standard Italian education, it's called "paraphrasing"

Maybe more fair to say his ashes were scattered on the moon?

> The mission ended on July 31, 1999 at 9:52:02 UT (5:52:02 EDT) when Lunar Prospector was steered into a deliberate collision in a permanently shadowed area of the Shoemaker crater near the lunar south pole. It was hoped that the impact would liberate water vapor from the suspected ice deposits in the crater and that the plume would be detectable from Earth; however, no such plume was observed.

Doesn't sound like they were scattered, if we're being factual about it. "The only man whose ashes are in proximity to the lunar surface" in a canister, in a probe. A long way off being buried there though.

You think the ashes are still in the canister? The probe hit the surface while traveling more than a kilometer per second. It would have to be some canister....

it we're being factual about it: "...a way to get some of Shoemaker’s remains to the Moon’s surface". But then again, the title "Almost all the remains of Eugene Shoemaker are still the first ones being almost buried on the Moon" would not sound very good.

Wouldn't it settle on the moon?

I worked for Shoemaker for a while. While I barely knew him, he was quite an impressive man. Sending his ashes to the Moon was entirely appropriate.

I feel like a lot of people don't realize how frequently the moon has been visited. Humans have landed on the moon six times. I have no idea how many unmanned capsules have landed on the moon, but it has to be close to 100 times.

I think you might find the opposite to be more true. When I was younger I somehow got the impression we flew to the moon all the time, and was shocked when I learned how rare it actually was.

That’s just my anecdote, but I don’t think it’s just me. I’ve also been the one to inform a number of other people who had the same misconception.

I guess I'm thinking of how conspiracy theorists say, "the moon landing is fake." Which implies only one attempt was made. Apparently nobody thought to ask, "what about all the other ones?" so the conspiracy was never updated.

I'm really curious now, I should do a poll or something.

Wikipedia has a list of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon

"Landings" and "impactors" looks to be about 25 missions total by my count. Many of the "orbiter" missions end with a crash to the moon, as well, although since this isn't the primary mission I guess you have to use your judgment if this counts or not. (The ashes were on such an "orbiter" mission)

Humans have visit the moon precisely zero times in 46 years this December.

I'm surprised to hear that it was 6 times, I actually thought it was more.

Honoring Dr. Shoemaker this way is entirely appropriate.

Still, it costs US$26 / gram to lift payload to Clarke orbit. I wonder whether a huge trend in this direction will be a waste of resources and yet another way to dump CO2 into the atmosphere. For my part, I hope to leave those kinds of resources (money, unburned petroleum) for another generation.

Beautiful. Fitting symbolism.

As for the human remains furthest from the earth, I think the record would go to the graduate student that lacquered a bit of their fingernail into the radio module circuit board they were processing for Voyager. The story at my college (possibly apocryphal) says on impulse they stuck a tiny bit of themselves into the resin they were painting onto an instrument circuit board. If true they would be currently about 144AU(?) from Earth, and ultimately approach another star system (in 17000 years)

An Astronomical Unit (AU) is the approximate radius of Earth's orbit around the sun.

At the time of this post, Voyager 1 is a bit over 144 AU away from Earth.

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/

Thanks fixed! I googled it earlier but I have to read things carefully for that to be any help

It’s such a strange thing to bury ashes or consider them unique, all that makes us human or different have been burned away and all that remains are anonymous minerals that could be from anyone.

The Ship of Theseus thought experiment might further interest you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

I think of this example often when working on my old Land Rover that has had almost every part replaced it feels like haha.

It's a human thing. After all, when you look at other people through the lens of pure science, they're all just collections of atoms, just as anonymous as ashes. Personhood is an idea - atoms don't care about it, whether they're part of a live person or their remains. Whatever symbolism we attach to human remains is not really any different.

DNA isn't anonymous though, the sequences are some of the most unique things out there.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-odds-I-have-identical-DNA...

Agreed, I never understood all the weirdness around human remains. A lot of the rituals stem from ancient practices aimed at reducing the spread of disease - either that or religious beliefs.

I always tell people that I want a Tibetan sky burial - chop me up and spread me on top of a mountain to be eaten by the birds. At least they'll get a good meal out of it. ;)

Sounds like something straight out of a J.G. Ballard short story.

I definitely thought they were referring to a shoe maker from Eugene, OR at first.

Definitely was wondering why a cobbler from Eugene, Oregon was the one chosen to be buried on the moon.

  When the Moon
  Hits your eye
  With an Ore-
  'gon Shoe guy...

The only clue to that gardenhose construction is that ‘shoemaker’ is capitalized.

Do you mean "garden path" or is gardenhose construction something else? (A garden-path sentence tricks you into an incorrect dead-end parsing. E.g. "The horse raced past the barn fell.")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence

Yes, mixing terminology. Apologies.

So are all the other words in the headline.

Gah, you’re right. I need sleep.

Somehow I misread the title to mean a shoemaker from Eugene, Oregon is buried on the moon.

I'm not sure that can be considered a misreading

Had no idea that shoemaker was burried on a moon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com