someone send them a littering bill
sadly one day hundreds of years from now parts of the moon will look like all the garbage left on Everest (and maybe even the dead frozen bodies too, moon dust is sticky and very sharp apparently)
sadly one day hundreds of years from now parts of the moon will look like all the garbage left on Everest (and maybe even the dead frozen bodies too, moon dust is sticky and very sharp apparently)
Also what's the alternative? Moon missions don't have enough extra propellant to go back to earth and deorbit. They might have enough to move to a relatively stable orbit, but then it's just long-lived orbital debris.
Do you know that for a fact? Unlikely sure, but the question isn't helped by ramming a thing that might have Earth-born life on it into it.
The moon is struck by meteors quite frequently. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter noticed 200 new craters over seven years.[1] Compared to what nature does to the surface, a few rocket bodies and impactor probes is a rounding error.
That is not definitive. There is frozen water and even water that sublimates on the bright side of the Moon. And the internal core of the Moon is quite hot. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that there are pockets of liquid water.
> Compared to what nature does to the surface, a few rocket bodies and impactor probes is a rounding error.
It's not an excuse. I also didn't comment about the impact itself, although it would be interesting to see a comparison to the meteors it gets hit by compared to the rocket shell, comparing speeds and size.
Yes, it is physically possible for liquid water to exist deep below the poles of the moon, but it would escape over time. Since there’s no way for any underground water to be replenished, and the moon is slowly cooling, it is very likely that all water on the moon is in non-liquid form (either ice, chemically bound up in rocks, or trace amounts of vapor that is soon to escape into space).
Meteors impact at 5-10x the velocity of the rocket body, meaning they have 12-50x more kinetic energy for the same mass. Their sizes vary, but a 4 ton booster traveling at 2.43km/sec is not going to be the most energetic impact on the moon this year.
Wait till you find out of "Götterdämmerung"
It's why I think the idea of starting with the Moon as a jumping-off to Mars is illogical. Mars is much further but is a million times more hospitable in every other way, and has presumably much more to offer in term of unknown unknowns than the Moon. We only found out that Martian regolith is relatively water rich (about 2% water by volume) in 2013, which is kind of insane if you consider that the first probe successfully sent to Mars was in 1962.