The Penn Cultural Heritage Center

One Small Step for Tourism: Protecting America’s Lunar Exploration Heritage

Speaker: Matthew Hersch, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: Forty years after the first landings by America’s Project Apollo astronauts on the surface of the Moon, the now-famous sites of exploration face obliteration at the hands of well-meaning explorers, adventurers, and entrepreneurs.  Google, through its Lunar X PRIZE, has offered tens of millions of dollars to private consortia that successfully land robotic vehicles on the lunar surface, and even more money to teams that visit Apollo landing sites.  For decades, these pristine sites of exploration—sites of undeniable historical and national significance—were protected from damage by their remoteness and the airless environment of the Moon’s surface.  They now face destruction, and protecting cultural heritage on land claimed by no nation, 250,000 miles away from the nearest archeologist, has proven extremely challenging.