Preservation
As the site of the first human landing on a heavenly body, Tranquility Base has cultural and historic significance. The U.S. states of California and New Mexico have listed it on their heritage registers, since their laws require only that listed sites have some connection to the state. Despite the location of Mission Control in Houston, Texas declined to grant similar status to the site as its historic preservation laws limit such designations to properties located within the state.
The U.S. National Park Service has declined to grant it National Historic Landmark status as it fears doing so would be a violation of the Outer Space Treaty's prohibition on any nation claiming sovereignty over the moon or any other heavenly body. It has not been proposed as a World Heritage Site since the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which oversees that program, limits nations to submitting sites within their own borders.
Interest in according the site some formal protection related to its historic status grew four decades later when the Google Lunar X Prize for private corporations that successfully build spacecraft and reach the moon. A $1 million bonus has been offered for any competitor that visits a historic site on the moon. One team, led by Astrobotic Technology, announced it would attempt to land a craft at Tranquility Base. Although it canceled those plans, the ensuing controversy led NASA to request that any other missions to the moon, private or governmental, human or robotic, keep a distance of at least 75 meters (246 ft) from the site.
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Famous quotes containing the word preservation:
“It is my hope to be able to prove that television is the greatest step forward we have yet made in the preservation of humanity. It will make of this Earth the paradise we have all envisioned, but have never seen.”
—Joseph O’Donnell. Clifford Sanforth. Professor James Houghland, Murder by Television, just before he demonstrates his new television device (1935)
“Is not our role to stand for the one thing which means our own salvation here but with which it will also be possible to save the world, and with which Europe will be able to save itself, namely the preservation of the white man and his state?”
—Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966)
“Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men’s preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men’s wills such as men would have them.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)