8 Moon Farside Protection, Moon Village …
77
Fig. 8.2 Claudio Maccone’s
badge enabling him to attend
the COPUOS Meetings in
Vienna, June 9–18, 2010,
and make his presentation on
June 10, 2010
One might naïveley expect that, after such an official presentation at the United
Nations, something should have happened towards the Moon Farside’s protection,
either at the political level or the scientific level or at both. But you are to be
disappointed: nothing happened at all for the next five years after 2010.
Why?
Because no national “big” space agency, nor any private entrepreneur had the
technological capability of sending a spacecraft to the Moon Farside before until
about 2015. The International Astronomical Union should have been the #1 promoter
of the Farside Protection didn’t care either, or was just unaware even of the urgency
of this issue: they love too much topics like “dark matter”, or what will happen
when the Andromeda Galaxy collides with the Milky Way in the 3 billion years, and
similar “learned stuff”, to “get down” to legal-scientific topics like the Moon Farside
Protection.
The situation started to change only in the summer of 2015, when the new Director
General of ESA, Prof. Jan Woerner, began his term. Woerner declares himself to be
a civil engineer, very much interested in building a Moon Village possibly on the
Farside, though the Moon Village location was not specified yet.
Next, a host of eager “Moon bases constructors” established the Moon Village
Association (November 2017).
77
Fig. 8.2 Claudio Maccone’s
badge enabling him to attend
the COPUOS Meetings in
Vienna, June 9–18, 2010,
and make his presentation on
June 10, 2010
One might naïveley expect that, after such an official presentation at the United
Nations, something should have happened towards the Moon Farside’s protection,
either at the political level or the scientific level or at both. But you are to be
disappointed: nothing happened at all for the next five years after 2010.
Why?
Because no national “big” space agency, nor any private entrepreneur had the
technological capability of sending a spacecraft to the Moon Farside before until
about 2015. The International Astronomical Union should have been the #1 promoter
of the Farside Protection didn’t care either, or was just unaware even of the urgency
of this issue: they love too much topics like “dark matter”, or what will happen
when the Andromeda Galaxy collides with the Milky Way in the 3 billion years, and
similar “learned stuff”, to “get down” to legal-scientific topics like the Moon Farside
Protection.
The situation started to change only in the summer of 2015, when the new Director
General of ESA, Prof. Jan Woerner, began his term. Woerner declares himself to be
a civil engineer, very much interested in building a Moon Village possibly on the
Farside, though the Moon Village location was not specified yet.
Next, a host of eager “Moon bases constructors” established the Moon Village
Association (November 2017).