News from the Moon – Lunar Ark and the Mythbusters

Two interesting pieces of “News from the Moon” lately.

First, European Space Agency scientists, at a conference in Strasbourg last week, discussed the possibilities of building a “Lunar Doomsday Ark” on the moon. The concept is to have a repository of all the necessary information needed to rebuild civilization on earth, should a catastrophic event ever happen. Something like another asteroid hitting, Skynet going online, or mass viral outbreak. The ark would house data banks of information and a self sustaining broadcast faculty. The broadcast faculty would continuously broadcast the ark’s information back to earth. If anything happens, surviving humans could find one of the fortified receiving stations, and start rebuilding civilization. Sounds like a plan to me.

Second, the Bad Astronomy Blog is reporting that the Mythbusters are doing a special episode on the Apollo landing myths – figuring out if we actually really did land on the moon, and checking out all those “mysterious angles and shadows” in the pics. I’m interested to see how they tear apart the skeptics claims on this one.

Speaking of which – I just uncovered this from the archives – the cuff checklist (pdf download)the Apollo 12 astronauts wore during their moon walks. The booklet contained all the timings and procedures for their time on the moon, as well as a few “bonuses”, slipped in secretly at the last moment. Nobody knew the surprises until those pages were flipped to while walking around out on the Moon.