Space junk is on the rise, and no one is in charge of cleaning it up | There are at least 100 bags of human waste on the surface of the Moon.::There are at least 100 bags of human waste on the surface of the Moon.

  • tasty4skin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    forgive me for not caring too much but 100 bags of waste on the moon is not only nothing, but there’s not even an environment to destroy there. i’ll worry about moon waste after we start taking care of all the waste here on earth that’s actually affecting us.

    • astropenguin5@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah I’m not sure what the point about the moon waste is considering it’s likely inside the remainins of lunar landers. The real space junk to worry about is all the stuff in LEO that will cause problems with satellites and such in the near future

      • kill_dash_nine@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        In all likelihood, it’s actually quite literally just in bags sitting on the moon as I am pretty sure that at least the early LM designs didn’t have external storage compartments where it could be stored in considering the ascent stages left the moon.

        Still not something I would really be concerned about though.

    • wagoner@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      I always try to think of these things at their greater extreme left unchecked, in order to evaluate if it’s worth caring about. How about when there are so many bags and abandoned transport equipment that it starts to become harder to land safely? What if we finally start to have a base on there, and the trash becomes unsightly and a nuisance?

    • imgonnatrythis@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Unforgiven, the anti-space argument is always the same. “Let’s focus on earth first” Earth is always going to have problems, this mindset gets us nowhere. It’s not like the people thinking about the space poop problem would all be hard at work solving earth poop problems if they weren’t allowed to think about space waste. These things are so incredibly not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, it’s entirely possible that some out of box thinking about how to manage moon waste ends up making for a creative solution for earth waste management that has a huge impact. Perhaps we need little packets of genetically modified yeast placed in moon poop bags to eat up the waste, and it turns out that putting that in Portapotties helps with odor, decontamination and insect burden. Who knows. It’s never too soon to seriously start thinking about space problems.

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Many eons from now, some future species will find our shit on the moon and conclude that earth bacteria created their own space program.

      • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Scientist bacteria, 600 million years ago:

        “So it looks like the most efficient way to reach the moon is to train our pet eucaryotes to assemble themselves into meat robots that will do most of the heavy lifting, while we ride along inside them.”

  • Genericusername@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Out of all types of space junk, I’d be least worried about stuff on the surface of the moon. If anything, these piles of human waste contain the gut bacteria of the astronauts and was exposed to decades of radiation, temperatures and extreme conditions. It will be an interesting thing to study once they’ll be able to create a research lunar base.

  • ramble81@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Okay, how is there that many bags on the moon? Were the astronaut shitting dozens of times, or did they use the poop knife and divide it up?

  • TheHotze@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m not too worried about junk on the Moon, it’s not going anywhere. Space junk is an issue though, but it’s the objects in orbit that are the problem.

  • ram@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    So what if in like 1000 years, a mound builds, and we decide we need to get rid of that mound and just launch a rocket or something at it to send it into space. Then the poo collects in space and forms a satellite around the moon so we can have a poo moon for the moon.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    With more countries landing on the Moon, people back on Earth will have to think about what happens to all the landers, waste, and miscellaneous debris left on the lunar surface and in orbit.

    “It’s going to be like an interstate highway, at rush hour in a snowstorm, with everyone driving much too fast,” space launch expert Johnathan McDowell told Space.com.

    The clutter in Earth’s orbit includes defunct spacecraft, spent rocket boosters, and items discarded by astronauts, such as a glove, a wrench, and a toothbrush.

    The United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says that no country can “own” the Moon or any part of it and that celestial bodies should only be used for peaceful purposes.

    However, the United States, Russia, and China never signed it, and in 2016 the US Congress created a law that unleashed the American commercial space industry with very few restrictions.

    The lead author of a Nature article arguing for a global commons filed an amicus brief—a type of outside comment offering support or expertise—on a case that went to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in late 2021.


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