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Lunar outpost or archive for humanity? |
To protect against a nuclear bomb, a plague, a natural disaster, an asteroid collusion or some other doomsday event, scientists are lobbying to have a reserve library of human scientific and cultural achievements built and maintained on the moon.
Jim Burke, a retired long-time NASA expert now working at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, warned that a doomsday asteroid or comet could annihilate global civilization and that something should be done to insure against the wholesale loss of human achievement.
Burke suggests a project to create a "lunar biological and historical archive," which would include samples and a record of human scientific and cultural achievements.
The idea for what Burke calls a "space-age Noah's Ark" is one shared by the Alliance to Rescue Civilization (ARC), which also seeks to include backups of Earth's biological heritage and diversity in a permanently manned lunar facility.
"In the event of a global catastrophe, the ARC facilities will be prepared to reintroduce lost technology, art, history, crops, livestock, and, if necessary, even human beings to the Earth," Ropert Shapiro, an ARC co-founder and biochemist at New York University, told the National Geographic News earlier this month.
NASA already has plans to establish a permanent outpost on the moon by 2024. It also has programs researching how to react to dangers posed by asteroids and comets using, for example, nuclear-tipped space vehicles.
But, the question becomes what information will be 'safe' and what information won't be 'safe'? What will be considered to be "achievements" and what will be considered to be "failure' (meaning 'failure' won't be 'safe')?? Who will make that decision?