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But this is why we put into the NASA Guidelines to approach the historic sites tangentially along a 2 km perpendicular distance. Crashes will always be >2 km away, & the faster you crash the farther you will inevitably be from the site. If 2 km isn't enough, we can revise... 1/N
2/ ...because we planned for the NASA Guidelines to be a living document we will continually revise as we get smarter. (I picked the 2 km requirement based on analysis of lunar crash dynamics.) There is a process of approving a mission to visit an Apollo sites. It is like this...
3/ For US-based organizations, the FAA reviews the launch plans. If they see it will land on the Moon, they ask NASA to review the mission plans. If NASA sees the plans will threaten the historic sites, NASA advises the FAA to deny the launch license, so the FAA will deny it...
4/ For foreign launches, the Outer Space Treaty is the law. It requires foreign governments to make sure their companies will not damage other nations' hardware, including the historic sites. The US already signaled what we consider acceptable behavior, via NASA's Guidelines.
5/ We have to rely on other nations obeying that treaty, and if we see problems we can appeal to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. @PTScientists has already signaled that they intend to protect the historic sites. They plan to follow NASA's Guidelines.
6/ When we wrote the NASA Guidelines, it was not our intention to prohibit all access to the sites because there is value in people of every generation seeing our heritage. But we need to be smart about it, so we had archaeologists and historians on the team when we wrote them.
7/ Admittedly the NASA Guidelines aren't perfect. There are gaps in our scientific understanding, so we need to get smarter as fast as possible & continually improve the Guidelines. I'm proud to be part of @ForAllMoonkind helping make that happen.
8/8 If you'd like to read the NASA Guidelines, including what they say about flying in tangentially to protect the heritage sites against crashing spacecraft, they are here: nasa.gov/directorates/h…
