Answer:

SPELLS will save the footprints.

For 20 years I have been exploring the possibility of preserving some of the vehicles and other articles left behind on the Moon in the wake of what some refer to as the Space Race. The idea came to me in the form of a short story I wrote about a group of tourists on a bus traveling to a “historic site.” The historic site turns out to be the Apollo 11 landing site... on the Moon.

The tale was inspired by two of my favorite television personalities – Rod Serling of “The Twilight Zone” and Andy Griffith; in his portrayal of the character Harry Broderick on the short lived TV series “Salvage 1.”

Science fiction movies and books spurred my interest in space travel in the late 1950s. Born in 1949, I spent my teenage years watching every launch I could and became a huge fan of the Space Race. I still have newspapers from many of the space shots. I saved them because they are important to me. The machines that helped the Human Race get to the Moon are important too - much more important! And it is important to save them just as I have those newspapers in my basement.

SPELLS is an acronym. It stands for The Society for the Preservation of Early Lunar Landing Sites. It is just one small step in a quest to save those machines and the places where they came to rest on the lunar surface.

The major goals of SPELLS include;

- The formation and enactment of international law that makes the purposeful destruction or disturbance of all sites where objects from Earth came to rest on the Lunar soil, a crime against humanity and a punishable offense,

- A United Nations declaration or amendment to UN Treaties concerning outer space as to the significant historical value of those machines and their landing sites,

- The return to Earth, of selected articles gathered from the sites, for world tours that would allow all peoples of our planet the opportunity to see and study those articles both intrinsically and scientifically and

- The building of structures to physically protect selected sites as soon as possible with the eventual purpose of turning them into our Moon’s first museums.

Many persons evaluating these goals may be of the opinion that it is much too early to be serious about them. The members of SPELLS believes those persons should thank again. Please! We need to start now! We’re not talking about junk to be salvaged or antiques to be collected and sold on some futuristic version of E-Bay. We are talking about the technological leftovers from an immensely important period in recorded history - the period when human beings traveled the void between neighboring planetary bodies for the first time ever.

During those few momentous trips, the crews of those vessels pointed their cameras back at all us left here on the Earth’s surface and brought a new awareness into focus – the awareness that our globe’s entire population is a single community.

Now, as that single community, we must band together, motivate one another and begin planning to protect the points on the Moon where we first learned to walk. It is not for ourselves we should resolve to do this. For most of us alive today with the ability to make a commitment to such an endeavor, it is only in a dream that we will ever walk transparent floors in a museum on the Moon and stare down at the footprints you imagined a few minutes ago in your mind.

We must go back as soon as possible, so we can safeguard and protect, photograph and preserve, collect and restore, study and yes, display these precious locations and their treasures. This resolution, and necessary measures to accomplish this undertaking will take our race into the future and our civilization will reap many benefits.

We humans are constantly becoming bored with the places we visit and the things we do. We sometimes hear the phrase, “Been there. Done that. And got the T-shirt.” At this point in our history, only a very small portion of the human race can wear the “Been There / Done That - Visit to the Moon” T-shirt! At SPELLS we see children wearing those T-shirts as they step off a vehicle that has yet to be designed - a vehicle that brought them back from the Moon!

Someday outposts will develop in the areas of our planned museums. Before they are even completed, the well-to-do thrill seekers, who are bored with Earth-bound entertainment and amusements, will go there. Some may invest or donate large sums of money because they know people will spend lots of money to be awed and entertained. Universities on Earth will send groups to study and help with construction. After the museums are completed tourists will visit them and the surrounding businesses. Technologies will advance in order to get them there. Remember, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Some year those outposts will become communities. Those communities will be composed of hotels, restaurants, clinics and maybe even casinos. Most certainly there will be gift shops where people will buy those “I Visited the Moon” T-shirts! “Jobs” will be created on the Moon because people will travel there to relax, be entertained, study, explore and visit the museums that started it all. Men and women will “work” there, meet and fall in love and children will be born there.

Museums on the Moon!?! It is a time and place that seem so far away. Right? Its really just too far away to actually start doing any planning. It’s science fiction. Right? Wrong! Science fiction becomes science fact. We have seen it happen many times. And remember this, a mere century ago, just going to the Moon seemed a time and place that were very far away. Now, landing on the Moon is behind us and a chapter in history.

Someday, the day the Gagarin-Grissom Lunar Museum of Early Space Age Exploration opened, on the Moon, will be history too.

Copyright 2000 / James S. Seidle