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Used Spacecraft Lot Needed On Moon
If you could salvage all of the material that human beings have left on the moon, you could open a fairly substantial used spacecraft lot.
If all of these craft could be collected in one junkyard/sales lot, the sales brochure would look like this:
Update 16-May-2007: Corrections have been made to the list based on attentive reader comments. End update notice.
| Mission | Object Description | Condition | Year |
| Luna 2 | Small spherical craft with sensors | Poor (Crash-landed) | 1959 |
| Ranger 4 | 5' high sensor platform w/failed solar panels | Poor (Crash-landed) | 1962 |
| Rangers 6-9 | #6 arrived but failed; others deployed sending photos | Poor (Crash-landed) | 1964-5 |
| Luna 5,7,8 | Sensor platforms with retro-rockets attempt soft landings | Poor (Crash-landed) | 1965 |
| Luna 9 | Spherical sensor platform with cameras makes successful soft-landing, sends back photos | Excellent (dead battery) | 1966 |
| Surveyor 1-7 | Sensor platform w/solar panels, soil analysis (some vandalism on #3 by Pete Conrad - camera missing) |
Excellent (#3 checked by Apollo crew 1969) | 1966-68 |
| Luna 10-12 | Satellites with MP3 capability (transmitted "Internationale") orbited moon | Poor (Crash-landed) | 1966-68 |
| Luna 13 | Achieved soft-landing; excellent cameras, detailed soil analysis | Excellent (battery dead) | 1966 |
| Lunar Orbiter 1-5 | Satellites w/solar panels and dish antennae, excellent cameras and 70 mm film processing | Poor (Crash-landed) | 1966-67 |
| Explorer 35 | Satellite with sensors; switched off 1972 | Poor (Crash-landed) | 1967 |
| Apollo 10-17 | Lunar lander descent stages; some missions left behind retroflectors for lunar ranging. [except for #13, which never got there, and #10, which crashed] |
Excellent | 1969-72 |
| Apollo 10-17 | Lunar lander ascent stages, which fell back onto the moon. [except for #13, which never got there.] |
Poor | 1969-72 |
| Apollo 15-17 | Lunar Roving Vehicles (style: dune buggy) in good shape, low mileage | Good | 1971-72 |
| Luna 15 | Platform-style unmanned lander intended to bring back samples | Poor (Crash-landed) | 1969 |
| Lunokhod 1 | Robotic lunar rover with cameras teleoperated from Earth; low mileage | Good | 1970 |
| Lunokhod 2 | Robotic lunar rover with upgrades also equipped with laser-ranging reflector | Good | 1973 |
| Luna 23,24 | Platform-style craft left descent stages | Good | 1974 |
| Hiten/ Hagoromo | Satellite lunar probes | Poor (Crash-landed) | 1990 |
| Lunar Prospector | Sensor-laden craft intended to locate lunar water | Poor (Crash-landed) | 1998 |
| Smart-1 | Satellite with unique Hall effect ion-thruster | Poor (Crash-landed) | 2006 |
Science fiction writers have already explored the idea of a used spacecraft lot on the Moon. In his 1941 novel Methuselah's Children, Robert Heinlein describes it this way:
...Despite efforts to make the Moon colony ecologically self-sufficient, Luna City still imported vastly more tonnage than she exported. On Earth this would have resulted in "empties coming back"; in space transport it was sometimes cheaper to let empties accumulate, especially on Luna where an empty freighter was worth more as metal than it had cost originally as a ship back Earthside.They suited up and left the dome by North Tunnel, then strolled along the grounded ships in the long, easy strides of low gravity...
(Read more about Lunar Used Spacecraft Lot)
(Lunar Rovers (3); low mileage, excellent shape, make offer)
If you are interested in space junk, you will want to collect these stories:
- Making a Living from Space Junk
- Space Junkyard in Northern Hollywood
- NanoTerminator Prevents Annoying Space Debris Build-Up
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/9/2007)
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