The footprints left on the moon won't be around for very long according to this scientist:


http://www.newscientist.com/lastword...p20.jsp?tp=top

It is an interesting little item, but I seem to recall that NASA published a little fact sheet about the time of A-16 and it said the foot prints were expected to last at least 10K years. I wonder if this is based on newer information or what is going on?

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It's just one of those damn things of which there are many few. -- Dan Blocker

I just hope we go back in time for someone to see them.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

If he is correct that the footprints will last only ~ 100 years, then they should already be seriously degraded. Seems like a good reason to at least send a "sojourner" type rover to take a look at one of the landing sites.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Wouldn't the exhaust from the liftoff of the LM at the end of each mission have an effect on obscuring the prints near it? Some of them may already be covered.

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...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

I am reminded of a story by Arthur C. Clarke in which the Apollo 11 landing site is now a museum and tourist magnet. He says something in passing about the tourists gawking at the first footstep on the moon, then goes on to comment, "The actual first footstep was obscured long ago by the astronauts themselves. What the tourists are admiring was placed there by an engineer from Milwaukee."

The upper stage of the LM used the bottom stage as a launch pad, thus no "exhaust" was ever directly exerted on the lunar soil during liftoff. The ground adjacent to the lander's "feet" could have shook a little, but probably not enough to significantly degrade the print.


I think Neil Armstrong purposely jumped from the second rung so that he could push off to the side enough so that that very thing would not happen. At least that's the way it looks in the video.

Videos that show Armstrong jumping off the ladder while saying "That's one small step..." are appallingly misleading (though I know there are some). He jumped down to the LM footpad before stepping onto the moon. I was watching it, and I remember.

No matter the case I am willing to bet he was a smart enough man to know how much that footprint would mean historically, and would have put it to the side of the pad so that he or Aldrin did not mess it up while they put a couple thousand more footprints on the ground. I could be wrong but it seems to me that it would be quite embaressing to destroy something of such significance.

I don't know if that's the case or not, but it would be nice to think so.

Actually, the article seems a bit circumstantial to me... It says there's evidence that some natural force moves the regolith around, but doesn't say anything about what that force might be.

I suppose that, as with so many other things, we'll have to go there to be sure.

Moon worms turn over the lunar surface.
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If and when we go back, I doubt that we would land in the same area.

Maybe not next time, but someday we would.

Just a matter of time.

We should have made a footprint-shelter-hut out of moon beams.

Don't be silly. We'd also need moon posts.

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And moon-roofing-tiles