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Looks Like Indigenous People Own the Moon

Hopefully indigenous people won't claim a proprietary religious interest in Moon Moon.

Also there is kind of a "dammit, Moon Moon!" vibe to the whole thing. Like of all the things the Maori and Navaho could be doing to participate in modern civilization, this is what they go with?
 
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Okay but what happens if you get caught between the moon and New York City?
 
dann said:
When a "a technologically-advanced nation" uses its advanced technology to "send ashes of bereaved to the moon," I'm on the side of people who try to put a stop to the moronic enterprise. I would even consider advising them to come up with a better argument.

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removed rule 12 violations
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Sending ashes of the bereaved to the moon is cruel. Sending ashes of the deceased makes much more sense.

Anyhow,

The purpose of the moon flight was to put technology on the moon to help with future moon landings. The tiny cannisters of human remains just went along for the ride.

Celistis doesn't just dump the remains onto the moon. The moon is in much more danger of enviromental contamination from people living on the moon, which they have done and are set to do again in the next few years
 
Checkmite said:
I believe you're wrong about that. The Moon is a moon, but its scientific name is capital-M Moon, similar to the way we have a sun that is scientifically named the Sun. Only sci-fi writers call it Luna, along with maybe a couple of science writers who tried but failed to make that a thing. The Latin word for the Moon was luna, and we use that for the modern word "lunar", but luna was not a proper name, as the Romans did not consider the Moon itself to be a place or a god - there was a Roman goddess of the Moon, but her name was Diana.
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And here I was thinking our sun was named Sol. :boxedin:

Oh well, as I said, someone smarter than me would be along to correct me. It took you long enough.
 
To be fair, all the other moons are named after our Moon. It wasn't until telescopes that we knew there were other natural satellites of other planets.

To continue the derail, I always like the old sci fi use of Tellus for Earth.
 
theprestige said:
Why ashes? There's tons of stuff getting put on the moon these days. Why is this suddenly a problem now? Is it because they're not aware of all the astronaut poop already on the moon?
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Not just ashes. Also 'DNA'.

It's going to be really funny sometime in the future when NASA starts building a colony and is told "You can't put it there, that's where Uncle Henry's bits are buried!". And interesting to see what Christians think of their sacred places being desecrated.

As to why it's 'suddenly' a problem now, that's what tends to happen with problems. Nobody thinks anything of them until they cross some threshold. I will never look at the Moon again without thinking about how we **** on it. No longer is it a pristine celestial body beyond the reach of human filthiness - now it's a toilet in the sky! :(
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Not just ashes. Also 'DNA'.

It's going to be really funny sometime in the future when NASA starts building a colony and is told "You can't put it there, that's where Uncle Henry's bits are buried!". And interesting to see what Christians think of their sacred places being desecrated.
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My understanding is that in Christian traditions, the place of burial isn't really sacred, the burial remains themselves are. So remains can be (and quite frequently are) relocated. You're supposed to take care in transferring remains, but the location itself isn't what's sacred. That's certainly the way it operates here on Earth. Moving graveyards is a thing, there are procedures for it, and nobody seems to get upset.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Not just ashes. Also 'DNA'.

It's going to be really funny sometime in the future when NASA starts building a colony and is told "You can't put it there, that's where Uncle Henry's bits are buried!". And interesting to see what Christians think of their sacred places being desecrated.
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Christians regularly move their sacred remains around to make room for progress. Jews, too. The city of Colma became the new home of many smaller cemeteries on the San Francisco peninsula, as that area became more and more developed. There's also the Catacombs of Paris, and I believe that similar practices are relatively commonplace in Europe and the UK. Maybe that will change in the future.
 
Damn.

I've waited all this time and no one has gone with the Earth/Moon binary planet system?

The Moon is bigger than Pluto, and by the "large enough to pull its own mass into a sphere" definition, qualifies as a planet in its own right.

:)

And, by the way, 'dwarf planet' is a sub class, of the class of objects called 'planets', so anyone who wants to argue that dwarf planets are not planets can go visit one.

:p
 
novaphile said:
The Moon is bigger than Pluto, and by the "large enough to pull its own mass into a sphere" definition, qualifies as a planet in its own right.
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Given that the Moon is the prototype for all moons, and that moons are called moons because of their similarity to the Moon, any definition of moon which doesn't include the Moon is a very bad definition.

I'm OK with the Moon also being a planet. After all, it was one of the original seven planets.

And, by the way, 'dwarf planet' is a sub class, of the class of objects called 'planets', so anyone who wants to argue that dwarf planets are not planets can go visit one.
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Not only is Pluto a planet, it's the tenth planet, NOT counting moons.
 
The claimants would have a better case, I think, if there were evidence that they had been there. Otherwise it seems a little bit trumpy, the idea that you can make a place sacred by just thinking about it.
 
theprestige said:
Besides, NGT's justification for demoting Pluto was arbitrary and laughable.
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Nope, totally appropriate. When I learned of the Kuiper belt I figured out that pluto was not a planet but just another kuiper belt object. It took astronomy 20+ years to agree.
 
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bruto said:
The claimants would have a better case, I think, if there were evidence that they had been there. Otherwise it seems a little bit trumpy, the idea that you can make a place sacred by just thinking about it.
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Come on now, to be trumpy you have to also talk about it.
 
ahhell said:
Nope, totally appropriate. When I learned of the Kuiper belt I figured out that pluto was not a planet but just another kuiper belt object. It took astronomy 20+ years to agree.
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Or, hear me out, Pluto is a planet in the Kuiper Belt. The fact that it was observed before the Kuiper Belt, and rated as a planet, cements its planetary status. Tyson's rationale is arbitrary and laughable. Don't be like Tyson.
 
ahhell said:
Nope, totally appropriate. When I learned of the Kuiper belt I figured out that pluto was not a planet but just another kuiper belt object. It took astronomy 20+ years to agree.
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That's like saying Mars is just another asteroid. And why do "planet" and Kuiper belt object" have to be mutually exclusive anyways?
 
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