
Eugene Shoemaker Is Still the Only Man Buried on the Moon - evo_9
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/eugene-shoemaker-buried-moon-celestis-nasa
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emptybits
The article tells us a quote from Romeo & Juliet was etched on Shoemaker's
lunar burial capsule. Here's the quote and more from NASA.[1]

 _And, when he shall die,_

 _Take him and cut him out in little stars,_

 _And he will make the face of heaven so fine_

 _That all the world will be in love with night,_

 _And pay no worship to the garish sun._

[1]
[https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/news82.html](https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/news82.html)

RIP all you pioneer astronomers!

~~~
fouc
Translation: When he dies, turn him into stars and form a constellation in his
image. His face will make the heavens so beautiful that the world will fall in
love with the night and not want daylight to come.

~~~
sincerely
This is hardly some abstract modern poetry requiring an explanation...

~~~
slowmotiony
Took me like three reads and I still didn't get it, maybe not being a native
english speaker has something to do with it

~~~
sincerely
Fair enough, I might have underestimated how much a few uni literature classes
may have helped me comprehend poetry.

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jessriedel
Maybe more fair to say his ashes were scattered on the moon?

> The mission ended on July 31, 1999 at 9:52:02 UT (5:52:02 EDT) when Lunar
> Prospector was steered into a deliberate collision in a permanently shadowed
> area of the Shoemaker crater near the lunar south pole. It was hoped that
> the impact would liberate water vapor from the suspected ice deposits in the
> crater and that the plume would be detectable from Earth; however, no such
> plume was observed.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Doesn't sound like they were scattered, if we're being factual about it. "The
only man whose ashes are in proximity to the lunar surface" in a canister, in
a probe. A long way off being buried there though.

~~~
jessriedel
You think the ashes are still in the canister? The probe hit the surface while
traveling more than a kilometer per second. It would have to be _some_
canister....

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oldmancoyote
I worked for Shoemaker for a while. While I barely knew him, he was quite an
impressive man. Sending his ashes to the Moon was entirely appropriate.

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mywittyname
I feel like a lot of people don't realize how frequently the moon has been
visited. Humans have landed on the moon six times. I have no idea how many
unmanned capsules have landed on the moon, but it has to be close to 100
times.

~~~
aikinai
I think you might find the opposite to be more true. When I was younger I
somehow got the impression we flew to the moon all the time, and was shocked
when I learned how rare it actually was.

That’s just my anecdote, but I don’t think it’s just me. I’ve also been the
one to inform a number of other people who had the same misconception.

~~~
mywittyname
I guess I'm thinking of how conspiracy theorists say, " _the_ moon landing is
fake." Which implies only one attempt was made. Apparently nobody thought to
ask, "what about all the other ones?" so the conspiracy was never updated.

I'm really curious now, I should do a poll or something.

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OliverJones
Honoring Dr. Shoemaker this way is entirely appropriate.

Still, it costs US$26 / gram to lift payload to Clarke orbit. I wonder whether
a huge trend in this direction will be a waste of resources and yet another
way to dump CO2 into the atmosphere. For my part, I hope to leave those kinds
of resources (money, unburned petroleum) for another generation.

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JoeAltmaier
Beautiful. Fitting symbolism.

As for the human remains furthest from the earth, I think the record would go
to the graduate student that lacquered a bit of their fingernail into the
radio module circuit board they were processing for Voyager. The story at my
college (possibly apocryphal) says on impulse they stuck a tiny bit of
themselves into the resin they were painting onto an instrument circuit board.
If true they would be currently about 144AU(?) from Earth, and ultimately
approach another star system (in 17000 years)

~~~
snerbles
An Astronomical Unit (AU) is the approximate radius of Earth's orbit around
the sun.

At the time of this post, Voyager 1 is a bit over 144 AU away from Earth.

[https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Thanks fixed! I googled it earlier but I have to read things carefully for
that to be any help

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JohnJamesRambo
It’s such a strange thing to bury ashes or consider them unique, all that
makes us human or different have been burned away and all that remains are
anonymous minerals that could be from anyone.

~~~
sowbug
The _Ship of Theseus_ thought experiment might further interest you.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
I think of this example often when working on my old Land Rover that has had
almost every part replaced it feels like haha.

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jlarocco
Sounds like something straight out of a J.G. Ballard short story.

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ajhurliman
I definitely thought they were referring to a shoe maker from Eugene, OR at
first.

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lanewinfield
Definitely was wondering why a cobbler from Eugene, Oregon was the one chosen
to be buried on the moon.

~~~
mc32
The only clue to that gardenhose construction is that ‘shoemaker’ is
capitalized.

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kens
Do you mean "garden path" or is gardenhose construction something else? (A
garden-path sentence tricks you into an incorrect dead-end parsing. E.g. "The
horse raced past the barn fell.")

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-
path_sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence)

~~~
mc32
Yes, mixing terminology. Apologies.

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doodliego
Somehow I misread the title to mean a shoemaker from Eugene, Oregon is buried
on the moon.

~~~
brian-armstrong
I'm not sure that can be considered a misreading

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cryptozeus
Had no idea that shoemaker was burried on a moon.

