Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Credit: NASA

The City of Kent, Washington and the Kent Downtown Partnership in King County, Washington received historic landmark designation on July 25 for the Lunar Roving Vehicles that were built in Kent at the Boeing Space Center and used in Apollo Missions 15, 16 and 17 in 1971 and 1972.

The designation was unanimously passed at a public hearing at the Kent City Hall on Thursday evening by the King County Landmarks Commission.

Now that the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicles have achieved landmark designation for the region, the City of Kent will go on to pursue recognition at the state level.

To date, only California and New Mexico have lunar objects in their state historic registers.

Astronaut John Young works at the mission’s Apollo 16 Moon buggie in April 1972.
Credit: NASA

Heritage worthy of protection and preservation

Applauding the decision for designation is Michelle L.D. Hanlon, co-founder of For All Moonkind.

The group’s stated mission is to ensure the six Apollo Lunar Landing and similar sites in outer space are recognized for their outstanding value to humanity and consequently preserved and protected for posterity as part of our common human heritage.

“While it is an entirely symbolic designation, the more organizations and entities that recognize our history on the Moon as heritage worthy of protection and preservation, the closer we come to persuading the international community to help us develop a convention to do the same,” Hanlon told Inside Outer Space.

Credit: NASA

Embrace contributions

Hanlon points to the 400,000 individuals who worked on some aspect of the Apollo program. These are people who worked, sometimes around the clock in anonymity and without clamoring for recognition, she said.

“The fact that communities are starting to understand and embrace their contributions to space exploration helps to put names against numbers.  And hopefully, it will help inspire a renewed interest in space exploration at all levels of public discourse,” Hanlon concluded. 

Go to this earlier story at:

Historic Landmark Designation Sought for Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicles

https://www.leonarddavid.com/historic-landmark-designation-sought-for-apollo-lunar-roving-vehicles/