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Moon Trees!



 
 
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Old July 24th 05, 11:46 PM
Garrison Hilliard
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Default Moon Trees!

Trees... from the Moon
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News


They have been to space and back and virtually all of them lived to tell the
tale. There are more of them than there are astronauts and they are found all
over the planet.


"They" are Moon Trees grown from seeds which journeyed to the Moon and back on
board Apollo 14 in 1971.
In the early days of the space race, various living things went into orbit -
most notably Laika, the Soviet Union's first dog in space which survived a few
orbits in the grim metal prison of Sputnik 2.

But seeds? When I came across the story, many questions sprang to mind - whose
idea was it, and why? Was there any scientific purpose? Were the seeds changed
by their journey? If you see a Moon Tree, how do you know it's a Moon Tree?

I began the quest for some answers at the southernmost tip of Indiana in the
tiny town of Cannelton. Cannelton Elementary School has two claims to fame - it
is the oldest continuously-used school in the United States, having taken its
first register in 1868; and it is the place where the second instalment of the
Moon Trees story, the modern rediscovery, began in 1997.

"We were doing a project at school," teacher Joan Goble told me, "and one of my
girls said 'I know there's this really neat tree at our Girl Scout camp we could
do a research project on'. I said 'what is it?' and she said 'it's a Moon Tree'.

Bicentennial celebrations

The only problem being no-one knew what a Moon Tree was. Joan Goble e-mailed
Nasa to find out. The message reached Dave Williams, a planetary scientist at
Goddard Space Flight Centre near Washington DC who collates records of space
history.

"I had no idea. I'd never heard of these Moon Trees before," Dave told me when I
met him outside the Goddard Visitors' Centre. "I talked to people I worked with,
and no-one had any idea about it, including people who'd been working at Nasa
for 20 years."


Eventually Dave found out the seeds were germinated and planted as part of the
US bicentennial celebrations in 1976. "They were planted all over the country
but after 1976 you didn't hear much about them," he said.


Dave put the Moon Tree story on the internet and receives regular e-mails from
people claiming they have one. He has a register of around 50, including - as he
related with amusement - one which had been standing at Goddard itself all
along.

Soon he was in touch with the family of the story's most important figure,
Stuart Roosa, the astronaut who decided to make room for some seeds on the
Apollo 14 mission. He piloted the command module around the Moon.

Like many early US astronauts, Stuart Roosa got the job partly because he had
demonstrated courage beyond normal bounds, both as a test pilot and as a
"smoke-jumper" - someone who parachutes out of aeroplanes to fight forest fires.

"My father used to talk about getting hung up in the trees, 100-feet up on his
parachute, and then having to lower himself down on a rope," explained
Christopher Roosa as we stood beside his father's grave in Arlington National
Cemetery.

Radiation exposure

Stuart Roosa's love of the outdoors prompted him to choose tree seeds as one
ingredient of his Personal Preference Kit, the sock-sized pouch Apollo
astronauts were allowed to fill with their prize possessions. The seeds were
provided by the US Forestry Service - in particular, by its then Staff Director
for Forest Genetics Research, Stan Krugman.


On the veranda of his house outside Washington, overlooking his trim garden,
Stan told me of the scientific purpose behind the Moon Trees - to see whether
exposure to space, in particular the harsh radiation, would have any effect on
the seeds.

"I didn't think there would be much, because the seeds were dormant," he said.
"I chose seeds where we knew the mother and father, and enough seeds scattered
around to get a representation of different environments."

Constraints on weight and volume meant only around 500 seeds made the journey.
All survived the landing - so would they grow?

"The first attempt to germinate a few of the seeds failed, so it was decided at
Houston that they were all dead. They called me, and I said 'ship them all up to
me'," he recalled.


At various institutions around the US, in the tender care of plant scientists,
all the remaining seeds germinated and grew into saplings. Each of the Moon
Trees has an earthbound twin, derived from the same set of parents. Stan Krugman
and his colleagues compared those which had made the journey with their twins.

So had the Moon trip wrought any changes? "No, nothing at all," said Stan.

Worldwide demand

During the bicentennial celebrations of 1976, when the Moon Trees were a sturdy
five years old, requests came from all over a proud nation for saplings - from
schools, government agencies, and Girl Scout troops in places like Cannelton,
Indiana.

Demand outstripped supply. Stan Krugman created second-generation saplings, the
offspring of a Moon Tree and an earthly specimen, but still requests kept on
coming, from abroad as well as home.


"They went all over Europe - France, Germany, Spain - we know Douglas fir,
sweetgum and redwood do very well in Europe. The British Isles got half a
dozen."

Unfortunately, any record of who asked for Moon Trees and who got them appears
to have vanished. But, for US$32 plus postage and packing, you can now buy your
very own second- or even third-generation Moon Tree - if legislation on
importing seeds into the country where you live will permit.

They are marketed by the conservation group American Forests as part of its
Historic Trees programme, which will also let you buy saplings derived from
tulip poplars planted by George Washington in 1795, or a descendant of the honey
locust tree which stood next to Abraham Lincoln as he delivered the Gettysburg
Address.

"The Moon Tree is a sycamore, and it looks like a sycamore," admitted executive
director Deborah Gangloff. "But the thrill of it is the connection to history,
the fact that it comes from a seed that flew to the Moon and back. If you were
born after 1969, you didn't see the landings on the Moon - so I think this is a
way to connect people to a little bit of fairly recent history."

And here the Moon Trees story comes full circle - full orbit, if you will - back
to the youngsters of Cannelton Elementary School, who, through their project,
are themselves getting in touch with the era of the first lunar footsteps. Is it
making them think? From some of their comments, I believe so.

"For me, it makes me think of evolution - mankind going from cavemen to geniuses
all over the world," one child said. Another added it would be "really cool" to
continue discovering things on other planets.



The Moon Trees was broadcast on Wednesday 20 July 2005 and can be heard for the
following seven days at Radio 4's Listen again page. The producer is Gabi
Fisher. If you know the location of a Moon Tree, please let us know by sending
an e-mail to


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...ne/4694361.stm

Published: 2005/07/19 12:26:37 GMT
..

 




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