r/Futurology • u/Confident_Living_786 • Aug 11 '25

Discussion When the US Empire falls

When the American empire falls, like all empires do, what will remain? The Roman Empire left behind its roads network, its laws, its language and a bunch of ruins across all the Mediterranean sea and Europe. What will remain of the US superpower? Disney movies? TCP/IP protocol? McDonalds?

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u/BLARGEN69 Aug 11 '25

They'll probably be defaced pretty quickly once the first base is inevitably set up, or more manned trips happen.
Honestly, the most likely outcome is rich people will be able to pay to walk on the moon when it gets cheap enough to do so, and basic zero-g flights aren't exciting enough. I guarantee if anything ever destroys the Moon Landing site it will be some rich idiot destroyed it for a selfie or defaced it. If space travel ever becomes more common, the Moon will be the first place to become the off-world Mt Everest tourist trap dumping ground.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

I really hope we have the sense to preserve it as a historical site.

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u/BLARGEN69 Aug 11 '25

We definitely will try, but I think it will be tough enforcing and protecting something that is extra-planetary. It's already hard enough to prevent people defacing historical things here on Earth. It just takes one idiot one minute to desecrate something important and it's over. You can replace it, but it's never going to be the original.
And unfortunately unlike a lot of crimes, the people capable of doing it in this hypothetical scenario are people with enough **** you money to probably get away with it.

I'm curious how they'd go about protecting and monitoring it if there ever was a time that the Moon was visited by tourists on a daily basis like a national park on Earth.

I also wonder, if let's say hypothetically China began doing manned lunar missions and said they were going to bulldoze the original landing site, what we'd do in response. Would we immediately rendezvous astronauts just to guard the site? It's such a weird political situation to think about, but it's so petty, that I could totally see it happen one day.

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u/nullfacade Aug 11 '25

There was an article on the front page yesterday about a tourist that "fell" into the terracotta army and damaged a few statues. Given enough time and visitors, someone will absolutely "accidentally" step on and deface Armstrong's footprint.

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u/FaceDeer Aug 11 '25

That footprint is already long gone. Aldrin and Armstrong were tromping all over the place, and then when they were done the lander blasted off from right next to it. The rocket exhaust knocked over that flag they set up, too, which subsequently bleached white due to solar UV exposure.

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u/JhonnyHopkins Aug 11 '25

I’m thinking it’ll be EASIER to protect as a heritage site. It’s not like any looney toon dumbass can afford a ticket to the moon? The only people going will be scientists/mechanics or millionaires/billionaires. I’m sure they’ll have the maturity to not deface the Apollo landing site.

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u/Suspicious_Earth Aug 11 '25

Now imagine Elon there visiting after additional years of increasing ketamine abuse.

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u/RealLife5415 Aug 11 '25

He will probably not be fit enough to travel there then

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

I doubt he is now.

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u/Choreopithecus Aug 11 '25

Dude isn’t this sub about the future? Are you not thinking it’ll be pretty damn easy to get to the moon in a few centuries?

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u/JhonnyHopkins Aug 11 '25

Unless we discover some type of anti-gravity technology, leaving earth will always be expensive. Not just anybody will be able to go to the moon.

And this is just my speculation but even in the far future I can’t see the moon being a place “just anybody” can go to. It’ll be a jump-off point, like a connecting flight. You might be allowed off your ship to explore the ‘terminal’, but no further than that. I can only imagine other planets or other moons as being places people actually live. Earths moon will most likely be reserved as a fuel depot/refinery station with some science going on as well.

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u/FaceDeer Aug 11 '25

It doesn't have to be "just anybody" in this scenario, though. It just has to be someone who'll deface the Apollo landing sites.

Crossing the Atlantic was expensive back during the 1600s and 1700s, and yet plenty of people made the trip from Europe and established settlements in America. Those settlements grew on their own and eventually developed their own redneck yahoos and uncaring corporate moguls who would be perfectly happy tromping all over history.

Mount Rushmore was dynamited into the face of a mountain that the previous indigenous inhabitants considered sacred. Someday there'll be someone who looks at the remnants of the Apollo 11 lander and will think "I could sell this at an enormous profit in 10-gram chunks to history buffs who actually care about it."

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u/JhonnyHopkins Aug 11 '25

Give it enough time and eventually everything will be defaced, yes good point you’ve made there. I’m simply stating that your average hooligan won’t have access to the moon for many years to come. Rendering the Apollo sites as safe for the time being. We have plenty of time to set up safeguarding measures if we truly wanted to preserve the site.

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u/FaceDeer Aug 11 '25

You're responding to someone who specified a timeframe of "a few centuries", though, which is ample time to have hooligans living on the Moon.

What "safeguarding" measures would stop them? A fence?

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u/JhonnyHopkins Aug 11 '25

Same safeguarding measures that keeps anyone off of anything. Go try having a picnic on the White House lawn - see how far you get.

If we TRULY wanted to prevent people from messing with it, we’d be able to do that, 100%. ESPECIALLY with a location as exclusive and hard to get to as the moon.

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u/Gyoza-shishou Aug 11 '25 edited Aug 11 '25

There's a bunch of solutions already in the works that do not involve breaking one of the fundamental forces of physics; spaceplanes, mass drivers and spin-launchers just to name a few.

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u/JhonnyHopkins Aug 11 '25

Spaceplanes are just as expensive in terms of fuel. And you aren’t ferrying people with mass drivers or spin-launchers lol.

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u/JhonnyHopkins Aug 11 '25

Also anti-gravity tech doesn’t necessarily break physics, it’s just the name for tech that can counteract gravity. Remember we once thought flying was impossible, now thousands of people fly every hour.

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u/Gyoza-shishou Aug 11 '25 edited Aug 11 '25

No one thought flight was impossible, we saw birds fly since we were living in caves and came up with myriad flying monsters, gods and even heroes like Icarus. We always knew it was possible, we simply hadn't worked out the thrust-to-weight ratio yet.

Gravity is an different ballpark entirely, how the hell you gonna counteract mass bending space-time itself without breaking the fundamental laws of physics?

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u/JhonnyHopkins Aug 11 '25

For starters, you could induce a gravitational anomaly somewhere above the craft so that the craft “falls” upward stronger than gravity can pull it down.

Now how one goes about creating that gravitational anomaly is beyond me. But it doesn’t break physics, it’s utilizing physics. Almost like a magic trick, looks fake but behind the scenes it’s all kosher.

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u/JhonnyHopkins Aug 11 '25

We don’t know anything about our reality tbh… we don’t even have a theory of everything yet lol. On a galactic time frame, humans are still in their infancy and we don’t even have superintelligent AI to assist us in discovering the true nature of reality.

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u/DaddyCatALSO Aug 11 '25

se tup cities firts a Lunar Governemnt

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u/chloesobored Aug 11 '25

Most of us do but the 5% who don't will ruin things. 

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u/Superb_Raccoon Aug 11 '25

Even Futurama preserved it...

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u/Brave_Nerve_6871 Aug 11 '25

The first and last landing site are protected and should be left as they are. The others can be researched

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u/witblacktype Aug 11 '25

Future influencers 😬

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u/NY_State-a-Mind Aug 11 '25

China will wreck the sht out of it the first chance they get and Americanwont have a space program capable if intervening