Luna. 1972. Trash Dump. Site Inspection.

Sticking with the lunar theme, here we have a crop from a moon photo, AS16-116-18603, taken by the crew of Apollo 16. The original, as released, can be found at a couple of places, though the Apollo Archive has the cleanest one. There are a couple of other pictures of this spot as well. Inspiration to do some personal exploration into these photos was provided by Keith Laney via his page on this image entitled Apollo Digs #2.

Above we see a crop of the main grouping of strange objects in this apparent junkpile on the surface. The astronauts, Commander John W. Young and Lunar Module Pilot Charles M. Duke Jr., made it a point to get a few shots of this scene and they took one of an intrepid explorer posing nicely alongside it, digging into the ground for samples. Apparent is what seems to be a pile of half-buried and lightly encrusted hardware; a slab sticking upright at a jaunty angle, a flared cylinder just beyond it, to its right a solid cylindrical shaft and a few smaller suspicious objects closer to the camera to boot… hmmm.

This image puts a serious stretch to the believability band regarding the remote possibility that these objects could have come to be eroded into these shapes… and all together like this… via a natural course of events.

The one right below is shaped very, very much like a support base, or perhaps a shelf extension to a desk, complete with a reinforcing bar and stand on its underside. Note the nicely radiused corner. Note that although sturdy it’s not that thick and said thickness is uniform. The support bar/stand assembly is pretty heavy duty, good for holding up something reasonably weighty. I wonder if they took this thing back with them. I certainly would have.

Below is item two in the series, just to the right of our slab above, a cylindrical shape of robust thickness and uniformity with a well defined lip and what looks like a circular depression at the center of the interior surface. What appear as gear-like teeth can be seen along the rim. A couple of small “rocks” in front of it are mighty gear-looking as well. Could this really be erosion, or pareidolia? How? Tell me!

The Astronauts were obviously most intrigued by these objects – and they were right there – up close and personal. And being deadly serious military men I imagine they truly didn’t have either the time or the inclination to mess about.

So, here they be. Make of them what you will…