Washington - First mooted in 2012 by ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich the massive lunar landgrab is being steamrollered into law by Democratic Texas Representative Donna Edwards.
The politician and fellow Dem Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson [Maryland], co-sponsor of the Apollo Lunar Landing Sites National Historical Park Bill, have incurred the wrath of NASA with proposals to list the Moon's Apollo site as a World Heritage Site.
This would give direct control of the Moon to US Interior Secretary Sally Jewel in what aides of NASA Administrator Charles F Bolden Jr
have called cynical constitutional pie-in-the-sky.
Bolden has been head of NASA since 2009 and reports directly to the President as have all previous eleven CEOs.
Aides said this morning that proposals under the Apollo Lunar Landing Legacy Act were a direct challenge to Bolden's constitutional authority as manager of NASA's annual $20 billion budget.
"The Moon is not a US National Park like Yellowstone or Yosemite," an Agency litigator explained, "nor is it some sort of Disneyland resort.
"It cannot be annexed in the same way as, say, the Israeli's '67 landgrab of the West Bank or Gaza, regardless of the window dressing currently on show."
Expect a fierce debate at the Bill's next reading when NASA's constitutional position will be made crystal clear.
