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From: KFL@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ("Keith F. Lynch")
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Names
Message-ID: <[MC.LCS.MIT.EDU].808101.860204.KFL>
Date: Tue, 4-Feb-86 23:08:13 EST
Article-I.D.: <[MC.LCS.MIT.EDU].808101.860204.KFL>
Posted: Tue Feb  4 23:08:13 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Feb-86 22:11:23 EST
Sender: uucp@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 53


    From: Robert Elton Maas <REM@imsss>

    It was suggested today that seven of the Uranian moons discovered this
    month by Voyager 2 be named after the astronauts & technicians &
    passenger who died on the shuttle this week. ...

    Since we haven't staked claim on these moons, what right have we to
    name them after citizens of our nation?

  Traditionally, the discoverer has the right to name his discovery.
Look at the names of the features on the back side of Earth's moon.

    All the other moons have been named after greek mythological beings
    affiliated in myth with the parent body.

  This is true for Jupiter and Saturn.  The five previously known
moons of Uranus (Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon) are
named for characters in Shakespeare.

    Do we want to start naming moons after real humans of the nation that
    discovered them?

  Why not?  We are running out of mythological names.  Most of them
(including the whole Hindu pantheon) have been used up on asteroids.
Some asteroids now have such pseudo-mythological names as
Rockefelleria (for Nelson Rockefeller) and Geographica (for the
National Geographic Society).
  Another possibility is for the government to auction the right of
naming each moon, and each mountain and each crater on each moon, to
the highest bidder.

    Why not name three more after Grissom/Chaffe/White ...

  Good idea.

    ... or after Russian cosmonauts who have died?

  Let them discover their own moons.

    Wouldn't it be sort of a slap in somebody's face to name the seven who
    died in the worst attempted-human-space-travel accident to date after
    moons that were discovered by the most successful
    unmanned-space-discovery mission to date, at a time when the contrast
    between these two missions is used by some people to argue that manned
    exploration should be totally stopped and everything should be done by
    robotics?

  No.

  Was the Arpanet site OBERON named after the moon, or after the
Shakespeare character?
								...Keith