It’s Shiny and New

So, it hasn’t snowed in a week and I’ve got a good four or five days to relax.  I guess, life is good.  The news kind of bores me at the moment.  The courts are going back and forth on the ICE arrests and the protest riots.  I guess it’ll take a while for that stuff to get sorted out.  I’ll let Trump get on with his work.  He doesn’t need my applause to do his job (I hope!).

So what else is going on?  Well, we’re sending a rocket around the Moon I hear.  They’re sending four astronauts and one of them is a girl.  Well, what can you do?  She can make sandwiches for the return trip, I guess.  I’m glad they’re planning missions to land on the Moon again.  I think the Moon is a better location for space missions than either the space station or Mars.  Mars is currently too far for our current capabilities to be attempted safely and effectively.  The space station doesn’t seem to be very interesting or useful.  A moonbase on the other hand has definite possibilities.  I think they can start by using robot equipment to transport lots of equipment to the lunar surface and then have a few manned missions to set up a permanent base.  Using unmanned flights to accumulate fuel before humans begin inhabiting a base would provide more of a safety factor.

As for what purpose the base would fulfill, I’d say it would be almost completely scientific experimentation.  Personally, I have a theory that somewhere below the surface of the Moon we’ll find bacterial life.  Specifically, it will be terrestrial life that reached the Moon as spores.  There is supposed to be frozen water on the Moon and below the surface there may be more moderate temperatures.  Of course, there is no atmosphere but I’ve got this feeling that somehow all the life on Earth must leak out into space over time.  Of course, Mars is a better place to look for wandering terrestrial micro-organisms.  But I want to put in my claim for Moon bugs early.  Maybe they’ll even name them after me; E. coli photogiensis.  But I think the Moon would also make a great location for astronomical observatories.  And in terms of the astronauts, having one sixth gravity on the Moon would be many times better for them than the micro-gravity of the space stations.

Finally, they could call the base Luna City.  Robert Heinlein based a number of his short stories and one of his best novels on the Moon (“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”) I think Luna City is an excellent name.  Of course, when it gets big enough for a main street, that should be Neil Armstrong Boulevard.  Of course, it may turn out that living on the Moon isn’t healthy for humans.  If that’s the case we’ll know soon enough.  Then the Moon will be the domain of robots.  And since it’s so close that will someday happen.  It’s a very large rock that’s very close to Earth and eventually we’ll think of lots of things to do with it.  But right now, it’s shiny and new and waiting for us to walk on its surface again.  Maybe even girls.