I Want A Moonsicle

NASA photo shows a plume from the LCROSS crash

NASA researchers are all ecstatic this morning, announcing that the LCROSS crash into the Moon on Oct. 9 revealed there is water on the Moon's surface.

Somehow, I feel like this announcement is coming a bit late. After all, science fiction writers from John Christopher to Arthur C. Clarke predicted -- or at least wrote about -- water on the Moon. One has to wonder, however, how Matthew Looney and company feel about the discovery, seeing as they distrust water almost completely, except as a cleanser for murtles. Some of the Moonsters up there are probably still upset about the bad Earther driving, crashing those two satellites into the Moon in the first place. Freeholy has got to be looking better and better.

Yes, I'm babbling.

It's exciting to find water on the Moon. It means available raw material for scientists if we ever get a Moon base going up there. Not that it's going to happen in my lifetime, but a guy can dream. It's like knowing you can go halfway across the Earth and not have to mail yourself cinder blocks in order to start building as soon as you get there.

Satire: If Man Landed on the Moon Today

Thanks, Slate. I needed a good chuckle today.

July 20, 1969

At the center of the photo stands the Apollo 11 Lunar Module.

On this, the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, only one thing bothers me:

The last men to step on the Moon are now old men.

Truth be told, as a kid I expected that when I became an adult, there would be cities on the Moon. I expected I'd be able to buy a ticket on a ride on some kind of space vehicle and visit those cities, perhaps live there if I wanted. I expected, at any rate, that I would be able to fly into space and see the Earth from above, as a blue-white marble hanging in a sky of black.

I'm grateful for the political expediency that led to that momentous moment on July 20, 1969. But I wish political expediency weren't so fleeting, that the urge to explore and populate the Moon had not ebbed after 1975. Six short years of exploration is a monumental, yet miniscule endeavor. Christopher Columbus made four journeys to the New World, spanning over ten years, and had many others follow him during that time as well.

Yes, there is cost involved. There is cost involved in any endeavor. But there are also benefits, many of which are left untapped.

Maybe our imaginations are smaller these days. Inthe heyday of space flight and in the heyday of technological expansion, authors like Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and others leaped the technological and societal barriers to manned space flight, to colonies in space, to the stretching of the imagination beyond what was practical into what is magical. Do we still see the magic? I don't know. Too many films these days have the explorers coming to Earth, not leaving.

I still believe. I look at the Moon nearly every night and marvel at our closest neighbor. Man walked on the Moon, and will again. I still retain the hope that I may, someday, too.

I can still dream. I can still imagine. Thanks to NASA, celebrating the 40th anniversary with this site. We also have Google Moon. And Clavius Base, where we find reason, not Moon hoaxes. We also have the immortal and snarky words of one of those grumpy old men, Eugene Cernan, who said of those who disbelieve man has walked on the Moon: "Nobody can take those footsteps I made on the surface of the moon away from me."

Me neither.

Radiocatively thinking. . .

We did indeed make it home. Went from palm trees in shirt-sleeve weather to a foot of snow and booger-freezing weather. And came home to a rather gassy and incontinent dog who has really made a mess of the carpet. Poor dogsitter.

Just read one of my Christmas presents, "The Radioactive Boy Scout," by Ken Silverstein. What a story. Now, aside from the fact this David Hahn nearly really made a mess of his neighborhood and very likely shortened his life with radiation poisoning, I've got to say this guy has a lot of drive. Had he performed his experiments a century earlier, he of course would have won a Nobel prize in physics. It's too bad he seems unable to channel his intelligence and drive into constructive uses of the technology that fascinates him. (For the uninitiated, the book is about David Hahn, a Detroit suburbanite whoa t age 17 built a model breeder reactor using chamicals he took from smoke detectors, lantern mantles, luminous-dial clocks and other bric-a-brac. He never did createa austained chain reactior or breed the uranium fuel he was hoping, but he did produce massive amounts of radiation to the point the EPA had to pack up his laboratory -- a potting shed in his mother's back yard -- and ship it all to a waste dump in Utah.

I admit to having mixed feelings on nuclear power. On the one hand, it's a tremendous way to produce massive amounts of energy. On the other hand, there's the stuff left over that you wouldn't want to mix with your potato salad. But I have to wonder. With all the worrying about fossil-fuel carbon emissions spreading like cancer in the oceans and the atmosphere, why is concentrated radioactive waste that can be stored such an evil tradeoff for some people? Isn't there some place on the moon where we could rocket this stuff, or have the environmentalists and spiritualists taken that over as well? Let's shoot it into the sun. That damn thing is 93 million miles away and can still cause your skin to bubble on a hot afternoon, so a little earth-originated radioactive material certainly coulnd't hurt it. There's the cost, yes. But how much could a moon-based slingshot or catapult really cost? We don't have to make express deliveries, do we? Just toss it up there and watch it carsh, Shoemaker-Levy-like, into the Sun ten, twenty years hence.

Ear update: After two days of showering and a ten-minute session with an OTC ear-wax removal kit that put a liquid in my ear that sounded like Pop Rocks, the ear wax is gone. For now. But I'm sure it's lurking somewhere, only to return later.