Moon Yearning
People are going to live on the moon because there is no stopping them. The limitations to human ingenuity, materials science and economic feasibility are massive, both staggeringly vast and blisteringly complex, but they’re no match for deep yearning inside our shared consciousness. The tribulations of negotiating a vacuum, settling on lifeless rock and producing or importing the necessary elements for human survival from a massive inorganic sphere are numerous and obvious. The cost of lifting even a single astronaut into orbit is vast; taking him to the moon more so. Supplying him with years worth of food, water and breathable air… I’m unequal to the task of describing the hubris involved. But that hubris we certainly do have, as a people. A moon colony—even if it must be bleak, boring and lonely—will be achieved because we want it that badly.
I could speculate as to the draw of the moon. I’d point out its prominent place in the heavens and our mythology and language. We’ve had goddesses of the moon, moon men and even men in the moon. We shoot the moon, cows jump over it, and we moon over things we desire. We’re moon mad. In English, we even use the word “lunatic” to describe someone who is mad; a word with the same root as lunar. There’s a fever about the moon. Crime rates, emergency room visitations and marital problems peak on the night of the full moon. The lunar cycle is built into the human physiology through estrous. The moon pulls on us as surely as it does on the tides. Though, truly, our desire to live on the moon doesn’t need any excuses. It’s there. It’s an obstacle which must be surmounted. A story which must be told.
Chuck Klosterman asks a point blank question in his book Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. Paraphrasing, would you rather spend a full year in Europe with a $2,000 a month stipend, or ten minutes on the moon. I answer unequivocally that I would take the moon. I have no hesitation in making that answer and no anxiety about the risk or complete lack of material benefit. It’s the moon. It’s the fucking moon. Europe is Europe. It’s exciting and beautiful and culturally significant and filled with people I know I’d love to meet. Someone who disagreed with me on this point made her argument that “You could do a lot on two thousand dollars.” This is absolutely true. But Europe will always be there, and I could conceivably find myself in a position to live in Europe, even have money in Europe. The obstacles between me and the moon are uncountable. Barring a major change in manufacturing worldwide, I don’t foresee the price of taking matter into orbit lowering enough for me to be able to afford that trip in the next 80 years.
Of course, there will likely be major changes in worldwide manufacturing between now and 2080. Science fiction and Popular Science notwithstanding, there are plenty of innovations going on which seem to promise a future of space exploration. Will I be able to afford to be a part of this when I’m aged and weaker and less skilled at manipulating the digital and physical tools of the age? Will anyone want to take me? Maybe. I might go to the moon. It’s too soon to call. Still, if given the opportunity now, I’d take it in a heartbeat.
There’s no good reason for it. Nothing that could be blamed on the evolution of my psychology or the presence of an all-knowing, all-loving God. It’s cultural and personal and silly. But for some reason, it’s powerful. It feels like fate. It feels like religion. For an occasionally solipsistic non-theist like myself, that’s a confusing feeling. Irrationality isn’t a normal part of my everyday thought process. The fact that I’m not alone in this lends poignancy to the spiritual argument. NASA scientists build the framework without blinking at the cost involved. Media gatekeepers grant time and airspace to the relentless march of moon science. Politicians immediately see it as a global quest and a national unifier. So I’m not alone in my unreasonable urge to bask in the Sea of Tranquility.
Or, maybe it’s more like love. It’s the feeling of caring for another or wanting something badly enough to supersede the normal process of tacit cost-benefit analysis that drives my decision making. If I’m in love with the moon, I can be okay with that. Ever since that night she winked at me, a giant shadowy eyelid crawling across her bleached surface, I feel like we might have a connection. She’s always there for me, asks almost nothing of me, and lights my way in the dark. My lunar lover is a literalization all the tired metaphors for the guiding hand of a loving partner.
But she’s also a giant rock suspended in a slowly spiraling gravity well, doomed to one day—aeons after my death—crash into the world I call home. She’s not protected by a blanket of gasses, not crawling with organisms, not running fresh with drinkable water and not crawling with continents that dance on a bed of magma. In short, she is nearly without resources. A purely artistic object laden with a beauty unchanged since the dawn of mankind. To settle her surface with landing strip lights and monorail tracks would, for the first time, make our planet’s dance partner into a different being.
All across the world, as long as people have looked up, they’ve seen the same moon. Now we lay poised to plant a more permanent flag on her surface, and I worry that the spirit of this moon yearning might crumble away as her uninhabited surface becomes just another city. We may find ourselves like a child on Christmas afternoon, lying spread eagle in a miasma of wrapping paper and bows, the frenzy of gift opening leaving us cold and a little depressed after destroying the anticipation. I know we’ll settle the moon, despite these concerns. I know humans will live there, if not permanently. But if I could make an argument against this, it wouldn’t be economic or scientific or rational. It would be for love of that pristine object. For love of her as a symbol.
Leave the moon for love.
I could speculate as to the draw of the moon. I’d point out its prominent place in the heavens and our mythology and language. We’ve had goddesses of the moon, moon men and even men in the moon. We shoot the moon, cows jump over it, and we moon over things we desire. We’re moon mad. In English, we even use the word “lunatic” to describe someone who is mad; a word with the same root as lunar. There’s a fever about the moon. Crime rates, emergency room visitations and marital problems peak on the night of the full moon. The lunar cycle is built into the human physiology through estrous. The moon pulls on us as surely as it does on the tides. Though, truly, our desire to live on the moon doesn’t need any excuses. It’s there. It’s an obstacle which must be surmounted. A story which must be told.
Chuck Klosterman asks a point blank question in his book Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. Paraphrasing, would you rather spend a full year in Europe with a $2,000 a month stipend, or ten minutes on the moon. I answer unequivocally that I would take the moon. I have no hesitation in making that answer and no anxiety about the risk or complete lack of material benefit. It’s the moon. It’s the fucking moon. Europe is Europe. It’s exciting and beautiful and culturally significant and filled with people I know I’d love to meet. Someone who disagreed with me on this point made her argument that “You could do a lot on two thousand dollars.” This is absolutely true. But Europe will always be there, and I could conceivably find myself in a position to live in Europe, even have money in Europe. The obstacles between me and the moon are uncountable. Barring a major change in manufacturing worldwide, I don’t foresee the price of taking matter into orbit lowering enough for me to be able to afford that trip in the next 80 years.
Of course, there will likely be major changes in worldwide manufacturing between now and 2080. Science fiction and Popular Science notwithstanding, there are plenty of innovations going on which seem to promise a future of space exploration. Will I be able to afford to be a part of this when I’m aged and weaker and less skilled at manipulating the digital and physical tools of the age? Will anyone want to take me? Maybe. I might go to the moon. It’s too soon to call. Still, if given the opportunity now, I’d take it in a heartbeat.
There’s no good reason for it. Nothing that could be blamed on the evolution of my psychology or the presence of an all-knowing, all-loving God. It’s cultural and personal and silly. But for some reason, it’s powerful. It feels like fate. It feels like religion. For an occasionally solipsistic non-theist like myself, that’s a confusing feeling. Irrationality isn’t a normal part of my everyday thought process. The fact that I’m not alone in this lends poignancy to the spiritual argument. NASA scientists build the framework without blinking at the cost involved. Media gatekeepers grant time and airspace to the relentless march of moon science. Politicians immediately see it as a global quest and a national unifier. So I’m not alone in my unreasonable urge to bask in the Sea of Tranquility.
Or, maybe it’s more like love. It’s the feeling of caring for another or wanting something badly enough to supersede the normal process of tacit cost-benefit analysis that drives my decision making. If I’m in love with the moon, I can be okay with that. Ever since that night she winked at me, a giant shadowy eyelid crawling across her bleached surface, I feel like we might have a connection. She’s always there for me, asks almost nothing of me, and lights my way in the dark. My lunar lover is a literalization all the tired metaphors for the guiding hand of a loving partner.
But she’s also a giant rock suspended in a slowly spiraling gravity well, doomed to one day—aeons after my death—crash into the world I call home. She’s not protected by a blanket of gasses, not crawling with organisms, not running fresh with drinkable water and not crawling with continents that dance on a bed of magma. In short, she is nearly without resources. A purely artistic object laden with a beauty unchanged since the dawn of mankind. To settle her surface with landing strip lights and monorail tracks would, for the first time, make our planet’s dance partner into a different being.
All across the world, as long as people have looked up, they’ve seen the same moon. Now we lay poised to plant a more permanent flag on her surface, and I worry that the spirit of this moon yearning might crumble away as her uninhabited surface becomes just another city. We may find ourselves like a child on Christmas afternoon, lying spread eagle in a miasma of wrapping paper and bows, the frenzy of gift opening leaving us cold and a little depressed after destroying the anticipation. I know we’ll settle the moon, despite these concerns. I know humans will live there, if not permanently. But if I could make an argument against this, it wouldn’t be economic or scientific or rational. It would be for love of that pristine object. For love of her as a symbol.
Leave the moon for love.
posted by Maximillian @ 10:56 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home