The Moon’s in Our Future
Ever since I was a kid I’ve been following our slow but steady progress back to the Moon. In the Apollo mission days, everything seemed possible as men walked on the lunar plains and people talked confidently about colonizing this empty but fascinating world.
We haven’t gotten back to the Moon in quite the way people expected back then, but there are steps being taken. The most recent mission, sent by the Indian Space agency, is the Chandrayaan-1. Before that were the Chinese and Japanese, the Europeans, the Russians and the U.S.
There’s no question that the Moon is a fascinating place. We know a lot about it from all the missions we’ve been sending and, of course, from millennia of studying it each month. The Moon has often been mentioned as an intermediate colonization spot before we send people to Mars. And, that makes some sense –to learn how to live and work on another world within shouting distance of Earth before sending folks on 18-month journeys to the Red Planet. It’s also been mentioned many times as a possible tourist destination and — something that perked my ears right up — a possible spot for a retirement village!
Human exploration lunar missions may seem academic to those who are growing up today without any direct memory of people walking on the Moon. I was thinking about that after I read about an upcoming show on National Geographic Channel called Direct from The Moon that plays on November 17. It’s part of an Expeditions series they’re showing, and although I haven’t seen the episode yet, the video clips are very impressive and seem designed to get people excited about our future on the Moon.
The show description says that Direct from the Moon tells the story of human lunar exploration past, present, and future, and what we’ve learned about the Moon’s past. It features gorgeous shots of lunar terrain from a number of missions, particularly from the Japanese Kaguya mapping and survey mission. Ultimately the maps and images and 3D models and mineralogical data obtained by Kaguya will be used to plan the construction of lunar bases for future explorers. Among other scientists and explorers, the show features Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, talking about his experiences and hopes for future exploration on the Moon he walked on so long ago.
It looks like a good show and I hope that it does the same thing for kids today that the Apollo and Gemini missions did for lots of kids in the 60s: turns them on to the idea of humanity’s future living and working on Earth’s nearest neighboring world.
