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Saturday, December 23, 2006

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JBanholzer8:00 AM
One Giant Leap for Humankind, or Starving Punch-drunk on the Moon?

In the summer of ‘69, as my brother David and I pigged out on potato chips and sipped Tang, we watched Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong hypnotizingly bounce around on our Moon. Young David was five and I was nine. As our grainy black & white Zenith set flicked otherworldly phenomena, I offered a simple explanation that the reason for gaps in communication was that it took time for Mission Control’s messages to reach the moon module and then a bit more for the astronauts radioed responses to rebound back here. Years later, David told me that he had clearly heard what I was explaining, but that it was too much then for his young mind to comprehend what it actually meant.
Since our last Apollo returned, the comprehension required to understand inner workings of mechanisms orbiting over our heads has increased exponentially. Nowadays, NASA has astronomical plans to establish a permanent colonization base near this Satellite’s South Pole. From a positive engineering aspect, this extremity appears to be ice-capped and gathers abundant sunshine. For decades, there has been speculation that whoever holds power over this new Moon, will also rule supreme, lighting over Earth with military “defense” weaponry and more. Gearing up for this, our space agency is making sustained efforts to make Moon travel appealing and even promising for average Joe-Spud’s like David and I. Recently the NASA website, Apollo Chronicles featured an article “Jack Skis the Moon”, comparing the Moon’s Mt. Hadley Delta to Sun Valley’sDollar Mountain. To read about this most skyrocketing ski run see: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/17jan_jack.htm
A prime moon mover and dust shaker partially eclipsed in this piece is former astronaut Harrison Schmitt. Mr. Schmitt is geology engineer, who has started a corporation for extracting Helium -3 from the moon. In the well-crafted NASA article, readers get the playful feeling that any stuck in the mud that is not rooting for buoyant moon bounces must be flat out against fun. The accepted wisdom is that pish-poshing un-patriotics should be made to munch on moon dust.
Ironically, it could be this heavenly body that ceaselessly revolves around us, that winds up saving us savage beasts from ourselves. In one giant leap for humankind, fusion power fueled by the Moon’s ethereal helium -3 could become the spark for transport methods of never-ending energy -an upholding solution to our self-wrought energy crisis. Scientific researchers at Princeton University Plasma Plastics Lab have speculated that over one millions tons of helium-3 could be scraped from the top of the Moon. At the going rate of three-million dollars a ton, if divided equally this would put a half-million dollars in every earthling’s back pocket.
It’s nice to imagine such a bright future, but that is likely more obscure. NASA is renowned for exorbitant cost overruns and does not put spending skycaps on such undertakings. In 2002, NASA even deleted from its mission statement the words, “to understand and protect our home planet.”Can the gravity of the good outweigh the bad if we invest heavily in moon missions at a time when our country is facing $$ Mountains of debt? Here we are, potentially aiming with billions of bucks trying to turn a profitable shipping lane in the sky. Meanwhile in years of overabundance, while begging for money, most earthly food banks turn down fresh Idaho and Canadian potatoes, because they are considered too heavy for shipping.
Although the Moon is apparently currently barren of sustaining food, there will likely be expanded colonization efforts, including farming if this gold rush of the new millennium proves profitable. In fact, students from Shoshone-Bannock High School, on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation conducted a successful experiment growing potatoes on Space Shuttle Atlantis. Average Joe-Spud’s will again be asked to help launch the pioneering missions funded from our tax base. However, before the tide turns in a twilight seashell game to break our National Treasury for corporate profits, shouldn’t we first be investing our mountainous dollars to help waterways run clean to oceans? And determining more seaworthy transport solutions, so that food belt farmers need not in years of overabundance, shamefully plough their potatoes back into earth, with millions starving in dark Africa and even gloomy pockets of Idaho?
Though some aspects of our government have lost the public trust for good, I have explained to Brother David, that I hope we will again take time to conduct wide-spectrum feasibility studies, before we skip the potato pivots over the moon and land with astronomically priced pi’s crunched on cash-vacuumed shores of tranquility in our fool-moon sky.
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More reference links: http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2006_12_10_archive.html
Organizing Notes: December 10, 2006
Does the space program have a future? - By Gregg Easterbrook and Nathan Myhrvold - Slate Magazine
http://www.slate.com/id/2078157/
GSFC Press Release H00-79
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/news-release/releases/2000/h00-79.htm
Telegraph | News
Did NASA accidentally kill life on Mars? - CNN.com
Tom Waits - Rare Recordings - Drunk on the Moon
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