Moonstruck, for better and for worse
A rare blue supermoon rises over Lake Michigan as spectators watch Wednesday. Credit: AP/Charles Rex Arbogast
The moon is having a moment.
And not just because of this past week’s extraordinary exacta of a blue moon and a supermoon, a visually spectacular if fleeting treat for us earthlings.
The more immediately relevant lunar luster lies in its status as the locus of so many nations’ space dreams. India recently landed on the moon and its rover is exploring the lunar surface. That came two days after a Russian probe crashed there. China also has a rover operating on this same dark side of the moon India is probing. Japan has a robotic lunar lander ready for launch any day now. Crewed missions are coming soon from NASA and from China. Private companies are joining the moon-push. Pittsburgh company Astrobotic Technology has a contract with Mexico’s space agency to deliver five tiny robots to the moon’s surface.
Budgets are coming down — India reached the moon for a lean and mean $74 million. The stakes are going up — billions and maybe trillions of dollars in commercial profits. That’s leading space newbies like the United Arab Emirates, Thailand, the African Union and Saudi Arabia to get in the game.
So what’s up there?
Hope, for sure. That dark side of the moon might have water ice, which could be mined to help create rocket fuel and support human life. The moon has lots of helium-3, rare on Earth and very attractive in terms of fueling the nuclear fusion reactors of the future. One expert estimate values the helium-3 on the moon at $1.543 quadrillion. One quadrillion is a thousand trillion.
Add in the moon’s rare earth elements, the value of space tourism, the possibility of satellite communications, the knowledge to be gained about our solar system through the collection of lunar rocks, the sheer prestige of landing and operating on the moon — see India’s collective exultation — and the continuing advance of technology and it’s no wonder the rush is on.
Progress is wonderful, and necessary. And yet . . .
This is the moon. Generations of humans have looked to it and wondered. It has inspired some of our greatest artists. Who among us hasn’t spoken to it in a moment of torture or bliss?
It draws us to it with a mystique derived at least partly from its apparent purity, its aloneness, its near-yet-far-ness, the fact that is both familiar and unknown all at once.
What happens when the three-day journey to it becomes commonplace? What happens when it becomes just another place — an exotic other place to be sure — but one of commerce and competition and industry? What happens when humans are living and working on it? What happens when we start to plunder it?
Will it become like Earth? Will our rapaciousness be unbridled on such a frontier? Whose law will apply? And whose rights to what land and what resources? Will the nations that now profess a desire to cooperate follow through? How long will it take for the spirit of exploration to give way to the creed of exploitation?
Will it still spark our sense of wonder?
The moon always has loomed large in our imagination, and in our culture. “Fly me to the moon,” Sinatra sang. Millions of children and parents have bid goodnight moon at bedtime. When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, you know that’s amore. In moodier moments, it’s the coldhearted orb that rules the night.
It is often — if dubiously — said that you can see the Grand Canyon from the moon. What will we on Earth think when we are able to see a Grand Canyon-sized mine on the moon?
The great science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke called the moon the first milestone on the road to the stars.
I hope it always embodies that sense of possibility, delivers that tinge of magic. But I wonder.
Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
