Let’s Stop Going In Circles And Go Somewhere Once Again

Once upon a time humans took short trips to the Moon. Then we stopped. Now we are going back – to stay. The prospect of an actual Moon base wherein we live and work offworld utterly fascinates me. It has for more than 50 years. Now we’re actually going to do it. How we do this whole Moon base thing absolutely captivates me. I’m going to write a lot about this on NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com as I pivot my efforts in the years ahead. I am already writing a book on how to mount Astrobiology expeditions on this world – and beyond. So these dispatches will be somewhat of an installment series from that process. More below

I have had three stints on the remote polar desert found on Devon Island with astrobiologists next to an impact crater; spent a month at Everest Base Camp with an astronaut; 30 years of supporting my friend Dale Anderson during his antarctic astrobiology expeditions; and benefited from the experience Sean O’Keefe and John Grunsfeld afforded me when we put together the NASA Risk and Exploration Symposium in 2004. So the whole exploration/expeditionary thing has my attention (and explains why I am an Explorers Club Fellow).

Being there. Left: the view outside my tent on Devon Island. Right: the view outside my tent at Everest Base camp.

Going Back Ain’t Easy

How and why we go back to the Moon has some relevance to how we did this before. It is important to learn from that experience – but at the same time we should not let that limit our horizons.

Many would argue that we should have never stopped going to the Moon. That makes sense. But that is not what happened. And it is not without precedent. In 1911/1912 Two groups went overland across Antarctica to the South Pole. One team came home. No one did that again for 50 years. At the time, this rather amazingly improbable feat was akin to a Moon mission.

After those initial sorties over the ice, we still flew over the pole and landed there, but we did not try the arduous overland trek. When we did so again half a century later we did so with advanced technology – with one team led by one of the first two people to stand atop Mt. Everest.

We now have advanced technology when compared to the Apollo era – but our muscle memory is weak. Much needs to be relearned. What now seems to have been a straightforward task in the 60s (it was not) now tempts us and taunts us at the same time. We decided to go back in 2004 after the loss of Columbia. When we do it will be a decade after the date that we thought we could do so back in 2004. Easy? No. Harder? Yes (apparently).

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

When we went to the Moon in the 1960s and early 1970s, World War II was still a real thing in people’s lives. An impossible task against a potent enemy. We won. We then had a new enemy with a seemingly impossible task jointly adopted as proxy war by both sides. Again we won. Then an increasingly complex world threw a dozen other priorities in the path of that victory and the Moon went up on the shelf like another national trophy. I am tired of hearing historians tell us their own take on why this happened. The point is now moot. It happened.

But we have been flying droids over the Moon for the half century since we left. In reality we only paused going there in person. They have been flying recon flights, grabbing samples, and trying to figure out how this world formed. We used to think that our Moon as a dead, inert place. Now we are going back to a region where there is abundant water. Imagine that.

The reasons for going back are all over the map: we have unfinished scientific business on the Moon; we need to beat Country X back to the Moon for geopolitical reasons; low Earth orbit is boring; we need to practice on the Moon before going to Mars; or there’s money to be made on the Moon. Usually it is a mix of several depending on who you ask. But we’re going back.

Now, with Artemis II, we have sent humans back to view this nearby world with eyes anew. For more than 70% of the humans alive today this is the first time they have seen the Moon outside their spacecraft window. When we finally land humans on the surface again in a couple of years it will be like doing the same thing again for the first time.

Why Go Back?

Regarding Apollo – that was then, this is now. These days we need ever more complex reasons to do the simplest of things. Send people to the Moon? Why? We already did that. Or maybe we faked it. Anyway, I can’t afford groceries and my neighbor is an alien who wants my job. Cynicism reigns, politics is divisive, and everyone everywhere seems to be ready to punch someone. Yet for a week or so  as Artemis II did their lunar flyby a lot of this noise subsided for a brief period. Let’s make that happen again, please.

I was 14 when Apollo 11 landed in 1969. I was 54 when I took Apollo 11 rocks to Nepal so that my astronaut friend Scott Parazynski could carry them to the summit of Mt. Everest. The rocks then spent 15 years in orbit on the International Space Station. I have watched those Apollo 11 rocks fly over my house ever since – inside a vehicle I helped design. I want the Artemis Generation to be able to look up at the night sky as I do and see myself reflected back.

In 2002 I wrote an essay out of frustration with being stuck with the ISS as a destination. As I noted back then it is time to stop going in circles and go somewhere once again. Ad Lunam.

Keith