Our Moon
Ink2Quill September 2020 Editorial
www.ink2quill.com

Our Moon is a strange satellite. It shines like a giant pearl in the night and even sometimes we see it during the day. It´s inspired so much poetry, so many stories, so much music and songs across all cultures, at all times, the world over. There´s the child´s tale that it´s made of cheese and the industrialist hope that it´s covered with Hydrogen 3 and full of minerals under its surface. I´ve even heard it said that it has a mild atmosphere from a stronger than previously thought gravity. But who can say?

It´s been called Luna, Selene and Cynthia by poets but here are some stats for those of you that forgot. It revolves around the Earth with an orbit distance of 363,000km to 405,000km from perigee to apogee (roughly) and completes an orbital period every 27 days (roughly). It is our only satellite and if you see any others please let everybody know because I´m sure there´s big bucks in yourdiscovery. It´s equitorial circumference is roughly 10,921km and is alleged to have a gravity of 1.62m/second squared. Interestingly, it has a far side which never turns to face the Earth.

Forget all those questions and stats for now. I wonder what we are going to do now that technology has made it so much easier to reach? We don´t have to wonder any more about it´s properties or what its made of. We can go check it out for ourselves. We have the technology to send people or robots to the Moon some 250,000 miles away. I´m convinced it´s no big deal getting people, robots or equipment to the Moon anymore. We have to ask ourselves what we intend to do once we´re there?

Well, let´s go through the possibilities. We could send a group of well equiped, well funded scientists to study it. Imagine getting an internship to the Moon? We could also send teams of miners to mine it but we would have to be careful not to ruin it. We could send tourists up there to go hiking, stargazing and to invent fun sports like Moon hoping. We could also build bases to spread out to other parts of space like the asteroid belt, Mars or some other planet´s moon.

Of all the possibilities of things to do with the Moon the stupidest one would be to wage war against each other. The Moon is not a good place for the theater of war. The effects on the Earth from a war on the Moon would be beyond detrimental, beyond anything we might be able to fix. It´s just common sense. So whatever we do end up doing with the Moon the very first thing we need to do is grow up a little and put into practice words we learned as kids like `cooperation´ and `respect your fellow person´.

John

• 

I2Q Blogs / Opinions ink2quill / moon / pearl / quill /