Kissing the Mysterious Glow Rock Aloft

Among the ghosts that haunt these times is this one: We’ve been to the moon, but may never return. Anyone with any imagination is forced to ask: Did Earth People lose their mojo?

Yutu - 2 tracks. The far side.
Courtesy of Chinese Academy of Sciences 

Looking back, the arc of progress the moon landings’ foretold was an arc in descent, marking Earth People’s imprisonment on the Third Stone from the Sun, a hard stop to such progress, and a coming back to circular time. The will fails us, but likely the imagination too.

You can’t say Return to the Moon is impossible, but in today’s world, it doesn’t appear to be in the offing.  

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The Year 2019 was a Year of Trouble for Lunar Optimism. Bright with hope were voyages of the Israelis and the Indians in 2019. Bright but doomed. The Indian’s dashed quest being most tragic, its nation gathered around TVs, the countdown going terribly wrong, and the residue then only troubled expressions on disappointed faces, when communications with Chandrayaan 2's Vikram lander ceased as it descended.

The Israeli effort, actually led by a non-profit known as SpaceIL worked over eight years spent over $100 million, and was launched in Feb 2019 on the wings of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It successfully orbited the moon, but contact was lost as the craft reached an altitude of about 14 miles within the moon’s surface.

It was Sept 7 in India as I dialed in the live feed of the Indian effort’s landing attempt. The lander module’s descent held hope – hope that was dashed as it became apparent the landing was a failure. Communications with a successfully orbiting Chandrayaan satellite ceased at about the time the lander appeared to have descended to nearly 2.1 km (6800 ft) from the lunar surface. 

A success in the otherwise dreary lunar parade of 2019 was the Chinese Chang’e 4 moon lander. On Jan 2, 2019, it alit on the Von Karman crater on the moon’s far side. A relay satellite, known as Magpie Bridge, or Queqiao, hovers between 65.000 and 85,000 kilometers beyond the moon, and handles the difficult task of communications with the Chang’e 4 , which holds a Jade Rabbit-2, or Yutu-2, rover

Among planned experiments were tests of the radiation environment on this side of the planet. Understanding radiation doses is important to understanding what kind of radiation longer-term visitors will encounter on the moon. Photosynthesis studies were planned as well. The basic nature of the science shows mankind is still learning rudiments in its quest to actually expand into space.

The Chinese became the third country to soft-land on the moon in 2013 with Chang’e 3. Success of Chang’e 3 was limited in the sense that the rover traveled just 113 meters before it konked out.  Chang’e 3’s choice of the far side is odd, given the trouble China had on the near side. The conditions afar are much more difficult on visiting machinery, requiring the equipment to shut down during cold and stormy nights that last for two weeks at a time

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Momentum is a phenomenon, and once it subsides its hard to re-kindle. A bunch of small projects and plastic models have followed the spectacular space programs of the 1960, ones that carried on World War II’s mo, that carried forward a dead hero president's invocation.

The manned trips to the moon, beginning in 1968 and ending in 1972, were incredible feats of engineering, but also manifests of the most fantastic dreams. Yes, we’ve lost momentum in funding – even during the Space Age, we wondered if the moneys were better spent down here below. But the momentum of dreaming may be the real deficit now to face.

Why did we land on the moon in my youth, and now can’t catch a break? On sad late night treks home I recall looking up to the Moon, and happily bathing in its farness spanned.

I ask Where have all the moon times gone? But the real best question may be – after all this – how now is the moon floating in the sea of human consciousness? Or, What place does it hold in our collective dream? Can humanity be trusted to dream again?

You don’t get answers without doodling, asking questions. What I look for is a new wind to blow across the land, one of whim, regeneration and adventure. 

Think upon the Blue Moon that left Elvis standing alone in a spatial echo chamber, or Johnnie Mercer looking into the Moon River, or upon John Lennon as he addressed Mr Moonlight, knowing from its beams are made his dreams.

Or, best, recall the recollective words of Gregory Corso:

"As a boy I kissed the moon in a barrel of rain.”

Courtesy of Valerie Kleba*

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* Fortunate to replicate here Valerie Kleba drawing from a calendar series she created in the 1980s. At about that time, she provided the wonderful lettering for the Airways Sunnyland Slim LP  ("Just You and Me") I co-produced. Earlier on she co-produced with Jan Mazelis the Shoreline Erosion poetry magazine, publising my poem ("Some Memory Serves Well") about running up on Bob Dylan.

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Space X’s Starship Mk1 prototype.

A natural question is what about Richard Brandon and Elon Musk and the private efforts underway to at least take people – rich people -- to space. These had setbacks in 2019, such as but most of the news was about progress. Musk in 2019 displayed a prototype of Space X’s Starship Mk1. Made from shiny plates of stainless steel it looks a heck of a lot like something out of 1950s comics, as the Economist noted. It is to be coupled with a “Super Heavy” booster and include engines that run super-cold methane rather than kerosene ( as on current engines). The idea is to strap together up to 37 of these engines, which seems like a daunting feat. I guess we can picture orbital tourism in the next 10 years, but cant’ guess what kind of a goose that will give to Space Ship Earth’s psyche …

We could also ask about Mars missions. In 2020, the relative positions of Mars and Earth are such that travelling energy for the journey can be conserved more so that other times. In July, Mars will only be 38.8 million miles away, making this a good year to set out for the destination. There are four Mars missions in the works for 2020, with three expected landings. [The UAE's first Mars mission is orbital, with no planned landing.]

China plans are ambitiuous for the Moon in 2020. The end of the year is expected to see a mission that will land, and collect rock samples, that will be returned to Earth. NASA's 2020 Mars rover upcoming will collect samples, and package them, in hopes of retrieving them at some later date.

Automomous cars are news on Earth, so there is more interest in all these unmanned automomous space missions, at least on paper. It still makes you wonder if the Cold War generation had more chutzpah than today's. - Jack Vaughan