Leave! The! Moon! Alone! !

That means YOU, that means NOW!

All this gleeful reporting of Moon landings has to stop, and those landings too, of course.

There is a new book, published by Penguin/Random House, Jan 16, 2024, 336 pages, size 6-1/8 x 9-1/4”, ISBN 9780593129722:

“Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are,” by Rebecca Boyle

Review at: https://undark.org/2024/01/19/book-review-our-moon/

This is a very well researched and well-written book, don’t miss it!

Here is a link where you may read the first 47 pages, I know you will want it after reading this.

Here are some tidbits from book:

Landing on the Moon throws up particles of lunar soil, at speeds of 400 m to 3 km per second, while the lunar escape velocity is 2.4 km/sec. So some dust will go into orbit around the Moon (it's still circling the Moon) and around the Sun and some fall to Earth.

From this information I would conclude that with all this joyful exploration, it will not be long before you look at the Moon and see a furry dust ball from all the Moon’s dust now orbiting it, and eventually a ring around the Earth. The Moon is just too important - stay off of it!!

The Moon doesn't orbit around the Earth (p.39) - both Earth and Moon orbit around a shared "barycenter," a shared center of gravity. It is about 3000 miles from the Earth's center. That is why the tides bulge on both sides of the Earth. "The Moon may be necessary for all the things that make Earth unique, especially its defining characteristic: us."

A lunar day is fifty minutes longer than a solar day, since Moon is orbiting in the same direction as Earth's spin. The sloshing of the tides transfers energy to the Moon, both pushing it farther away, and slowing the Earth down.

Did you know, the Moon is not a great distance away? If you draw a 1” circle to represent Earth, the Moon is just five feet away, 60x the diameter of the Earth in distance.

p. 43- Without the Moon, Earth's axis, instead of about 23.4 degrees tilt, would range between 10 and fifty degrees, (a climate disaster).

Jupiter and Saturn pull at Earth's orbit, changing it from almost circular to more elliptical over a hundred-thousand year cycle. (p. 47) The Moon is just the right size to help but not harm Earth's systems. If it were 10% larger, Earth's axis would become unstable.

p.49- "The Moon's tidal action stirs the core and mantle as well as the seas, and may provide enough power to keep Earth's interior sizzling."

I do not have a “review copy” of the book, I have to get one like everyone else, so when I get done reading it, I might have a few more comments.

People in the Media - could you PLEASE stop your giddy boosterism of all types of Space adventurism, including colonizing or mining the Moon and Mars? This all has to stop! Remember, we are in a climate disaster. Remember that? As I mentioned before in the Anthropocene article, all these launches and re-entries are messing up the upper atmosphere. Humans have used this thin layer of atmosphere as a trash can for too long - just STOP it!

Nothing against India, I’m just using this for an example- So India launches a rocket to land on the Moon. Wrapped up in this endeavor is a vast amount of national wealth, almost every element you can think of, the highest level of all technologies, and thousands of hours of work. And it’s all blown right out into Space. While people go hungry, live in squalid conditions, farmers commit suicide due to poor marketing and irrigation conditions and the nation is powered by coal and water comes from deeper and deeper bore holes. While the finest of everything is shot out into Space? What’s wrong with this picture?

Scientists- you are amazing in how you have so fire-walled yourselves so that you do not even feel the cognitive dissonance that you should feel for doing these activities as described in the India example. I know, and you know, that a big reason for your funding being approved is that big money is always sifting through your research for military or Big Pharma uses of the results. That money can certainly ease a lot of moral dilemmas. Oh, sure, you do it “for the good of Humanity.” Right, while the climate is falling apart and we need all those funds and more to get off fossil fuels?

Yes, the scientists want to follow the same old “settler’s” pathway of conquest, exploration and extractivism which lead to the “discovery” of the “New World,” the genocide of Indigenous populations and culture, the expansion of this system across the Americas, and when technology finally permitted, carrying on to the Moon, the “Next Frontier.” They would want to dig in to the Moon to search its origin and find water and identify ways in which a Moon Station could be set up as a base for future Space exploration. And even set up a radio telescope on the far side of the Moon, away from human electromagnetic noise. Then what, lay a cable to the other side for a transmitter? How about cutting out the human noise on Earth??

All this Space adventurism is a feeble attempt by governments to get people’s minds off the real problems we face and to give them a sense of Hope. Well, it is a false hope; it is an attempt to fabricate a new state of “Normal” to replace the previous normal; which keeps fading away (as it should). In this manufactured “normal,” you go about your smelly little consumer life, ignoring any issue such as global warming, nuclear weapons and proliferation of plastic residues - it really is the creation of a glorified version of the past - MAGA all over again. In the MAGAverse, “…thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears.” If ever! The everlasting advance of “Progress” is a false hope and within that lies the entire “Space Program.”

It all must stop, NOW. I am thoroughly disgusted by all the human CRAP already dropped on the Moon. And these nations are not keeping to the space treaties, they are staking claims to lunar territory. USA started it by planting their flag on the Moon. You DO NOT place a nationalistic symbol on the Moon! Moon not belong you!