Moon Dreaming

   Many of you have likely noticed the cover stories and documentaries which tell of the decision and task of landing on the moon, all of this coinciding with the release of archival footage and documents on the 50th anniversary of the accomplishment.  Looking back, one scientist labeled it the greatest accomplishment of the 20th century.  And as with so many historical achievements (the earth is round, the discovery of atoms, refrigeration, etc.) we've come to accept such an effort as almost normal; from here we'll shoot for Mars and beyond, fulfilling our Marvel and Star Trek imaginations in the near future...or not.  Watching the documentary of Apollo 11 (don't groan, it's an absolutely mesmerizing documentary and will give you an idea of just what's involved in a space launch...and that was 50 years ago),  one notices the black & white monitors, the slide rules, the crackly transmissions, the Instamatic cameras, the almost silent determination of the entire NASA team, and perhaps most importantly the unity of the world.  But upon reading the version that appeared in Smithsonian, all of this boiled down to one thing and that was which country would be first to set foot on the moon.  Said the article: When President John F. Kennedy declared in 1961 that the United States would go to the Moon, he was committing the nation to do something we simply couldn’t do.  We didn’t have the tools or equipment —the rockets or the launchpads, the spacesuits or the computers or the micro-gravity food.  And it isn’t just that we didn’t have what we would need; we didn’t even know what we would need.  We didn’t have a list; no one in the world had a list.  Indeed, our unprepared -ness for the task goes a level deeper: We didn’t even know how to fly to the Moon.  We didn’t know what course to fly to get there from here.  And as the small example of lunar dirt shows, we didn’t know what we would find when we got there.  Physicians worried that people wouldn’t be able to think in micro-gravity conditions.  Mathematicians worried that we wouldn’t be able to calculate how to rendezvous two spacecraft in orbit—to bring them together in space and dock them in flight both perfectly and safely...Ten thousand problems had to be solved to get us to the Moon.  Every one of those challenges was tackled and mastered between May 1961 and July 1969.  The astronauts, the nation, flew to the Moon because hundreds of thousands of scientists, engineers, managers and factory workers unraveled a series of puzzles, often without knowing whether the puzzle had a good solution.  And the final surprise, discovered only because President Kennedy had a secret taping device to record his conversations (hmm, and you thought President Nixon was the only one), was that Kennedy wasn't really interested in the moon or what scientific secrets we might find there, only that the U.S. be first to have a human touch the surface (the Russian craft, unmanned but attempting to touch down on the moon, crashed just days after Apollo 11's lunar lander departed).  At the time, Kennedy was going against the mood of the country because 74% of the American public were against the funding of such a mission.

   But there's a human side to all of this as evidenced by another set of recordings, this from the Apollo 8 astronauts themselves as they struggle to capture that iconic image of our planet coming over the moon's horizon (their text appeared in the story in National Geographic): "Look at the picture over there!  Here's the Earth coming up.  Wow, is that pretty!."  "Hey, don't take that; it's not scheduled."  (laughter)  "You've got color film, Jim?"  "Hand me that roll of color quick, will you."  "Oh man, that's great."  "Hurry.  Quick."  "Well, I think I missed it."  "Hey, I got it right here!"  "Let -- let me get it out this window.  It's a lot clearer."  "Bill, I got it framed; it's very clear right here.  You got it?"  "Yes."  "Take several of them!  Here, give it to me."  "Wait a minute.  Let's get the right setting.  Here now, just calm down."  "Calm down, Lovell."  "Well, I got it ri--oh, that's a beautiful shot."   All of that and still a human wouldn't tough the surface until three launches later.  So exactly how many people have been on the moon, and how many Apollo missions were there?  As a quick quiz, can you name any of the ten other astronauts who have walked and driven on the moon?  Somehow in our minds, history is like that...we remember the first and the rest are forgotten (the race to prove Einstein's general theory of relativity took a similar path in a fascinating piece in Discover).

Image of space debris circling Earth: NASA

    Clap, clap, clap.  And then, the explosion.  But this time not the Apollo mission (the live-broadcast of the Challenger explosion shocked much of the world) but this time by China, a pin-point missile that targeted and blew up a satellite in space, sending perhaps an additional 150,000 pieces of deadly shrapnel into orbit (the amount of floating and dangerous space debris is astounding).  NASA (and the U.S. military) were stunned.  Star Wars was suddenly taking on a entirely new meaning, and the U.S. was way behind.  Said a piece in WIRED: Todd Harrison, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, explains that there are effectively four categories of space weapons: kinetic (aimed at destroying a satellite), nonkinetic (aimed at disabling a satellite without touching it), electromagnetic (aimed at interfering with a satellite’s signals), and cyber (aimed at corrupting the data sent to a satellite).  The US tested its own anti-satellite missile in 2008, shooting down an errant spy satellite as it was falling out of orbit. Russia has repeatedly flight-tested a so-called direct ascent weapon, the PL-19 Nudol ballistic missile, which could strike objects in orbit, although it hasn’t conducted a live attack on an orbiting satellite.  And in the decade since China shot down its weather satellite in 2007, Beijing has launched multiple ballistic missile tests that extended into orbit. In addition, a trio of Chinese satellites have practiced “close-proximity operations,” similar to those performed by the Russian Object 2014-28E.  Anti-satellite weapons form just one part of what China calls shashoujian, or “assassin’s mace” systems, which can be used at the start of an attack to achieve a surprise, decisive advantage over a technologically superior foe.  There’s also the growing challenge of cyberattacks on satellites: Chinese hackers have reportedly infiltrated the US weather satellite system, and a Romanian hacker announced that he had accessed the server of one of NASA’s space flight centers.  In the past decade, at least two nonmilitary US satellite systems have experienced brief, unattributed glitches tied to hacking attacks.  And that GPS system that we ordinary folk rely on for finding our way around or keeping track of things (such as drones and satellites), both China & Russia have their own systems and...have joined together in an alliance.

    Another Cold War brewing?  It seems to be appearing more and more on the tips of tongues, especially as climate change talk brings new impetus for nuclear power plants as evidenced by the International Atomic Energy Agency just finishing its Climate Change and the Role of Nuclear Power conference held in Vienna October 7-11.  Said my local Sierran newsflyer: The Trump administration's fiscal 2020 Energy Department budget proposal boosts funding for nuclear- and coal-fired power plants while cutting 70% from renewable energy programs.  Priorities include extending the lifespan of existing nuclear reactors while streamlining the regulatory process to develop "advanced" reactors.  In a separate subsidy agreement, Energy Secretary Rick Perry defended federal loan guarantees reaching $12 billion for two over-budget nuclear reactors in Georgia, telling workers at the site, "This is the real new green deal."  The 2020 energy budget requests includes $116 million to resurrect Yucca Mountain, Nevada as a nuclear waste storage site.  Over half of the Energy Department's $31.7 billion budget would go to nuclear weapons development and maintenance...In Congress, a bipartisan group is promoting S. 903, the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act which directs the Secretary of Energy to establish and support "advanced" nuclear reactor programs.  Decades ago I read a book which mentioned a then-strategy of missiles targeting nuclear power plants, a far easier method of unleashing radiation to surrounding cities (on a side note, the U-235 uranium "waste" or "spent fuel" has a half-life of 703 million years).  And now Russia has announced the testing of its newly-developed nuclear powered missile.

   To watch the Apollo 11 documentary is an exercise in humility.  The guidance system on the lunar lander began overshooting its target and required Armstrong to manually take over and find another spot, and quickly (the film shows the very few seconds left of fuel that remained in the lander).  And still, their words both inflight and on returning were those of thanks, not only to the engineers and planners, but to the public, the world.  It was a reflection given about what humans could accomplish and all in the name of working together and working towards peace.  But it didn't last.  Even with additional Apollo missions, the final three Apollo missions "were cancelled due to budgetary restraints -- and lack of public interest, " said a piece in The Week.   But such is our history, said The Conversation: We tend to assume that people do things and want things for good reasons.  But very often we want things that it makes no sense to want because they are clearly harmful.  When someone tries to reason with us, pointing out all the factual and logical errors we commit, we just ignore them and carry on as before.  This would be very puzzling if we were indeed rational animals.  But we are not.  We are certainly capable of being rational and reasonable, but the problem is that we don’t always want to be.  Reason bores us.  Occasionally we want and need a little bit of chaos.  Or even a lot of chaos.

    If this is sounding a bit depressing, then watch the documentary.  Even The Conversation ended with a hopeful reflection: ...to change the world we may need a more active and combative approach.  Instead of trying to escape from or accept what is happening, we can also --as Camus suggested-- create a more meaningful world by becoming rebels and fighting injustice in all its forms.  Such a rebellion can be quite modest in scope.  It does not have to be loud and flashy.  Not much more may be required from us than being and remaining --despite all the challenges we face today- decent and reasonable people.  In a world that may seem to be going mad, and with navigation and coordinate systems being targeted (the U.S. Navy is having their ship commanders learn celestial navigation, just in case), and the threat of nuclear antihalation (again), it might be time to reflect on what sort of future do we really want in space...and on our Earth?  One small step for man, or one last step for man?


Addendum: For a quick summary on the different types of space "weapons" being considered (NATO meets to discuss this in a few months), you can view the piece from The Conversation.