Listening to the early morning news on BBC Radio 4 I heard that the US is abandoning its plans to establish a base on the moon. In one way it’s rather sad that we aren’t going back but in another sense it’s a mercy given the fact that the underlying concept for the base, mooted by the Bush administration, was to use such a base as a springboard to Mars.
It was never a tenable idea, as if the almost 400,000 km hop to the moon would somehow make the trip to Mars (anywhere between 55 million and 400 million km), despite the claims for energy savings in constructing equipment in reduced gravity…
Anyway, a waning, gibbous moon was low in the sky at 07h52 today when I snapped this view from my home office window. A crisp and very frosty morning, light from the rising sun succumbs to the Tyndall effect and gives the moon an almost copper tone.
Meanwhile, quite bizarrely, California has named a new site a state historical resource even though the site isn’t even on Earth, let alone in the US state. According to the BBC, the Apollo 11 moon landing site is now included on the state’s register. I wonder whether they were hoping to boost their ailing finances by charging space tourists a visitor’s fee.
By the way, do you know the moon’s name? I’ve got a copy of Moon 3D