Counterforce

Some facts about our friendly little satellite up there:

It’s the belief of science that the moon was created via something called the Big Whack, which sounds like a mafia-themed porno. The gist of it: About 4.6 billion years, not long after our solar system was born, an object the size of Mars probably hit the Earth and large chunks of it split off from the rest of the planet. Some of those chunks mixed with other space junk and started to coalesce into a smaller, larger body, and when cooled, was formed together in the shape of our lovely moon.

The Crescent Earth, from here and here.

That lovely shape, by the way, is not round. It’s more egg-ish. When looking up at the moon, you’re seeing one of the ends pointing at you. That’s what the moonface is. Just like Earth, the moon gets fatter in it’s middle.

“One of these days… POW! Right to the MOON!”

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) launched on June 18 to begin mapping the surface of the moon from orbit with a never been seen clarity of detail. The technology is so fucking good now that it’ll be taking gorgeous pictures of the tracks left in the moon by lunar rovers, and even imaging the Apollo equipment left behind up there. Oh, in case I didn’t mention it, the LRO is a robot, part of the Lunar Precursor Robotic Program. What a lovely sci fi type of name.

And then in a few months time, we’ll have the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which is part of the LPRP, and is intended to crash into Shackleton Crater, on the moon’s south pole. The purpose of that is to kick up dust that’s just been sitting there dormant for something in the neighborhood of 2 billion years and study it. Then, shortly after, they’ll crash another probe into a different spot on the moon and study that.

The above is one of my absolute favorite images of comic art ever. It’s by the wonderfully talent and incredibly tragic Wally Wood. No matter how many accolades he got, for me, it was never enough.

There is actually no dark side of the moon. Well, there will always be The Dark Side of The Moon, cause that’s just a classic, wonderful album, but as far as the actual moon goes: No dark side. There’s the side we can see, and the other side, the far side, which is usually illuminated by the sun. We can’t see it though and we tend to think that things are only lit up by us, but no, it’s there.

But there is more than one of The Far Side out there:

Under the category of things everyone knows: gravity is a lot less on the moon.

The moon is about 27% the size of the Earth and it’s gravity is about 1/6 of ours. If you weigh 300 pounds here on your home planet, you’ll only weigh about 50 up there. Nice, right?

from here.

A slight digression from the moon to… Rockets! For a lot of people, celebrating things like Apollo 11 isn’t so much about going to the moon and back, but about rockets. Seriously, just take a google image search at hits for “rocket porn.” Fun stuff.

Dr. Wernher von Braun in his office, from here and here.

And I should add to that digression, one of the fathers of the space going rocket: Werner von Braun.  Just look at his office up above. How cool is that? von Braun has always fascinated me, not just because he helped make being a rocket scientist look cool, but his background is still so interesting and full of intrigued. He was one of the many scientists snatched away from the Nazis at the end of World War II and was a prominent name on the Osenberg list and in Operation Paperclip. And thanks to him, we escaped Earth’s gravity and finally went to space and to the moon.

Speaking of which…

from here.

There’s moonquakes! The Apollo 11 and following missions left some seismographic equipment on the moon that monitored until the 70s when it was shut off, but showed that the moon does do a little shake, rattling, and rolling. Good thing to keep in mind for when we start building moon bases.

As things tend to always go in my life, the moon is leaving us. But slowly. It drifts away from the Earth about 3.8 cm a year.

from here.

The drift into space is actually caused by the Earth’s tides, which the moon itself regulates. High tides, spring tides, I’m not going to pretend to fully understand all of it, nor be able to explain it properly, but here’s how it works. And the moon does steal a bit of our rotational energy, slowly the spinning of the Earth down about a milisecond every year. Story of my life.

At some point, we’re going to go back to the moon (and mind you, we haven’t been back there since the 70s, so it could have reverted back to being made of cheese!), but in a big way, possibly setting up the aforementioned moonbases and having astronauts living up there for months at a time. It’s a notion that gets a lot of criticism since it would be beyond extremely costly and we’re living in harsh economic times, but on the other hand, we seem to have gently drifted into the beginnings of another space race with the Russians and the Chinese. And everyone wants to knock the moon notch off their belts once more before heading to Mars.

Mars would be cool, to sound like a geeky little kid (which, honestly, is what I really, really am). But Luna? I still love ya. And not just because you gave us the setting for this excellent book:

And RIP Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America:

Mad Moon Linkage:

NASA lost the moon landing footage, but Hollywood can restore it.

Who owns the moon?

Space law is kind of fascinating (to me, anyway).

Is the Apollo 11 moon landing flag still standing?

How the Earth, the moon, and the sun work together.

Pick your favorite moon god or lunar deity.

Maria on the moon.

Walking On The Moon.

Strange things to do happen at each Full Moon.

List of artificial objects on the moon.

Don’t forget: Snoopy went to the moon too.

Sacrifices in the pyramid of the moon.

Well, we all shine on! Like the moon, the stars, and the sun…