Hiatus

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

I suppose it’s only polite to announce what is already evident from the lack of posts here over the last couple of months. I’m taking a break from this moon blog, but I hope to come back when I have more time and when my enthusiasm has been rekindled.

The main reason that I haven’t been posting lately is that I have had some very pressing other work to do. A secondary reason is that I have been working a lot harder on my chess blog, which is still very active and those of you who are chess fans are welcome to visit any time. Some interesting things have happened since the world championship match, and at the moment the chess blog seems like a more productive investment of my time.

Finally, a third reason, not the main one but a reason nevertheless, is my disappointment at President Obama’s vision, or lack thereof, for the space program. When I started the blog I was very excited about the upcoming missions, LCROSS and LRO, and I devoted a lot of my entries to them. When LCROSS confirmed the presence of water–lots of it–and a rich stew of other volatiles, it really seemed to me like the beginning of a new chapter in the story of lunar exploration. But a story needs people in it. And the hopes for seeing people on the moon again, in the foreseeable future, have taken a huge hit (unless China can pull it off).

So, when my work settles down, when I find a way to keep two blogs going at once, and when I feel excited about the moon again, this blog will be back. Probably, when it comes back, I will concentrate a little bit less on the NASA/science side of things (although that is still very important, and is still my main interest) and bring in some more of the cultural elements of the moon in our society.

So, this blog will go quiet for now, but let us take the long view. Here is how I ended my book, The Big Splat, and I still believe what I wrote eight years ago. This passage came at the end of a timeline of lunar history:

“About 30 years ago, a few Moon rocks find a new route back to Earth, in the storage bay of spaceships built by those thinking creatures. And a few Earth items make the reverse journey–an ungainly, spider-like lander, a hammer and a feather, a plaque that reads, ‘We Came in Peace for All Mankind.’ This new ‘geological process’ seems to have stopped for the time being, but it could begin again, whenever the thinking life forms on Earth decide it is worth their trouble.

Whenever I see a timeline like this, I always wonder: What comes next? In this case, I think I know. The Moon’s history cannot be over. It will be reclaimed by those thinking creatures, whether it takes a hundred years, a thousand, or a million. For the Moon, a million years is not a long time. The Moon is a survivor, just like us.”

Until next time!

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