Liftoff!
July 3, 2009To all space enthusiasts, especially those who are interested in the moon, welcome! I’m celebrating the launch of my blog, appropriately enough, with a picture of a rocket launch. On June 18, 2009, NASA successfully sent its first two lunar missions of this millennium into orbit: the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). (Image credit: United Launch Alliance/ Pat Corkery.)
It’s an exciting time to start a moon blog. Not only have the LRO and LCROSS missions gotten underway, but also the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission is still going and the Japanese Kaguya mission has just ended. We also have a big anniversary coming up: the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 manned mission to the moon. Two days after that, the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century will take place — and as you know, we wouldn’t have eclipses without the moon.
That is a sample of the topics I plan to cover in my blog. I also hope to include interviews with people who are working on moon-related projects, whether they be NASA or private, science or literature or art. Yes, I do intend this blog to be not just about lunar science. The moon plays a large role in our culture, so I don’t think that we should just stick it in a box labeled “Science” and forget about all the other things that the moon means to us. But that’s a topic, or discussion, or rant for another time!
This blog takes its name from the working title of a book that I wrote six years ago, which was published by John Wiley & Sons: The Big Splat, or How Our Moon Came to Be. It’s a figure of speech my grandfather used to employ often. If you “think so-and-so hung the moon,” that is another way of saying that you are a great admirer of said person.
Eventually, my editor and I decided that “Who Hung the Moon?” was not an appropriate title for the book. The main reason, for him, was that book titles should not be in the form of a question. This was news to me — hadn’t he ever heard of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”? My reasons were different. I was concerned that “hung the moon” might be an idiom from a specific region — the American South — and not everyone would understand it. And finally, “Who Hung the Moon?” didn’t quite say what the book was about. The title we chose, The Big Splat, or How Our Moon Came to Be, was a much more straightforward description of the book’s contents.
Nevertheless, I still like the abandoned title. But it was actually my SO (Spousal Overunit), Kay, who suggested reviving it as the title for this blog. She did more than suggest it — she designed the whole look of this webpage around it, so that by the time she was done I couldn’t possibly say no! If you like the design, please send your compliments to her (and check out her quilting blog, www.allaboutapplique.net).
See the “About” pages if you want to read more about my background and reasons for writing this blog. But now, let’s get started!
Tags: Apollo, Chandrayaan, eclipse, Kaguya, LCROSS, LRO, NASA, spousal overunit, The Big Splat
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Dana – Welcome to the small coterie of lunar bloggers! I think our numbers will be swelling now that we have new missions and data – the first LRO images are wondrous!
You might want to check out the Moon-Wiki (http://the-moon.wikispaces.com/space/pagelist) and Lunar Photo of the Day (http://lpod.wikispaces.com/). As of this afternoon the former has 3,053 pages devoted to every named feature on the Moon and many related topics, and LPOD is a daily dose of the best lunar imagery from all sources.
Good luck with postings #2, #3, …#infinity!
Chuck Wood
July 5th, 2009 at 7:46 am
Hi Dana.
Lots of interesting material here.
As a layman I don’t find a whole lot to get excited about re. the Moon.
I have viewed the moon from a number of places on this planet, and have always found it visually fascinating.
I am not aware of anything in our moon explorations that have actually influenced life here on earth. Has anything (information, etc.) been discovered that has made a difference to the majority of us earthlings? Or have those discoveries remained relevant only to those few directly involved in these efforts?
I shall return here from time to time to see what information you can provide that might make me see these benefits from a new perspective.
July 5th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Chuck, Thanks for taking a look! I have now put both of the links you mentioned up in the sidebar.
Rob, Thanks for coming over from my chess blog. Those are good questions, and maybe they can be answered over time in this blog.
To me, one of the main values of human exploration of the moon is that it prepares us for the possibility of extending our civilization past Earth. This may become necessary for our survival, or it may remain optional. It may even turn out to be impossible. it will definitely be impossible, though, if we don’t try.
This is a very far-future justification, which may not appeal to everyone. Maybe I will talk about near-term benefits in another post — or perhaps other readers of this blog would like to chime in. Paul Spudis’s blog (see link in sidebar) is a good place to start reading about this.
July 8th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Great job! I really enjoyed it.
Hopefully can gather the steam to get my ‘scope set up and find some of the interesting places mentioned.
Chris