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A Leap in the Dark

Writer's picture: Kevin BerendKevin Berend

Updated: Jun 18, 2024





F I R S T  Q U A R T E R

NASA :

On the Moon, snow does not fall. Thunder never rolls. No clouds form in the pitch-black sky.


This year I had great trouble making up my mind where to go for the autumn moon-

viewing. Finally, after much perplexed head-scratching, I decided on the Ishiyama

Temple. The day before the full moon, however, I read in the paper that there would be

loudspeakers in the woods at Ishiyama to regale the moonviewing guests with

phonograph records of the Moonlight Sonata. I canceled my plans immediately.

Loudspeakers were bad enough, but if it could be assumed that they would set the

tone, then there would surely be floodlights too strung all over the mountain. 

: Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows


Natural History Museum, UK :

There is almost no atmosphere on the Moon, which means it cannot trap heat or insulate the surface. In full sunshine, temperatures reach 127°C, way above boiling point. There are 13 and a half days of high temperatures followed by 13 and a half days of darkness.


Galen Rowell, photographer :

“The most influential environmental photograph ever taken.”


PBS, Seeing the Earth from Afar :

If you listen to the voice tapes you hear Anders looking out the window and saying, 'Oh my God, look at that picture over there.' Frank Borman says, 'What is it?' Anders says, 'It's the earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty.' And Borman at this point gives Anders a little dig about being so rigid about the photo plan and says, 'Don't take that, that's not scheduled.'


Then the two of them are just marveling at the sight and Anders realizes this is a picture to take and he asks Jim Lovell to get him a color magazine of film. All the while Lovell is rummaging around in a storage cabinet Anders is saying, 'C'mon, hurry up, we don't have much time,' and he's clicked off a black and white shot, and Lovell gives him a color roll. He slapped that on the back of the Hasselblad camera and took the picture that became probably the most famous picture of the decade—if not one of the most famous of the century. 


We Orientals tend to seek our satisfactions in whatever surroundings we happen to

find ourselves, to content ourselves with things as they are; and so darkness causes us

no discontent, we resign ourselves to it as inevitable. If light is scarce then light is

scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular

beauty. But the progressive Westerner is determined always to better his lot. From

candle to oil lamp, oil lamp to gaslight, gaslight to electric light—his quest for a

brighter light never ceases, he spares no pains to eradicate even the minutest shadow.

: Tanizaki


Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 astronaut :

“One small step for man…”


It's natural the Boys should whoop it up for

    so huge a phallic triumph, an adventure

        it would not have occurred to women

        to think worth while, made possible only


    because we like huddling in gangs and knowing

    the exact time: yes, our sex may in fairness

        hurrah the deed, although the motives

        that primed it were somewhat less than menschlich.


    A grand gesture. But what does it period?

    What does it osse? We were always adroiter

        with objects than lives, and more facile

        at courage than kindness: from the moment


    the first flint was flaked this landing was merely

    a matter of time. But our selves, like Adam's,

        still don't fit us exactly, modern

        only in this---our lack of decorum.

: W.H. Auden, Moon Landing


Robert Z. Pearlman, Space.com :

Armstrong's historic quote can be traced to The Hobbit, to a scene where the protagonist Bilbo Baggins jumps over the villainous Gollum in a leap that Tolkien described as ‘not a great leap for a man, but a leap in the dark.’


We touched the face of another world and became a people without limits.

: Andrew Chaikin, A Man on the Moon


~~


What was that? An exhibition? We need emotional content. Try again!




F U L L  M O O N

Outer Space Treaty :

Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, ratified 1967.


Article I

The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.


Pushing the boundaries of space exploration, science, and technology once again,

America is on the verge of exploring more of the Moon than ever before. This new era

of lunar exploration is called Artemis. Named after the twin sister of Apollo, she is the

Goddess of the Moon, and we are the Artemis Generation.

: Jim Bridenstine, former NASA Administrator


The Moon is a shared cultural space for humanity. Many people might instinctively feel

uneasy about its incipient commercialization, which has happened with little

consultation and remains mostly unregulated. Many Indigenous Peoples, including the

Diné (the people) of the Navajo Nation such as myself, feel a whole other level of

unease.

: Alvin D. Harvey, Nature


Djinguereber Mosque, Timbuktu


Row on row of gloomy mudbrick arches. Bat guano. Wasps’ nests in the rafters. Shafts

of sunlight falling on reed mats like the beams of a burning glass.

The marabout interrupted his prayers to ask me a few questions.


‘There is a people call the Mericans?’ he asked.

‘There is.’

‘They say they have visited the Moon.’

‘They have.’

‘They are blasphemers.’ 

: Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines


Article II

Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.


NASA’s Artemis program will lead humanity back to the Moon and prepare for the

human exploration of Mars. This lunar exploration strategy has two main components

working simultaneously: 1) a near-term focus on achieving the initial human landing by

2024 as efficiently as possible with acceptable technical risk and 2) the build-up of

sustainable systems, informed by our initial missions, that will allow America’s human

spaceflight program to maintain a robust lunar presence well into the next decade.

: NASA Lunar Exploration Program Overview


I sing of Artemis, whose shafts are of gold, who cheers on the hounds, the pure

maiden, shooter of stags, who delights in archery, own sister to Apollo with the golden

sword. Over the shadowy hills and windy peaks she draws her golden bow, rejoicing in

the chase, and sends out grievous shafts. The tops of the high mountains tremble and

the tangled wood echoes awesomely with the outcry of beasts…

: Homeric hymn


Like most space engineers and scientists, I was educated in a system that upholds an

ethical and emotional distance from space.

: Harvey


Landing astronauts on the Moon within four years will better focus this global initiative

in the engineering, technology development, and process improvements necessary to

safely and successfully carry out sustained human exploration of the Moon. It also

paves the way for U.S. commercial companies and international partners to further

contribute to the exploration and development of the Moon.

: NASA-LEPO


Article IV

The Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military maneuvers on celestial bodies shall be forbidden. The use of military personnel for scientific research or for any other peaceful purposes shall not be prohibited. 


Helm: What about space colonies? What is your feeling about them?

Snyder: I think they are unimaginative.

Helm: Unimaginative?

Snyder: Unimaginative. We've done it already. Why play with that idea anymore. It's a

much greater challenge to learn, finally, how to apply our contemporary scientific

inclination to refine our biological understandings. To realize that all our technologies

and all our refinements are crude compared to what plants and photosynthesis are

able to do, or compared to what takes place in the process of digestion in any body.

We should learn to work with biology rather than to clumsily reconstruct it with nuts

and bolts. In a nutshell, our future options are technocratic solutions or sophisticated

biological solutions. The second, of course, is obviously right.

: Gary Snyder, The Bioregional Ethic


For us, the Moon is an ancient relative – Grandmother Moon is a term of reverence

shared by many Indigenous Peoples – and we should be careful, diligent and respectful

when visiting her.

: Harvey


My administration is reclaiming America’s heritage as the world’s greatest space-faring

nation…

Our destiny, beyond the Earth, is not only a matter of national identity, but a matter of

national security. It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We

must have American dominance in space.

: President Donald Trump


~~


I said emotional content, not anger. Now try again, with me.




L A S T  Q U A R T E R

Tanizaki :

How different everything would be if we in the Orient had developed our own science. Suppose for an instance that we had developed our own physics and chemistry: would not the techniques and industries based on them have taken a different form, would not our myriads of everyday gadgets, our medicines, the products of our industrial art—would they not have suited our national temper better than they do? In fact our conception of physics itself, and even the principles of chemistry, would probably differ from that of Westerners; and the facts we are now taught concerning the nature and function of light, electricity, and atoms might well have presented themselves in different form.


The Moon’s axis tilts only 1.5 degrees from the ecliptic plane (the plane containing the

path of the Earth and the Moon around the Sun). Because of this unique geometry,

sunlight never shines on the floors of some craters near the Moon’s poles. These areas

are known as Permanently Shadowed Regions, or PSRs… Data from the Diviner

instrument on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which measures temperatures

across the Moon, including PSRs, indicate that some surfaces are cold enough so that

water is stable at the surface.

: NASA Space Science Coordinated Archive


Tanizaki :

Ceramics are by no means inadequate as tableware, but they lack the shadows, the depth of lacquerware… What lies within the darkness one cannot distinguish, but the palm senses the gently movements of the liquid, vapor rises from within forming droplets on the rim, and the fragrance carried upon the vapor brings a delicate anticipation… A moment of mystery, it might almost be called, a moment of trance.


The Clementine imaging experiment showed that such permanently shadowed areas

do exist in the bottom of deep craters near the Moon’s south pole… Within these

craters the temperatures would never rise above about 100 K (280 degrees below zero

F). Any water ice at the bottom of the crater could probably exist for billions of years at

these temperatures.

: NASA-SSCA


Omniglot :

The Moon alphabet consists of embossed shaped which can be read by touch. Some of the Moon letters resemble the letters of the Latin alphabet, others are simplified letters or other shapes.


The Moon alphabet is easier to learn than Braille, particularly for people who lose their sight in later life.


[The Moon] does possess abundant raw materials that are of potential economic

interest. These are relevant to a hierarchy of future applications, beginning with the use

of lunar materials to facilitate human activities on the Moon itself, and progressing to

the use of lunar resources to underpin a future industrial capability within the Earth-

Moon system. In this way, gradually increasing access to lunar resources may help

‘bootstrap’ a space-based economy from which the world economy, and possibly also

the world’s environment, will ultimately benefit.

: Ian A. Crawford, Lunar resources: A review


One of the first economically viable uses of resources from the Moon might be

propellant from water… Up to 30 wt% ice on the surface is indicated at some locations.

In 2016, the United Launch Alliance became the first commercial company to offer to

buy liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen propellant in cislunar space. ULA set a price (it

would be willing to pay) and quantities at various locations within cislunar space, for

example, $500/kg on the surface of the Moon for 1,100 mT of propellant per year.

: George Sowers & Christopher Dreyer, Ice mining 

in lunar permanently shadowed regions


Tanizaki :

We are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway. The “mysterious Orient” of which Westerners speak probably refers to the uncanny silence of these dark places. And even we as children would feel an inexpressible chill as we peered into the depths of an alcove to which the sunlight had never penetrated. Where lies the key to this mystery? Ultimately it is the magic of shadows. Were the shadows to be banished from its corners, the alcove would in that instant revert to mere void.


Thermal mining is an efficient scalable sustainable method of ice mining at the lunar

poles. The efficiency of thermal mining enables the establishment of a commercial

mining operation on the Moon whose business case closes without government

participation.

: Sowers & Dreyer


Paul Spudis, one of the scientists who took part in the Clementine study, referred to

the lunar ice deposit as possibly “the most valuable piece of real estate in the solar

system.”

: NASA-SSCA


Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens :

In the months leading up to their July 1969 mission to the moon, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin trained in the moon-like desert of the western United States. The area is home to several Native American communities, and there is a story—or legend—describing an encounter between the astronauts and one of the locals.


One day as they were training the astronauts came across an old Native American. The man asked them what they were doing there. They replied that they were part of a research expedition that would shortly travel to explore the moon. When the old man heard that, he fell silent for a few moments, and then asked the astronauts if they could do him a favour.


“What do you want?”, they asked.

“Well,” said the old man, “the people of my tribe believe that holy spirits live on the moon. I was wondering if you could pass an important message to them from my people.”

“What’s the message?”, asked the astronauts.

The man uttered something in his tribal language, and then asked the astronauts to repeat it again and again until they had memorised it correctly.

“What does it mean?”, asked the astronauts.

“Oh, I cannot tell you. It’s a secret that only the tribe and the moon spirits are allowed to know.”


When they returned to their base, the astronauts searched and searched until they found someone who could speak the tribal language, and asked him to translate the secret message. When they repeated what they had memorised, the translator started to laugh uproariously. When he calmed down, the astronauts asked him what it meant. The man explained that the sentence they had memorised so carefully said, ‘Don’t believe a single word these people are telling you. They have come to steal your lands.’


~~


Yes, that’s it. How did it feel to you?

Let me think…

Don’t think! Feel. It is like a finger pointing the way to the moon. Don’t 

concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.

: Bruce Lee, Enter the Dragon




N E W  M O O N

Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press :

Jan. 19, 2024

TOKYO – Japan became the fifth country in history to reach the moon when one of its spacecrafts without astronauts successfully made a soft landing on the lunar surface early Saturday.


NASA Administrator Bill Nelson lauded SLIM’s landing with an X message, congratulating Japan “on being the historic 5th country to land successfully on the Moon! We value our partnership in the cosmos and continued collaboration” in the U.S.-led multinational Artemis Moon exploration.


Takeshi Tsuchiya, aeronautics professor at the Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, said it was important to confirm the accuracy of landing on a targeted area.


“It is necessary to show the world that Japan has the appropriate technology in order to be able to properly assert Japan’s position in lunar development,” he said.


No matter what complaints we may have, Japan has chosen to follow the West, and

there is nothing for her to do but move bravely ahead and leave us old ones behind.

: Tanizaki











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