Die Frau im Mond ist Grün

By John McDaid | Friday, 13 November 2009
402248main1_LCROSS_results1_226.jpg
Lcross impact site. Photo courtesy NASA

At a press conference this morning, NASA researchers with the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCross) team announced that last month's impact experiment had produced definitive evidence of water in a shadowed crater near the Moon's south pole.

In a statement posted on the NASA web site, Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist said, "Multiple lines of evidence show water was present in both the high angle vapor plume and the ejecta curtain created by the LCROSS Centaur impact. The concentration and distribution of water and other substances requires further analysis, but it is safe to say Cabeus holds water."

Read more at the LCross site.

The importance of this finding — not just for pure planetary science, but also for exploration — is hard to overstate. Local sources of water would make permanent bases a possibility. Colonies. Domes full of hydroponic plants. A jumping-off point for travel to the outer planets.

And as far as I know, the sf writer to most fully explore this possibility was Robert A. Heinlein, whose character Manny Davis is a Lunar ice miner in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

I'm glad I made Jack get up so early to watch what was a pretty anticlimactic impact last month. While it might not have been immediately apparent, that was a huge moment.

Tags: 
Localblogging, 02871, sf, media ecology

Comments

Viking

Fri, 11/13/2009 - 4:29pm

The woman in the moon is green? Yet again, Mr. McDaid, I have gone to Google to try to learn what you are saying. Bablefish helped me translate - but what is the context or reference? Anyway, I thought it was a MAN in the moon, and the green is - what? Cheese?

John McDaid

Fri, 11/13/2009 - 9:07pm

Hi, Viking...
YouTube%20-%20Woman%20in%20the%20Moon%20(1929)%20The%20Launch%20-%20Part%201I will confess that the amazing news sent me riffing off one of the first great science fiction films, Fritz Lang's 1929 Frau im Mond, which teh google has correctly translated for you as "The Woman in the Moon." (I added the 'green' part, only to suggest the implications of water, rather than what the folks in Lang's film are seeking -- gold.)

You can check out this documentary or you can watch the whole thing, piece by piece, on YouTube.

Cheers.
-j

Wernerlll

Sun, 11/15/2009 - 7:38am

Not to complicate the matter, but I got it because I follow NASA from the days as an enthusiastic Apollo team worker.
However, the moon in German is masculine and in English it is feminine, and the reverse for the sun. Go figure.

Cheers,
Wernerlll

John McDaid

Sun, 11/15/2009 - 1:02pm

Hi, Werner...
Der Mond, ja, aber die Frau, nicht wahr?

Cheers.
-j

Viking

Sat, 11/14/2009 - 9:51am

With the knowledge of the presence of a lot of water on the moon we can really dream of possible futures. Perhaps someday, humans, having "toasted" this planet, will survive as a colony on the moon?

John McDaid

Sat, 11/14/2009 - 12:34pm

Hi, Viking...
Well, there's no harm in having a colony there, but for long-term survival, I think you have to look at Mars. And even there, there is just so much terraforming to be done, and the cost of lifting humans out of our gravity well is so extreme that I'd hope we would use technology to repair our ecosystem before we'd consider that approach.

I mean, humans can't even survive on Antarctica unassisted by logistics and supplies. And that's a walk in the park compared to the Moon (-270F and all the vacuum you can breathe.)

If anything, this should make us appreciate our rare and precious blue marble of a world even more.

Cheers.
--John

Viking

Sun, 11/15/2009 - 12:48pm

All the vacuum I care to breathe! I don't remember the last time I've breathed in a lot of vacuum, but I'm almost certain I've done it. I think I was listening to a speaker at a college lecture hall at the time.

John McDaid

Sun, 11/15/2009 - 1:05pm

Hi, Viking...
I had a few of those too. But I think there have been several occasions in the pages of the Sakonnet Times recently where I would swear I heard the intense sucking sound of total vacuity.

No names named. Some folks are so sensitive.

Cheers.
-j

Wernerlll

Sun, 11/15/2009 - 6:54pm

My, my, let's be careful or the Reich will rise again. What a thought, perhaps precipitated by the rise in conservatism not only here in America, but in Europe as well. It pains me to see all this anger for which very little is justified by any kind of logic, or even less so,
by the notion of an underlying cognition. Tsk, tsk, how we all become victims of ideology, or is it the rush of masses feeling the urge to follow like sheep to the beat of the drum that allows for the venting of a national mood, embedded in anger, and I hope not, in violence? I hope we are not seeing the facsimile of a Weimar mentality that ended up in the worst of human history, and — in a nutshell, not become couched in an ominous bloody-mindedness replete with nationalist propaganda. That would be something I would not want to see on this continent. Call me paranoid? Well, don't take my words, watch what is taking place on Fox to get the idea, even the pundits are becoming worried -read the papers and some progressive publications as well, not just the blogs.

God Bless America,
Wernerlll