The Times Magazine 5note that Nasa is getting a bit more
showbiz, teasing its “exciting new
discovery about the moon!” on social
media a week before announcing
water has been found there.
“Water is a valuable resource, for
both scientific purposes and for use
by our explorers,” it said. Nasa intends
for there to be a permanent base on
the moon “by the end of the decade”.
It’s interesting that Nasa went full jazz
hands on the announcement because we’re all
supposed to be excited about the moon and
space. Only a Luddite grump-grump wouldn’t
be excited about going into space!
Well, I am the Luddite grump-grump. I’m
not excited about the moon and space. In fact,
I’m going to go as far as to write my only
angry column of the year, and say, “F*** the
moon. F*** space.” I don’t like who’s going up
there and I don’t like why they’re doing it.
Space projects have to push all the showbiz
razzmatazz because the real bottom line is a
very old and depressing story. Space projects
are based on the beliefs that a) we are rapidly
making the Earth uninhabitable and will
eventually need to close the door on what is
basically our trashed student house and find
a fresh, new planet; and b) space is possibly
full of valuable resources that we can make
“stuff” out of and sell. So, really, we’re up in
space because of a combination of terrible
failure and awful greed.
All the countries with space projects- America, Russia, India, China, Japan, and
let’s not forget the European Space Agency - have expansionist economies. This year’s
Earth Overshoot Day, which “marks the date
when humanity’s demand for ecological
resources and services exceeds what Earth can
regenerate in that year”, occurred on August 22.
We’re now consuming roughly one and a half
Earths every year. Rather than spending all
the space programmes’ trillions of dollars
on something non-sexy, such as inventing a
genuinely recyclable yoghurt pot, we’d rather
BE HAN SOLO! ON THE MOON! MINING
SPACE DIAMONDS! POW! POW!
I felt so sad when Nasa was being excited
about finding a small amount of water on the
moon. You know where there’s loads of water?
Here! On Earth! Not 238,000 miles away!
There’s loads of it! And what have we done
with it? We’ve filled it with plastic and poo!
If mankind plays its usual game, moon water
I
CAITLIN MORAN
THIS IS MY ANGRY COLUMN
Don’t get me started on the latest obsession of the very rich
ROBERT WILSON
has a sad future ahead of it because why
wouldn’t we eventually f*** up the moon?
That is, after all, what we do to every hard-to-
reach place we populate. We are not careful
with planets. Hence the push to find new ones.
I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news,
but if, and when, we do populate new planets,
you’re not going. I’m not. Trillions of dollars
are being pumped into what are essentially
evacuation plans for Earth, but all 7 billion
of us aren’t jetting off somewhere new. Note
the people who are building private space
programmes to ensure they have a seat on the
last chopper out of ’Nam: Elon Musk, Jeff
Bezos, Sir Richard Branson. Very rich men.
They know the guestlist for new planets is
going to be tight. And so far, that guestlist has
been pretty racist and sexist. No one brown, or
black, has walked on the moon. There’s never
been a woman on the moon. No Muslim,
Buddhist or Jew. The idea of the whole world
being inspired by spending trillions to put a
few white men on a barren satellite seems
bizarre. The real discovery, and value, of the
space race came on the day James Irwin
returned from space and said, “The Earth
reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament,
hanging in the blackness of space. As we got
farther and farther away, it diminished in
size... That beautiful, warm living object
looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you
touched it with a finger, it would crumble and
fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man.”
Space exploration will never teach or
give us anything more important than that
realisation. We should have shut down the
whole programme that day and spent the
money on making the Earth less fragile.
A couple of years ago, I learned a dolorous
fact. When JFK made his announcement, in
1961, that America would put a man on the
moon by the end of the decade, it wasn’t his
first idea for a big project that would make
America look cool. Initially, his plan was to
build desalination centres in Third World
countries. America would be the country
that gave the world limitless fresh water.
In the end, he abandoned it because a man
putting an American flag on the moon looked
better on TV than a kid on another continent
drinking a cup of water.
Space – it’s just showbiz. Razzmatazz.
Jazz hands. We’ve found water on the moon,
60 years after we could have found it in every
household in the world. nWe should shut down
the space programme
and spend the money
on making the Earth
less fragile