The Last Word On Nothing

We went back to the Moon. People were just there again, going around it and then coming home. And other people will land there again soon, maybe in the next two years, assuming all goes well and as planned at the beloved, beleaguered American space agency.

Four humans were at the Moon on Monday, the Moon’s day, lunes, lunedi, lundi, Montag, 星期一(Zhouyī). This timing is a coincidence. It happened on Monday because of the time of the rocket’s launch last week, and the movements of the cosmos, but also because time is a construct made up by us, for our own use. This invention called time was possible because of the existence of our Moon.

Why did we go back? I think it depends on who you ask. There are a lot of answers. The best one, the most hopeful one, is that we did it for science, to discover something new about our Moon and ourselves. I think this is the bravest, sincerest reason.

I know there are others. It happened because the current president wants more than anything to be remembered by history, and back in 2016 someone told him a Moon program would ensure that. It happened because China is also going there, and people in both political parties don’t want them to get there before we get there again, I guess, which doesn’t make a ton of sense, unless you consider a fourth main reason. We went back this week because people want to use the Moon now, and get rich from it, and so they want to lay claim to special areas that might hold riches. They want to put companies up there, and entire industries, and they want to figure out new ways to exploit and extract and generally pillage so that they can sit and laugh with other fat cats, I guess, which also doesn’t make a ton of sense. But that never does.

Anyway I like to think the most human reason we went back, the most primal, is the reason we went for the first time, and then repeatedly, a half-century ago. We went because we could. Because the Moon is there. We went not because it was easy, but because it was hard, in the words of the good young president who pitched the idea to the nation back then. We went because humans go places. The Moon was the last one we hadn’t gotten to.

The Artemis II crew went because it would be bizarre not to want to go, I guess, even though going doesn’t make a ton of sense. In my book, I wrote about the singular strangeness of Apollo:

We don’t often pause to think about how strange the whole thing was, how strange to send a bunch of strapping young men just because. How utterly odd that sentient pieces of Earth—because that’s all we are, really, bits of the planet remolded by time and sunlight—made a choice to send some of their brethren away from it. 

It’s weird, really it is. We pack a few brave beloveds into a tin can, strap it to an explosion, and hurl them farther away than any other has ever gone. Because. 

I am in awe of the newest encounter between us and our Moon. I remain amazed by the fact of our presence there, off this world and visiting another. I barely slept the last two days, and I am not even in Houston with my space journalist friends, though I now really wish I had been. You should go read their work!

I loved watching the astronauts taking pictures and uploading them to Instagram. I know I am not the only one who feels a parasocial relationship with them now. And this is not just because I sent them my book last year.

Artemis, the great goddess, the Moon personified, the Moon personed. Godspeed! 

Going to the Moon is one of the most incredible things we have ever done as a species. And we did it just because.

All images are in the public domain, courtesy NASA and the Artemis II crew.

Ad lunam.