What’s This About Bombing the Moon?

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Good grief, don’t we have more pressing matters to attend to? I know, they figure they can tell by raising a big dust cloud if there is water present. Since it’s pretty cold up there I can’t imagine that any water would be obvious in any form other than ice. It’s not like you could detect a steady drip drip, drip. I mean, did we see any snow drifts or icicles up there the last time we went? Man has been ogling the moon for centuries and I would think someone might have noticed an ocean or a big lake or at the least a lazy creek on the moonscape.

In some scientific minds there is, no doubt, concrete reasoning for this move but it sure does escape me. Let’s just say for grins and giggles that I’m wrong. So what? What are going to do, build a pipeline to bring all that valuable H²0 treasure down here. Given the temperature in space, that would require heated towers which would tax our already overburdened fuel sources to the max. A few trays of ice cubes would be hopelessly impractical. Come to think of it, the whole deal seems pretty silly to me.

Perhaps the intention would be a prelude to full colonization of our satellite neighbor. Boy, we are just dying to live a world of scant gravity and freezing temperatures. It could soon become a spot where the slurpee became the beverage of choice. I can just hear their triumphant cry now, “Houston, the water bucket has landed.”

At various times over the last few decades, I have been very impressed with the noble aims of our space program. This is definitely not one of them. Maybe I’m just too old to fully appreciate this effort and all it means, not just to our country but to mankind in general. My limited scope does not easily reveal the full scope of this project.

My greatest fear is that folks will get accustomed to “shooting the moon.” Since that is my name, I shun the thought of legions of people rejoicing because we ‘shot the moon.” There are very few of us so even the loss of one ‘moon’ would be tragic; especially for those of us who are moons. Over the course of nearly eight decades I have already heard just about every “moon” joke that ever came from the stage or a gaggle of kindergartners and they were all of equal quality. I see no reason to add fuel to the fire.

So, what now? If you have any influence with NASA I strongly urge you to mention that you oppose this effort. However, if the blast happens to dislodge vast quantities of pure gold, I certainly wouldn’t object to hauling some of that back here for general use. It might go a long way toward balancing our budget which, as you well know, is in horrible shape. Is it possible that our leadership is already aware of this possible outcome? Nah!

In summation I can only say; “I’m agin’ it.”



In His abiding love,

Cecil Moon