Let's Give The Moon Another Shot
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Art by Tomas Brewer
There are days, weeks even, when I think about returning to the moon; not that I’ve ever been. Going to the moon used to mean something, every few years our great nation would stretch it’s space legs and the world would squint into the sky and try to partake in the spectacle. Other countries tried to replicate our success but we were truly the master of the cosmos. Now that our eyes are set on colonizing Mars we’ve all but given up on sauntering across the chalky landscape of our once great conquest.
Think of the missed opportunities:
· Astronauts doing the Harlem Shake on the moon
· Our first female president banning guns on the moon
· Woodstock 2029 – on the moon
· X-Treme sports on the moon, think of all the gnarly air you could catch on the dark side.
· It should go without saying that the gravity conditions on the moon would make for a much more enjoyable sexual experience (if I have to hear another argument about 1.622 m/s2 VS 3.711 m/s2 I’m going to scream).
Some may say that it’s a retro futurist cliché to want to go back to the moon. To those people I suggest they dig their heads in the deep end of a kiddie pool filled with wet newspaper. It’s the moon or bust for me baby. I’m not some geek who’s stuck in the past. Goggles and a leather cap appeal to me about as much as a stiff slap on the back after a day in the sun, pointy spaceships with art deco interiors may be the end game for some, but for me it’s that big white bulb in the sky.
From the moment that my consciousness sparked into being I remember being fascinated by the moon. Countless hours were spent running through my backyard fighting off cheese goblins from crater Z, and burrowing through The Moon’s surface to find an army of cybernetic clones programmed for my destruction (by whom else but those rotten cheese goblins). The Moon has inspired countless pieces of art from A Trip to the Moon, to Iron Sky, and Starry Night, so why are we abandoning our muse?
We’re not the only explorers making our way off this trailer park of a planet, the Chinese government has instituted a plan to build an elevator to the moon that should be fully operational by 2065. In 51 years we’ll still be wiping our eyes from hyper sleep while a team of child miners (minor miners they’ll be called) digs up pyramids long buried by an ancient alien race. Or at least that’s the bet I’ve placed with my friend Patrick. We can’t let China win that dollar. How would they even split it 1.357 billion ways?
If people want to go to Mars that’s fine, Mars is a fine planetary appropriation. I look forward to the first hootenanny on Olympus Mons but let’s not count out the girl that brought us to the dance. If we’re going to spend trillions of American dollars on terraforming Mars we can at least spend a few billion on getting a proper oxygen dome up and running on The Moon. It’s possible that in due time the two heavenly bodies can have rival sports teams that face off every season in a bitter “Space Ball” game, punctuated by half time performances from Robo-Beyonce (RoboBey) and the cryogenically frozen head of “Weird Al” Yankovich.
If that doesn’t sound fun to you then, for starters, you’re a prude and you also lack faith in the American dream. The dream to travel great distances and claim something as our own, to build new civilizations and lay waste to whatever ancient junk may have stood in it’s place, to play sports and watch beautiful people dance in between the playing of said sport. Theodore Roosevelt may have said, “Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground,” but only if that ground is The Moon and the earth is floating amongst those stars you mustachioed stick carrying fuck.
