While things have been going to hell here on earth, the moon has been having one of its best weeks ever.
On Sept. 15, hundreds of astronomers, photographers and, I reckon, enthusiasts of the Farmers Almanac gathered at Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park to witness the celestial reenactment of Ansel Adams' famous "Autumn Moon," his photo of a waxing gibbous moon rising over the Clark Range. The moon configures itself just so every 19 years. Tales of this occasion, retold in Homeric fashion, will enthrall dinner party guests for years to come. Or not.
Two nights later was the annual harvest moon, when--because of the angular geometry of lunar orbit--the full moon loiters near the horizon with an entrancing, Navajo stillness. And so it did. As I was driving home from dinner that evening, the moon, immense and ochre, impaled itself on the Los Angeles skyline. Hours later, at mid-sky, the moon was small and piercingly white, a lighthouse in an oil-spill night.
These astronomical doings roughly coincided with the Sept. 23 release of the Tom Hanks-produced IMAX film "Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3-D," and if that wasn't coincidence, well, some marketing exec ought to get a case of beer. Not everyone can turn God's handiwork into cross promotion.
The day after the Ansel Adams moonrise, NASA briefed Congress on its 13-year, $104-billion plan to return Americans--pointedly not humanity--to the moon. This is an extraordinary development in the history of space exploration, first because of the harrowing cost and second because Americans don't give a fig about space exploration. Oh, no? Quick, name the two astronauts aboard the ISS?
Quick, what is the ISS? For most of its five-year manned history, the International Space Station has hung lamely in space, a $100-billion earring hanging 220 miles above a blue and otherwise-occupied planet. The sidereal and synodic months come and go, the space station's caretakers busy themselves on their exercise bikes, hamster-like, and few earthlings spare a second thought for them, except when a rich adventurer like Dennis Tito or Greg Olsen wants to pony up the $20-million fare for a ride on a Soyuz spacecraft. With the U.S. shuttle fleet in dry dock, the public has been pretty incurious as to what would happen to the ISS occupants if for any reason the Soyuz program came to a halt.
