Clint's Blog: The Moon

I've photographed the moon in so many ways at so many different times. It's very encouraging to see Artemis II fly out to and return from a swing around the Moon. In my entire lifetime, that is the first time it's happened. I've long been fascinated by it, watching many documentaries on the various Moon landings and wondering why we’ve taken so long to get back when we went several times and flew 24 people very close to the surface, from 1969 through 1972.

A little more than a decade later, I was born, and I still had to wait decades for it to happen again. I figured with so much activity, getting regular visits would be as routine as building new cars. Yet, that didn’t happen. Not to say that space exploration is easy, or that the money Earth has spent on it was wasted, but no Moon! People have set foot on and modified just about every place on this planet; you figure the moon is next.

Although there is a lot of space junk on the moon. I often wonder if future visitors to the moon will be able to trample on the spaces occupied by the lunar descent module lander stage, the instruments, and other memorabilia left on the Moon’s surface. Someone may even consider every footprint a historical artifact that shall not be disturbed. They are likely to last for a very long time, until some new crater on the moon throws dust over them. Or maybe they will dig them out and store them in a Moon museum.

That gets even more interesting when you consider Gene Cernan and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt (Dec 1972) put 22 miles on their moon rover odometer. That’s a lot of old historic markings that are probably the same as they left them.

Either way, it’s exciting to see some progress. Artemis III was supposed to land humans on the Moon, but it appears it will be more of a test of landing-vehicle concepts. The SpaceX Starship HLS feels kind of nuts to me, because it’s so tall. I would not trust such an impractical design.