Fly Me From the Moon

This week’s topic is:
Space exploration – would you travel to the Moon or Mars, (assuming you could return)?
See, there’s the problem…“ASSUMING” you could return.

That better be an airtight guarantee!
(But how would you collect if it failed?)

The fear of not being able to return is why I panic whenever I hear the question, “What time in history would you like to visit?”, which comes up so often in writer-circles. There is no way I would travel anywhere in history, for fear of being stuck there.

But, we’re supposed to be returning, so…

When I was a kid, I subscribed to the Dr. Seuss book club. Some of the books were not by Theodore Geisel, such as “Put Me in the Zoo”, (remember that one?). One such book was “You Will Go to the Moon”, and showed a boy about 8-ish traveling with a grown man to the Moon. (Moon with a capital ‘M’; it’s OUR moon, Earth’s moon. Earth also needs to be capitalized if you are talking about the planet, whereas “earth” mean “dirt/soil”, but I digress.)

In this trip, the ‘rocket’ had to stop at a space station halfway to the Moon to refuel. My goodness, how far we have come in our thinking or in our capabilities. You have to realize that the first Moon-landing was only about eight years after I received that book.

I’d like to take a look at Earth from space, even more so from the Moon. I am fairly certain that I have mentioned that I heard it was possible to stand at the tip of Spain on a clear day, look across the Strait of Gibraltar and see Africa. I have no idea why the idea of doing that has real appeal to me, but I would truly love to do that. How much more exciting would it be to take a look at our World from our Moon ?

I’d feel fairly safe being able to get back now that they know more about what they are doing, but gee, even though I lived through the almost constant coverage of the drama surrounding Apollo 13, I was still at the edge of my seat watching the movie of it all!

Maybe I’m not very secure about it after all.

[ “Cough, Challenger), Cough, cough,(Columbia)”.]

Michael Collins piloted the command module around the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin traipsed around on the ground in the first Moon-landing. Do you know what he said when they asked him if he felt cheated to get so close, but not get on the Moon himself? No, he didn’t want to go. He was afraid that there was a chance he was not going to be able to pick the other men up again and he knew that he, at least, could get home in the command module.

As for Mars, heck no! I think everyone is nuts to consider it. Such an incredible distance, (without Star-Trek warp capabilities), and to such a hostile environment, with no possibility of anyone calling the space equivalent of an ‘auto club’ if anything goes wrong? I shudder to even consider it!

A few months ago I saw “Passengers” . A fellow asleep for a long journey across space awakens alone. Last week I heard a reading of Stephen King’s “The Jaunt”, where things can go wrong with a ‘worm-hole’ type transport to Mars. Holy cow!
I have not had the nerve to see “Interplanetary”.

So, tempting as getting a full look at the Big Blue Marble is, the answer to the original question is a resounding “No way”.

I always was a homebody.