Category: Countdown to the Moon

I talk about the moon a lot! Last night I went to a lecture at Rice University by David Kring, Ph.D., Senior Staff Scientist at Lunar and Planetary Institute. There is so much we learned by the few rocks that the Apollo astronauts brought back. There is so much more we have to learn.

The permanently shaded areas (PSAs) are colder than the surface of Pluto. They have captured ices from comet and wet meteor impacts for billions of years. You have heard about the water ice. But last night I learned there should be many other ices. CO2 and NH4. We can grow plants and make methane on the moon! And there are so many different areas that we have not explored.

I talked to Christa about us going to the moon. As my sister, she has heard me talk about our trip to the moon many times. I think she will be excited to see it actually happen. She would go if she could. So would I. Ad Luna!

NASA needs to figure out how to get its plans to land on the moon in the news. Not many people outside of the space community know about it. I talked to Rebekah, Destiny, and Devonte about it and it was the first they heard about it. They are excited, and would go if they could. They think we need to get out there and explore.

Ritu and I talked about the benefits of this project. I work from home and can easily go for a while only interacting with the people at my house. Today was one of those days. It wasn’t supposed to be. I had a flying lesson scheduled and a tennis social. Both were cancelled because of the weather.

Ritu has heard about NASA’s plans to land people on the moon in 2024 from me. She thinks it is a good thing. She would go if it was economical. She is not sure if humanity will be beyond earth in 500 years. It seems like science fiction now, but air travel, the iPhone, and many of the things we use everyday once were unimaginable.

Hyunmee had heard about NASA’s plans to go to the moon in 2024 as part of the Artemis program. She was reading about the Korean American that was part of the 13 astronauts that had graduated the Friday before last. She thinks it is good that we are going and exploring. She is a geologist and thinks it would be good if we did send a geologist but at the same time it is not necessary if the astronauts can bring back many rocks. She would go to the moon if it was possible.

Franz supports everything that NASA does. But he had not heard about the plans to send people back to the moon in 2024. NASA needs to advertise more for him to know about it. Franz has heard about that group that was sending people to Mars, and he would go to the moon or to Mars if that was an option.

On the day of SpaceX’s successful in flight abort test of the Crewed Dragon, we are closer to getting astronauts launched from American soil on American rockets. And we are another day closer to NASA’s goal of getting people on the moon by 2024.

Today I talked with Meena. She had heard about NASA’s plans and thinks it is a good thing. She remembers when the first people walked on the moon in 2024.

In 1808 days we will be back on the moon. NASA’s Artemis program is taking us back to the moon.

I talked to Ian, my 9 year old nephew about it. He had not heard about it. He is not sure it is something that he would want to do.

We had a wide ranging discussion about the end of the dinosaurs, how the moon effects the tides, and much more.

“Go space exploration!” I talked to Sierra about NASA’s plans to send people back to the moon in 2024. This was the first time Sierra had heard about it. But she thinks it is cool and once there are regular, safe flights she would go.

I asked her, “We have so many problems here on Earth, some people say we should not be spending money on space exploration. What do you say about that?”

“We might discover something while going to the moon that will help us here on earth,” she said.

Welcome to the Artemis generation.

Sunil had heard about the 2024 moon landing from me. I have been inviting him to the NSS North Houston Space Society (http://NorthHoustonSpace.org) since it started. He is not a space enthusiast, but he supports people doing things. He does not plan to celebrate people returning to the moon (though I will be inviting him to my party, so let’s see 🙂 )

He has no interest in going to the moon. The pictures will be enough.

I asked him about the recent events regarding Yusaku Maezawa‘s http://DearMoon.earth project with the dating show having the first woman around the moon be the winner. He is unconcerned as who can say right now who would be the first.

Ammaar has heard about the plans to land astronauts on the moon in 2024 from NASA’s twitter account. He is excited about NASA going back and he would like to go too. He is also a big SpaceX and Elon Musk fan. And he sees no reason why we can’t explore space and do all the other things that people want to do. There is so much we don’t know, let’s go out and explore.