Industry, mining, and tourism
The moon is in danger
Door Christien Boomsma
By Christien Boomsma
Christien Boomsma
Christien is sinds 2016 achtergrondcoördinator bij UKrant. Ze plant de achtergrondverhalen en begeleidt de auteurs. Bij haar eigen verhalen ligt de focus op wetenschap en academisch leven. Daarnaast schrijft ze veel over onderwerpen als sociale veiligheid en maakt ze graag persoonlijke interviews. In haar vrije tijd schrijft ze jeugdboeken en geeft schrijftrainingen.Buzz Aldrin voted for Trump, says retired history professor Klaas van Berkel. ‘Because he wanted to reinstate going to the moon when he was president. And together with Elon Musk, Trump will definitely continue the Artemis programme.’
Peter Barthel – retired professor of astronomy – agrees. ‘Trump immediately gave him a vanity job.’
The moon is very slowly drifting away from the earth, at a pace of 3.8 centimetres a year. That’s slowly making the days here on earth longer.
That’s because the moon’s gravity attracts the water on earth, causing the tides. But because the earth simply keeps rotating underneath all that water, it’s gradually losing energy and slowing down. This, in turn, pushes away the moon. The moon that the dinosaurs saw looked bigger and their days only lasted twenty-two hours.
Buzz Aldrin voted for Trump, says retired history professor Klaas van Berkel. ‘Because he wanted to reinstate going to the moon when he was president. And together with Elon Musk, Trump will definitely continue the Artemis programme.’
Peter Barthel – retired professor of astronomy – agrees. ‘Trump immediately gave him a vanity job.’
Neither man is particularly happy about it. That might sound weird, considering one of them is an astronomer. Shouldn’t he be thrilled about more space exploration? More research? But Barthel shakes his head. ‘Astronomers hardly even work on the moon anymore. We basically know everything there is to know. In truth, the moon is kind of boring for astronomers. Other planets’ moons are much more exciting.’
Much more important than finding out new things about our moon, they say, is the centuries-old fascination people have with it. The awe they feel has led to the creation of thousands of paintings, poems, and novels. The moon has been a goddess that people worshipped and a scientific object they studied. People have written songs about the moon, dreamed and fantasised about her. Just look at the astonishing number of children’s books about the moon, says Klaas van Berkel. The moon, not the sun. ‘She acts as a guide, illuminating a specific kind of landscape… The moon is much more familiar and tangible than the sun. We’re much more affected by her.’
Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus was the first person to theorise that the moon was simply a physical object and predicted a solar eclipse back in 585 BC. One of his students, Anaximenes, didn’t believe a word of it. He claimed the moon emitted light because there was a fire burning inside a sphere, with holes that opened and closed.
People’s interest in the moon has become even more apparent to the pair since they started writing their book Gids voor de Maan (Guide to the Moon). The book was published last month and in it, they describe the history of moon research as well as the cultural significance of the moon in five parts. They also cover modern research into the moon.
Awe
‘In an era when people didn’t really have the means to properly study the moon’, Van Berkel says, ‘we were surprised to find there were still shifts in how people regarded the moon.’
People were familiar with the phases of the moon, since they had a predictable rhythm. But the eclipses – solar when the moon moves in between the sun and the earth, and lunar when the earth is between the moon and the sun – must have been bewildering, says Van Berkel. ‘You can still feel that primitive awe for the moon when it comes up in orange and red and slowly changes colour. But if you’ve ever seen a solar eclipse, you can understand how terrified prehistoric people might have been.’
After the world had been destroyed, the Aztec gods gathered to make a new sun. One of them had to throw themselves into a fire for this. Tecciztecatl volunteered, but changed his mind at the last minute.
Nanahuatzin, a small and insignificant god, took his place, rising from the flames as the shining sun. Embarrassed, Tecciztecatl jumped in after him. He, too, came back out as a sun, but the earth couldn’t handle two suns. One of the other gods then threw a rabbit at his face. This partially eclipsed Tecciztecatl, turning him into the moon. This rabbit is still visible on the moon today.
Ten thousand years of awe. But all of this might change. It’s not just Trump and Musk who’ve set their sights on the moon. This summer, Chinese moonlander Chang’e 6 returned to earth with bits from the dark side of the moon. Japan and India are also working on radical plans.
And while the NASA missions from the seventies were about the technological challenge, about pure curiosity and scientific research, the agency’s ambitions have since changed. ‘We’re entering an era where the moon itself will be changed because of what we do to it. That was already a theme in science fiction, but it’s going to become a harsh reality.’
Industrial site
The Americans and Chinese are mainly looking to the moon for resources, such as Helium-3 – instrumental in nuclear fusion – as well as rare earth metals that can be used in the chip industry. Then there are the plans to use the moon as a jumping-off point for missions to Mars. ‘I wonder if that won’t make us lose more than we’ll gain’, says Van Berkel.
We all know that lunatics aren’t actually impacted by the moon and that no one turns into a werewolf on the full moon. But many people still believe that the moon somehow has influence over what happens on earth. As recent as 1978, American psychiatrist Arnold Lieber claimed that people’s blood pressure rises during a full moon, affecting the permeability of membranes and the function of neurotransmitters in the body. Sensitive people would become disturbed and potentially aggressive.
Modern analyses, like the one from 2019 that studied 17,996 people who had been treated in psychiatric hospitals over the course of ten years, ruled out any link between insanity and the moon. There is also no correlation between the moon and menstrual cycles. There have also been reports about increased criminal activity during a full moon, but there is a simple explanation for that as well; during bright, moonlit nights, there are simply more people outside.
Photos by Reyer Boxem
Artemis, NASA’s new space programme, wants to put people back on the moon as soon as 2026. What will be left of our awe once the moon becomes a gigantic industrial site? Once the familiar pattern of craters – the ‘spots’ on the moon – are concealed by the clouds of dust from automated diggers?
‘What some people want to do to the moon borders on sacrilegious’, says Van Berkel. ‘Once the general population becomes aware that the moon is being mined, that they’re setting up storage, or building launch platforms for missions to Mars or wherever, the moon will lose some of its fundamental status.’
It’s like building a fence around a nature reserve, he says. ‘The object itself is still being maintained, but it no longer functions the way it did before. The confrontation with the other, which was affected by your concern but which can therefore actually be comforting, could be destroyed.’
‘Not to mention tourism’, Barthel adds. ‘That’s another potentially destructive form of revenue.’
Antarctica model
Therefore, the men say, we should take action now in order to prevent this. ‘Wouldn’t the moon make for a great UNESCO heritage site?’ says Barthel?
The first conspiracy theories about the illegitimacy of the moon landing appeared as far back as 1970. They were bolstered by movies like Diamonds are Forever and Capricorn One, which were based on the idea that the landing had been faked. Conspiracy theorists claim their ideas are proven by the fact that none of the pictures taken from the Apollo show any stars. There is supposedly also a lack of moon dust in the air, and the American flag is said to be waving in a non-existing wind.
All of this is false. The sunlight on the moon was too bright to see any stars, moon dust sticks together in a vacuum, and the flag was suspended from a horizontal bar as well as a vertical one. Nevertheless, these kinds of theories abound.
They argue in favour of an Antarctica model – just like the moon, Antarctica belongs to no one, meaning it belongs to everyone. The Antarctic Treaty System was initially signed by twelve countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union, in 1959. The countries agreed that no military action would take place on the continent, only scientific research. The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty went into effect in 1998, which forbids countries from extracting minerals from the continent until 2048. Forty-four countries have since signed the treaty.
In the case of the moon, there is the looming threat of an uncoordinated commercial race. Musk has already sold a ticket to a Japanese space tourist. ‘But there’s another problem’, says Van Berkel. ‘Looking at what Musk and his cronies are saying, it’s like they think interplanetary colonisation is a way to escape the problems here on earth.’
Musk seems to think of himself as some kind of a Messiah, who’s going to find a better world for humanity. ‘Mankind’s salvation lies in the colonisation of Mars, he feels. He’s almost making it a religious thing’, says Van Berkel. ‘But that kind of thinking undermines the will to do anything about the problems that exist.’
That means we should take a step back. Think about what we really want with the moon, and how we want those things. That way, we can prevent giving away something we don’t realise the genuine importance of. ‘Otherwise, one day we’ll look up at the moon or at paintings and descriptions of it with the gnawing feeling that it’s all in the past, that we’ve forever lost the innocence in the way we used to look at the moon.’
Gids voor de maan’ by Peter Barthel and Klaas van Berkel. Published by Noordboek, 27.90 euros