1 The Moon: Science and Mystery

From the earliest times men have been fascinated by the Moon, a cold desolate beauty, calm, serene, a light for the dark, wise and knowing, a witness of creation a keeper of secrets a gentle lady mysterious and aloof.

Much earlier than the first civilisations primitive man and our furthest ancestors must have looked up in the night sky to marvel at the splendour and wonder of the majesty. In terror of a blackened Sun in daytime and seeing in amazement the magic of a lunar eclipse in night.

Phases cycles and events in nature were observed there were beliefs and rituals kept in the very beginnings of religion, such as governed by regular rhythms of nature.

Mystery of origins

The fact is we do not know the origin of the Moon it is mostly speculation and guess-work. This means we cannot explain what happened right on our doorstep. However we are made to believe to know how the solar system evolved.

My question is that since we cannot even know how the solar zoo came about, how does it compare with the most remote outer space if we do not even understand at all our own Moon's history? The history the eras and epochs and the remotest past almost an eternity ago almost back to this "Big-Bang". It sounds like it is known even how the Universe came to be, we are told we can say how it all happened many millions of ages ago and millions and billions of light years far and with just a few loose ends, the "keys"?

We do not know and I believe we will never know. Do we really understand where pulsars come from, and black holes, or galaxies? What is this dark energy business? Can we see back into time right to the very start of the Universe and explain all or most of it, but at the same time don't understand our very own companion? The problem is not observations, astronomy, it is in interpretations and astro-physics. By the way the phrase "the age of the Universe" is meaningless.

Misconceptions, deliberate misunderstandings, possible errors abound. Spectacle and entertainment, public imagination and fascination provide crucial funding for research.

The present and future

It is quite feasible and there will soon be operational manned Moon bases and after not long there will be self-sustained functioning colonies on the Moon. Research is to be done both pure and applied and amongst more a starting point with the lower gravity for launching rockets of solar exploration and commercial purposes.

The Moon is greatly strategic for surveillance and communication, unfortunately physical military occupation and control of the Moon is crucial.

We do have the know-how the practical experience knowledge and engineering skills from the Apollo missions and the decades since, acquired expertise for example through Antarctic research bases and specifically the orbiting international space station. The Moon is actually a much less hostile environment and not much further away.

Of practical importance knowledge of science and technology as well as computational and analytic celestial mechanics must play a role. This can be done even today, it is just a question of money. To me Mars still seems very far-off but I believe it also will be colonised in the distant future.

An Earth-Moon project

A model for the mechanical formation of the Moon will be suggested which simplifies matters considerably. In making only a few assumptions and simplifications it is easy to describe, and to formulate the questions in this simple mathematical model of the physical reality. To thus investigate here, a mechanical engineer is probably more useful than an astro-physicist!

This work is not meant as academic research and I don't have access to academic journals nor collaborators.