{"id":9779,"date":"2019-05-01T16:42:32","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T23:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=9779"},"modified":"2019-05-07T16:50:30","modified_gmt":"2019-05-07T23:50:30","slug":"moon-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2019\/05\/01\/moon-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Moon Race"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from The New Yorker<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Race to Develop the Moon<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

For science, profit, and pride, China, the U.S., and private companies are hunting for resources on the lunar surface.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Rivka Galchen<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Illustration by Allan Sanders<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In January, the China National Space Administration landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, the side we can\u2019t see from Earth.\u00a0Chang\u2019e-4<\/a>\u00a0was named for a goddess in Chinese mythology, who lives on the moon for reasons connected to her husband\u2019s problematic immortality drink. The story has many versions. In one, Chang\u2019e has been banished to the moon for elixir theft and turned into an ugly toad. In another, she has saved humanity from a tyrannical emperor by stealing the drink. In many versions, she is a luminous beauty and has as a companion a pure-white rabbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chang\u2019e-4 is the first vehicle to alight on the far side of the moon. From that side, the moon blocks radio communication with Earth, which makes landing difficult, and the surface there is craggy and rough, with a mountain taller than anything on Earth. Older geologies are exposed, from which billions of years of history can be deduced. Chang\u2019e-4 landed in a nearly four-mile-deep hole that was formed when an ancient meteor crashed into the moon\u2014one of the largest known impact craters in our solar system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may have watched the near-operatic progress of Chang\u2019e-4\u2019s graceful landing. Or the uncannily cute robotic amblings of the lander\u2019s companion, the Yutu-2 rover, named for the moon goddess\u2019s white rabbit. You may have read that, aboard the lander, seeds germinated (cotton, rapeseed, and potato; the Chinese are also trying to grow a flowering plant known as mouse-ear cress), and that the rover survived the fourteen-day lunar night, when temperatures drop to negative two hundred and seventy degrees Fahrenheit. Chang\u2019e-4 is a step in China\u2019s long-term plan to build a base on the moon, a goal toward which the country has rapidly been advancing since it first orbited the moon, in 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you missed the Chinese mission, maybe it\u2019s because you were focussed on the remarkably inexpensive spacecraft from SpaceIL<\/a>, an Israeli nonprofit organization, which crash-landed into the moon on April 11th, soon after taking a selfie while hovering above the lunar surface. The crash was not the original plan, and SpaceIL has already announced its intention of going to the moon again. But maybe you weren\u2019t paying attention to SpaceIL, either, because you were anticipating India\u2019s Chandrayaan-2 moon lander, expected to take off later this year. Or you were waiting for Japan\u2019s first lunar-lander-and-rover mission, scheduled to take place next year. Perhaps you\u2019ve been distracted by the announcement, in January, on the night of the super blood wolf moon, that the European Space Agency plans to mine lunar ice by 2025. Or by Vice-President Mike Pence\u2019s statement, in March, that the United States intends \u201cto return American astronauts to the moon within the next five years<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at The New Yorker<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The New Yorker The Race to Develop the Moon For science, profit, and pride, China, the U.S., and private companies are hunting for resources on the lunar surface. By\u00a0Rivka Galchen In January, the China National Space Administration landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, the side we can\u2019t see from Earth.\u00a0Chang\u2019e-4\u00a0was named […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}