Motherboard

It has been over 40 years since we first visited the moon (and if you were unaware of this recent anniversary, you must have been living under a rock on the moon), but the world’s relationship to space and space exploration has not become less complicated over that time.

India leaped into the 21st Century last year by firing a lunar probe that lived inside the moon’s orbit for about a year until last month when radio contact with the probe was lost and the two year mission was suddenly abandoned. All was not doomed, however, as the Indian Space Research Organization has indicated that the probe had already accomplished much of what was hoped, including the mapping of the moon’s poles. (If the moon were a tough-talking hoodlum, it may have responded to India’s endeavor by cracking in a thick Brooklyn accent: “Hey, map this pole, huh!?”)

That aborted mission is small potatoes compared to what NASA is currently facing with its Ares 1 rocket that it hoped would replace the space shuttle. Four years and $3 billion dollars into the rocket’s development there are still considerable technological flaws to be addressed. Seems the rocket likes to lean into the launch tower at takeoff and could rattle so intensely during flight that astronauts would be bounced around like so many Pop Rocks in a can of Fresca. Not good. The contractors working the project—which include heavy hitters like Boeing and Lockheed Martin—are, naturally, reluctant to give up the ghost on Ares 1 and have begun an all-out PR campaign, even taking to YouTube to make the case that NASA cannot give up on the program yet. It’s funny to think about Boeing execs being so reliant on YouTube—every drunk sophomore’s favorite time-suck—to help save its burning-out rocket. That’s the world we live in. It’s kinda cool, I guess.

Speaking of many millions of dollars—you may have seen that the Japanese are almost ready to spend about $21 billion on a space station that would serve mainly as a massive, inter-terrestrial solar panel, producing enough energy to power roughly 300, 000 homes. I’m no math whiz but I think that works out to $70, 000 per home. Which seems like a lot, no? I realize we long ago entered a serious global energy crunch but surely there are more economically efficient ways to whup the problem.

But, yeah, space. That’s one mysterious, seductive, alluring, difficult, dark, and beautiful mistress ya got there. Kind of like her.