What about the Moon? / Moon Off Limits

Here's "Eddie" flying in from the fringe to comment on all this talk of mining on the moon, etc. The word from the sectors where I frequent is: The moon's off limits. That's right; no touchie.

Of course this is fringe data from the viewpoint of your average engineer. But it could explain why the moon has been so little exploited and really so little explored considering how close it is and how many launches we have made to do other things and go other places.

Some speak of it being manufactured in outer space similar to how a glass blower crates a sphere of glass and that it was dragged to its current location several thousand years ago. It LOOKS like a normal chunk of stuff, but that disguise only goes skin deep.

However that may be: Story is, it isn't really ours to play with. Not that we haven't tried. But most attempts were not in public. Anything in the asteroid belt, on the other hand, is probably fair game. Navigating through that mess can be a little touchy, but I'm sure that could be figured out.

But if the voices from the fringe have any basis in reality, we have some negotiating to do both here on earth and elsewhere before it will be politically and economically feasible to exploit any chunk of dirt in the solar system other than good ol' earth.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Joe Strout wrote: