{"id":3218,"date":"2012-03-01T05:00:36","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T10:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allandouglas.com\/blog\/?p=3218"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:41","slug":"moon-mysteries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/moon-mysteries\/","title":{"rendered":"Mysteries of the Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"border: 0pt none; margin: 10px;\" title=\"Moon Hopper\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7033\/6726785669_0911a508db_m_d.jpg\" alt=\"moon, exploration, base\" width=\"240\" height=\"200\" \/>A while back I posted a <a title=\"Sci-Fi Authors \u2013 Dalotek Base \u2013 Any Hope?\" href=\"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/sci-fi-dalotek-base\/\">brain spill<\/a> involving a\u00a0 moon base, just to entertain you a bit &#8211; by teasing me about it if nothing else.\u00a0 A brain spill is a snippet of a story, or potential story.\u00a0 But reaction was good and I decided to explore developing the story further.\u00a0 To do that, I needed information about the moon; its composition, its history, and a reason that mankind may want to have a presence there at all; other than setting records for the longest home run hit ever.<\/p>\n<p>Of course I could just make up a bunch of stuff &#8211; it IS fiction after all &#8211; but I like to stay as close to truth as I can in fiction.\u00a0 One of the questions I had is, &#8220;why does one side of the moon always face the Earth?&#8221; I theorized that perhaps the moon is not round, but lopsided, or egg shaped.\u00a0 The large end of the egg would pull harder toward the Earth&#8217;s gravity.\u00a0 I was pretty darn close!\u00a0 I&#8217;ve turned up a lot of amazing facts.\u00a0 Here are some of the more interesting study materials on the moon, it&#8217;s history and why it is the way it is. <!--more--><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"watch-headline-title\" style=\"text-align: center;\">ScienceCasts: Did Earth Have Two Moons?<\/h2>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xbZ4MlTw2JA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Cosmic Journeys: Birth of the Moon<\/h2>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WGTBJHFNywI\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7067\/6932563383_581b5ba9ce_o_d.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"border: 0pt none; margin: 5px;\" title=\"L2 Point in space\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7067\/6932563383_acb09f1214_m_d.jpg\" alt=\"L2, space, astronomy\" width=\"240\" height=\"173\" \/><\/a>I still don&#8217;t know that there is any real reason to establish a base on the moon for any reason other than studying the moon.\u00a0 Any sort of way-station that ships would use as they explored near Earth space would more likely be placed at the <a title=\"More on the L2 Point\" href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2010-06-l2-james-webb-space-telescope.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">L2 point in space<\/a>.\u00a0 The Lagrangian points or Lagrange points, L-points, or libration points, are the five positions in an orbital configuration where a small object affected only by gravity can theoretically remain stationary relative to two larger objects (such as a satellite with respect to the Earth and Moon). The Lagrange points mark positions where the combined gravitational pull of the two large masses provides precisely the centripetal force required to rotate with them.\u00a0 The Sun-Earth L2 point would be approximately 930,000 miles out from Earth (well beyond the moon&#8217;s orbit) in the direction away from the sun.\u00a0 This would keep the station in the &#8220;shadow&#8221; of the earth and protect it from most of the bad stuff the sun throws off; a great spot for a deep space observatory like the James Webb Telescope as well as a supply depot for near Earth exploration craft.\u00a0 Possibly even a refinery for smelting ores brought back from mining asteroids before transporting them back to Earth for use.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">But the moon?\u00a0 Ehh&#8230; not seeing much use for a moon base except tourism &#8211; maybe with a baseball diamond?<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0gmJX9SgWNw\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A while back I posted a brain spill involving a&nbsp; moon base, just to entertain you a bit &ndash; by teasing me about it if nothing else.&nbsp; A brain spill is a snippet of a story, or potential story.&nbsp; But reaction was good and I decided to explore developing the story further.&nbsp; To do that, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/moon-mysteries\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mysteries of the Moon&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[43,28,48,13],"class_list":["post-3218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-muse","tag-brain-spill","tag-fiction","tag-moon","tag-scifi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20834,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3218\/revisions\/20834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}