Crashing Into The Moon

A Symbolic Failure

The magnificence and beauty of the heavens have inspired humans since they first looked up to behold the stars, sun, and moon. Only in the last one hundred years has this wonder caused Earthlings to blindly reach out to touch and defile the objects in the sky.

Nothing demonstrates this soulless crusade like the pursuit to explore the surface of the moon.

On the 22nd of February of 2024, yet another Earth-launched device failed to land appropriately on the Moon’s surface. Although the damage to Odysseus has not been fully assessed or revealed, it likely tipped over upon striking the surface, greatly limiting all of its functions, including communications. While preliminary coverage of this U.S. space effort was hailed as a spectacular event, subsequent reporting has been muted, with the NASA-funded, private company’s admission that it may have snapped a leg.

Humans have been crashing devices and rockets into the moon for decades — both accidentally and intentionally. Over sixty impacts have occurred to date, leaving craters and scattered debris.

Beyond the overt trashing of our neighboring heavenly body, the material and human costs of all lunar adventures, both failures and so-called successes, are beyond imagination.

NASA’s budget since its beginning demonstrates that hundreds of billions of dollars can be spent when deemed important by powerful interests. The combined efforts of other countries, including Russia, certainly have cost a similar amount. The price of Odysseus was considered a bargain at just over a hundred million dollars.

Incredibly, despite the side-flop, glorification dominates U.S. media as this device lays in moon dust, unlikely to provide much more than a whisper of valuable data.

As news of Odysseus quietly emerged, that it was poised on its side with most of its instruments pointed in the wrong direction, and well before the extent of its limitations could be known, Time magazine declared that the landing was a huge success, saying it...

…marked the first time a spacecraft built by a private company, not by a governmental space program, had managed a lunar landing, and it was the first time any ship had visited a spot so far in the moon’s south, down in a region where ice is preserved in permanently shadowed craters. Those deposits could be harvested to serve as drinking water, breathable oxygen, and even rocket fuel by future lunar astronauts.

Whether the probe accomplishes any of its intended goals or not, this assessment reveals the truth about efforts to conquer space; they are designed to serve the purposes of future exploration rather than support advances for humanity.

Yet U.S. space endeavors continue to be framed as heroic by those involved and hailed as historical by anyone who financially benefits. The first man to walk on the moon declared boldly that his step was one giant leap for mankind.

The Odysseus, built and operated by Intuitive Machines, though funded by NASA, represents the progress and footprint of the American Empire. Intuitive declares on its website that, we open access to the moon for the benefit of humanity.

There is a continuing attempt to lead the public into believing that there is some intrinsic value in competition for firsts in space exploration and the advancement of humanity. The descriptions of setbacks and mistakes reveal a different agenda.

Over the years, news stories have explained the numerous misadventures to the moon with a broad range of qualifiers. Sympathy and understanding abound when the efforts of NASA or political allies turn into moon junk, yet when the probes of enemies are destroyed while landing, there is smug repetitious coverage. When a Russian device crashes or burns up, condolences are couched in details described as failures with overt references to their financially strapped space agency.

Among various scientific proclamations, exploration of the moon is justified by the search for elements that might explain the geologic or biological origins of life on Earth. For all of these motives and efforts, there is nothing that has helped improve the grave problems facing our home planet; although some of the technical advancements in getting to the moon have been applied to warfare on Earth.

This has been greatly apparent since the beginning of the space race and the response from the public has been insightful. Some claim that landings are staged, others question their value; there is general agreement among critics that the money applied to moon exploration could be better spent on terrestrial challenges.

The reality is observable: humanity is no further along after a very expensive reckless probing of its only natural satellite. The unwarranted competition to claim superiority over enemies demonstrates the misguided motivation.

In 1963, at a time when there was hope that the Cold War might be thawing, President John F. Kennedy presented a controversial concept of what would have been a beneficial outcome of going to the moon.

“Why,” he asked the audience, “therefore, should man’s first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition?” Kennedy noted, “the clouds have lifted a little” in terms of U.S.-Soviet relations, and declared “The Soviet Union and the United States, together with their allies, can achieve further agreements — agreements which spring from our mutual interest in avoiding mutual destruction.”

Within a few months, President Kennedy was assassinated, and since then, while senseless, symbolic crashes into the moon continue, the likelihood of mutual destruction on Earth has only increased.

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