the "moon" book

 One book I read recently was Rebecca Boyle's "Our Moon." I enjoyed it, though like all of these "sweeping" non fiction books, there were parts I liked better than others. 

She starts out talking about speculation as to how the moon formed. One hypothesis is that the earth collided with another planetary mass (hypothetically named Theia) and the result was a larger earth and the formation of the moon. This is interesting to me given that I've read the particular size of the earth is what allows for it to hold the right kind of atmosphere for life....

There are other hypotheses. I admit I've never had classwork in that material, so I can't evaluate the various hypotheses and I'm not sure I fully understood them. (I was reading that part right after I injured my leg, so I wasn't sleeping well, and maybe that affected my comprehension).

The second section was historical/ancient people's conception of the moon, as much as we know about them. Apparently in some parts of the ancient Middle East, there were moon cults, and at least one ruler "secretly" considered the moon goddess his favorite (even though the sun goddess was considered the important one who had to be propitiated).

She also mentioned Stonehenge and other ancient stone circles - or the remnants of where "woodhedges" were. There's a little bit of speculation about the various festivals and things. And yes, I can see in ancient societies, where either knowing timing to plant, or the timing of hunting/migrating to be where the game was. It's a very different way of thinking from us, where we have calendars and most of us don't farm and hunting is only a very specialty activity.

There were also probably ceremonies or observances that knowing the moon position and time of year would be important for. Like a lot of things in anthropology, when we don't know what they were for, we go "ritual or religious reasons" (There's a funny book by David Macauley* called "Motel of the Mysteries" where he approaches far-future archaeologists finding a midcentury American Route-66 style motel - one thing I remember is that the "archaeologists" interpreted the toilet seats as a ceremonial head/neck dress)

(*I actually met David Macauley in the very early 1980s; some of us who wrote "particularly good" (in the judgment of our teachers) stories got to meet him and he gave a talk for us. Somewhere I have a copy of his book "Cathedral" that he autographed)

From there, she moves to the space race and the missions to the moon. And it is kind of amazing that we did that, back in the 1960s. (It's commonly noted that modern smartphones are more powerful than the computers that got humans safely to the moon and back). Both amazing in that it was done with only one really bad mishap (the fire  on Apollo 1 that killed the three astronauts on board), but also amazing that we had the political will to do that then. (Looking from the perspective of seeing years of infighting, gridlock, and ridiculousness in our government). I mean, I guess some would argue that it was done largely as a "flex" on the Russians - they had the first man in space, but we had the first man to walk on the moon (And as far as I remember - the only people to walk on the moon were Americans)

Another interesting observation - a lot of the astronauts were fairly religious men. Buzz Aldrin (who was an elder in his Presbyterian church) made arrangements to be allowed to take communion on the moon. There was the reading from Genesis - done over the radio- and at least one of the astronauts offered a prayer. Again, today, I think that might cause more consternation, even if it was very clear that was one individual exercising his own private faith.

But she also writes about the "overview effect" and how people were deeply changed from having viewed the Earth from "the outside" - apparently several astronauts developed much deeper and more intense faith as a result, and several have written about realizing how small and fragile our world is. 

And now: the talk of returning to the moon. And the talk of using the moon - either "outsourcing" really dirty industries there, or mining resources from it. And I get the arguments in favor, but everything in me recoils at that. Like, NO. We should treat the moon as a sort of World Park, I think, where we don't pollute it or commercialize it (ugh, luxury hotels on the moon for the megawealthy. Though then again? Maybe the overview effect will change a few hearts?). I'd rather see it left as it is, with only the human incursions/space junk from earlier missions there. (Really, space exploration needs to be: you packed it in, you pack it out, like they say with roadless areas here on earth).

But anyway: I enjoyed the book; it's well-written and it's amazing to go in a couple hundred pages from "this is how we think the moon formed billions of years ago" to "should we mine minerals from the moon"