Thursday, October 08, 2009

Moon Explosion?

You’ve probably heard by now that NASA plans to hurl a massive charge of TNT at the moon tomorrow. Apparently, they are investigating the presence of ice on its surface. Aside from my problems with the $97 million dollar cost, which I’m sure was budgeted for years and years ago, I can’t see how it’s a good thing to bomb the moon.

I mean, in our grandparents’ or parents’ day, there were astronauts exploring the moon and touching down to make a “giant step” -- now, we cause explosions…. So, is this just a case of nerd boys wanting to blow stuff up?

In defense of nerd boys -- my brother is kind of a nerd. He was all about computers and I’m pretty sure he was in the rocket club at our elementary school. I can totally see him wanting to know more about the moon and stars. And there is nothing wrong about launching a project in the spirit of discovery. I’m all for finding out things that are important.

Maybe since I write novels about werewolves, I’m particularly sensitive to this latest NASA project. I mean, what if something happened to our moon? Could tides shift? Could all of the creatures of the night be totally thrown off?

What do you know about the explosion? Is there anything else that you’d like scientists to focus on discovering instead?


Hugs,

Heather
www.heatherdavisbooks.com
NEVER CRY WEREWOLF – Sept ’09 HarperTeen
THE CLEARING – April ’10 HMH

3 comments:

Me said...

Um, yeah, I could have lived with not knowing this. (I avoid the news as much as possible.) Having just read Life As We Knew It makes me especially uneasy about doing anything to the moon. Fingers and toes and eyes crossed that nothing significant happens. (Except for hopefully finding ice, of course.)

Cara King said...

Just wanted to say, nerd girls also like blowing stuff up. (Sometimes.) ;-)

We've blown up lots of TNT on earth, and even nuclear bombs, and we've never affected earth's orbit or spin. And though the moon isn't nearly as massive, it's still the same thing. So I'm sure all the werewolves will never notice a thing...

Cara (a nerd girl who thinks water on the moon is kewl)

Wendy Toliver said...

Growing up with a NASA dad (a literal rocket scientist) I've seen my fair share of what some folks would call cool space stuff and as others would call a total bore. What I find interesting is the whole space station idea -- all the brain power and money that goes into each detail, like the toilet system way up there in zero gravity.