From Lunar Landing to "Red Moon": Lunar Exploration at the Present and in Recent Fiction

Depiction of the Lunar Lander, as it would have been.

By Péter MARTON

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Israel may be about to become the fourth nation on this planet, after the U.S., the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China to complete some kind of proper landing on the Moon. No simple manoeuvre! You have to transition to lunar orbit, get the descent right, and then find a good landing spot, which tends to be complicated in terrain covered by boulders, craters and extensive fully-shadowed areas where there may be... more boulders and craters.

Some issues of typology. Lunar landings come in a variety. They can be manned or unmanned, soft (when you can still take off with what you touch down) or hard (when you touch down hard). If you crash-land, it may still be useful for various purposes but obviously requires less of a fine-tuned ability in approaching Luna. The three nations mentioned above are the ones that have pulled off landings other than crash-landings so far.

If Israel is to be the fourth, it brings up the issue of the private v. public distinction. SpaceIL, an Israeli nonprofit based out of Tel Aviv University, is in charge of the mission, funded generously by a South African billionaire. SpaceX launched their lunar lander unit. So this is a private/transnational thing, strictly speaking.

It is remarkable that the European Union has not made it so far. Especially as the EU once had its own Lunar Lander program. It was to get to the moment of launch by late 2018, and the final stage of the lunar descent, aiming for the southern polar region of the Moon, could as well be happening right now, as I write this. But the project was eventually shelved, in 2012, in circumstances explained in detail here.

In short: Germany wanted this the most, but would not fund the project alone. Spain was their most important ally, but its economy was going through hard times by 2012, so they had to quit. Italy and France had different priorities: Italy wanted to focus on the European-Russian ExoMars program (which is still a thing), while France preferred to fund development of a new launch vehicle, the Ariane-6 (which is certainly important with a view to the future of space exploration). 

So ultimately it came as no surprise to me that there was hardly any mention of the EU or European countries in Kim Stanley Robinson's latest novel, Red Moon (2018). Where Europeans do come up is in mention of how European countries and other emerging powers (e.g. Brazil) share the place with the U.S. at the North Pole. Otherwise, they carry little weight in the plot. This is a "G-2" story, the story of the U.S.-China relationship on the level of countries as well as people, as the great cliffhanger of our times. With a view to this blog's audience I am happy to recommend the book nonetheless. Robinson, one of the best and most important SF writers of our time, is at his best here in mixing plausible events, odd characters, philosophy and politics -- making this a fantastic work to appreciate anything from the feng shui of the Moon to the future of party-state, democracy, crypto-currencies or capitalism at large. Not to speak of the EU's absence on the future lunapolitical chessboard.