It’s not rocket science

I was stumbling through some old files and found an animated gif that I had used for a blog a few years ago…and with all the interest in lunar space nowadays, it has become relevant again.

As you know, Space Force stood up as an entity in 2019, threatening the Coast Guard’s unbroken reign as the Rodney Dangerfield of uniformed services. What Space Force actually does isn’t entirely understood, but its appearance coincided with a massive new interest in space – including moon travel.

These guys probably don’t know it, but back in the late sixties there was another space frenzy going on, and one of the big unknowns was whether the lunar module (and the two astronauts riding her) would sink into the surface of the moon when it landed.

I had the solution. I even wrote a letter to NASA with my proposal, confident I had solved one of the most pressing questions facing the nation. All we needed was a giant rock.

If the rock sank, the dust wouldn’t support a lunar landing. If it didn’t, we would be good to go. Elegant in its simplicity.

NASA blew me off. I’m sure they had their top scientists studying the problem, and they were damned if they were going to take the advice of an eleven year old. But to me, the solution was easy and it wouldn’t have cost them a cent to build.

I mean, it’s not rocket science.