LOOKING down at the pitted surface of the moon from a height of 70 miles last December, Apollo 8 Astronaut Frank Borman described it as "vast, lonely and forbidding—a great expanse of nothing." But looks can be deceiving. As desolate as the moon appears, scientists have little doubt that man will soon work, play, and perhaps even prosper on his bleak satellite.
The environment that makes the moon so hostile to terrestrial life is, paradoxically, precisely what makes the moon so potentially valuable. The absence of atmosphere, which exposes any life on the moon to deadly radiation and the inhospitable vacuum of space, also makes the moon an ideal base for observatories and some industries. Meteors which have battered the lunar surface for eons have probably also endowed the moon with immense mineral wealth. Although lunar days and nights are each two weeks long and accompanied by deadly extremes of temperature (ranging from 240 degrees Fahrenheit above zero to 250 below), both the unshielded rays of the sun and the numbing cold of the night can be turned to the advantage of human settlers.
A Leisurely Look
Man's early visits to the moon will be largely taken up with exploration and scientific studies of the lunar substance and structure. But man will not long be able to resist making practical use of his closest celestial neighbor. As soon as they are able, for example, astronomers will be competing to book passage to the moon. There, freed at last from the obscuring mantle of terrestrial atmosphere, they will immediately get a clearer, more revealing and more leisurely look at the universe around them.
On the atmosphereless moon, optical telescopes can be used continuously; no clouds, air currents or air pollution can impede viewing. Were the giant, 200-in. optical telescope at Mt. Palomar to be duplicated on the lunar surface, for example, it could observe stars that are 10,000 times too faint for it to detect through the earth's atmosphere.
Because the moon rotates on its axis only about one-thirtieth as fast as the earth, stars move slowly across the lunar skies, making it easier to track and photograph them. Because lunar gravity is only one-sixth the earth's, structural distortions caused by the sheer weight of large telescope mirrors and their supports will be dramatically lessened. Some scientists have estimated that telescope mirrors as large as 2,000 in. in diameter (ten times the earth's largest) could be used effectively on the moon.
The moon has equally great advantages for radio telescopes, which in recent years have greatly expanded the observable universe, locating quasars and discovering pulsars and other strange celestial objects. Not all radio frequencies can penetrate earth's atmosphere; on the lunar surface, radio telescopes will be able to pick up the entire spectrum of these frequencies. Furthermore, by building radio telescopes on the back side of the moon, astronomers will be able to escape completely from the radio interference caused by earth's increasingly electronic civilization. Without the background "noise" to contend with, radio astronomers will be able to detect much fainter radiation from space, perhaps even the weak signals of a distant civilization.
Unsuspected Galaxies