Melisseus

By Melisseus

Which way is South?

Somewhere up there is the new USA landing craft - or, more accurately, the privately-built vehicle created by 'Intuitive Machines'. No sci-fi author would risk a name that corny, but it's fine in Texas. The lander is called 'Odysseus'; the founder of the company is called 'Altemus' (those are the vowels he uses in public, anyway). To mark the profound moment when the US put something on the lunar surface for the first time in 50 years, he channelled his inner Neil Armstrong and said "Welcome to the moon"

I also got a smile from the words of NASA spokesperson talking about the purpose of the mission. They are interested in confirming if there is water there - not because there is any expectation of life, but because water, H2O, can be split into hydrogen and oxygen, which is to say rocket fuel. The project administrator said, apparently without irony, that "if there's water...we could have a gas station on the south pole of moon"

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