Is Our Love Affair With The Moon A Thing Of The Past? (Naked City)

It was an untimely announcement, one that hardly caused a ripple of international excitement. Amidst the madness of Trump’s attack on Iran and the resulting world-wide chaos with the supply of fuel, came NASA’s announcement that they were looking to build a permanent base on the moon by 2036. Estimated to cost up to $30 billion, the plans were revealed at a time when many respected economists consider the American economy insolvent.

Back in 1969 when Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission, the world was captivated. The achievement was seen as a major step forward for all mankind and the gateway to interplanetary exploration. It might have been the Yanks who first made that historic journey but the feelgood ownership of the event was universal, expect perhaps in the Soviet Union.

Here in Australia the moon landing was celebrated with a special release of stamps and coins, top forty songs like Reg Linsday’s Armstrong and space themed restaurants and takeaways. There was extensive media coverage with every flash of fuzzy vision from the Moon greeted with awe and admiration. We didn’t quite know why we had landed there but by golly we were darn excited that we had. It also added a new item to our range of footwear, in the newly named “Moon Boot”.

Five decades later and the billionaire head of Space X, Elon Musk has entered the space race with plans to build a self-sustaining city on Mars, the stuff of science fiction. More recently he has focused his attention on something a lot closer to home – i.e. the Moon. It’s here he hopes to build “Moonbase Alpha”, a so called ‘self-growing city’, serviced by his SpaceX rockets and funded by a massive share sale.

You might be assured to know that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by over 100 countries, declared the Moon “a province of mankind”, free for exploration but not a shameless land grab. Just how the lunar landscape might be carved up in decades ahead remains to be seen, especially when it comes to the mining of precious minerals. Trump has certainly signalled that annexing countries like Greenland and Cuba is a distinct possibility, so who knows what any future despot might decide.

In the meantime, one enterprising American, a former used car salesman by the name of Dennis Hope, has managed to flog off some 600 million acres of lunar real estate. He claims to be utilising a loophole in the 1967 Treaty that designates nations but not individuals from owning acreage on the Moon. He has since extended his real estate empire to eight other planets in the solar system and claims to have made millions in doing so.

Long before Elon Musk and some of the more sophisticated Hollywood sci-fi epics, there was a naïve and often phantasmagorical approach to everything outer space. The 60s and 70s were often dubbed the “Space Age”, as we looked towards both a utopian and technologically advanced future. In Australia the kids were tuned to The Jetsons on their B&W TV sets whilst their parents embraced sleek modern design and cars with rocket like fins.

In Sydney, hipsters gathered at the space themed Mars Espresso Bar in Pitt Street, opened in 1957, and now a long-forgotten icon of its time. You entered to what some observers have likened to the Mos Eisley Cantina from Star Wars, ready to be transported to some far distant planet. It was more than just a gimmicky attraction to pull in the punters and had a real ethereal quality, not to mention one of the few early Italian espresso machines in Sydney.

More than anything it was a temple of hope, not defined by any religious ideology, but the aesthetics suggesting that there was a better world to come. It’s hard to find any real information about the venue these days and how long it actually survived in the often callous knock-em down development of the city. Ideally it would have been preserved for posterity, as an historic site and a reminder that the exploration of space was more that just a billionaire’s party trick.

So with a lunatic in the White House, the war in Iran and Lebanon, a US enforced famine in Cuba and the fuel crisis in Australia, to mention just a few, does anybody give a damn about Elon Musk opening the first Hooters on the Moon in another ten years?