This Week Those Books is chock-full of crucial context — from fiction and non-fiction — to the shouty, doomscroll news cycle.
Dark side of the Moon venture
Jules Verne took us there and back in 1865! And a study of Earth’s ‘sibling’
Full moon. Image: Alexis Antonio, Unsplash
The Big Story:
The first humans to fly around the Moon in more than 50 years were always destined to set records, but is the nearly $100-billion Artemis programme an inspiring new era of space exploration or “a colossal waste” of resources?¹
- A dozen men had already walked on the Moon when US space agency Nasa ended its Apollo lunar programme in 1972.
- Nasa’s Artemis, named after the Greek goddess of the Moon who’s also twin sister of Apollo, is intended to return astronauts to the Moon by 2028 and possibly build bases there for long-term human habitation.
- China wants to put its own taikonauts on the Moon by 2030 and, with Russia, establish a permanent lunar base by 2036.
This Week’s Books:
- A 19th century novel laid out how to get to the Moon.
- An exploration of how Earth and Moon are “paired” worlds.
Click to read on about the books and the back story
Originally published on Medium
