1
1972 was the year
a great love affair ended.
The human race
fell out of love with the moon.
It was a classic case
of familiarity breeds contempt.
There'd been six moon landings,
and we'd grown bored.
To this day, no-one has been back.
The moon did turn out to be dull.
It's... What do you see?
A barren, colourless landscape
with fragmentary rock
all over the place.
Our eyes wandered
to other more intriguing worlds.
Throughout the solar system,
scientists found many more moons
that seemed far more exciting than
our own dull pile of grey rock.
For 35 years,
our own moon has been abandoned.
But now,
all that's about to change.
This is the story
of our love affair with the moon.
What inspired it,
how it faded away,
and how now we're slowly,
but surely,
falling in love all over again.
Our love affair with the moon
s an ancient one.
It is Earth's constant companion
in the dark emptiness of space.
The moon has looked down
on the whole of human history.
And throughout history,
we have looked up at it.
It has inspired great myths
and legends.
We've feared it
and we've worshipped it.
5,000 years ago, in a remote
corner of the Outer Hebrides,
a Neolithic community
made its home.
We know very little
about these people,
but they've left us an enduring symbol of
their profound relationship with the moon.
Islanders Margaret Curtis
and her husband Ron
have devoted their lives
to understanding that relationship.
I find a link with these people -
that our minds seem work
along the same ideas.
This has been very much a detective
story - sorting it all out.
They may not have had writing,
but they've set the stones up
in such a way
that we can fathom out
what they were after.
No-one knows for certain what the
Standing Stones of Callanish represent.
But their positioning suggests
that they're a tribute to the moon,
part sacred site
and part ancient observatory.
These stones at Callanish
are a sort of lunar computer -
a lunar calendar.
And it's a computer that's still
working after 5,000 years,
which is more than we can say for
the computers we've got nowadays.
The stones seem to be arranged so they track the movements
of the moon through the sky from month to month.
Nowadays, we're not fully aware
of what the moon's doing in the sky.
We know short days in the winter,
long days in the summer.
But the moon's plodding on, doing the same
sort of thing over a much longer cycle.
Whereas we nowadays aren't fully aware of where the
northernmost moon rises or sets, or the southernmost,
our prehistoric ancestors -
5,000 years ago -
did know and they set
these stones out
to mark these
extreme positions of the moon.
Most of all, the stones could predict the
timing of a spectacular and rare lunar event.
To the south of Callanish
is a range of hills
which resemble
a woman lying on her back.
Every 18 years, the full moon rises
out of the hills.
It rolls along the woman's body...
and then vanishes.
But moments later,
it is re-born -
right in the centre
of the stone circle.
Legend says that anyone
who witnessed this magical event
would be blessed
with the gift of fertility.
It has always been
the full moon,
above all else,
that has stirred the human spirit.
Yet the moon
has no light of its own.
Its glow
is simply reflected sunlight.
As it orbits our planet,
the portion of the sunlit surface
that we see changes.
This gives us
the phases of the moon -
a twenty-nine-and-a-half-day cycle
that waxes to full
and then wanes back to new.
When the moon is full, the night
sky glows ten times brighter
than when it's new.
On this night, the same full moon
can be seen all over the Earth.
It has always inspired awe.
In times gone by,
the full moon was believed
to bring out our darker selves
in a monthly wave of madness
and bloodshed.
The word lunacy derives
from the Latin for moon
and crimes that happened
at this time
were looked upon more leniently.
But when it comes to nature,
the moon's impact isn't legend.
The full moon triggers
a frenzy of activity.
It is the time
of the highest tides.
And in the oceans,
the full moon's bright light
is a mating call for sea creatures
all over the world.
The full moon governs the very
reproduction of these species.
And now, scientists have discovered it
may be doing the same for us humans.
Research suggests
that the full moon may play
a significant role
in our own cycles of fertility.
In the late 1970s, scientists
studying female fertility
noticed a baffling coincidence.
We knew that the moon cycled
every twenty nine and a half days,
and we knew...
a
twenty-nine-and-a-half day cycle
was the most fertile
woman's cycle length.
That a woman who had a
26-day cycle, or a 40-day cycle,
or a 60-day cycle,
was much less likely
to be fertile in that cycle.
At the time, it was unclear whether
this was a chance phenomenon
or whether the two were related.
But further research on women with
twenty-nine-and-a-half day menstrual cycles
threw up even more links with
the patterns of the lunar cycle.
In that group of women
who cycle as frequently as the moon,
they tended to start their periods in the
full moon, at the day of the full moon.
And as you move away from
the full moon toward the new moon,
a smaller and smaller and smaller
proportion of the group
is starting their menstrual period.
That was a very exciting
natural biologic phenomenon,
that said there's something
in nature about the moon
that coincides with women getting
their period at the full moon.
The fertility cycles of women
are related to the moon cycle,
and I don't think women's fertility
drives the moon,
I think it's the other way around.
No-one knows for sure
why this phenomenon exists,
or how it works.
It is one of the moon's
many mysteries.
Until very recently,
the moon remained an enigma.
And it was this mysterious quality
which fuelled our fascination.
Where did it come from?
What was it made of?
And the biggest question of all -
was it a world like ours?
Did it harbour life?
For millennia,
it was impossible to know.
No-one even knew what the surface
of the moon looked like.
All that changed in 1608, when an Italian
astronomer made a primitive telescope.
For the first time, he was able
to get a close-up look at the moon.
His name was Galileo Galilei.
And what he saw shattered
conventional wisdom.
At the time, the Church insisted
that all heavenly bodies were
perfect, unblemished spheres,
and that the Earth was the only body
in the universe that was flawed.
But Galileo's close-up
view of the moon's surface
revealed a world
that was far from perfect.
He described it as "Rough and uneven,
just like the surface of Earth itself."
Perhaps it WAS a living world,
like our own.
Hundreds of years later, our knowledge
of the moon had barely improved.
Just how ignorant we were
was revealed in 1835.
An American newspaper
published a front-page story
announcing that herds of bison had been
observed tramping across the lunar surface.
Readers were entranced
by this vision.
A few days later, it was revealed
to be an elaborate hoax.
The only way to find out
what was really on the moon
was to go there and take a look.
But over 100 years later, it still
seemed an impossible dream.
All that finally changed
in the early 1960s.
I believe that this nation should
commit itself to achieving the goal,
before this decade is out,
of landing a man on the moon and
returning him safely to the Earth.
Kennedy's bid for the moon
came out of a Cold War battle
to win over peoples'
hearts and minds.
It was an inspired move,
tapping into an ancient dream.
Finally, we would find the answers
to the moon's great mysteries.
How was it formed?
What was it made of? And was it
a home for some form of life?
The moon had always been the symbol
of the remote and the unreachable.
And here,
people are going to leave Earth
and go to the moon!
But, if they wanted
to lay claim to the moon,
the Americans had a lot
of catching up to do.
Their Cold War rival,
the Soviet Union, was way ahead.
The Russian's ambitious space programme
produced a string of firsts,
including the first satellite in
orbit and the first man in space.
And in 1959, they'd set out to solve
one of the moon's greatest mysteries -
something that had kept humans
guessing for centuries.
What was on the far side of the moon -
the side that always faces away from us?
To find out, the Russian mission would have
to circle the moon for the first time.
On the 7th of October,
the probe disappeared behind
the far side of the moon,
and its cameras leapt into action.
For 40 minutes, it snapped away
whilst scientists waited
on tenterhooks.
When the images were transmitted
back to Earth,
they had their answer.
The far side was actually
just the same as the near side.
But the lack of surprises
didn't matter.
These blurred images made history.
And the mission consolidated the
Russians' lead in the space race.
The Americans weren't
keen on second place.
I guess the American people are
alarmed that a foreign country,
especially an enemy country,
can do this. We fear this.
Definitely alarmed. Do you admire
the Russians for doing it or not?
No. We should've been
first to have it.
The Russians had all the headlines.
But landing a man on the moon
was an entirely new challenge.
At the time when Kennedy made
his famous speech,
scientists knew so little
about the moon
that the prospect of sending a
human there seemed almost reckless.
Their knowledge of lunar geography
was so sketchy,
they didn't know
where they could land safely.
They didn't even know whether the moon's surface
was strong enough to support a space-craft,
or even a man.
They needed answers quickly.
The first step for the Americans was
a series of probes called Ranger.
They carried
on board television cameras
to take detailed close-up pictures
of the lunar surface.
But it wasn't exactly
a sophisticated approach.
The Rangers went in hard, crashing
kamikaze-style into the surface,
furiously filming away
until the moment of destruction.
The 4,300 images
taken by the Ranger probes
were the clearest views
we'd ever had of our moon.
It was now clear
it was a harsh and hostile world.
But the pictures were vital
to prepare for the ultimate goal -
the moon landing.
It was an epic endeavour.
No expense was spared.
At its peak, the moon programme employed
more than 400,000 people in America
and cost over $25 billion, nearly
$150 billion in today's money.
People were electrified
by the race to the moon. And the
United States was spending...
I think it was 4.5% of our entire
national budget on space.
But most Americans
were 100% in favour of,
let's push on and whatever
it costs, let's get to the moon.
Ten... nine... eight...
By 1968,
NASA was ready for a test run.
..four... three... two... one...
Zero!
We have commenced!
We have lift-off!
Lift-off at 7.51am
Eastern Standard Time.
Apollo 8 wouldn't actually
land on the moon,
but it would go into lunar orbit.
Although they weren't
going to touch down,
this would be the first time
that humans
had ever visited another world.
This transmission is coming to you personally
halfway between the moon and the Earth.
Back on Earth, people watched
and waited and listened.
And the astronauts
didn't disappoint.
Hovering just above
the moon's surface,
their broadcast
was from the book of Genesis.
"In the beginning, God created
the Heaven and the Earth.
"And the Earth
was without form and void.
"And darkness
was upon the face of the deep.
"And the spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters."
"And God said, 'Let there
be light.' And there was light."
I don't know. It just caught
the country by surprise.
It was so moving
and... comforting.
And I think, at that point,
we realised the importance
of a space mission
for bringing self-confidence
to people.
On their fourth orbit
around the moon,
the astronauts saw something
no human eyes had ever seen before.
It was the Earth, rising out
of the blackness of space.
The pictures they took changed the
way we viewed our planet forever.
We have commenced! We have lift-off!
And then came the big one.
On July 16th 1969,
Apollo 11 was launched.
Oh, I remember watching it.
It was like, "Wow!" Like watching
science fiction come true.
On its final descent
to the moon's surface,
unknown to the watching audience,
a series of alarms went off
inside the lunar module.
NASA decided to over-ride them.
The gamble paid off.
Houston, er...
..Tranquillity Base here.
The eagle has landed.
I'll now step off the ladder.
It's one small step for man...
..one giant leap for mankind.
More than 600 million people
watched the broadcast worldwide.
HE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN
The experience bonded the human race in a way
which had never happened before. Or since.
It was one of those rare occasions
that brought the whole nation...
and, in a sense, the whole world,
together in a shared experience.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin only walked
on the moon for less than three hours.
But on that night,
people all over the Earth
looked up at the night sky
and knew that there were two men
up there, looking back at them.
I remember the night
of the landing.
And I looked up from the
parking lot and there was the moon.
And you could see
the little dark smudge,
over on the right side of the moon,
which is the Sea of Tranquillity,
and you knew
that there were two men -
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin -
by that time trying to sleep
in their lunar module
on the surface of that smudge
that you can see from Houston.
Over the next three years, five
more missions landed on the moon.
Each one was more ambitious
than the last.
Whereas Armstrong and Aldrin had only taken a
few tentative steps from the lunar module,
the astronauts on later missions
travelled miles across the surface.
They spent days at a time on the
moon, visiting different locations,
collecting samples
of rock and soil,
and setting up
scientific experiments.
Guess what we just found?
I think we found what we came for.
Just old rock, eh? Yes, sir.
But down on Earth,
with each mission,
the public interest
was starting to wane.
By the time it came to Apollo 17,
NASA even had to pay the American
TV networks to cover the mission.
By the fourth or fifth time
that we had gone to the moon,
it was probably
page two or three news.
You know,
it certainly wasn't headline..
There is more soil!
People were getting bored
with going to the moon.
Once you've seen astronauts
collect rocks for a few times,
it ceases to fascinate.
Going to the moon had been done.
And there was a feeling that
it was now time to do other things.
There's a state of apathy in the United
States now. People just don't care.
I think that we are spending
too much money on the moon.
I think they could use the time, energy and
money better here in the United States.
There's lots of room
for improvement here.
Rather than spend all that money exploring
space when people are starving here,
that money could be put to very
good use in improving life here.
When we finally got there,
it turned out our moon
didn't harbour life or even water.
It was not the home of the Gods
or rampaging herds of bison.
It was a barren and bleak place -
a dead rock in the sky.
We'd built it up in our imagination
for tens of thousands of years.
And the disappointment
was crushing.
People thought maybe...
there were people alive
on the moon,
maybe there are things up there.
But what we learned when we got
there is what we saw was the case.
It's a very cold place
and it's desolate and it's not capable
of supporting life as we know it.
Hey, team...
I was strolling
on the moon one day...
When astronaut Gene Cernan stepped off
the lunar surface for the last time,
it was no giant leap for mankind,
but the last stumble
of a dying era.
NASA cancelled
the next three moon missions
and quietly drew
the Apollo programme to a close.
Cernan was the last human being
ever to walk on the moon.
To this day, no-one has returned.
The love affair was over.
But although the public's relationship
with the moon had gone sour,
for a small band
of dedicated scientists,
the romance was just beginning.
They now had actual pieces
of the moon to study.
Nearly 400 kilos of lunar rock
had been brought back
by the astronauts.
They hoped that these rocks would unlock
the unanswered mysteries of the moon.
Because, despite the moon landings,
scientists still didn't know
the answer to the big questions.
Where had the moon come from?
And how had it formed?
One of those starry-eyed
young scientists was Gary Lofgren,
a geologist working for NASA.
He was given the job of cutting
up each sample ready for study.
You just had no idea
what you were going to see,
looking at these really
strange-looking rocks
that were just jumbles of debris.
It was a chance to really
look at them closely,
to not actually touch them,
but come very close,
and we realised we'd never seen anything like
that on Earth, or never recognised it on Earth.
Most scientists had assumed that
the moon would be similar to Earth.
There'd be a mixture
of young and old rocks,
formed in many different ways.
They were in for a surprise.
It turned out that our thinking
about the moon was really wrong.
Science had not done a very good job of
guessing what the moon was going to be like.
People did think
it was probably fairly old,
but they didn't realise it was
as old as it turned out to be.
We found rocks that are almost
four and a half billion years old,
almost the age of our solar system.
Some of these rocks formed just 50-100 million
years after the beginning of the planet.
We just don't find rocks that old
on Earth.
The moon was an ancient,
fossilised world.
Its rocks hadn't changed
for billions of years.
Scientists were thrilled.
Basically, the surface of the moon kind
of froze roughly three billion years ago
and preserved the first one and a
half billion years of its history.
The moon tells us very much about the
early history of our solar system.
It's probably one of the best recorders
of the early history of our solar system.
This ancient fossil
was a scientific gold mine.
Because the moon
was so well-preserved,
it meant scientists could finally answer
the question that had come to obsess them.
How was the moon formed?
At the time,
there were two competing theories.
The first was that the moon and the
Earth were formed at the same time,
from the same cloud
of dust and gas.
The other theory was that the moon
was nothing do with the Earth,
but was wandering alone in space
until the Earth sucked it in
with the power of its gravity.
But the rocks themselves didn't
seem to support either theory.
They were different enough
from rocks on Earth
to make it unlikely they were
all formed at the same time.
But they had enough similarities to make it equally
unlikely that the moon was completely foreign.
Eventually, scientists came up with a new
theory that explained these strange rocks.
It was a brutal tale.
It takes us back
four billion years,
to when the solar system
was a young and volatile place.
There were many planets
and asteroids circling the sun.
One of these was a young Earth.
But there was also another
young planet, a bit smaller.
The two were on a collision course.
Eventually, they crashed together.
It was the biggest bang
the solar system had ever seen.
The impact was so massive
that it spewed out millions
of tons of molten rock and gases.
As this debris circled the Earth,
it came together, forming
a separate body - our moon.
When it first formed, the moon was ten times
closer to the Earth than it is today.
So it appeared
much bigger in the sky
and its gravitational pull
was much stronger.
But, over time, it slowly
drifted away from the Earth
to its present position, about a
quarter of a million miles away.
And there, its orbit seemed
to have stabilised,
its distance from Earth
fixed for all time.
But a little-known Apollo project
has blown that cosy theory away.
Deep in the wilds of West Texas,
Jerry Wiant coaxes his elderly motorbike
up to the top of the Davies Mountains.
He and his trusty bike
have made this same journey to work
every night
since the Apollo programme.
He is on his way to the Texas
Laser Ranging station.
This small outpost is one of only
three of its kind in the world.
We're the last
living Apollo project.
Many people think,
"The Apollo projects?
"Oh, they're dead and gone."
That's not true.
We're still getting valuable data.
Scientists all over the Earth
are still using that data.
So we're still operating,
in spite of the fact
that everybody's forgotten
what the word Apollo used to mean.
Each clear night, Wiant focuses
his telescope on the lunar surface
and fires a powerful laser
straight at the moon.
This will measure the exact
position of the moon in space.
All right,
we're ready to fire the laser.
What we hope is that our beam goes
from here to the moon surface
and it comes back and our goal
is to measure how long does it take
for our light to go from here
to the moon and back.
Their target is a simple device
placed on the moon
over 35 years ago.
The Apollo astronauts left behind
some simple glass reflectors,
rather like the reflectors
on a bicycle light.
This is a chunk of glass
that's a corner reflector.
And you can see it. It's three sides
and this would be the front side.
So light entering here
will go directly back to its source,
and then, our telescope
gathers that light
and then feeds it
to our detector.
There are four panels
of reflectors on the moon,
placed at four different sites.
This one I'm holding
in my hand is one.
And you can see
there's a row of ten by ten.
This a panel of a hundred of these
individual corner reflectors.
Look at the footprint.
You can see the astronaut's
footprint in the moon's surface here.
This is an Apollo 14 site,
the second site.
And, I don't know if you can see it,
but there's a... there's a bag...
there's a Ziploc bag right here.
You can see the red seam.
The astronauts were not required
to pick up their litter.
So there's a free Ziploc bag
if anybody would like to have it(!)
If the moon's orbit was fixed,
then its distance from the Earth
should have stayed the same
ever since Jerry
began his measurements.
But it hasn't.
The moon, it seems, is on the move.
The moon is receding
at a certain rate per year.
3.8cms per year, I believe,
that it's moving out,
moving away, receding.
It doesn't sound like much.
But over time, it's going to bring
some big changes.
As the moon pulls away, it'll put an end to
one of nature's most glorious spectacles -
a total solar eclipse.
The moon is 400 times smaller
than the sun.
But at the moment, it's also precisely 400
times closer to the Earth than the sun is.
This amazing coincidence means that, when the
moon passes directly in front of the sun,
it appears exactly the same size.
We are living at the only time
in the history of the solar system
when this unique spectacle
is possible.
As the moon drifts away from us,
this awe-inspiring sight
will be over forever.
So, over the years, scientists continued
to make new discoveries about our moon.
But somehow, it was never enough
to reignite our passion
for our closest neighbour.
And that was partly because
our attention had turned elsewhere.
There are over 150 other moons
in the solar system,
and, by the late 1970s,
we were starting to explore them.
The results were spectacular.
The journey of discovery began
with the Voyager probes.
They were sent to explore
the outer solar system -
the gas giants
like Jupiter and Saturn.
Until now,
these extraordinary worlds
had been seen only
through telescopes.
It took two years for these probes to
reach their first port of call - Jupiter.
Scientists all over the world
were gripped,
waiting for the first close-up
pictures of the great giant.
But when Voyager started
transmitting pictures back to Earth,
they were in for a surprise.
It seemed it was Jupiter's moons,
rather than the planet itself,
that held the most exciting secrets.
We thought the moons would be lumps
of ice covered in craters.
And that was about it.
But when Voyager started transmitting back
pictures of Jupiter's innermost moon, lo,
there was a strange anomaly.
A young NASA scientist spotted an
odd-looking bulge on the moon's side.
I came in about nine o'clock
that morning to the navigation area
and the pictures the spacecraft had
taken a day before were on my desk.
I put them on the computer system
and I displayed them,
and I could see that lo,
the moon of lo, was a crescent,
as very often our own moon
is a crescent in the night sky.
And I went
and enhanced the brightness,
and there appeared beside lo
an object -
a huge object that looked like
something I couldn't recognise
and could never have expected
and it completely captured
my attention.
I wanted to know so badly
what that was
that I had to ask myself,
"My goodness! What is that?!"
And the answer
that occurred to me first
was it looked like another moon,
peeking out behind lo.
But when she looked closer, she realised
it was something completely different.
When I explored it,
I was able to find
that this large, strange object
was this huge plume
of a volcanic eruption
arising 270km over the surface of
Io and raining back down onto it.
So I had discovered the first
ever volcanic eruption
ever seen on another world
besides the Earth.
Io's vibrant volcanic activity
is caused by the
massive gravitational pull
exerted by Jupiter, which squeezes
and heats the moon internally.
You could actually see,
looking at the edge of lo,
plumes of what turned out to be
sulphur dioxide gas
shooting up into space,
about 100 miles,
and dropping all this sulphur
dioxide snow back onto the surface,
and the whole place is stained
red and yellow with sulphur.
It's an incredible place.
Here was a moon to swoon over.
It was far more exciting and exotic
than our own boring, lifeless moon.
And lo was just the beginning.
Soon, another of Jupiter's moons -
Europa - was also wowing scientists.
Europa's surface had no craters.
Close up, it was covered
in cracks and canyons.
Europa clearly had
a very young surface.
We could tell that there weren't
many large impact craters
and the surface
was relatively smooth and cracked.
Not chasms going deep down into it,
but cracks filled
with something darker.
A recently active surface.
Looking at it, scientists realised
it was similar
to scenes they knew from Earth,
from the poles.
Europa was covered in ice.
And because there were no craters,
they knew that the ice must have
melted and refrozen many times.
And that could mean
only one thing -
there had to be liquid water,
the crucial ingredient
for life on Europa.
It got even more exciting
when scientists began to speculate
where the heat to melt the ice
was coming from.
Again, the answer
lay within our own planet.
On the floors
of the oceans of the Earth,
scientists had discovered
"black smokers" -
volcanic heat sources coming
from below the Earth's crust,
warming the water from below.
Perhaps hot vents like these could
exist under Europa's icy crust.
Scientists could barely contain
their excitement.
Liquid water
and a volcanic heat source
sounded like the kind of conditions
that many believe
gave birth to life on Earth.
The people who work on
the origins of life on Earth today
seem to have come
to the conclusion
that the most likely place
for life to have begun
is at a hot vent on the ocean floor
and we could have the same sorts of organisms on
the floor of the ocean of Europa, at a hot vent.
And if you've got bacterial life, you
could have something eating the bacteria.
You could have a whole eco-system
down there.
like sharks grazing on smaller fish eating worms
and the worms eating the bacteria. We don't know.
There could
be all kinds of things there.
But if you want somewhere
warm and cosy
for bacterial life
to get started and to survive,
Europa is probably the best bet we've
got in the entire solar system.
It wasn't just Jupiter's moons
that were attracting attention.
When the Voyager probe
flew past Saturn,
it captured an image
of its largest moon, Titan.
It was strangely fuzzy.
It looked as though Titan
was shrouded in an atmosphere,
just like our own planet.
Scientists were desperate
to know more.
What lay beneath
this thick atmosphere?
Could it have
other similarities to Earth?
They didn't get their chance
to find out
until 20 years later,
when Cassini lifted off.
It was one of the biggest rockets
ever launched,
but even so, it took
seven years to get to Saturn.
And then,
it turned its attention to Titan.
Cassini dropped a probe called
Huygens through the Titan atmosphere
onto the hidden surface.
It revealed a world
that scientists believe
could be strikingly similar
to the early Earth.
Pictures revealed by Huygens
on its parachute descent
towards the surface of Titan
showed, at one point,
a network of valleys.
You could have been floating
over many parts of the Earth.
We've got hills
and valleys in between them
and the valleys converge
and drain into a sea.
So we can see landforms on Titan
that look very familiar to people
who do landform studies on Earth.
The valley networks are very similar to what
you get produced by rainfall on the Earth.
The extraordinary images
of distant moons
revealed them to be places
of great beauty
and tantalising possibilities.
They had volcanoes,
ice-covered oceans,
active geysers
and thick atmospheres.
There was even
the possibility of life.
Moons were the most exciting places
in the solar system.
And so, scientists began to wonder
whether our own long-abandoned moon
was perhaps worth another look.
So, in 1994, a small
unmanned orbiter, Clementine,
was sent back to the moon.
The first spacecraft to make
the journey in more than 20 years.
And this mission
would go somewhere new.
Technology had moved on
since the seventies.
And so, Clementine would be able
to reach an area of the moon
that had never been seen
in detail before -
the lunar poles.
Clementine spent two months
bombarding the moon
with radio waves,
and in doing so, it made a discovery
that scientists had never dreamt of.
They found what appeared to be
patches of ice.
Its radar was getting signals being bounced
back from the surface very strongly,
in a way consistent with there
being patches of ice down there.
And, er... it's not a lot of ice.
It could... could fill plenty
of Olympic-sized swimming pools,
but if you were to melt it and
spread it all over the lunar surface,
it would be a millimetre thick.
You're not gonna produce oceans
on the moon from this ice.
But enough for humans to exploit.
The existence of water on the moon,
even if it was frozen,
changed everything.
The bleak and barren landscape
wasn't so inhospitable after all.
Suddenly,
the possibilities seemed endless.
With life-sustaining water,
the moon could one day
be a base in space,
a stepping stone
to the rest of the universe.
Humans might even live there
one day.
The love affair was back on.
AUDIENCE APPLAUDS
As if to drive home
the renewed fascination,
45 years after President Kennedy's
famous pledge to take us to the moon,
another US President
launched a new mission.
Returning to the moon
is an important step
for our space programme.
Establishing an extended
human presence on the moon
could vastly reduce the cost
of further space exploration,
making possible
ever more ambitious missions.
The moon is a logical step
toward further progress
and achievement.
Human beings
are headed into the cosmos.
AUDIENCE APPLAUDS
It may have lacked some of his
predecessor's rhetorical flourish,
but 35 years after
the last man stepped off the moon,
we are finally going back.
NASA has already started planning
the new lunar mission.
And it's going to be big.
We are planning to go to the moon
in a particularly different way
than what we did with Apollo.
Apollo was short sortie missions.
And we're planning
to go to the moon to stay.
It'll be a permanent presence, where
each mission adds more capability.
And, eventually,
we'll just have people living there.
This time, the aim is to turn
the moon into a home from home.
And when this new lunar base
is established,
the moon will become our launch
padto the rest of the solar system.
The moon is near.
It's three days away. And we
can go and practice and perfect
all the techniques and the tools
and the things that we need to do
to go off and explore
our first foreign planet.
We'll bring tools and we'll bring...
some basic machineries
and then we'll use those machineries,
along with the lunar resources,
to make what I refer to as the
brute force and ignorance materials.
Bricks - one of the first uses of
lunar material will be making bricks.
So you can have someplace to live
without being zapped by cosmic rays.
But there doesn't seem to be quite
the same urgency as in the 1960s.
NASA's plan is to get
back to the moon by 2018.
We have to develop
a new lunar lander,
we have to develop and establish the
infrastructure on the surface of the moon
that will allow us to live there
for long periods of time.
So, as we start
the development process,
if we could develop it
all at one time,
then we could do it quicker, get
to the moon much quicker than 2018.
But given that we have to do this
somewhat serially,
we build infrastructure for travel,
then we have to build
the lunar pieces,
it'll take between now
and about 2018 to get there.
But NASA's public sector plod to the
moon isn't quick enough for some.
Now the moon is back in fashion,
NASA have got competition.
The players in the new space race
are a mixture of dreamers,
hard-headed businessmen,
and publicity seekers.
But they've got one thing
in common - they want action now.
This barren desert
in a remote corner of Utah
is the site of a unique experiment.
For one week, it's standing in
for the surface of the moon,
complete with mock-up moon base.
This is the Moon Society -
a collection of scientists
and space enthusiasts
who are already preparing for a
commercial mission to the moon.
Putting on a spacesuit
is a two-person job.
And, er...
not only because it's difficult.
It also is an opportunity
to have somebody else verify
that you have all your connections
secure and safe.
Hmm...
Not sure what this is, here.
Their aim is to establish not
just a human colony on the moon,
but a full-scale industrial complex.
So they spend their days in the Utah
desert testing out the technology
that could one day be part
of their mission to the moon.
I think you always start
with kind of a thought experiment.
What would it be like
to go to the moon?
And what would it be like
to live on the moon?
What would
it be like to work on the moon?
Then you take it to paper,
start making drawings,
and then
you take it to the next step.
Eventually you get
to a life-size prototype
and you try to make things more
and more realistic as time goes on,
so that you flesh out the problems
in order to get there.
So the more realism
you can introduce,
the more of your homework you can do ahead of
time to make sure the mission's successful.
And as they trundle around
practising being on the moon,
they can't help but dream.
People on the moon
would be involved in using resources
to start manufacturing...
First of all, they wanna manufacture
their own building materials
and other things that they need.
Anything they manufacture there
would be cheaper
than it is to bring up
from Earth's surface.
They could also, you know, if we
were to start a settlement on Mars,
the moon and Mars could trade,
and they'd be much more viable
together than either one separately.
But there's a problem.
They don't actually have
a spaceship.
Or any money.
But their optimism is unquenchable.
It's WHEN people move to the moon.
It's not a... It's an eventuality.
It's not something that's probably
going to happen or might happen,
it WILL happen.
Others are less ambitious
than the Moon Society.
For some, the moon represents a
straightforward commercial opportunity.
We started out as a group
of engineers and space enthusiasts,
got together online
and posed ourselves the challenge
of what is the lowest-cost but
commercially-viable lunar mission
that we could come up with?
We came up
with the Trailblazer Mission.
Unlike the Moon Society,
Trailblazer have at least found
a rocket to take them to the moon.
Although not an entirely
conventional one.
The launch vehicle
is a converted SS18 Satan ICBM.
That's a Cold War nuclear missile.
They essentially take the missile
out of the launch silo,
remove the warhead,
recondition the payload bay
to accommodate commercial payloads.
But these commercial payloads
do not include people.
Instead, the converted missile
will deliver much cheaper, lighter
items to the surface of the moon.
This is a line of cosmetics.
This is actually a lipstick.
You can see the obvious space theme.
One of the more popular cargo items
is with artists.
This is from a gentleman
in Minnesota who has an art gallery.
And this is Alchemist
and this is Intelligence Of Beauty.
These are original artworks.
We also have several customers
who have asked us to carry
representative samples
of cremated remains...
from loved ones
to the lunar surface.
Your going rate for cargo
is $1000 a gram,
including handling and packaging
and delivery to the lunar surface.
It's not immediately clear what the point is of
delivering lipstick to the surface of the moon.
But if someone's willing to pay,
the technology is there to do it.
This is the Penetrator,
which will carry cargo
to the surface of the moon.
Down the middle of the Penetrator
is a 1 inch, 2.5cm,
open cargo space
into which we can
load various objects
to be carried
to the surface of the moon.
It's carried internally
inside the spacecraft,
and when the spacecraft impacts
at the end of the mission,
this will punch through the front
and come to rest about ten metres
into the lunar soil.
This is very much
a commercial proposition.
They're even offering to deliver business
cards to the surface of the moon.
Or rather,
ten metres under the surface.
We have a standard rate
for regular-sized business cards.
One business card just happens
to weigh about one gram.
We expect these items to be there
practically forever,
unless somebody goes up
and removes them.
But the big prize is still
to get a person back to the moon.
And there is one private sector challenge to
NASA's moon monopoly that might just succeed.
Government always plays a big role
in getting things started.
But after a while,
the citizenry has to take over.
I mean, after all, the world and
the universe belongs to all of us.
It's not just
individual governments.
So I think you're starting
to see that now.
Greg Olsen
has already been to space.
But he's not an astronaut
and he's never worked for NASA.
He's a businessman.
Last year, he paid $20 million
for a week-long trip
to the International Space Station.
I know, with my spaceflight,
the money I thought about
for five minutes,
and it was a simple
yes or no decision,
and once I made it,
I never thought about money.
Olsen is one of
the new breed of explorers -
the space tourists who are prepared
to spend millions of dollars
to fulfil a lifelong dream.
And now, there's a company who
aim to make their dreams come true.
They've already
sent three people into space
and now they're adding a new
destination to their brochure.
It gives me great pleasure
to be here today to talk to you.
Because today is a historic day.
Space Adventures
is going to the moon.
The moon mission
is open to the public,
meaning anyone who has
the financial capability
to afford the price of the seats.
They're each priced at $100 million.
At the front of the queue
is Greg Olsen.
Who wouldn't
want to see the moon up close?
You may not want to go through
the space ride to get there,
but just imagine if you could
look out and there's the moon,
there's this big moon, the way
we're looking at the Earth now.
Just... to me,
it would be mind-boggling.
I'd really like to do it.
And the company thinks
there'll be no shortage of takers.
You really don't have to sell
a moon mission.
It's making history, it's going where
less than 30 people have gone before.
You really don't need a sales tactic
for that.
In a neat twist from the
Cold War rivalry of the 1960s,
the company works in partnership
with the Russian Space Agency.
Rich clients provide the funds and the
cash-strapped Russians provide the hardware.
And it's technology straight out of
the 1960s - the Soyuz Rocket System.
The Soyuz Rocket System
was first designed in the 1960s
for the Soviet lunar programme.
Once the Americans
landed on the moon,
the Soviet's lunar programme
was almost just abandoned.
But one of the reasons
why it was abandoned
was that the Soviet manned lunar
programme of the 1960s was a failure.
Not only did they fail
to get a man on the moon,
but they also failed to even put
a man into orbit around the moon,
despite 18 attempts
to make the technology work.
They hope that the cash injection
from the rich Westerners
will help them
do better this time.
Everything in life is a risk.
There's various degrees.
The Soyuz was designed
for lunar orbit,
so it's certainly capable
of doing it.
The Russians have
a great space programme -
great instruction,
great cosmonauts -
so I would have
a lot of confidence.
This private-sector mission has a fighting chance of
at least putting a person into orbit around the moon.
But even they could be overtaken
by a new dark horse.
A late entry in the new race
to the moon - China.
Its economy is booming.
It's a global superpower.
And now it's turning
its attention to space.
In 2003,
the Chinese put a man in space
and brought him safely
back to Earth.
In 2005, they did it again.
Now they say they want to put
a man on the moon.
Few would bet against them.
With China coming up, um...
we've had astronauts,
and cosmonauts in Russia,
and now taikonauts in China.
Now, they've had two orbits of the
Earth and, you know, that's nice.
And people say,
"Well, it's primitive technology,".
But you wait ten years and see where
those people are with space flight.
Whoever wins the race to get back
to the moon, there's little doubt
that our most ancient love affair
is back on.
In many ways, it's a relationship
that's finally grown up.
We've been through infatuation
and courtship.
We've had a bit of a rocky patch.
Now, the relationship has emerged
stronger than ever.
And this time, it looks like
we're in for the long haul.