The light of the moon oscillates slowly, very gently, like the movement of sleep. What do we owe the moon? The peoples, for centuries, had their eyes turned towards her.
In the masterpiece of documentary cinema that is For the rest of the world, Pierre Perrault captures the words of the islanders of L’Isle-aux-Coudres. Captains accustomed to the tides, with overflowing words, discuss the cosmos among themselves. At the time of the first flights in space, they wonder who will be able to reach the moon, while considering its virtues, its merits, its omnipotence.
We are in 1962. In the midst of the hubbub of an auction for the benefit of the parish, Captain Joachim Harvey affirms that it is the good God who created the Moon for the Earth. “If he had created the Earth for the Moon, the Moon would have been inhabited and not the Earth. That means that there, the Moon, it is she who makes the grass grow on the Earth. It is she who creates the seasons. It is she who crosses the trees. She is the one who crosses the animals. It is she who crosses the world! In other words, it is the food of the Earth. And the man hastened to add, so that no one is mistaken, that this is not just a simple saying. Oh no ! “It’s real, for centuries! »
At his side, convinced by this cosmogony, Grand-Louis subscribes to this same vision of the world. “The moon is a very terrible thing,” he said gravely to those around him.
To hear these old sailors from another era, the moon is somehow at the origins of the world. “Everything works with the moon”, they assure, while explaining how, by losing its pieces at each of its phases, it nourishes the earth. Will we be able to approach it one day? Maybe. Calmly. By stages. Within a few years, they suggest.
Since then, man has set foot on the Moon. The Apollo mission left behind stainless steel plaques to testify to this. They include the signature of the astronauts, but also that of the President of the United States, Richard Nixon. The plate of the Apollo 11 rocket, the first to land on the Moon, indicates, in English, that men who came in peace, in the name of humanity, landed there, in July of the year of the lord 1969 To whom can such a plaque be addressed, if not to people who speak English and who hold God, this other elusive referent, as an ever-consequent point of reference?
Half a century later, the Artemis mission, named after this sister goddess of Apollo, proposes to return to the Moon. Apart from promising beautiful images of rockets and square-jawed astronauts, what does this tell us about the times to come?
The case is estimated, for the moment, at more than 100 billion dollars. The mission wants to make the Moon a base so that from there it is possible to be within rocket range of the planet Mars. The American space agency has announced, in harmony with the prescriptions of the present, that “the first woman and the first person of color will set foot on the lunar soil”.
Between the Apollo and Artemis missions, there were billions of dollars spent to create never-completed missile shields. Former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan waged a war against the poor on earth while projecting Star Wars security fantasies into the sky. After the fall of the USSR, many had suggested cutting even more social programs so that space programs could be continued. Since then, tons of debris have accumulated in orbit around the Earth.
The administration of Bush Jr. supported the Prometheus project, with billions of dollars, in order to produce space launchers based on the use of nuclear energy. Over the short history of the conquest of space, several nuclear accidents have occurred. Irradiating the Earth may one day be done in a multitude of ways.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has the wind in its sails again, while its budget had been reduced. The conquest of space resumes where it culminated: on the Moon. The case is again given as a universal accomplishment, but his private interests appear more and more evident.
For the benefit of billionaires who enjoy getting laid, a lot of money is now being spent on solving major space problems. Physicists have thus worked, in recent years, on scientific advances in order to find a way to pop the champagne and toast in weightlessness.
The financial floodgates are open again on the space side. This very expensive colonial adventure promises juicy benefits to those who intend to push the expansion of their interests, including outside the atmosphere.
A sign of the times, advertisements to sell us automobiles now look more than ever like embarking on an interstellar mission. “It’s the beginning of a new exploration,” says in a serious tone the advertisement of one of these manufacturers of sheet metal carcasses mounted on rubber washers. “Adventure into a new world,” says another ad. Go, it is added, “even further towards infinity.” Even on the side of idiocy? Elon Musk didn’t send an electric car into space for nothing. The leaders of our world appear engaged in parading in the sky all the instruments forged to destroy us.
The degradation of our environment is no longer in doubt. Even the saddened, those inclined to close their eyes to reality, finally admit it. A new lunar conquest, is this really the intellectual tonic that humanity needs to tear itself away from the sidereal void of the stupidity that drives it?
The moon, “it’s a very terrible thing”, Grand-Louis would say more than ever.