A space for cooperation?

Did you hear the one about the village on the moon? No, not the joke about the village on the moon, the director general of the European Space Agency’s idea to build a village on the moon.

I read a little bit about it in a couple of newspapers, and having read, I went looking for more. I think he may be on to something.

Those of us who have been alive for long enough to remember the impact of Neil Armstrong’s “one small step” on July 20 1969, probably have a different regard for the moon from the rest of us. Not since that imagination-haunting day have I been so intrigued by the possibilities of the moon as a force for peaceful equilibrium on this increasingly, alarmingly, out-of-kilter planet.

“Isolating a country is not the right way,” said the ESA’s director general Jan Woermer.

“A much better solution is to find ways to co-operate in space to strengthen ties between humans on Earth.” Forget Mars For some time now, in the rarefied atmosphere where space agencies talk about such things, the wish list has all been about Mars. The trouble with Mars – one of the troubles with Mars – is that it takes six months to get there. The moon takes four days.

Another of the troubles about Mars is that seen with the naked eye (which is how most of us relate to the night sky if we relate to it at all) it’s a squishy red spot, such as you would not want to appear in the middle of your forehead.

The moon, on the other hand, has a smiley face, we write it into our songs to make us go weak at the knees. Audrey Hepburn, for heaven’s sake!

Remember the super moon three weeks ago?

I thought that would be as good a place to start as any, having read about the moon village.

What I found rather took my breath away. It was an internet gallery of photographs of the super moon, fabulous photographs, but the gaspinducing aspect of them was that they were from all over the world.

One illuminated a Russian space rocket on its launcher in readiness for the international space station. There was one that could have been straight out of any BBC News Channel bulletin any night of any week these last five years, for it glowed above a truckmounted gun in Syria. Another was reflected in the Swan River in Perth, Western Australia.

There were photographs of the moon over the desert in Utah, in Nuremberg, in Istanbul. Over the sea off the coast of Mexico, and embalming with haloed beauty a hillside slum in Caracas, Venezuela.

Above the ancient walls of Cordoba in Spain, wedged between stone columns at the Acropolis in Athens, high over a Tatra Mountains snowscape at Zakopane, Poland...

If you have your heart set on a process to “strengthen ties between humans on Earth”, surely the moon is the perfect logo for such an endeavour. Symbolism It is everyone’s moon, wherever we live, and to a man, woman and child it symbolises beauty. Why should it not also symbolise international co-operation, scientific advancement? Why not build a moon village?

In 1960, President Kennedy announced that humankind would land on the moon in 10 years. No one knew how to do it at the time, yet nine years later it happened.

Now, the international space station has taught us something of what it takes to live in space, but it has only 10 years left before it falls back to earth as a fireball.

Relax, it will happen in the Pacific Ocean, although that won’t be much comfort to a blue whale. For further details check New adventure The next stop on the way to an ever deeper understanding of what is out there is not Mars, it’s the moon.

If we can put telescopes there, on the far side (and therefore free from the Earth’s interference), a great new adventure can begin that embraces all humankind, because the moon embraces all humankind.

A village on the moon might just be the best idea our species has come up with in a long time.

Moon tourism. Chill for a week in the Sea of Tranquillity. Why wouldn’t you want to go? I would.

Nasa’s own account of 1969 and all that, written for its website in 2014, includes this:

“Magnificent desolation,” said Aldrin.

“Those two words summed up the yin-yang of the moon. The impact craters, the toppled boulders, the layer of moondust – it was utterly alien. Yet Tranquillity Base felt curiously familiar, like home.

“Later Apollo astronauts had similar feelings. Maybe this comes from staring at the moon so often from Earth.

“Or maybe it’s because the Moon is a piece of Earth, spun off our young planet billions of years ago. No one knows: it just is.”

Why not build a moon village?

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Picture: Getty Images. Jim chooses to go to the Moon... and he thinks if we all pulled together to get there it would strengthen ties between nations back home.