13 June 2010
The Man Who Stole the Moon
(First Ranger image of the Lunar surface. NASA photo.)
Being Up North this time is about the collision of the past and the future, me being stuck in the eternal now.
It is a challenge, but not in a bad way. Just confusing. Mom came out last night looking to see if I was OK. I had kissed her tenderly and said good night about a half hour before, right around the time the fox padded into my field of view as I pensively puffed a cigarette out on the staircase that leads up to the upper level of the Big Top.
I told the fox to get lost, and he complied, though I think he knew exactly where he was, though I did not.
I walked with her back to the main house and assured her everything was fine and secure for the night, and shut things down when the light died. I think I slept well, since I had no dreams.
I rose with the birds and the first tinge of light. Five or so. I made the coffee and caged some bandwidth off whoever operates the unsecured "Linksys" wifi net at the hospital next door. My thanks, whoever you are.
I had just emerged from the Times and was headed over to the creative side when I was struck by a twinge of guilt. I am my parent’s eldest child and guilt comes with that territory. It is accentuated when I am around them, and this strange time of transition has not eliminated it. Their expectations of their first-born have always been as limitless as they are unrealistic.
Mom added one yesterday. My Uncle Jim, my namesake, was the eldest and a fraternal twin to Aunt Rhoda. Being the man, and the times being what they were, he took the leadership of the family seriously when Grandpa died in the 1940s. Dad was the baby of the family, by 18 years to Jim, which made Dad almost his son, and our branch of the family almost grandchildren.
Jim took time each week to write a letter to my Dad down through the years, outlining the concerns of the day and sage advise. Over the years, you can imagine that became a thick file, which Mom meticulously saved.
Mom has not stopped having concept ideas. She pulled out the books she has organized over the years to share the photos with The Cousins when they were here this week.
We were looking at the file cabinets filled with more projects late yesterday in the garage. Next to them is a large framed etching of Neil Armstrong in his space garb, and a curious large-format photo of the lunar surface. It is quite detailed, and apparently was taken from the stream of images produced by the Ranger exploratory spacecraft that were sent to survey prospective landing sites for the Apollo missions
There is a note on the back that the photo may not be sold or transferred without the express consent of my Uncle, who passed away several years ago.
We spent several minutes yesterday talking about the title of the book that might emerge from such a detailed accounting of the family from the war years on. Mom thinks that the title should have the "moon" in it, for sure, since Jim was one of the men who stole away with the first close-up pictures of our heavenly companion.
Jim was not your average guy. He was an aeronautical engineer to start, and designed the first all stainless-steel amphibious aircraft, back in the day (MIT class of '25, or thereabouts). It required the invention of a new spot-welding technique, and he was a multi-threat thinker.
In his later life he branched out into optical technologies, and wound up designing gun-aiming systems that the Eastman Kodak company sold to the government. He later did some things that boggle the mind, and are still classified.
The part that he could talk about were the digital systems that beamed the Ranger spacecraft images back to earth, surveying the prospective lunar landing sites for the Apollo missions.
Later, when I was in government with the right clearances, I asked him whether he had considered that the digital cameras he designed could be turned around from stealing close-up pictures of the moon and pointed at the earth. Maybe placed on perpetual orbit without the need to send the film back to earth, and provide constant surveillance of people and things we did not like. He smiled enigmatically, and I grinned right back.
We knew. That technology cost the taxpayers a lot of money, but as it turned out, the digital capability had some quite remarkable dual use. What can steal a picture of the moon can be used effectively to borrow other things, too, in near real-time.
You can get it on Google Earth, now, but that provides you only a snap-shot in time, when the little camera car happened to drive by the point on the earth you wish to observe. Imagine what it might be like to see that place with the image updated a few times each day? Wouldn't that be useful?
It is interesting, looking back, at what the money we spent to get to the moon funded along the way. Perfecting the inter-continental ballistic missile might be one.
Digital satellite imagery might be another, though Uncle Jim is not talking.
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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