A Flight to the Far Side of the Moon

 A Tripel Projection of the Moon showing the near side (within yellow lines) the areas of Lunar Liberation (between green and yellow lines) and the Far Side of the Moon (outside green lines)
 

Flight to the Far Side of the Moon

Back in the mid-sixties when the Apollo moon landing program was the end all of space news, the knowledge and technology we take for granted today was no more than science fiction. 

In 1968, NASA announced that the Apollo 8 mission would take three men around the moon and back as a preliminary flight to prepare for the 1969 lunar landing. This mission was going to be a monumental accomplishment that would include humanities first look at the Earth from space and the far side of the Moon, which is never visible from the Earth. 

On hearing this I was instantly fascinated with the question of what the far side of the moon would actually look like.  At fourteen, I had already spent four years at Star Base One (my family’s back yard) with my eyes glued to the eyepiece, examining every detail of the moon that my telescopes would reveal.  Two years earlier, I had upgraded from the Gilbert “toy" telescope that Santa had brought me, to a “real" telescope that I had purchased from Edmund Scientific (through a mail order ad found in the back of the Popular Science magazine).

The Moon I knew (and for that matter, the Moon everyone knew) was really rather one sided and basically flat.  Even though we all know that the moon is a sphere, for all intents and purposes, it is generally portrayed as a disk with surface features somewhat resembling the relief imprint on the face of a coin.  Anything that was beyond the horizons of Moon’s Earth facing side, were basically Terra Incognita (unknown lands). Since the moon does not rotate on its polar axis like the Earth and the other planets, which would otherwise reveal hidden details, the Far Side was still a great mystery. 

Due a force known as Tidal Locking, the Moon is fixed into a synchronous rotation with the Earth, like two twirling skaters facing each other with their hands locked together. Because of this, we are only able to see 59% of the moon through the course of a month; the other 41% is what we refer to as the Far Side of the Moon.  The 9% over the full 50% (the half that we can see) is due to to the moon actually being a sphere and an apparent visual rocking motion known as Lunar Liberation.  Late in the lunar month we can see a little bit more of one side, while early in the lunar month we can see just a bit more of the other.  This is like being able to see more of someone’s ears when they are facing us by slight tipping our heads from one side to the other. 

 

As I began to wonder what the Far Side of the Moon would look like, it was these visual areas of Lunar Liberation that I began to study. I had figured that these “ears” of the moon would give me a glimpse of what the rest of the lunar sphere would look like, and I began to imagine what the Apollo 8 astronauts would actually see. I assumed that if I could see any relative consistency in the lunar terrain in both the liberation extremities, that I could extrapolate some form of overall perspective.   With lunar maps in hand and my eye studying the moon’s surface through the telescope, I strategically planned my observing sessions on either side of the New Moon, the exact times that the liberated areas would be visible.

...and MILES

 

Applying what I would later learn to be a technique used by both Galileo and Einstein (a thought experiment), I imagined myself flying to the moon and circumnavigating its circumference as the Apollo astronauts would in their spacecraft. Before this, I had often imagined myself flying through space, but this was the first time I had actually thought of using this technique as a way of applying science to imagination in order to gain insight.  In this particular flight of the imagination, I actually envisioned myself flying like Superman with no ship or even a space suit. Lying on my back in a reclining lawn chair, I looked at the moon one last time then closed my eyes. I could practically feel myself rising through the air and accelerating into space.  Even at fourteen, I knew enough about space that everything I imagined on this journey was based on my scientific knowledge and personal observations, the only thing I had to “see” in my mind’s eye, that I had not already known, was the Far Side of the Moon.

As I approached lunar orbit, I gazed upon the darkened but familiar terrain of the Near Side, which was now only visible due to the Earthshine.  To the Lunar East, the slim crescent began to expand as I rounded the corner of the Liberated Territory.  Here, I clearly saw the multitude of craters that my maps and observations had shown. As I progressed around to the Far Side, traveling toward the distant horizon, I saw no lava plains, only countless thousands of craters of every imaginable size. From east to west the familiar dark lava plain “Seas” of the Earth facing side were conspicuously absent.  The distant vistas I imagined while flying over the Far Side were an endless landscape of craters and mountains, as far as my mind’s eye could see.    

 

 

Earthrise as seen from Apollo 8

Since my studies of the Moon’s liberated extremities showed only craters, I had intuitively assumed that this was indicative of the entire Far Side. Although it might have been logical to assume that the Far Side of the Moon would have the same general appearance as the Near Side, what little evidence I had available just told me that craters would overwhelmingly dominate.   While much of my certainty came from my knowledge of the moon based on my reading, I really trusted my intuition and what my thought experiment “flight” around the Moon had revealed.  To my thinking; if the moon had acted as a “meteor magnet” that generally protected the Earth from bombardment, as theorized, then the Far Side of the Moon should look as if it had been blasted by a shotgun.

I impatiently waited for collaborative documentation to return with Apollo 8 in photographs and published descriptions, it wasn’t too long before my speculative theory was confirmed. The Far Side of the Moon was indeed predominated by craters and there were no lava plain seas.  Only one or two of the larger craters showed lava flooded basins, leaving the rest of the Far Side looking like the proverbial image of Swiss Cheese.
 

The Far Side of the Moon 

 My flight of the imagination had given me a glimpse of the moon that no one before the Apollo 8 astronauts had ever actually seen. For weeks after seeing the pictures returning from the moon, it was as if I were walking on clouds. I felt that I had developed a sound hypothesis based on research and observation, and that the Apollo 8 mission had substantiated my theory. I figured myself a true scientist and felt that I was beginning to grasp astronomy on a much deeper level. No longer was my “star gazing” simply pastime of admiring the sky, it was developing into an understanding of the universe that virtually went beyond the stars.

Twelve years later (1980) when I watched the premiere episode of Cosmos, I almost leaped out of my seat when Carl Sagan introduce his "Spaceship of the Imagination" as a way of exploring the Universe.  My initial flight around the moon in 1968 had only been the beginning of my adventures in space.  After that maiden voyage around the moon, I repeatedly found myself flying off into the cosmos and diving into the deepest crevasses of the sea. Whenever I discovered places or found things that I didn't fully understand, or as I worked on things such as engines or instruments, I would imagine myself shrinking down and delving into them as if space and solidity had no boundaries.  By combining my understanding with my imagination, I found that I could see things from the inside out, as if I were actually inside them.
 

Sagan's Spaceship of the Imagination



Although I had never bothered to take an imaginary ship with me on these adventures, I soon adopted that perspective when relating my experiences with others. Having also watched Cosmos, other people seemed more comfortable with the idea when I made the correlation between looking into space and going there in a virtual way. Today virtual worlds abound and there are desktop planetarium programs like Celestia, that allow anyone to virtually fly through the Galaxy and see the Universe up close and personal from perspectives out in space.

The Science Fiction world of the 1960’s exists today because of people with imagination, people who were not afraid to take flight in "Spaceships of the Imagination" and trust in what these virtual flights revealed to them.  There is an art to expressing and experiencing what we intuitively understand and if we allow ourselves to be artists as well as scientists, we can freely travel throughout space and time and come to understand this beautiful Universe as our true home.

“I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am… [but] I would have been surprised if I had been wrong.   I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”  
  
– Albert Einstein

Miles, Star Base One, May 22, 2014