The case for going to the moon
Ken Murphy / 12:36 am January 14th, 2006
“The case for going to the moon” by Neil P. Ruzic. Published in 1965 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in New York. Runs 231 pages of content, which includes ample B&W illustrations, photos, and even a picture of a diorama of a small nuclear plant on the Moon.
There are a couple of titles in the Lunar Library that really need to get republished. This small work is one of them. In his preface, Mr. Ruzic states:
“I am uneasy. I resent the passive attitudes many scientists have toward the challenge of science, especially their passivity concerning the greatest scientific, technological, and industrial opportunity of all time - the development of space - a challenge so limitless and exciting as ultimately to surpass all previous human accomplishment.”
The resentment arose from an exercise that he undertook immediately prior to writing the book. He mailed out at at least 1,000 questionnaires to each of seven different carefully selected groups of scientists and engineers (7,742 total). The overall average rate of return was 12.6%, or about 1 in 8. By discipline, it broke down as follows:
-biologists 6.0%
-geologists 8.3%
-astronomers 8.4%
-vacuum specialists 10.2%
-meteorologists 14.8%
-engineers 18.2%
-chemists 21.4%
Now Mr. Ruzic was editor and publisher of Industrial Research magazine, which routinely mailed out commercial questionnaires (What kind of microscope do you use?) that rarely averaged below a 30% return. This kicks off his first chapter, Cases Against the Moon, where he visits many of the arguments being made at the time against a Moon boondoggle.
He then comes back strong with The Case for Research in the Lunar Vacuum, wherein he notes that on the Moon there is 15,000,000 square miles of a vacuum far harder than anything we can achieve here on Earth. He goes into The Case for Manufacturing on the Moon, The Case for Mining the Moon, The Case for Technological Transfer, The Case for Seeing the Universe, and finally The Case for Life Beyond Earth.
This book is a very powerful read, even today, and it opens vistas onto vast realms of imaginative industrial possibilities on the greyfields of the Moon. If you can find a copy or your local library can get you one, read it. If you really want to know about the kinds of things we can do on the Moon, industrially and commercially, then this is the book for you.
After 40 years its copyright should be about up, or perhaps the Ruzics could permit a copy to be archived on the web at Harvard. Perhaps some old Lunar fan can cough up a copy to be taken apart for the scanning process. I can only hope.
This book is a solid Full Moon.