Word: moone
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...environment that makes the moon so hostile to terrestrial life is, paradoxically, precisely what makes the moon so potentially valuable. The absence of atmosphere, which exposes any life on the moon to deadly radiation and the inhospitable vacuum of space, also makes the moon an ideal base for observatories and some industries. Meteors which have battered the lunar surface for eons have probably also endowed the moon with immense mineral wealth. Although lunar days and nights are each two weeks long and accompanied by deadly extremes of temperature (ranging from 240 degrees Fahrenheit above zero to 250 below), both...
Some scientists are hoping that unexpected clues in Apollo's samples will lead to new and more satisfying theories about the moon's origin. Complains Astrophysicist Ralph Baldwin: "There is no existing theory that gives a satisfactory explanation of the earth-moon system as we know it." Nobel Laureate Chemist Harold Urey wryly notes that it would be easier to prove that the moon did not exist than to get agreement on how it came...
Chemical analysis of the samples may also help determine whether lunar material was ever hot enough to have melted, or whether it has been relatively cool almost from the first. Moon specimens strikingly lacking in volatile elements such as potassium and arsenic could indicate that these substances had been expelled by high temperatures?and would support the theory of a volcanic moon. Those who believe that meteors gave the moon its cratered surface might still argue, however, that the volcanism had occurred only in areas struck?and heated?by huge meteors. Studies of the crystal size and average density...
LOOKING down at the pitted surface of the moon from a height of 70 miles last December, Apollo 8 Astronaut Frank Borman described it as "vast, lonely and forbidding?a great expanse of nothing." But looks can be deceiving. As desolate as the moon appears, scientists have little doubt that man will soon work, play, and perhaps even prosper on his bleak satellite...
...early visits to the moon will be largely taken up with exploration and scientific studies of the lunar substance and structure. But man will not long be able to resist making practical use of his closest celestial neighbor. As soon as they are able, for example, astronomers will be competing to book passage to the moon. There, freed at last from the obscuring mantle of terrestrial atmosphere, they will immediately get a clearer, more revealing and more leisurely look at the universe around them...