View from the North 40: It's an exercise in lunacy

It seems only fitting that a recent push to define and enforce some kind of time zone system on the moon has a link to the word lunacy.

The Associate Press reported Feb. 28 the European Space Agency requested that the moon to have its own time zone. In response, a joint international effort, with all the countries participating in the race back to the moon, is being launched to create what one navigation system engineer called “a common lunar reference time.”

The current space race aims to get to the moon, set up space stations and push on to Mars from the moon’s surface. NASA is shooting for its first flight with astronauts to the moon in more than a half-century to come in 2024, with a lunar landing possibly as early as 2025, the AP article said.

The term lunacy is history linked to the perception that the moon caused “moon madness” — now known as mental health issues — and other afflictions like epilepsy and menstruation and lycanthropy. Now, the effort by mankind to come to an international agreement on a measurement of time for the actual lunar body itself, in only one or two years will forever be linked with lunacy.

I know, some of you are thinking, “What is this chick blathering on about now. They just need to set the moon to Greenwich Mean Time, call it Lunar Standard Time, and move on.” You know what? That’s a really simple, sweet and wholly naive thing to believe in the international cooperation of humans.

International scientists and their governments started in 1875 with the Metre Treaty trying to agree on how to weigh and measure, well, everything, equally and accurately. They’re still working on it — though, I grant you, “everything” is a pretty tall order.

We’ve had worldwide agreement on time forever, right? No. Not even now. Japan, North Korea, Thailand and Taiwan use different calendars, with different new years. Ethiopia thinks its 2016, for real.

Don’t worry about years, you might think, just stay focused on days. OK, yeah. A day a cycle of sun and darkness, back around to the the start of sun again. Right? A day on the moon is what we on Earth call a lunar cycle, it’s about 29 days long. Unless you’re on the backside of the moon where the sun don’t shine, which is the classic Hollywood-inspired Ground Hog Day loop.

On the International Space Station one day is about 90 minutes long. Don’t even go there.

So now we’re back to, “Hey, can’t we just set the moon clocks to the same time as one point on Earth?”

Sorry, no. Clocks operate at a different speed on the moon. Any clocks will have to be tuned into the Atomic Clock system on Earth, which is the most accurate thing we have, though it is constantly tweaked, recalibrated and updated, occasionally has needed to take a leap second to readjust.

Plus, who’s time will the moon follow, because there will be a huge prime time advantage to any time zone synced with the moon?

As a base of reference, let’s use Greenwich Mean Time, which is based in London. Lunar Station folks get up, take a stretch, grab some coffee and get to work by 8 a.m. Friday London time.

What does that look like for space and science people around Earth working with their Lunar Station people? That’s 4 a.m. Friday at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral and midnight Friday at the Space Disturbance Monitoring Station of the blah blah blah near Anchorage, Alaska. And for space-y science stuff in Japan it’s 5 p.m. quitting time, and in Sydney, Australia it’s 7 p.m. happy hour and will already be 4 a.m. Saturday by the time they get off shift.

Greenwich Mean Time, officially Coordinated Universal Time monitored by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, was centered on London originally because, simply, they got there first. As a global maritime powerhouse in the 1800s, London started setting official times and meridian lines. And when countries got together at the International Meridian Conference of 1884 to agree to agree on scientific time measurement, they drew the prime meridian right through the middle of the Airy Transit Circle, the first ginormous telescope built in England and plunked down in Greenwich, London, in 1851.

In contrast, moon mission time is based on whichever country is operating the International Space Station.

By these historical standards, then, the first country, or corporation, to land on the moon and get operations established, gets dibs on the clock, right?

If this is what the agreement comes to, you know that all the major players in the space race are going to be racing to launch astronauts at the moon out of clown canons. You can see it happening.

NASA engineers will be telling the next astronautical pilot Capt. Airan Space, “Keep yourself tucked tight through the initial thrust. Once you’re clear of the atmosphere, open up into a diver’s position. Keep your fingers forward, flat and pointed at the moon. Eyes on the target. And if you need to make any course adjustments, there’s a classic Rocketeer rudder on the top of your helmet so just tilt your head. Careful with that, though. When you feel the pull of the moon, just open your shoot. Upon landing, get the tent pegs out of your backpack and devise a shelter the parachute as the roof. It’s already made from five large American flags, sewn together by my mom’s quilting group.”

“OK, people. Let’s lock and load. We’re sending this clown to the moon!!”

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I’ll have a watch party at my house at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .