Moonstruck Over Water?

Bombing the moon would have sounded like an improbable episode from A Hitchhiker���s Guide to the Galaxy, if it wasn���t true. A bunch of serious NASA scientists actually sent off a Centaur rocket to detonate a crater near the Moon���s barren, pock-marked south pole. This sophisticated scientific manoeuvre was expected to set off a plume of moondust containing globules of water which would help sustain future manned lunar missions. Right.

India���s hand in this sci-fi adventure ��� the bombing was apparently prompted by the late lamented Chandrayaan-I���s ���discovery��� of water on the surface of the moon just before it conked out ��� may have lent the gambit a veneer of credibility, but that has not stopped the theorising. If the conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh���s take was that ���...this could set up a retaliatory attack! You know, wait ���til the meteorites organise when they hear about this, folks...���, the average American Joe was thinking, ���Whatta load of moonshine!���

Indeed, why should anyone want to prospect for minute quantities of vapour on an airless ball of orbiting rock when 2/3rds of the Earth is covered with water? Are scientists actually finetuning a big missile that can travel long, really long, distances ? We will rule out the really improbable theories like the bomb���s mission was to destroy a secret Martian surveillance bunker or to dispose of the much-dissected bodies of the extra-terrestrials who crashlanded in Roswell, New Mexico many moons ago.

How about the contention, then, that it was an experiment to find a long-term solution to the perennial terror of tidal flooding, by weakening that ���outpost of tyranny���, the moon. That, of course, would make the spinning orb an ���axis of evil��� in this climate-conscious world... But those are phrases coined by ex-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and ex-President George W Bush, respectively, and as such hardly likely to inspire the newly-enNobelled incumbent... What are scientists really over the moon about?