Listen: ( 3:00) to this recording from Fusion... Or order the entire CD set from iTunes:
	NASA Project and Moonlight from the show 6/11 06/11/02 from the Internet Archive
	Watch this YouTube video live at 6/11 in Chicago 06/11/02
	See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her prose NASA Project live 9/17/15 at Story Teller Night at Roots Room in Chicago (from a Canon fs200 camera)
	See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her prose NASA Project live 9/17/15 at Story Teller Night at Roots Room in Chicago (filmed with a Canon Power Shot)

NASA Project

I’ve always loved astronomy.

I’ve kept the telescope I had since I was a child, I remember tracking the motion of the stars to the horizon when I was six with my sister when she took a high school astronomy class, I’ve witnessed two comets, I’ve even had a star past the base of the constellation Cygnus named after me.

I’ve studied black holes, tried to learn more about astrophysics, the whole nine yards.

And I have noted that there are studies and possibly plans for NASA, after setting up the space station, may be planning a colony on the moon for inhabitants, as part of a test to study which would also entail the long-term-effects of a change in gravitation force on the human body.

And I heard this, that there may be plans for this within the next twenty or thirty years, and I thought,

my god, I am meant for this, I would be perfect for this.

But then I thought,

what would I do there, why would they want me there

And

I’m a journalist, I’ve written all my life, and I’m a designer,

and my job would be to catalog what is going on at the colony and to distribute news to the colony about what is going on on the moon and maybe also even about what is going on on earth.

And I liked this plan, it would seem fitting, give me occasional feeds through occasional transmittals of information for me to pass on to the colony, and I would catalog historically what is happening here for people on earth to learn from, this sounds like the perfect thing for me

and then I though, wow,

I would disseminate all information to this colony of people on the moon. I would be their only link to news.

I could tell them anything.

Just think about this for a moment: I could tell them anything and they wouldn’t be able to use another source to prove me wrong, I could tell them I sang the national anthem for the President,

no really, I don’t have that bad of a voice,

because we were leaving to live on the moon,

and these people would believe me.

I wonder if I had to write reports to send back to earth, would I have to tell them about the hypnotic effects of the earthlight, because, you know, everyone talks about how wonderful it is to be in the moonlight.

But I don’t know if it is a good idea to have a restrained audience, people who had to listen to me, and then I started thinking:

would I be able to bring my pet cat with me?

Cause all I can think is that my cat would be taking leaps and they would be fifteen feet jumps, 10 feet in the air, you know, they probably wouldn’t let me bring a pet to the moon, but it’s still fun to think about the gravitational pull for them. Remember at the Planetarium how they would have scales for different planets so you could see how much you would weigh there because of different gravitational pulls? All the women liked weighing themselves on the moon because of the moon having one sixth the pull of earth they could look at a scale and say,

“I weigh thirty-six pounds.”

But then I suddenly started to think: I love the idea of seeing the stars from an entirely different angle, I wonder how they would accommodate for days that are twenty-eight earth days long on the moon, can you even imagine seeing the earth in the sky out there the way we look at the moon now, can you imagine it. You’d be there, unable to make any connection with people on earth at all, and would that be hard?

The one thing I realized I’d miss so much about leaving earth for years would be not the traffic, or having to go to the grocery store or to a restaurant, but missing love. For the first time you’d be separated from your family, would my husband go with me, or would I have to live without the one person that meant the entire earth to me, would i have to learn to live without love.

Copyright Janet Kuypers.
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