Mare Tranquillitatis

covering everything, waiting for nothing.

And somewhere on the surface, in the sea of tranquility, the footprints wait in the silence.

They are pressed into the soft regolith, the shape of boot treads recorded in the dust, with a clarity that will last for an almost incomprehensible stretch of time.

No one is there to see them, No one has been there for decades, but they remain as clear and sharp as the day they were made, a quiet testament to one of the most extraordinary things that human beings have ever done.

It is a fixed point in a changing world, a constant in a universe of variables, and there is something deeply reassuring about that.

Whatever else may change, however much the world may shift and transform and reinvent itself, The Moon will be there, looking the same as it has always looked, doing the same things it has always done.

And now, having covered all of these facts, from the Moon's basic nature as a rocky body orbiting the Earth to the footprint still waiting in the silence of the Sea of Tranquility, we can step back and see the whole picture.

the moon is not one thing it is many things at once it is a natural satellite a rocky body a source of reflected light a driver of tides a stabilizer of seasons a calendar marker a cultural icon a target of exploration a canvas for the imagination a companion in the dark it is all of these things simultaneously and each one is connected to all the others because they are all aspects of the same simple object a ball of rock in space circling the earth doing what it has always done The physics of the moon give rise to the tides and the tides shape the lives of fishers and sailors and the lives of fishers and sailors shape the cultures that grew up near the water and those cultures told stories about the moon that filled it with meaning and personality and myth.

Th- these are, um...

Before people knew that the moon didn't have weather like we have or oceans, these large flat areas were called s- the Sea of Tranquility, okay? That's where it gets its name.

Nice.

Um, and all the seas were named after psychological states or physiological states.

Yes.

After Apollo 11 landed in the Sea of Tranquility, what lunar region was the destination for the Apollo 12 landing?

The ocean of storms.

Oceanus Procalarum, yes.

"'O Moon, where'er the clouds fly, beyond the willow tree, there is a ramblin' space guy I wish you'd save for me.

Mare Tranquillitatis, O dark and tranquil sea, until he drops from heaven, rest him there with thee.'" Her voice cracked, and she laughed.

Old Donnigal chuckled weakly.

"Fried mush," he said.

The difference between touching the moon once and going back to stay is not primarily a difference in technology.

The physics that carried Apollo 11 to the Sea of Tranquility in 1969 are the same physics that will carry Artemis missions to the lunar South Pole.

The difference is institutional.

It is programmatic.

That's what they said, and yet it did happen.

An American spaceship called Apollo 11 did land on the moon in the Sea of Tranquility on July 20th, 1969, 10 years ago.

And so did all the millions of Americans who got together to make it happen with their individual efforts and their support.

When we get together, we can do what can be done.

That's not true.

Again, there are pictures in the book that we've put in there that show that the pictures that they purport to show the moon landing area in the Sea of Tranquility, the first one anyway, It just doesn't show anything of the kind.

It's impossible to discern what those tiny little dots, and that's all they are, just tiny little dots.

It's impossible to discern exactly what they are.

I could recognize the wrinkles.

Crisium, Mare Fecunditatis, Mare Tranquillitatis, the Luna Apennines.

[gentle music] It took two fraudulent bankruptcy and an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission before we did it.

The Moon.