Outer Space Outrage!

I’m a fan of space and astronomy and all that wild blue yonder stuff. So it hurts me to say that there are two stories in the news today that have left me in a state of annoyance.

The first is the unbelievable information that NASA has apparently lost its original footage of the Apollo moon missions. How in the hell does something like that happen?

I know they’ve worked on a lot of projects in their history and I’m sure there’s a gazillion things on file- but landing human beings on the moon is considered by most to be the most important success in that history. How does that get misplaced?

Next time file it under M for Moon, or Moron.

The second disturbing story comes out of Prague. A group of elite astronomers and other eminent space-folk have been holed up for quite some time trying to come up with an internationally recognized definition of the word ‘planet.’

This early report proves the point that 2500 brilliant minds are sure to screw up just about anything. Pluto is the sticking point. In the way-back days certain moons were considered planets. Then they were stripped of the status and Pluto was discovered and bestowed the title of planet- but that was before we figured out that Pluto was really a part of a larger system known as the Kuiper Belt.

The Kuiper Belt is a whole mess of orbiting debris just beyond Neptune that resembles the asteroid belt that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. These belts are a bit like still-born planets, a field of debris that never quite gained enough gravitational attraction to coalesce into a proper round planet like ours.

I don’t have a problem with Pluto being considered a planet but the reclassification of certain moons in the solar system as planets is simply wrong.

Pluto is a planet because it’s gravity is strong enough to make it round and it is orbiting the Sun first. Meaning it is primarily orbiting the Sun. A moon of any kind orbits something else first and the Sun second. If we include one of Pluto’s moons, why not include our own?

If Pluto is a planet then any other round object in the Kuiper Belt that can be found is a planet as well. Which can get dice-y because there’s a lot of crap out there, surely some of it will be found to be round in the future.

The answer is to copy the star classification system. Astronomers are happy with two categories; major and minor stars. Likewise we should classify the stuff within our own solar system as being either major or minor as well. We should have major planets and minor planets. Let the experts agree on what it takes to be a major planet and classify all the rest as minor. At the end of the day we’d end up with eight to ten Majors and potentially thousands of Minors.

But no moons!

The Sun must be their first dancing partner damnit!

BTW:
Did you know that Pluto is smaller than the United States of America?

It’s also 3.7 billion miles from the Sun.

It takes sunlight eight minutes to get from the Sun to the Earth- but it takes it another 241 minutes to get to Pluto.