Beach Boys and Girls on the Moon

For many, it happens every time the moon is full. When the moon is full, and so seemingly close, it can be irresistible. Every culture has fantasies about the moon, the hidden secrets on the dark side of the moon, and even about the werewolves and lunatics that are bewitched by the compelling force from the lunar surface.

The tide is the oceans moving because of the overwhelming power of the pull of the moon. The human spirit and imagination can also become captives of the otherworldly demand from our nearest alien neighbor. Albert Einstein once said, “I like to think the moon is there even when I’m not looking at it.”

Before Columbus cast off the lines on the Nina, Pinta, and the Santa Maria, and began to set sails across a vast ocean in search of new trading routes and strange new worlds, he had a tough time getting financing. He spent years begging for his exploration and his ships to come into fruition, but when his expeditionary force was ready to set off on a voyage that would change the world, skeptics were standing on the dock and protesting the waste of money and resources.

“There are dragons waiting in the deep ocean that will surely swallow all of the ships at once,” the critics raved. “Why spend money on something that must surely fail to produce anything of value? This must be a swindle and a fraud—no one could be brave enough to voyage across an ocean of danger. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabela must be mad to waste money on such a foolish venture!”

Throughout history, skeptics have always found fault with almost every successful venture before it became a success and profitable. When the first astronauts stepped foot on the moon and began to explore, they brought back moon rocks rich in an unusual element. An element which is very rare on Earth. Without the voyages to the moon and the century-old fantasy that became real-life exploration, the plentiful and powerful element of Helium-3 might not be waiting for excavation and refinement on the surface of the moon.

Apparently, Helium-3 is the newest conquest in the race for space and mining on the moon. Helium-3 can be a fuel for the new fusion reactors that are under development and construction in huge facilities in the USA, France, and China. Helium-3 is truly the holy grail of fuel that can produce energy without the byproducts of radiation.

As with Columbus and the explorers who followed, critics are everywhere, but science will always speak the truth. Huge challenges await the mining and refining of the new mineral on the moon. Clever bankers, however, might choose to go where no one has gone before, and finance what the Beach Boys and Girls of yesteryear could only look up and dream about.

When John F. Kennedy made his famous speech and announced an American would land on the moon within a decade, the critics went crazy. It is not possible, many said. Why spend the money? But the spirit of the American people has fallen under scrutiny before and prevailed many more times than not. The rapid production of the technology involved in landing astronauts on the moon in only a decade has moved science forward in almost every field imaginable.

The Chinese today know about Helium-3 and so does every other nation with the wherewithal to join the next and greatest space race ever.

A mine on the moon is nothing new and the 1950s images of such an imaginative enterprise are easy to find. Almost as easy as when humans within the next decades are living, working, and mining Helium-3 above and below the surface of the moon.

One concept might possibly be if Caterpillar made an excavator that could dig into the moon and create caverns that could be sealed, pressurized, and made into a futuristic habitat for miners, refiners, and engineers. Whole and complete complexes and lunar colonies could thrive under the lunar surface without the expense of hauling up building materials and making lunar surface structures that could fail under a harsh open space environment.

Out-of-the-box thinking is what will be required for the newest space race. The same type of creative drive that fueled the first race to the moon and the Mackle brothers’ creation of modern Marco Island.

Perhaps the recent Artemis II is the first step toward the future reality of mining on the moon. Without Columbus making a discovery, which changed the Old World and brought in a new realm of opportunity, the innovative pattern of exploration as we know it would certainly be different.

If the US space program in the early 1960s had progressed from rockets exploding on launching pads to astronauts walking on the moon and discovering the abundance of Helium-3 in less than a decade, imagine how fast living and working on the moon might become a reality.

When the Marco Beach Girls and Boys of the 1970s were working on Marco and building the Mackle Brothers' dream of a new kind of paradise, the spirit of “Can Do” American enterprise was fully underway.

When the next full moon begins to pull at the imagination, and the possibilities of “can do” instead of “cannot” take hold, the inspiration fueled by moonlight, and perhaps a little moonshine, might inspire the next generation of Marco Beach Boys and Girls. An inspiration to choose the moon as a new place to build a future, just as a former generation of pioneers chose the Mackle Brothers’ Marco Island.