Fly me to the moon,
Let me play among the stars,
Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.
In other words, hold my hand.
In other words, baby, kiss me…
Flying to the moon was not a “thing” yet in 1954, when Bart Howard’s publisher asked him to stop writing grandiose lyrics and just say what he means. So he spent 20 minutes writing a song with a simple message:
Hold my hand. Kiss me. Please be true. I love you.
The rest of the song is slightly silly. As far as anyone can tell, there’s no such thing as “spring” on Jupiter and Mars. But hand-holding and kissing are real. So Mr. Howard was not completely off base.
15 years later, a few people did in fact fly to the moon during the Apollo space program. If any hand-holding or kissing took place relative to those journeys, we never heard about it.
One thing for sure: hand-holding and kissing are a lot cheaper than flying to the moon. According to The Planetary Society, the U.S. effort to put people on the moon cost the taxpayers about $280 billion, adjusted for inflation.
We know pretty definitely, however, that Elon Musk, the founder of the SpaceX company, is not feeling affectionate toward acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy.
NASA’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, seems to have provoked the ire of Elon Musk.
Mr. Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, took aim at Mr. Duffy on Tuesday in a flurry of social media posts, attacking his intelligence and his recent efforts at the helm of the space agency.
Elon wrote on social media, “Sean Dummy is trying to kill NASA!” The misspelling of Mr. Duffy’s name may have been intentional.
In a separate post, Elon said: “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.” He didn’t elaborate on what IQ the person responsible needs to have.
The highest “2 digit IQ” that a person can have is “99”. Which is higher than the IQ of nearly everyone currently running our country. But apparently not as high was Mr. Musk’s IQ.
SpaceX currently has a generous $2.9 billion contract to build a rocket and landing system for the next moon visit by U.S. astronauts. But Mr. Duffy thinks the contract ought to be re-opened to allow other private space companies to bid on the project. Partly because the SpaceX rockets keep exploding during testing.
And also because — you know — the Chinese.
And also — you know — the bad blood between Elon and Donald.
The Chinese recently landed spacecraft on the moon, and we suspect they are aiming to send astronauts there within the next few years. Kissing and hand-holding does take place in China, but also space technology. Reportedly, the Chinese are on schedule to land people on the moon by 2030. These would be Chinese people.
The thought of Chinese people walking around on the moon, and maybe even erecting a flag, leaves a bad taste in certain mouths.
NASA, meanwhile, landed astronauts on the moon in 1969, but since then, has focused on a little space station that’s been circling the earth endlessly in a slowly decaying orbit that will allow the space station to eventually fall out of the sky.
So much better to be focused on the moon, which has been circling the earth for literally centuries without any prediction that it’s going to fall out of the sky in the near future.
The Chinese understand this. Most Chinese, statistically, have IQs higher than 99. As does Mr. Musk. But you can’t just keep launching exploding rockets and expect people with 2 digit IQs to keep giving you money.
All of this moon-landing nonsense has very little relationship to kissing and hand-holding, however. And those are topics that Elon Musk presumably knows something about, considering that he’s the father of 14 children by four different women.
Obviously, a high IQ. Or something.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.