Having coffee while naming this one

Time is, as was recently discovered, not invariant. It changes slightly with altitude, and with latitude as well. Different time zones mean that time is relative throughout the world. With the absolute offset from time zones and the good-grief RATE offset with altitude and latitude (the earth is an ellipsoid) it is a wonder we can talk at all.

The Eurasian land mass has taken the larger mass of that which determines what time it is in the progressions of history. This is not surprising. America was like a great caterpillar in preparing the world's first flights to the Moon. (Interestingly, Russians used the image of a slug, the mollusc without any shell.)

Suddenly, something a billion years old was over. Much of the rapidly developed infrastructure, technology and other factors was obsolete. Only new generations can determine which is which. It is too late for anybody as old as this writer to determine that for the future. I spent all my determination in the projects to reach the Moon-in Project Mercury, specifically.

All the enthusiasm we had for the Apollo flights made us feel determined to go out and conquer and colonize the planets, take worlds away from the space monsters, and overpopulate the Galaxy. That was not to happen. What's more, it seems likely that younger and more logical people probably feel that way too, though at a different time and rate of progression.

Asia may find it propitious to go to the Moon. While the rationality of the Roman traditions so deep in our laws (a good thing) makes that relatively unnecessary, and our militarist egos would like to think so as well because then our land would be the only part of the world that did walk on the Moon, the real fact is that as far as that half billion years of evolving instinctive curiosity is concerned, there's no point in it. There is no air, water, food, people, animals, plants or space aliens on the Moon. Yet ancient determination and contest by immense numbers of animals and other sentient beings has left us with energy to spare for just that -more flights to the Moon until true satiety and exhaustion temper the world's sheer lust for action.

But if China does not immerse itself in THAT struggle, there is a dreadful danger that all those millions of years of pent-up zero sum struggle to conquer (the essential ingredient in predator-prey survival) will appear in international relations, ambitions, conflicts and worse.

The result is not only emotional detachment from the realities of nuclear energy. It is a sense that the aggressive powers with human beings that were groomed through thousands of years of military heroism and adventurist exuberance will be tempted to play dice in the aggressive world of national dominance. These issues are deeper than mere wood and concrete foundations in the earth. They are challenged with good but slight effect by major constructions-tunnels through mountain ranges, tunnels under the sea, bridges across formally impassible or erosive valleys, and other titanic ventures that serve to divert our natures to more civilized goals worthy of the real destiny of this lovely planet Earth.

America was chosen for the flights to the Moon by God, by the Mandate of Heaven, by Allah, the Earth, the birds, instinct from long ago-it does not matter what we call it. If that had not been decided long ago the choice to go to the Moon would probably not have occurred by now and the flights might not have occurred yet at all.

It was destiny that the Old World began moving the Conquest of Light to the New World with the inventions of the lens, the prism, and the telescope 1500's. That was the beginning of the fourth quarter of two thousand years that had been foreseen in the light of Pliny's Moon when the Sun appeared in the Moon during the moment of truth of Pompeii. It was four hands of centuries that played out.

Had we not attained the Moon, there would probably have been nuclear war on a massive scale already. That is a good sign. It only wants those negotiating the disarmament to have faith the Moon was actually reached. Yet if the world does not believe quite enough in America's Apollo flights, and if the Old World does not turn itself to the eventual flights from Eurasia, that too could cause nuclear war.

It is very important to understand this. The Old World must busy itself with its own Moon projects visibly, with increasing money, news, economic activity, publicity and widespread agreements. Otherwise it risks bumbling into nuclear war. America, highly respected, can play a key role even in just in being an enthusiastic audience and source of encouragement.

It is fortunate that much preparation existed and that few of the most vexing and egregious difficulties of history remained. The terrible practice of slavery, too long upheld because of its ancient origin, remained to reject. It was the only great war in the United States before the Moon flights, and the moon was attained not by slaves.

Neither was it important what color the skin was in the shoes of the persons who first walked on the Moon's surface. The race and color of the persons who made those footprints will be forgotten long before the footprints themselves disappear.

What does remain is to look to the day when the Old World Sun rises in Moon as it comes up over the Atlantic seaboard, and look to it with good will and cooperation, for it is more inevitable than America's dominance, opulent prosperity, and chaos.

America must now turn itself to patiently abiding the Old World's progress toward the Old World's Moon. After that it will be decided what the World and Moon are. In all the Old World's land mass, eliminating whatever practices that remain in its slowly gathering preparations for its own flights to the Moon constitutes a persistent, inevitable flow of its activities.

It was not given this writer to say more about the Old World's preparations for its own flights to the Moon. Those events are unfolding there. Each will bring surprises.

China recently launched an astronaut into orbit, and though it was a triumphant and happy return, the flight was found surprisingly bruising. It is good to know what the consequences were; the problem will be solved with, say, football instead of table tennis. It was only that, and does not need flogging the ocean waves to defeat the tides, or many other things in history that would have condemned future attainments of the Moon to bloodshed and war.

It is probably better not to attempt to be or cause perfection in the real world by force. The Old World was committed to attaining the Moon too, long before the Americas were settled by Europeans. Neither do the people of Asia and Europe have the choice any more than the people of the Americas. The destiny is already upon those lands and their people are already groping toward the goal to the greatest extent they find possible.

It cannot be safely said that the United States will have no role in that, even if it is only Amici Americi. Americans we would be wise to make our opinions opinions and policies toward Europe in the East and toward Asia to the West distinctly similar. It would do great good at little cost.

One suspects we should regard the extent to which the inhabitants of the North American continent dictate to the rest of the world as something it is desirable to greatly perfect. We should minimize capitalist marketing and military aggression and permit more than England to dictate to the United States what Europe and Asia are.

We should cultivate greater expertise in being responsive to their progress, without attempting to change its course. It was not Asia's choice and Europe's choice to be undertaking the next flights to the Moon any more than it was America's choice. Nobody in the old world can avoid yielding to the necessity of that destiny. They may not see it as the first thing they wake up to yet, but the day is approaching when they do.

America, after all, cannot choose to be the only part of the world that attains the Moon. The option is already gone; it disappeared with the manufacture of off-the-shelf robots and avatars. The real attainment again, this time by the Old World, is a destiny on the Moon already devolving even now.

We might choose to perfect something like an absolutely essential dainty, like coffee that makes life just nicer until long after Europe has its size nines on the celestial orb. America as Philioses Paleos Cosmos.