Moon Miners' Manifesto

#93 March 1996

Space Notes

An Oscar-winning name

  Actor Tom Hanks, awarded an Oscar for Forrest Gump and who portrayed astronaut Jim Lovell in last summer's hit Apollo 13, has his own production company in Century City, California. It's not unusual for actors to get into the movie production side of the business, but what is unusual is the name of Hanks' company: Clavius Base. Asked to explain, Hanks was quoted in Daily Variety: "It's from 2001: A Space Odyssey. When that came out in 1968, I couldn't sleep the night before. It was the first time I was moved in a different way by a movie. The character in the movie was going to Clavus Base in a moon bus. It's also the name of the biggest crater on the Moon. Also, it's a goofy name I had come up with to name my production company."

Cynthia Griffin, Space Research Associates, Houston

The way it used to be

  After the Apollo 11 lunar landing, Wernher von Braun's plan was to have a six-person station orbiting the Moon by 1975. This would be followed in five years by a six-person lunar surface base. By 1990 von Braun had hoped to have 24 people in lunar orbit and 48 people living on the surface of the Moon engaged in mining, astronomy, biology, selenology (lunar geology), seismology, regional exploration, and planetary quarantine. The planetary quarantine facility would be used for martian samples from the semipermanent Mars base that von Braun hoped would be operational at the same time as the more permanent lunar base.

Cynthia Griffin, Space Research Associates, Houston

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