Those that remember the first moon landing in 1969 remember, too, that Armstrong and Aldrin did a little excavation. They brought back samples of the moon's surface.
Few flinched. Scientific studies indicated that there was almost nothing to be worried about. In all likelihood, the moon's surface was not radioactively absorbed.
Still, scientists were careful. You never knew. This is a completely different world we were dealing with, only tangentially connected with ours. It wasn't a large bunch of people who opened the containers.
Want to be around when we open what we've shot down? Nobody's talking about this. This, too, is a completely different world we're dealing with now: Our own.
Any debris on the moon wasn't likely to harm us. What was there had been there for millions of years. But whatever's inside the objects we've brought down recently, it was planned. Someone wanted us to find it. Why would they be that obvious to float it by in broad daylight, at an altitude that might intercept our own flying objects?
Nobody's dealt with the question that ought to be nagging darn near everyone: Why would someone send objects, one of which was as big as a small car, over the United States? Why now? Why here?
I'm talking about the last three we've brought down (With more to come?). The Chinese tried the old U-2 (Remember that one? We looked pretty bad there.) trick and attempted to explain their measurements as weather observations. Yeah, right. Nice try.
At least we know about that one, though. It's within the realm of cloak and dagger: The Chinese spy on us, and we know, or should know, that we spy on them. China has just said that we've sent at least ten balloons over their territory since last year.
Fine. So what's up with those other three? Are they Chinese, too? Do we need a Balloon Treaty now? The latest one floated over Wisconsin, they're saying now. Do we need to gape in wonder, or yawn in boredom, when the next one floats by?
The silence that's gathering around all this might be reassuring. It might mean--should mean--that people are being very careful with this stuff. But too much silence for too long means trouble. It means that someone doesn't want us to know about it.
It's too early to demand answers. That we've shot these things down is a reasonably good housecleaning response: nobody wants junk in the sky (Heaven knows, we have enough of that on the ground.).
Let's eliminate a few. No, said the White House, this isn't the work of aliens, and I would concur. I like Neil DeGrasse Tyson's reasoning: If some alien beings or forces had the reach of, say, across the galaxy--not exactly around the corner, and surely light-years (literally) farther than from here to Mars--would they show up in this extremely primitive form? I've always had the feeling that aliens have stopped by, flown over, taken a good look, and gone right by. Why the hell would they have anything to do with slobs like us, who can't figure out that our planet is slowly dying and who still haven't concluded the simple fact that skin color makes absolutely no functional difference? That doesn't make us the least bit interesting.
No, it isn't Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, either. They're already concentrating on interplanetary flight and don't have the inclination to distract themselves, much less the rest of humanity.
If it were some other corporate experimenters dabbling in space flight, they either aimed a little low or need a little more work. Even so, they wouldn't be reasonable substitutes for drones, which are much smaller and designed to hover much lower. (But would they be categorized as such to make them less threatening, in which case--fail!)
If it were another nation trying things out, why would they drift over our skies? Okay, Moldova and/or Sierra Leone would run out of airspace quickly, but wouldn't they take the trouble to tell us they're coming first? Are their compasses so dysfunctional? Or do they care so little about irking us?
I'm not sure I'm in the kind of mood that says, 'I can't wait to learn what this really is.' I'm not scared too much, either. Too much time has gone on. Not enough danger has been implied. Now, I'm a little annoyed and want to get on with things.
I mean, it isn't like school shootings or anything. That's a mystery no one can unravel. And much more urgent.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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