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Waiting for custome I s m nunhein India. 



Dawn Starin 



Vanished Greatness 



by Paul D. Spudis 



Between 1961 and 1969, the United 

 States chose to compete with the Soviet 

 Union in the initial exploration of another 

 world in the solar system, the moon. This 

 epoch saw the emerging infant technology 

 of space flight boldly pressed into the ser- 

 vice of scientific exploration. Don Wil- 

 helms relates this inspiring story from the 

 perspective of both an observer and a par- 

 ticipant. 



Wilhelms's long career as a geologist 

 for the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) 

 has been devoted mainly to reconstructing 

 the history of the moon by studying pho- 

 tographs of its surface. He was involved in 

 the geological training of the Apollo astro- 

 nauts and in the selection of sites on the 

 moon, both for the initial demonstration 

 landings and for the later, more sophisti- 

 cated scientific expeditions. But his princi- 

 pal scientific contributions are in the area 

 of historical geology, or the natural history 

 of the moon preserved in its layered rocks. 

 Like that of the earth and other rocky plan- 

 ets, the moon's record may be read and re- 

 constructed from photographs of its sur- 

 face. 



The episodic story of how we came to 

 understand the history and processes that 

 have shaped the moon begins with the pi- 

 oneering work of Grove Karl Gilbert, first 

 chief geologist of the USGS, who mar- 

 shaled evidence in 1893 that craters on the 

 moon were formed by the colhsion of as- 

 teroidal bodies. The largest of these im- 

 pacts formed a prominent feature on the 

 front side of the moon, the Imbrium Basin, 

 a crater more than 600 miles across. 



Fast-forwarding to 1949, Wilhelms 

 highlights the work of astronomer Ralph 

 Baldwin, whose book The Face of the 

 Moon got nearly everything right: that the 

 moon's craters were formed by impact; 

 that the dark maria were volcanic lavas; 

 and that the surface of the moon was old — 

 very old. 



After reading this book, Nobel Prize- 

 winning chemist Harold Urey became ob- 

 sessed with finding out more about the 

 moon, which he believed was a piece of 

 primeval nebular matter, unheated and un- 

 modified since the creation of the solar 

 system, 4.5 billion years ago. Urey cam- 

 paigned for the scientific exploration of the 

 moon, using the up-and-coming technique 

 of rocketry, which had been salvaged from 

 the ruins of a smoldering and prostrate 

 Germany. Aiding him in this task was Ger- 

 ard Kuiper, a heretic astronomer who was 



To A Rocky Moon: A Geologist's His- 

 tory OF Lunar Exploration, by Don E. 

 Wilhelms. University of Arizona Press, 

 $29.95, 477pp., illus. 



interested in the planets and who treasured 

 photographs as a source of data. 



Meanwhile, beginning in 1948, a 

 young, energetic geologist was mapping 

 the uranium deposits of the Colorado 

 Plateau and dreaming of exploring the 

 moon. From that point on, Eugene Shoe- 

 maker devoted his career to making geol- 

 ogy a part of the burgeoning and nascent 

 lunar exploration program. Such an explo- 

 ration strategy was far from self-evident: 

 to Shoemaker, more than any other per- 

 son, Wilhelms gives credit as the founder 

 of an entirely new discipline, planetary ge- 

 ology. Shoemaker went on to establish a 

 branch at the USGS, created specifically to 

 study the geology of other planets in the 

 solar system and charged with mapping 

 the geology of the moon to support the 

 Apollo effort. 



The addition of geology into the mix of 

 scientific subdisciplines involved in the 

 exploration of space created an amusing 

 and intriguing conflict of goals and tech- 

 niques — a conflict that continues to the 

 present day. Wilhelms carefully (and I be- 



66 Natural History 1/94 



