Went The Gravitay Well?

I Know I Shall Get Into Trouble For This -

 - especially if it gets back to that cherubic-faced doyen of military history, Professor Gary Sheffield, because "Went The Day Well?" is one of his favourite films ever, and here Conrad is mangling the title in order to shoe-horn some punnery into the blog.

Gray Sheffield.  Close enough.

     Okay, okay, a short explanation is due here.  WTDW is a film produced by Perfidious Albion during the Second Unpleasantness, in 1942, about an undercover Teuton sneak attack that takes over an English village, only to be thwarted by the film's end.  The story was by Graham Green, and it features a flighty, flirty Thora Hird and a cast of character actors.  Art?

Thora Hird - a dangerous bird

    Think of it as a much better predecessor of "The Eagle Has Landed".

    Righto, back to the Moon!  Yes we've changed subjects, do keep up.   We last left the Moon - yes, we've now gone back, keep up with the tenses or you'll never make sense of this scrivel - in the next decade or so, with Hom. Sap. busily setting up lunar bases for profit and as forward bases for onward explanation.  There is another use, of course, and one that springs readily to mind: as a strategic resource for military purposes.  You know Hom. Sap.; if anything has the potential to be used as a weapon, it will.  This is known in theatre as "Chekhov's Gun" and in real life as Real Life.  Art?

Come on, you must have been expecting this.

     The thing is, being on the Moon puts you at the top of a nice deep gravity well, with Earth right at the bottom of said well.  That means it takes an awful lot of energy for anything to loft itself free of Earth's gravity; conversely, the smallest pebble shot from the Moon would require next to nothing in terms of escape velocity.  This theme can be traced in sci-fi, long before Neil did his patented cha-cha dance moves on the lunar regolith in 1969.  For instance -

IT'S BEHIND YOU!

     "Quatermass And The Pit" in it's original, exceedingly creepy television adaptation, debuting in 1959 and having at start a project to put British nuclear missiles on the Moon, operating under a "Dead Man's Handle" system*. Colonel Breen, supposedly the series' rocketry and ballistics expert, believed that these missiles " - would be able to locate the Earth".  And blow up which particular bit, Colonel?  Sheesh.  Conrad can see the technical specs now: "To have a Circular Error Probable of three thousand miles"**.

British mud.  Endlessly fascinating.

     Then we have one of the chapters in John Wyndham's 1961 work "The Outward Urge", which concerns the British Moonbase, supposedly a vast repository of nuclear missiles all ready to launch and devastate the Sinisters enemy at a minute's notice.  When a few survivors from the destroyed Sinister Moonbase turn up, it is revealed that the nine missiles already fired were the entire British arsenal.  Ol' John has us believe that this is because This Sceptred Isle was more interested in exploration and science than martial endeavour, to which Conrad slyly observes that even in the future there will be a Treasury ...

Okay, women, as the men go leaping you can get on with your knitting.

     Then came one of the Grand Old Men of sci-fi, Robert Heinlein and his immensely readable epic "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" of 1966.  There's far too much to go into here, except to note that the novel takes it's inspiration from the <shudders, bites a lead shot, continues grimly onwards> the American Revolution.  Ol' Bob's chosen method of destruction is an electromagnetic catapult that accelerates masses of rock (instead of the usual wheat) which cause impacts of multiple kiloton yield when they hit Earth.  Under this kind of bombardment terrestrial politicians get to the negotiating table rather quickly.

I think this is a Bruce Langford cover

     Hmmm.  Bruce hasn't really taken on board what an electromagnetic catapult is, has he?  Although he's got the same idea QATP and TOU had.  Close but no cigar.  Art?

Accurate!  Realistic! Dull!  Dramaless!

     So you see, having bases on the Moon gives you the ultimate in high ground.  Just wait and see; if one major power establishes a base up there the rest will be racing to follow.
     I just heard a loud crash in The Mansion's back yard - I think the Motley has landed in MOT-1.  Well, when I say "landed" I mean "crashed uncontrollably and is now spread over several hectares"***.


     Ooops.  That's most of the blog on the Intro.  Quick, change subjects - I know  what we can have -

Appropriately Gloomy Music

Yes indeed!  Traditionally we here in the sunny, good-natured and affable West look on the Ruffians as surly, scowling, chronic misanthropes, mostly because they are.  Look at Chekhov.  However, the other European Slavs can be just as misanthropic; just look at the Poles and their terrifying film posters.  Art?

"The Lovely Fluffy Bunnies Go For A Walk In The Park"

     For today I have been listening to The Plastic People Of The Universe, a Czech band, whilst hammering away on the keyboard, and I have to say they'd be perfect to do a soundtrack for Halloween.  Any soundtrack.  And it would need a warning about "Adult Advisory" because one of their male singers in particular sounds as if he eats small children for entertainment.  Art?

Nope.  Nopenopenope.

     Sorry, couldn't find any pictures of scary Czech musos.  We shall have to wait until they tour Poland and get some posters done.


Finally -

Your Humble Scribe has seen both "The Shining" and "Doctor Sleep", yet hasn't read either of them, so I have finally bitten the bullet and am now 46 pages into "The Shining", which of course - obviously! - I only ever meant to glance at DAMN YOU STEPHEN KING YOU THIEF OF TIME! so that's probably a compliment to Ol' Ste's gift for storytelling.  It probably took me up until reading the unexpurgated edition of "The Stand" before I really 'got' the concept of South Canada being made up of states, each of which is as large as a European country, and which can be wildly different.

     I rest my case, and also my keyboard.  For we are done!

*  Oh boy.  Herman Kahn would have loved to parse this.

**  CEP = the distance 50% of missiles will miss by.

***   Don't worry, Motley's are both tough and cheap.