{"id":463,"date":"2004-04-11T16:01:26","date_gmt":"2004-04-11T23:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/?p=463"},"modified":"2004-04-11T16:01:26","modified_gmt":"2004-04-11T23:01:26","slug":"theyre-at-it-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/2004\/04\/11\/theyre-at-it-again\/","title":{"rendered":"They're at it again"},"content":{"rendered":"

While wandering through I Want One Of Those.com,<\/a> I ran across this.<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s the “Buy A Piece of Real Estate Not On Earth” thing again, this time on the Moon. I have some history with this concept My high school astronomy teacher, the man who more or less poured gasoline on a love of astronomy which was already burning merrily, was a man named Robert Coles; he was a former chairman of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, serving in that capacity during the 1950s. For reasons I can’t now remember, he once gave me one of the original dollar-an-acre “Deeds to the Moon” as a present; this particular beautifully printed “deed” was part of a sales promotion which (if my memory isn’t completely broken) he told me had some connection to Seagram, the liquor people. (See the news story here, <\/a>a Google-cached page from the Long Island newspaper Newsday, <\/i>for a little more about this.)<\/p>\n

The company is a different one this time. The Newsday story gives a little more information about the Lunar Embassy.<\/a> Interestingly, they say they want to send some servers to the Moon \"Collier's
\nand establish a “virtual presence” there. I seem to remember that this would be something you’d have to do if you wanted to gain control of the “.luna” toplevel domain. <\/a> (I can’t resist linking to this<\/a> while we’re on the subject…)<\/p>\n

…And of all the things to run across… While googling to check out what Mr. Coles’ exact title at the Hayden was, I stumbled across this:<\/p>\n

“NARRA[TOR]
\n Marge and Fred are going on a vacation. The date for their trip is 1993 and they are leaving for the moon!”<\/p>\n

The Generic Radio Workshop,<\/a> one of the few sources on the Web for “classic-era” radio scripts, has this transcript<\/a> of a November 9, 1953 radio show on which Mr. Coles once appeared. It seems that WNEW Radio in New York had a weekly science show called “Out of This World”: here my old teacher talks about what it would be like to go to the Moon. I wonder if any recordings of the show exist…<\/p>\n

\"Collier's<\/p>\n

It also turns out, to judge by this article from the NASA history archive<\/a>, that Mr. Coles was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the connection between Willy Ley and Collier’s Magazine<\/i> which resulted in their famous groundbreaking series of articles on the potential conquest of space. (Wernher von Braun is often credited for staging the symposium at which the Collier’s <\/i>reporter got the idea for the article series. But he was only one of the guests. Willy Ley was the organizer, and it was Robert Coles who — when presented with the idea that such a symposium should be held in the US, as earlier ones had been in Europe — said, “The Planetarium is at your disposal.”<\/p>\n

…The things you discover by accident. Robert Coles was not just a kindly guy who let me run the school planetarium after hours. He was a whole lot more. But I’ll probably always best remember him for the wicked twinkle in his eye when he handed me that deed and said, “Who knows, this might be worth something someday…”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While wandering through I Want One Of Those.com, I ran across this. 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