To the Moon

Phoebe couldn’t believe her eyes when she received the email saying that she had won a full scholarship for the “Fly Me to the Moon” public space trip opportunity. Years before, in 2018, SpaceX had flown two private citizens around the moon, but this was an all-inclusive chance to walk on the surface itself. Out of the millions of high school applicants, she was the one to have been handed millions of dollars for this trip. Because her mom was an astronaut, she was not as terrified as most other kids would have been but was still worried that something could go wrong. Her mom reminded her, however, that “Fly Me to the Moon” had become a fully developed commercial spaceline -- they had flown hundreds of thousands of people to the moon and back already.

The idea that hundreds of thousands of people before her had already visited the surface of the moon put a damper on her excitement. Phoebe remembered when she was younger that she only needed two hands to count the number of people who had walked on the moon. It was no longer solely a revered center for research, but simply a tourist location. Despite these thoughts, there was no way she would pass up the opportunity to step foot on the surface of the moon, hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth.

Even after Phoebe’s name was officially on the list, it still seemed surreal that she would depart for the moon just a few months. She began receiving periodic emails informing her of what to bring (or rather, what not to bring), mental preparation, and how to help avoid delay and system malfunctions. Her departure was set for August, but she began preparing in January because of nervous anticipation. It didn’t help her patience when she was interviewed by the scholarship program; her picture was taken for various websites and newspapers, and she was interviewed on dozens of radio stations. Soon she would be living her dream.

. . .

Several months later her parents said goodbye as Phoebe passed through to the “Fly Me to the Moon” restricted access area. There, everyone was given suits to change into and went through an inspection to make sure they were only carrying things under the weight limit. There were strict weight and size limits for what each person could carry, so most had their phones or fairly lightweight cameras to capture their experience. Phoebe didn’t bring anything, but left her pockets empty in hopes that she could bring back a couple small moon rocks. In line to board, she could see the ship outside a window and was surprised to find it covered with ads. There was a wide variety of a couple dozen or so people standing in line in front of her, and she was sure that they were all paying for the trip using money they had inherited or obtained in some non-respectable manner. They were selfish, all of them -- treating this like any other week-long vacation on which to spend their “hard-earned” money. Why were they even going, anyway? To take pictures so they could brag to their friends? To one-up their also-rich neighbor who just took a trip around the world? Phoebe wanted to be an astronomer one day. She was going to see with her own eyes an extraterrestrial object that she had heard about and learned about all her life. It’s a good thing she was good at napping, she thought, because she planned on speaking to none of them for the entire trip.

Behind her was an old man. When Phoebe saw him, she couldn’t believe they let someone in his physical condition on the trip. She quickly stopped herself from being too judgemental toward him, though; he seemed kind, and had a look on his face like this was the only thing he had ever wanted to do in his whole life. “What brings you on this trip?” she asked him.

The old man smiled at her. “Well, my father used to say that when I was very young, I would point up at the small white circle in the night sky and ask him questions about it. When he ran out of answers, he said, ‘Maybe one day you can go up there and answer that question for me.’ So, I suppose I’m searching for a few answers that one day I’ll be able to tell my father.” Phoebe smiled. Maybe not everyone on this trip was as selfish as she thought them to be.

It took four days to get to the moon. The spacecraft was not built for speed, but for as much customer comfort as it could afford. Freeze-dried meals were served three times a day, and an attendant who knew Phoebe snuck her extra freeze-dried fruit for snacks. On the last day, through leg cramps, loud passengers, and a plethora of safety announcements, they landed and prepared for exit. As she was getting ready, Phoebe felt a sudden panic that she should have brought her camera. How would she ever remember exactly what it looked like? How could she convince herself afterward that it wasn’t all a dream?

Her worries were put to rest once she was in the doorway. She looked straight out and saw the pitch black sky meet the shadowy, gray, fairly flat horizon. She looked down and almost gasped as she put her foot down on the lunar soil. She laughed as she and the rest of the group got acquainted with the low gravity and saw how high they could jump. Phoebe just about cried as she went over to see a clear box staked down around Neil Armstrong’s infamous footprint and the American flag nearby. They were only allowed to walk in a designated roped-off perimeter, outside of which was a spot behind the Armstrong footprint with strangely shaped imprint that Phoebe was just as excited to see: the landing site of Apollo 11. The only other one who gazed upon it with as much awe as she did was the old man.

Everyone stood at the edge of the roped-off area to watch the Earth as it began setting in the sky. People murmured to each other vague philosophical statements about how small and insignificant seeing the tiny Earth made them feel. Phoebe sat down and stared at it silently. After a while, she looked at the ground around her and saw a small plastic bag sitting there. A few feet away lay a candy wrapper. Suddenly, no longer blinded by the excitement of her new and unique surroundings, she saw all sorts of plastics and wrappers scattered on the ground, carelessly strewn by previous visitors. Then, she looked around again -- not at the moon dust, but the site set up around them. There were ropes fencing in the large area in which they could wander. Signs with all sorts of lunar information also included logos on the bottom. Her bubble of excitement popped as she was again reminded that this was a tourist trip. She looked back at the Earth setting in the sky and wondered how people who lived so far away could already be trashing a land that didn’t belong to them -- or anyone, for that matter. It wouldn’t be long, Phoebe was sure, before there would be vending machines brought to the moon. How materialistic could the world be?

Everyone had their phones and cameras out snapping shots of the Earth, Armstrong’s footprint, and were taking selfies. Phoebe looked around at the ground again and started picking up trash. She crawled around on her hands and knees, thinking about how trash on the moon would neither decompose nor go anywhere because there was no wind to blow. After a few minutes of picking up bits and pieces of random wrappers, she bumped her head into something. She looked up and saw that it was the old man, crawling around to pick up litter just as she was. Phoebe didn’t know whether she wanted to smile or cry, so she put her head back down and continued to pick things up.

Once their time was up and everyone had to return to the spacecraft, Phoebe took one last long look around her. She knew she had no need for a camera. The bottom of the Earth was just below the horizon, just like that famous picture she had seen dozens of times. She scanned the ground for any more wrappers and politely asked the old man for his so that she could throw them away. Two hands full of trash, she saw nowhere to put it. She opened up the zippers of her two empty pockets, stuffed in the litter, and boarded the spacecraft for departure.