Hello. Hello and welcome to the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, the monthly show where we talk

about the politics and processes behind space exploration.

I'm Casey Dreyer, the chief of space policy here at the Planetary Society.

I'm really excited about this month's episode and we are

taking a small step away from the focus on policy to kind of policy but kind of something but something more I'm

talking to Chris Kocinos the poet and also author of a brand new book called Still as Bright, an illuminating history of the

moon from antiquity to tomorrow.

Now obviously there's a lot happening at and around the moon these days.

Just this year that I record this we are seeing the first commercial lunar payload delivery services.

We are seeing multiple new missions

going through multiple different countries

to the Moon for the first time.

And of course, NASA's Artemis program

is marching along and very likely next year we will see humans at least orbit the moon for the first time in my lifetime and a lot of your lifetimes.

What's so interesting about this book, which of course talks about the history of the moon as we see it,

why it came to be the physical processes, some of the exploration of it,

but it's ultimately a book about looking at the moon and actually seeing it.

Chris Kocinos would argue that all of the people that are working to go,

from the astronauts to the engineers, to the policy makers themselves,

should pause and spend time just looking at the moon,

observing it, watching it, taking it in at a deep level, not to

necessarily change what they're doing but to understand the place to which they're going. But Chris's book, which is just beautifully written, really captures this interesting tension

...