Writing AH. Anachronisms Part 5: Fly Me to the Moon

[Thande]

What if there are other intelligent races in our galaxy, but humans are the only one who have a Moon like this, and everyone else thinks we’re weird for the whole dualist culture thing?

This is fascinating. Cue the Vulcan word for human being lunatic!

Of course with the Vulcans there was that whole frantic hoo-hah for years because Star Trek TMP showed a giant moon in the sky, which they later retconned to be a co-orbital planet, and then the director's edition removed it anyway. It would be very much in character for Spock to say to Uhura 'Vulcan has no moon' to shut her down flirting when it has something that's a distinction without a difference, though.

I can't remember if I mentioned it in the article, but another thing that's mildly annoying about TV and film sci-fi is the VFX people's obsession with putting absolutely gigantic moons in the sky, like this example - Stargate SG-1 is also notorious for it. In reality, Earth's moon is already unusually large and close (for our Solar System, of course we can't comment on others) and think of the tidal forces it exerts on the Earth - if you had a moon as big and close as those ones, the planet would probably be covered in continuously erupting volcanoes (similar to how Jupiter's tidal forces are constantly 'squeezing' lava out of Io).

 

[IanBertram]

Of course with the Vulcans there was that whole frantic hoo-hah for years because Star Trek TMP showed a giant moon in the sky, which they later retconned to be a co-orbital planet, and then the director's edition removed it anyway. It would be very much in character for Spock to say to Uhura 'Vulcan has no moon' to shut her down flirting when it has something that's a distinction without a difference, though.

I can't remember if I mentioned it in the article, but another thing that's mildly annoying about TV and film sci-fi is the VFX people's obsession with putting absolutely gigantic moons in the sky, like this example - Stargate SG-1 is also notorious for it. In reality, Earth's moon is already unusually large and close (for our Solar System, of course we can't comment on others) and think of the tidal forces it exerts on the Earth - if you had a moon as big and close as those ones, the planet would probably be covered in continuously erupting volcanoes (similar to how Jupiter's tidal forces are constantly 'squeezing' lava out of Io).

In the latest episode of Foundation that I watched, Hari Seldon's home planet has a huge moon, within the planetary atmosphere.

 

[Alexander Rooksmoor]

As a writer it does make you think of how different Earth cultures would be if we had more moons. Seeing this: https://www.space.com/new-moons-discovered-uranus-neptune now Neptune is seen to have (at least) 16 and Uranus 28, how a larger number would have been viewed from Earth. We might not have managed to have 16 squeezed in, but certainly 5, maybe 10 seems possible. I guess our tides would be more complex and eclipses more common. Would they have been deemed gods by our ancestors? Would the landing programme have continued through the 1970s until humans had visited a number of them or would different countries focus on going to different ones?