Short Stories About the Sparks in the OUBEY MINDSPACE – Episode 8: The Moon

No other celestial body comes as close to Earth as the Moon. Especially as a full moon, bathed in the dazzling floodlight of the Sun, its appearance has always stirred emotions, thoughts, and fantasies in human beings. It has served as a projection screen for longings and fears, a timekeeper of the night, and a silent companion to life on Earth.

Countless poems and songs have been devoted to its cool light in the dark of night. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata touches us deeply in the soul through its compositional perfection; Debussy’s Clair de Lune lifts us up into floating states of bliss. Jules Verne´s science fiction novel “From the Earth to the Moon” described the journey to our satellite a full century before Neil Armstrong’s first step on the Moon—astonishingly precise and visionary at the same time. In 1902, pioneer Georges Méliès ventured a cinematic adaptation of this material, creating a milestone in film history, to which Martin Scorsese paid a loving tribute a hundred years later with his film Hugo Cabret . Pink Floyd devoted an entire album to The Dark Side of the Moon, and Bob Dylan, in his epic love song  Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, let the moonlight swim in the eyes of the celebrated beauty.

Still from “A Trip to the Moon”, directed by Georges Méliès (1902)

Seen up close, however, the Moon loses its romantic aura. Viewed through a powerful telescope, it reveals a gray, dusty surface covered with craters. Thus, the term “moonscape” became synonymous with inhospitable, desolate regions. Yet the Moon’s influence on Earth is immense: its gravity stabilizes Earth’s axis, causes the tides, affects the biorhythms of certain plants and animals—and presumably even the female fertility cycle. For our ancestors, the Moon was also a celestial body of great spiritual significance.

John F. Kennedy’s announcement to send a human to the Moon within the decade of the 1960s was an expression of the systemic rivalry of that era—but also a testament to pioneering spirit and visionary ambition. On July 20, 1969, this seemingly impossible feat became reality: Neil Armstrong set foot on the surface of the Moon as the first human being.

Screenshot from the Spark about Space Colonies in the OUBEY MINDSPACE

The exploration of space and human spaceflight had fascinated both OUBEY and me from an early age—independently of one another, long before we met. After we got to know each other, we felt closely connected, not least because we shared a keen interest in the cosmos, its phenomena, mysteries, and history. We celebrated special missions such as the journey of the two Voyager probes Voyager program – Wikipedia into interstellar space or the – initially rather bumpy – launch of the Hubble Space Telescope A friend in space – OUBEY MINDKISS. We were deeply moved by the statement of many astronaut who had been to space and summarized their most important insight from this experience as follows: We went out as technicians, we returned as conscious human beings.

What Aristotle had already recognized in the 4th century BCE, and what Magellan practically proved with his circumnavigation of the globe in the 16th century, received its final visual confirmation through images of the Earth floating freely in dark space—of a beauty that is hard to surpass. Not growing accustomed to this sight, but encountering it again and again with reverence and awe, evokes a humility in thinking about the interconnectedness of existence that hardly anything else can achieve.

When our Earth was still young, about 4.5 billion years ago, it was shaken by a massive collision with a Mars-sized protoplanet. Debris of rock, dust, and molten material was hurled into space, gathered in orbit, and eventually formed the Moon through gravity. This is why the lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo missions so closely resemble those of Earth. Beyond all romance, there is indeed a kind of kinship between Earth and Moon, which has been orbiting it at a distance of around 380,000 kilometers for billions of years—rendering valuable service along the way.

Screenshot from the Spark about Space Exploration in the OUBEY MINDSPACE

Artemis II is scheduled to launch in a few weeks. For the first time in more than fifty years, a crew will once again travel into orbit around the Moon—still without a landing, but in preparation for Artemis III. The mission follows a so-called free-return trajectory. This special flight geometry makes it possible to use the Moon’s gravity as a natural return ticket: even in the event of a complete failure of the main engine, the capsule would return safely to Earth without additional fuel. The laws of physics serve here as the ultimate backup propulsion system.

Public interest today is not comparable to the hype surrounding Apollo 11 at the time. This could change, however, if Artemis III marks the first time since 1972 that humans set foot on the Moon again. And probably even more so when construction begins on the planned base camp, from which the first two-year Mars expedition could launch in as little as 20 years, or even sooner. Since the moon has no atmosphere, no air resistance, and no gravity, the launch conditions here are much more favorable than on Earth. By then, there will also be flowing water on the moon, which is currently still bound in the ice of the Shackleton crater but can be thawed.

As back then, the purpose of such missions is also being questioned today—not least because of the enormous costs. Yet it has never been spaceflight that prevented us from doing our earthly homework or from taking responsibility for ecological balance and peaceful coexistence.

OUBEY had a clear stance on this. What for some was an irreconcilable contradiction belonged inseparably together for him—in his very own vision of the future of humanity and the Earth. Some of his thoughts on this can be heard in the OUBEY MINDSPACE. Jules Verne would probably have taken great delight in it. 🌙

OUBEYs statements can be found in these two rooms at the MINDSPACE:

• On space exploration: https://mindspace.oubey.com/cosmos
• On space colonization: https://mindspace.oubey.com/moebius

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There are six rooms in OUBEY MINDSPACE. Each of them contains five different Mind Sparks, which in turn contain various impulses. Behind every Spark and every impulse is a story about OUBEY and what interested and inspired him. I will tell these stories here.

At this point, I would like to thank the Kubikfoto³ team for the great design of OUBEY MINDSPACE, which has already won three prestigious international design awards – most recently the Red Dot Award 2025.