Huff Post:: Big Time Pink Floyd Fans?

   I gave the Huffington Post's grab-bag science section editors overnight to fix a gaffe, figuring somebody there would catch on. No go so far.

    The Dark Side of the Moon was a well-received album from Pink Floyd many years ago, its title drawing upon its single, "Eclipse." Pink Floyd seems to have known a little celestial mechanics and geometry – during a solar eclipse, the sun gets covered and all we see in its place is the dark side of the moon. But a headline writer at Huff Post decided that the back side of the moon is sensibly called the dark side. Uh… no. It gets just as much sun as the side we see (more, really, when one considers the occasional lunar eclipse). It's an error that occupies a small, occasionally used niche in popular culture. Reporters and editors sometimes – perhaps writing fast and thinking slow – have been known to fall for it. But a news outlet's science-assigned staff really ought to be more careful.

   Anyway. The story –  on which ran the hed at Huff Post "New Space Station? NASA Mulls 'Earth-Moon L2' on Lunar Dark Side"  – was picked up from Space.com where it ran without any dark side nonsense. It does say far side there.

The topic has to do with gravitational zones in space, like eddies in gravitational fields from competing bodies, where a slow enough object will be drawn and, if not held, have an easy time hovering relative to the Earth, Moon, or other massive object. One such libration, or Lagrangian point, is L2 where a space station could be parked at a spot in faily deep space on the line extending from Earth through the Moon. It could provide a good jumping off point for deeper human expeditions. Whether tax dollars ought to be spend on such costly and difficult ventures is another issue. But NASA is, apparently, thinking about it.

   The story itself is just fine, a professional job from veteran NASA and space writer Leonard David, about this notional idea for giving astronauts something to do that is farther than the Moon but not nearly as costly as a Mars or even asteroid mission. It might even include some Russian hardware. At space.com, David's story runs under "NASA Mulls Deep-Space Station on Moon's Far Side." Earlier this year he had a column also mentioning it: "Far Out! New Deep Space Mission Ideas Draw NASA's Eye."

– Charlie Petit