On 21st of December 2022, the GEGSLA (Global Expert Group on Sustainable Lunar Activities) under the auspices of the Moon Village Association held its last plenary to conclude its first phase work.
It is my debut on an international NGO with multi-disciplinary membership, a rare experience I might recall in future career. Learning the ropes on how to operationalize an idea is one big takeaway: are we prepared for a cast as we stomp towards the center of stage?
Many fellow experts moved me in the past two years, Raj lost her father when COVID-19 engulfed India and we all witnessed how desperate she tried to balance work and family; Maria lost her country and moved to Germany from Ukraine, and our drafting group subsequently lost her voices as well as those of her Russian peer. Most of the meetings were scheduled around midnight of my time, Alice from Australia would bring sherry to the drafting group to pair with my double strong tea. It would be a long session, lingering even into a sleepless night.
The topic is about the Moon, anything you can imagine is on the plate, and the Moon causes tides to every corner on the Earth. Geo-political struggles are everywhere, setting silhouettes, oversized and towering against the Moon. Sometimes when we plan for the next decades for those lunar projects, we seem lost in the time, assured, reassured, we talk to each other that we will pass the most challenging point in history.
The Chair, a Romanian astronaut from a Soviet era donated to print one thousand copies of the outcome report, five of them are on the way to reach me. Touching upon those pages will bring this long process to its finis, and a new journey will start then.
Kipling in the Ballad of East and West said:
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.
Someone might be misguided by those words, in fact the whole poem is the opposite, it is about a bond. I borrow its title for this short note, as I wish although the Moon is the Moon, the Earth is the Earth, what we worked on and what we look forward to will tie the two celestial bodies together: one day the twain will meet.
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