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The Space Party

If you’re lucky, one day you will throw a party of astronomical proportions.

M. H. Rubin
8 min readNov 7, 2020

Part 1: The Set Up

Jim’s Lincoln Field office, Brown (2010)

In college, I took GEO 5, taught by Brown University’s popular geoscience professor Jim Head. His lectures on the geology of the Moon and Mars were always interlaced with gripping tales from his days in the NASA lunar space program, and even if you weren’t into geology (or space), they were fun. One of Jim’s first jobs in the late ‘60s was being on the team that decided where, on the moon, the astronauts should go; and, what they’d do when they got there.

The walls of his office were delightfully cluttered with space memorabilia, USGS photos of the exploding Mount St. Helens, globes of a half-dozen celestial bodies, and a rare beer bottle collection that covered most surfaces.

As cluttered as it looks, when I reminded Jim of the Space Party he was able to find the invite in 10 seconds. (2010)

One of his pet projects was an academic collaboration with the Vernadski Institute, the Russian space program’s scientific center. When I was in college, the US had been to the Moon, we had a lander on Mars but no American had seen the surface of Venus. All visual telescopes revealed was a smooth white cueball, a planet with sulfuric acid…

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M. H. Rubin
M. H. Rubin

Written by M. H. Rubin

Living a creative life, a student of high magic, and hopefully growing wiser as I age. • Ex-Lucasfilm, Netflix, Adobe. • Here are some stories and photos.

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