Bases, Boundaries, and the Moon Question.

Blog Post 18

Last night I was out in the backyard and asked the aliens about a few things — basic questions that have been sitting in the back of my mind for a while and I wanted to clear up.

The questions were straightforward enough:

·        Is the ET base in Antarctica nice? — Yes.

·        Is it roughly over a thousand people at any given time — residents, visitors, people who live or work there? — Yes.

·        Would you get your ship serviced there? — No.

·        Would you get your ship serviced on the Moon? — Yes, some people do.

·        How long, on average, given different ships with different tech, does it take to get to the Moon? Under four hours? — Yes.

·        Is it a good thing that Earth humans want to return to the Moon? — No.

·        Would you say that humans are not welcome on the Moon? — Yes.

Then I asked:

·        Is the Australian government aware of our interactions? (The book, the website, etc…) — Yes.

·        Do they believe it? — No.

Ok then. That pretty much matches what I would expect from them anyway. I would be surprised if it was any other way, to be honest.

And right at the end of our exchange, another big ship went overhead — faint lights front and back, silent and invisible except for that subtle glow that indicates the extremities.

The Moon

Ok. The Moon. Let’s work it out clearly.

The average distance from Earth to the Moon is about 384,400 km. If the trip takes 4 hours, then:

That’s roughly 96,000 km/h, or about 26.7 km per second.

For comparison:

• Apollo 11 travelled at about 39,000 km/h (≈ 10.8 km/s) on its way to the Moon — peak velocity — but took over four days from take-off to landing. It had to speed up, slow down, adjust trajectory and perform multiple burns. Apollo 8 took about 3 days to get into Lunar orbit.

• So, a 4‑hour transit would be more than twice as fast as Apollo’s velocity, assuming constant velocity — well into the range of advanced propulsion or non‑chemical drive systems.

That’s a fascinating figure to think about: a speed that would cross the Earth–Moon gap faster than it takes to fly from Sydney to Singapore in an Airbus A380‑800.

Antarctica: The (not so) Quiet Hub

The Antarctic ET base has come up before in conversation, but tonight’s confirmation adds a new layer. Apparently, it’s not such a small outpost. Over a thousand people — residents, visitors, workers — suggests a fully functioning community. That’s more than just a logistics hub or remote research station; that’s closer to a small city. And if it’s “nice,” as they said, then it’s not just utilitarian. It’s comfortable, established, and probably long‑standing, given the size. And “more than” indicates a bottom end population. It could be much bigger than that.

The fact that ships may not be serviced there is interesting. It implies that the base is a place for people, rather than machines, other than regular transport coming and going. That suggests that maintenance occurs elsewhere.

The Moon, on the other hand, seems to serve a very different purpose.

Ships are serviced there. Transit time is under four hours — which, given the distance, suggests propulsion far beyond anything we currently understand. But the tone of the answers was clear: humans are not welcome.

Humans – persona non-grata

That’s a sobering thought. We’ve spent decades dreaming of returning to the Moon, building rockets, planning bases, and imagining a new frontier. But if the Moon is already occupied — actively, structurally, and politically — then our ambitions may not be as simple as we think.

The “no” to human return wasn’t ambiguous. It felt definitive. And the “yes” to humans being unwelcome felt like a boundary marker — a line drawn in the lunar regolith. Is the Moon considered a human-free zone?

The Moon might be:

• a high‑security operational facility

• a specialised research and engineering hub

• a place where only authorised personnel can go

• a zone where human presence would interfere with ongoing work

Antarctica and the Moon seem to represent two parts of the same system, both quite inaccessible to humans. Perhaps the Moon is an operational hub and Antarctica is an outpost, a remote base of operations on Earth.

The Big Ship

When the big ship passed overhead at the end of the session, it was a quiet acknowledgement of my request to send one past if there was one nearby. Very faint lights front and back but clearly locked together, silent, invisible except for the two lights on display. Where does it go if a ship that size needs servicing or upgrades? Probably the Moon, I’m guessing.

Where This Leaves Us

If the Moon is off‑limits and Antarctica is a thriving community, then the system above us is more complex than we realise. There are boundaries, permissions, and roles — and humanity sits somewhere near the lowest access tier of that hierarchy.

Maybe that’s temporary. Maybe it’s a deliberate decision based on the human predilection towards irrational violence. Have a look at the state of the world right now. Maybe it’s self-protection.

But, again, it’s clear that the infrastructure above us isn’t random. It’s established, layered, and governed by rules we’re only beginning to glimpse.

And as that big ship faded silently into the night, I couldn’t help wondering:

What is humanity’s position on the ladder?