 What is a significant irony in the successful colonization of the moon?
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first lungfish ventured from the sea. In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine, and volitized upon striking the blades. The shaft tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged were spit through the casing. It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney. The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be drifting across Australia. Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after Australia. Once he followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that he had a fortune in chromium. Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of the first landing on the Moon. Four days reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals twenty-one days to live. In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin for thirteen more days. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine, the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly freezing the water in the tank. It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. They might have appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares. This was to allow the air-conditioning system to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly improbable meteor damage. For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor. Morning to him had no meaning at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning on the Moon for another week. The solar furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
 Earth needs materials from the moon to survive, while the moon needs materials from the Earth
 Earth needs materials from the moon to survive, while the moon needs materials from the Earth  The government is just as ineffective on the moon as it is on Earth  Moon inhabitants are less free on the moon than they used to be on Earth  The greed of humankind is destroying the newly colonized moon just as it is destroying Earth