At the ‘Back to the Moon’ session yesterday evening, Chris McKay of NASA Ames tried to convince the 500-strong audience that it was in their best interests to get behind the effort to send humans Moon-wards, more than 30 years after the final Apollo mission. Harry ‘Jack’ Schmitt, the very last person to walk on the Moon and the only scientist to ever visit, was on hand for moral support.

McKay first gave us a breakneck run through the plans for the Crew Exploration Vehicle that will carry astronauts there in the next decade. “I was there for the last Apollo launch, and I hope I’ll be there for this one too,” he said. “There’s a sort of continuity about it … er, with a 30 year gap,” he mused, to much giggling from the audience.

But he soon got the crowd onside by reminding them that most of the science done on the Moon will be geology. Ultimately, he explained, he wanted to set up a base on the Moon as a staging post for a Mars colony, because it provided the perfect testing ground for many of the challenges of the red planet.

One key difference is that the planetary protection people, who want to ensure that no Earthly bacterium ever contaminates Mars, wouldn’t be too worried if we made a few mistakes on the Moon first. “Nobody cares about contaminating the Moon,” he explained. “It’s like New Jersey.”