In addition to books on fishing, AJ checked out a new Tintin book from the library earlier this week. He's been wanting to read The Adventures of Tintin: Explorers on The Moon since he saw it listed on the back of one of my brother's old Tintin books that we brought back from our visit to my parents' house.

Explorers on the Moon was written in 1954 at the beginning of the space race. It was the year Werner von Braun (immortalized by Tom Lehrer) first proposed sending a satellite into orbit, three years before Sputnik and a good 15 years before the first moon landing. And yet some of the science looks, at least to my non-expert brain, amazingly accurate (give or take a supposed tropical virus that causes the bowler-wearing incompetent government agents to rapidly grow humongous beards).

It's every thing I remember about space from my childhood, the excitement of exploration, the complexity of new machines, the beauty of designs built for speed and efficiency, the promise of achieving something thought unachievable. Tintin's rocket is red and white checked like a cheerful Italian tablecloth. It is filled with buttons and dials, none labeled, and easily jostled, to comic effect.

The picture of Earth from space looks eerily like photos we've all seen. So does the picture of the moon. So do Mars' canals.

AJ is caught up in this fusion of science and fun. He imagines himself there already in a way that he doesn't when he reads science books. He talks breathlessly and with that question-like upward scoop of intonation that he's recently acquired.

"Mommy? When I go into space? and I put on my spacesuit? I'm going to hold my breath so I don't waste too much oxygen."

"But you need oxygen so your brain and the rest of your body keep working."

He thinks for a moment. "Well, then I'll just do it for a minute."

AJ critiques Tintin's flight path. "They're going to the moon! What are they doing between Mars and Jupiter?"

Why, rescuing a wayward captain of course. The plot demands he be sucked into orbit around a smaller body. Enter the asteroid belt.

AJ interrogates the science. "Do they really have gravity when they're moving and not when they stop?"

"Hmm. I'm not sure."

He speculates on Tintin's procedures. "In real life, do astronauts wear their spacesuits inside the space shuttle?"

This time I have to think. "I think they wear some kind of space suit inside, but it's not the same thing they wear when they're outside. I think it depends on whether there's oxygen in the cabin. They need the special spacesuits to breathe."

"They should just wear their spacesuits all the time. Then they wouldn't waste so much oxygen. And Mommy? Where does the carbon dioxide go?"

"I'm not sure."

"Maybe they have some plants to eat the carbon dioxide and make oxygen."

"That sounds like a good idea to me."

AJ's rocket design will, no doubt, be green.

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