Next time the moon expands like that . . . maybe soon after the next time it turns blue . . . astronomers might give us due notice, and we might be able to make out a new feature of the moon, a manmade one. Last week, Nasa announced plans to build a colony on the lunar surface. It says that by 2020 it hopes to have a series of interconnected huts, fit for human habitation, built on the moon's south pole. In time, the network will expand so that it will sprawl in all directions from its original site. Amazing, isn't it? For years Nasa gives us nothing only the technology to put tartan livery on Thermos flasks, and now the moon is going to look like a fat Bay City Roller.

I don't know though. You can see it's all a slippery slope. It puts me in mind of the debate sparked by proposals for a genetic database . . . the idea that a sample of everyone's DNA should be kept in storage in some sort of depot so that if anyone commits a crime, they can be nailed double-quick. Proponents of the plan say: If you're a good egg, you've nothing to worry about. The other side says: What if all that data falls into the hands of some sinister future regime?

To me, it's a foregone conclusion how this space-base business will end. We already know the way America is going. Every second or so president is a Republican even more extreme than the previous one. By 2020, the leader of America, and probably the world, will be a white supremacist whose most trusted adviser will be the talking cloud of dry-ice in his head. All he has to have done is seen Moonraker once and next thing the planet's most beautiful Caucasians will be propagating a new race of superhumans from the safety of a cluster of moon-barns while a giant laser fries the earth. There's only one thing for it. We must start building a giant mirror: now.