Antarctic exploration

As the turn of the 20^th Century loomed, the nations of the world struggled to fill in the remaining blank spaces on the map. The effort to chart the last continent proved to be the most challenging. In the 17^th Century, it was believed that Australia spanned from near the equator to the South Pole, fulfilling a perceived need for balance of the world’s landmasses. Tasman’s exploration of Australia proved that it did not connect to any frozen landmass. The first explorers to venture anywhere near the land of eternal ice were those of the British Captain James Cook’s expeditions in the 1770s, where no significant landmass was ever discovered.

                The first confirmed sighting of Antarctic happened in 1818 when Brazilian whalers landed in the King Frederick Islands some 120 kilometers north of the Antarctic Peninsula. The Brazilians built temporary camps in the islands, along with a whaling station to process their vile cargos. Discovery of petroleum oil ended the whaling industry as well as any interest in the tundra islands by Dutch interests, although Britain continued to explore the area. Few in the United Provinces had any interest in a continent covered with glaciers. After all, they already possessed Greenland, which was ice box enough.

                Brazil showed a greater interest in the Antarctica. In 1901, the Amundsen Expedition set out to step foot upon the lost continent. The expedition was led explorer Henrich Amundsen, a fourth-generation Brazilian; his family immigrated to Brazil from the Grand Principality of Norway shortly after Brazilian independence. The voyage was mostly a Brazilian affair, with the exception of Adrian de Gerlache, an astronomer and navigator born in Antwerp.

                The expedition charted the Antarctic Peninsula, and barely escaped being trapped when the ice began to advance during the final days of the brief summer. Amundsen claimed the peninsula for Brazil. That in itself was not an event to stand out. However, de Gerlache made the same claim for the United Provinces. Though they shared the same king, the two countries did not share the same government. Both explorers argued intensely over the claim, nearly coming to blows over the issue. The debate made its way back to Recife and The Hague, where both Staaten-Generaals backed their respective claims. It was only when King William proposed a joint-occupation, which later mutated into a Commonwealth mandate, did the debate fade and die.

                Amundsen returned to Antarctica in 1906, after quickly assembling his new expedition. The mission was rushed, for it came only after word of the Shackleton Expedition planned to reach the South Pole in the same year. Unlike a few years earlier, Recife and The Hague agreed that a British expedition could not be allowed to reach the pole first. Amundsen returned to the frozen land with another Netherlander navigator, Commander Georges Lencointe. There would be no fight over ownership of the South Pole, for the King wanted the flags of both his realms to stand side-by-side, greeting the late Shackleton.

                Unfortunately, there would be a flag awaiting the second-place team, but Amundsen would be the one greeted by the Union Jack. According to Shackleton’s log, his expedition reached the pole seventeen days before Amundsen. When a disgusted member of his expedition moved to remove the British flag, Amundsen stopped him. He said that Shackleton won the race fairly, and he would not be denied his place in history. The defeated explorers planted their own flags next to Britain’s before heading north. The news of who reached the South Pole first reached the United Provinces and United Kingdom roughly the same time. Crowds in London celebrated while newspapers in Amsterdam questioned the claim. It was not until Lencointe returned to the United Provinces that he confirmed British claims as accurate, much to the disappointment of the Dutch people.



Abel Tasman

A little revising to An Alternate History of the Netherlands. I imagine Australians learned about Tasman in history class...

 

...and I wish I knew why MS Word always has to jumble up the format.

 

In the middle of the 17^th Century, the island-continent of Australia, as well as nearby islands of the Pacific, was charted by the legendary explorer Abel Tasman (1603-54). Not much is known about his early life, and in fact the exact date in 1603, when he was born in the Province of Ommelanden is unknown. References to being at sea as early as 1615, as a cabin boy, are found in Tasman’s journals. He also married twice; his first wife died and his second outlived him. Tasman has only one know child. What is known for certain is that he was in the employ of the VOC since 1631. For the first seven years, he served as navigator on several ships trading in the East Indies, on trade mission as far as Japan and Indochina. One voyage in 1634, he narrowly avoided death when a portion of his crew was massacred by the natives of Ceram.

            For his first great voyage of exploration he was given command of two ships, the Engel and Gracht in 1638, where he spent eight months out of Batavia mapping Bali, Flores and visiting northern Australia. Along with trade goods, Tasman also brought back tales of dragons on Komodo and a race of monkey-men on Flores, the latter being taken more seriously in light of recent paleontological evidence uncovered on the island. Unlike the other islands he visited, the Australian coastline continued on for days. Before returning to Batavia, and eventually the United Provinces for more than a year, he speculated that this was the same land spotted by other Dutch explorers.

            Upon returning to his homeland, he lobbied the VOC Board to launch an expedition to chart this southern continent. Little attention was paid to the mentions of this land in previous decades, as ship that reached it reported no signs of civilization, and thus no potential trading partners. Expeditions cost, and the Company demanded a return on any investment. Tasman claimed there would be little cost to risk on exploring this land, and the potential for a great return. A great and wealth civilization could thrive on its southern, more temperate coasts, or even in the interior. There was no reason to believe it not true. A century earlier, Spain grew rich off plundering unknown civilizations. The VOC preferred their trading partners to remain in one piece, to provide a steady income for decades or centuries to come. They agreed to Tasman’s request, and in 1641, he began the first circumnavigation of Australia by leaving the island of Mauritius and riding the Roaring Forties to the coast of what is now known as New Holland.

            Upon reaching the southern lands, his ships, the Limmen and Zeemeeuw, sailed into Haai Bay where Tasman and his crew set out in search of food, water and profit. He sought signs of civilization, or at least a people with the Dutch could trade. After a three day trek inland, he encountered his first group of natives. Unlike the peoples of the East Indies, he viewed the natives as wild as the animals that roamed the land. They were a Stone Age tribe of nomads, lacking even basic agriculture. The natives had nothing of interest to trade, though they were fascinated by the metal tools of the expedition.

            The voyage around Australia continued in January. The journey along the southern coast of the continent was a mostly uneventful affair. Tasman stopped at multiple locations in search of natives. The VOC would be most displeased to learn this large southern land had no opportunities for trade. In May, he crossed the Tasman Sea and discovered an island that shares his name; Tasman Island. The island was a far greener place than most of New Holland. As with the mainland, he made contact with the natives, and discovered they lacked anything worth trading. Unfortunately, such an isolated people lacked the immunity defenses of the Javans. By the time a further European expedition arrived, the natives that Tasman discovered were all but decimated. Only the low population density prevented disease from spreading to other bands.

            Sailing north, Tasman discovered the Great Barrier Reef, where the Engel wrecked in October. Tasman was forced to spend three months in Queensland, near modern day Brisbane, to make repairs. Abundant trees provided a source of lumber, though the native trees were less than ideal. Twenty percent of his crew succumbed to tropical diseases as well as venomous fauna during the stay in Queensland. Two of his men were lost to crocodile attacks while Tasman charted part of the Brisbane River, forcing him to turn back after only venturing thirty-three kilometers.

            Tasman returned to Batavia in March of 1643, delivering his findings to a disappointed VOC crowd. His description of the native, as well as the native fauna, was a hit with many people back in the United Provinces. However, it was more important to impress those who fund voyages, and tales of an upright hopping animal with a pouch in its belly did not impress. Tasman returned to the United Provinces that year, spending the next three years organizing a third expedition. His maps provided much information for the famed Dutch cartography industry, with Australia filling in a once empty space. What to call Australia was debated back even then. Was it a small continent or a large island? Earlier predictions of a southern continent called for something much large, perhaps even the size of Africa.

            Tasman made a third voyage to the continent between 1646 and 1648, discovering New Zeeland during his second expedition with its hostile natives and the remains of giant birds, and sailing as far as Fiji and Tonga during his third. As with previous voyages, Tasman was empowered by the VOC to establish trade relations with any natives he discovered. The Maori had the same love of iron as other Polynesians, but instead of peaceful barter, a band of Maori attacked Tasman’s encampment on November 8, 1647. The attackers were repelled, but at the cost of fifteen dead sailors.

            An outbreak of scurvy while in the southern Pacific forced Tasman to bring his small fleet, consisting of the Guilder, Limmen and Otter, to take an extended stay on the island of Tongatapu. There, he traded iron tools and implements for supplies. The natives of Tonga proved to be friendlier than the inhabitants of New Zeeland, so much so that his crew found it difficult to say goodbye. The discovery of the islands gave European sailors a way station in crossing the Pacific. In 1678, a Dutch expedition set out to form a settlement on the island, but was forced to abandon the project when disease claimed a number of colonists. The Tongans, less resistant to European strains, suffered a heavier loss of life due to the epidemic. The islands would eventually fall under an English protectorate before the turn of the 20^th Century.

            Fiji proved to be an opposite of Tonga. Instead of smiling, friendly natives, Tasman and his crew encountered warring cannibals of the islands that were constantly at each other’s throats. Human sacrifice was not unknown to Fiji either. One form involved using men as rollers for when launching of a new canoe. Tasman filled his journal with atrocities and the savage nature of the islanders. Often in the course of European exploration, explorers would embellish accounts of savagery among native population. While what Tasman discovered did happen, it was not the everyday occurrence as made out by him. His reports did, however, encourage other European ships to sail well clear of Fiji.

            Tasman would have liked to launch a fourth expedition, and in fact planned for one. It would involve sailing further southeast, past New Zeeland. It was just as well that such an expedition was not launched, for the only natives encountered in the direction would be penguins. When he returned to Java in 1648, the VOC appointed him to the Council of Justice. He retired from the VOC in 1652, returning to his merchant roots until the start of the First Anglo-Dutch War.

            His final voyage saw him commanding eight ships and sailing north to Manila. The VOC hoped to expel the English from the Philippines as well as other trading posts in the East Indies. He never made landfall. His fleet was defeated at the hands of a larger English flotilla on June 19, 1654. Half of the VOC were killed in the fight, or from injuries suffered during the battle. Tasman took a musket round to the hip, fracturing his pelvis. While the wound itself may have left him crippled, the infection that followed claimed his life.

Moonlab, final chapter

V) Last Flight

The launch of Moonlab XI met with delay following the mishaps of Moonlab X. By April 1978, there was serious talk in Congress about ending the program. Popular support of lunar exploration hit a wall as the economic situation in America began to slide. Soring fuel costs and the making of a recession on the horizon made many Americans ask if Moonlab was worth the risk. Would it not be better to spend that money to improve lives on Earth?

When Buzz Aldrin was asked that question, he responded that if their ancestors had the same mind-set, then we would all still be in Europe. One of the more cynical members of the Science Corps, who chose to remain anonymous, posted a retort to Aldrin’s statement, saying that if their ancestors had that mind-set, they would all still be in trees. It was announced before Moonlab X returned home that Moonlab XII would be the final flight. Moonlab XI would effectively be the last mission devoted solely to exploration. While the next crew would continue, and wrap up experiments, a great deal of their time would be spent decommissioning Moonlab.

Command of Moonlab XI was given to Charles Conrad, known as Pete by just about everybody and former commander of Apollo XII, the mission that brought germs back from the moon. Conrad was also one of the Gemini Nine, serving on Gemini V and Gemini XI, as well as a naval aviator who just missed action in the Korean War. The mission’s pilot was another of the second group of astronauts. Air Force pilot James McDivitt started out as a mission commander on Gemini IV, where his pilot, Ed White, made the first EVA. He acted as commander again of Apollo IX, testing the LM in Earth orbit. Following his Apollo flight, McDivitt acted as Apollo Spacecraft Program Manager. He was not an astronaut used to playing second fiddle, but when offered the slot on Moonlab XI, he said that he could endure the indignity for a chance to work on the moon.

The mission specialists, George Patterson earned his degree while serving in the Arizona National Guard. The war in Korea interrupted his studies as he, and over a hundred thousand other militiamen were called up for duty. After serving his tour in Korea, he returned home and finished his degree at the University of Arizona. Fellow astronauts often gave Patterson a hard time for being an enlisted man, as well as a ground pounder. Patterson gave as good as he got, and whenever McDivitt or Conrad complained about walking through the Southwest’s deserts during geology training he would mention how consistent soft beds and warm meals made pilots such wimps, and if they thought this was bad, they should have tried a winter on the front line in Korea.

Moonlab XI left Earth on April 29, 1978, to one of the smallest crowd of spectators to date. Over the years, people far and wide travelled to the Cape to witness the launch of a moon rocket. Apollo XI still held the record for largest crowd. When Moonlab XI launched, the crowd was so small that traffic jams were nonexistent. For the American public, going to the moon was becoming routine. There were mishaps and unforeseen scenarios, but no matter the disaster, the astronauts flew to the moon, did their work and returned home. Nobody expected this mission to be any different. At first, it was not.

Mold was still a problem in the HM, though not as severe as with the pervious mission. As with previous mission, astronauts inspected the HM and IHM before moving in. The HM showed slight pitting on its side where high-speed dust slammed into it. A small crater was discovered in one of the HM’s legs, caused by a meteor less than a millimeter across. Had it been much larger, it would have smashed through the leg, toppling the HM. Patterson discovered a new fist-sized crater fifty meters from the IHM.

It was one of the advantageous of studying the moon from a fixed location. While Apollo had the advantage of taking samples from across the face of the moon, Moonlab was able to track to development of the landscape of a given area. A handful of craters were discovered in the vicinity, far less than some astronomers predicted. Before man set foot on the moon, the frequency of impacts was unknown. Did meteors hit once in a great while, or was there a constant peppering of the moon.

Both answers were correct. Large impacts were rare, but dust constantly rained down on the moon, as it did on Earth. When they hit Earth’s atmosphere they were seen as shooting stars in the night sky. On the moon, they simply came to an abrupt stop on the surface. While not conclusive of the whole moon, especially the Far Side, the area around Moonlab showed minimal impact frequency. Meteors, along with radiation, were two worries at the top of NASA’s risk. Today, solar forecasting and modeling can give warning to possible solar flares, and thus far NASA was lucky. Cosmic rays, atomic and subatomic particles traveling at relativistic speeds did not need forecasting for it was a constant bombardment of particles. Eventually four of the Moonlab astronauts would die of cancer, but whether or not that was caused directly by cosmic rays.

The moon was a deadly environment, and a fatality was bound to happen. At 1107, on June 3, 1978, Patterson and Conrad made their routine rounds in inspecting equipment and experiments when the inevitable happened. Patterson was reporting back to Houston on the state of the moon buggy when he was cut-off midsentence. At first, NASA dismissed it as a communication glitch; they certainly racked up an impressive score of those over the years. When Conrad continuing to communicate, management began to worry. The first alarm came when the mission doctor keeping tabs on life signs saw that Patterson’s fluctuated and ceased.

If his suit had a faulty transmitter, that would explain the lack of communication and lifesigns. Capcom relayed a request for a visual inspection on Patterson to Conrad, who reported back that he was nowhere in sight. As he was just checking the ‘buggy, Conrad walked over to find his comrade lying face down in the regolith, his suit deflated. Conrad called back to Earth, “Houston, we have an emergency here,” as he drug Patterson back to the closest of the habs, the IHM. Conrad tried in vain to resuscitate Patterson, and mission control was brought to a standstill by the message “He’s dead Houston.”

What killed Patterson was rather clear upon inspection. His shoulder sported a brutal wound where a micrometeor punctured his suit. Where a routine launch spurred little interest, the media ate up news on the death of an astronaut. Patterson was not the first astronaut to die. Apollo I claimed the lives of three astronauts on the ground, and a routine flight in a T-38 claimed the lives of Bassett and See, and Soyuz I claimed its pilot upon crashing into the ground. Patterson earned the distinction of being the first astronaut killed off Earth. His death set off an immediate abort to Moonlab XI and to bring Patterson home.

It sounded like a simple enough order, however, Patterson left a will behind in the event of his own death, and in it, he requested that should he die on the moon, he wanted to be buried there. Conrad and McDivitt were conflicted; they wanted to bring him home, but did not relish riding back to earth with a corpse. His own family was divided on the issue, but NASA’s management was not. There was no way they were going to leave an astronaut behind. To bury anyone on the moon would forever change how people viewed the moon, at least which was how NASA saw it. Patterson’s children lobbied NASA to honor their father’s wish.

Attempts by PR to keep a cork in the will issue failed, and the evening news picked up on Patterson’s ‘dying wish’. It also brought the same question back to the forefront; is exploring space worth the danger? Every astronaut would answer that it absolutely was worth it. Patterson’s death was also brought before a Congressional committee. Many members of Congress used this death to score points for their own programs, which needed funding badly. They said that not only was the moon a waste of money, but it was dangerous too. Clearly these politicians lacked the pioneering spirit that historically reigned over the United States.

Even before the accident, engineers working with NASA poured their effort into developing a hard-shell suit. The main reason had to do with pressure differences, and attempts to remove the need for pre-breathing before an EVA. Their projects were not widely known. A reporter from the New York Times asked about the suits during one of NASA’s many press conferences, and wanted to know why the suits were not deployed on the moon. PR gave the usually long-winded response, but to the engineers, the question of protection against micrometeors was laughable; you simply could not stop a pellet travelling twenty-five thousand miles an hour.

A declining economy added another nail to the Moonlab Project’s coffin. The public was not pleased by the cost of each mission, and where that money could have been spent to begin with. The Air Force stepped up its lobbying for a shuttle, and many politicians jumped on board the ban wagon. Contracts and subcontracts would be parceled out to companies in several States, and Congressmen can return to their constituents proudly proclaiming they created new jobs.

While popular history views the death of an astronaut as the end of lunar exploration during the 20th Century, it really came down to economic times on Earth. Moonlab employed tens of thousands of people directly and as support, but the Space Shuttle promised to create five times as many. If the shuttle succeeded, then a new chapter would open in the aerospace industry as hypersonic transports replaced the subsonic jumbo jets. More than three decades after the end of Project Moonlab and the public still awaits the arrival of superfast air transports.

After three decades of cost overruns and limited return on investment, NASA sought out a replacement for its aging shuttle fleet. Currently there is debate in the halls of Houston as whether or not NASA should develop a new spacecraft or contract out to the private sector. The Dragon and Silver Dart spacecraft are promising candidates, though they are from small, startup companies. Giants like Boeing are developing their own spacecraft and lobbying for NASA contracts.

NASA has yet to return to the moon following the last Moonlab mission, but in 2011, venture capitalist Robert Bigalow had the first of his inflatable hotel modules lofted into orbit. Lessons learned from Moonlab’s own IHM lead to an improved design now orbiting Earth. Bigalow entered negotiations with NASA over the status of the abandoned Moonlab modules, wanting to use the sight as part of his grown space tourism empire, with plans for constructing a hotel on the moon made from inflatable modules. Moonlab itself would be little more than a tourist destination, not unlike ghost towns in the western States.



Moonlab, part 5

V) Unlucky X

Moonlab X started out like any other Moonlab mission. Its crew underwent lengthy training. Commanding the mission was the mission commander of Apollo XVII, Eugene Cernan. He already visited the moon twice; as LM pilot on Apollo X and landing with XVII. His first mission, Gemini IX, nearly ended in disaster for him. Originally, he and Tom Stafford were the backup crew for Gemini IX, but when the original commander Elliot See and pilot Charles Bassett died when their T-38 crashed, Cernan and Stafford were moved to the front of the line. Cernan’s role in the mission involved extravehicular activity before any astronaut really figured out how to do so properly. Cernan nearly passed out from exhaustion as he wrestled his way through weightlessness to re-enter the spacecraft. Apollo X and XVII ended on much better notes, with Cernan being the last of the Apollo astronauts to walk on the moon. Six years later, Moonlab X would return him to the surface.

He would work with fellow astronaut Alan Bean and specialist Sam Black. Bean served on Apollo XII as LM pilot, accompanying Charles Conrad to the surface for a near perfect landing. Apollo XII’s crew was the first humans to witness a solar eclipse involving Earth instead of the moon, though they were not the last. Pictures from previous Moonlab missions showed the world that eclipses of the sun by Earth were not as impressive as those caused by the moon. Earth’s relative size totally blocks out the sun and its corona, leaving little off the sun to study. Black held degrees in both paleontological and geological studies, with a doctorate in Earth sciences. His paleontology background brought him endless jokes from fellow astronauts about searching for dinosaurs on the moon.

Moonlab X left Earth on September 20, 1977, and right out of the gate the mission ran into problems. A glitch caused the shutdown of the center engine on the Saturn’s first stage. It was not a show stopper, nor did it adversely affect the launch. It was not the first time an engine shut itself off either; a similar incident occurred during the launch of Apollo XIII. Cernan announced to his crew that they just suffered their glitch of the mission. Unlike Apollo XIII, the engine shutdown was just the start.

Once at the moon, the crew nearly found itself back in orbit before they even touched down. The LM’s guidance computer suffered its own errors, primarily in the form of information backing up in the slow computer. Even with the improved hardware of the second generation lunar module, computing power of the 1970s still left a lot to desire. Both Cernan and Bean piloted the earlier model LM, and both were well trained in manual operation. Moonlab X touched down slightly outside the nominal landing zone of one mile, allowing for a longer hike that originally planned.

Just reaching Moonlab was the start of Moonlab X’s problems. Previous concerns over mold growing proved to be vastly underestimated by the people on Earth. The plan was simply to disinfect surfaces in the HM with chemicals brought by the next crew. Upon cycling through the airlock, Cernan discovered that not only did the previous crew not scrape away all of the mold, but the colony expanded to cover new surfaces.

Mold was not just unsightly, but a potential health hazard, especially if any astronaut had an allergy to it. Mold spores can cause serious health problems. Fortunately for the crew of Moonlab X, the mold in question was not one of the toxic species found in bathrooms on Earth. After running down the operational check list, and insuring mold had not infested any of the systems, the crew spent the better part of two days disinfecting the HM. Though the crew was not affected, the mold did take a number of casualties in the plant specimens left growing over the life of Project Moonlab.

Battling the mold proved an easier task then the other ‘glitches’ that plagued the mission. Upon entering the IHM, the crew discovered the interior pressure was at 390mb and slowly falling. Exactly what caused the leak had never been determined and will not be until the site is dug up and the IHM thoroughly tested, though it is believed a small meteor impacting on the regolith above the module cracked the IHM, causing this slow leak. Re-establishing the optimal pressure proved no challenge in skill, though it did cut into the air reserves.

Inspection of the exterior regolith armor discovered several craters ranging from the size of dimes to the size of a softball. Since the regolith was recently disturbed by construction work, all of the craters formed within the past two years. It caused some worry to officials back on Earth, but the fresh impacts excited Black, who took the opportunity to measure and study the new craters. Unfortunately for the primary task of plugging the leak, none of the craters’ locations coincided with outgassing from the IHM.

The IHM was originally intended to be spacious and comfortable for astronauts working within its confines. Because of the leak, and its uncertain nature, new protocol dictated that astronauts remain in their suits while in the lab. Visors on their helmet could be open, and the helmets could even be removed, but NASA insisted the astronauts be able to seal themselves in minutes in the event of a catastrophic failure. The only good news for the first month of Moonlab X was that the leak did not get worse. It was eventually located and sealed, but not before making headlines across Earth.

Two months into the mission, the supply lander not only arrived off target, but landed on uneven ground. Not only was the ground uneven, but it was unstable as well. The weight of the lander caused the ground to crack, giving the lander a dangerous list. Fifty minutes after landing, and before the astronauts could arrive for a visual inspection, one of the landing struts gave way, toppling the lander. Some supplies were damaged, but the astronauts managed to salvage a majority of the goods. Water and air canisters fractured by the collapses immediately evaporated in the lunar vacuum. Freeze-dried foodstuffs proved more resilient.

Moonlab X’s problems were picked up by the media back on Earth. Not since the rescue mission of Moonlab VII did the news outlets pay such attention to the happenings on another world. It was attention NASA could do without. CBS News anchor Dan Rather gave the mission the name Unlucky Ten, a name that was picked up by other networks and major newspapers. A number of editorial columnists began to ask what was going wrong at NASA and if it was time for the astronauts to come home before one of them was killed.

Politicians began to question Moonlab, as did many voters. The biggest question on their lips was what was Moonlab doing for them? With billions of dollars invested in the program, the voters expected to see some return. The same questions were asked about Apollo. In the long-term, both projects benefited the American economy greatly. The technology used to cram a computer into a command module led the way for the microcomputer to make its way to desk tops as well as eventually sparked off the Information Revolution. Revenue taken from corporate taxes from IBM, Microsoft and other tech companies, as well as personal income taxes of all their employees paid for Apollo and Moonlab several times over in the forty years since Apollo XI first touched down.

Even before the first Moonlab mission, the United States Air Force, along with aerospace giants, lobbied NASA and Congress for its Space Shuttle Project. The argued that it was wasteful to launch one-shot space capsules, and instead the money spent on the moon should be diverted to developing a reusable spacecraft that would lower costs and eventually allow the average person access to space. Pan-American Airways even had plans for sub-orbital flights using these new space planes.

As we have discovered in the 1980s and 1990s, all the promises of the Space Shuttle failed to appear. It was a rebuildable spacecraft, not reusable; after each launch, its heat shield was replaced, and every other year one of the shuttles was taken offline for upgrades. When all these extra costs were factored into the equation, shuttle launches were nowhere near as cheap as first promised. All of these were unknown in 1978. What was known was that the shuttle’s military applications were far greater than any other spacecraft. It could launch, retrieve or deploy payloads, and de-orbit before the Soviets knew what was happening. With rumors in the international intelligence field circulating that the Soviets were planning a shuttle, well that just meant American had to have two.

The scientific community and the astronaut corps both lobbied for continuation of Moonlab, denouncing any idea of retreating from mankind’s toehold on a new world. Moon veteran Charles Duke said that if NASA retreated now, then they would be like the Viking explorers who reached North America only to turn around and go home. In other words, centuries from now, they would be just as forgotten as some other nation reached out and took the moon for its own. The moon is, of course, somewhat different from Vinland. International agreements made in the 1970s gave the moon the same Terra Nullis status as Antarctica.

Moonlab X nearly ended in disaster. As the crew prepared to board the LM and return to orbit, they failed to get any signal from the orbiting Apollo craft. The first thought was that the C/SM was damaged or destroyed by a meteor impact. The idea generated apprehension but was immediately dismissed as Houston still retained telemetry on the capsule. Sometime during the stay on the moon, the orbiting spacecraft’s antennae drifted out of alignment with the astronauts on the ground. The drift would have occurred within the past few days as it mission SOP required periodic checking on the dormant Apollo. Cernan had to relay orders to the C/SM through Houston, where a clear line of communication with the sleeping capsule remained.

NASA downplayed the problem when it reached the media, saying the astronauts were never in any real danger. In a sense, it was true; Houston had a quick fix for the problem. What they did not say was that had they not been able to communicate with the Apollo, then they would have a serious problem. They would not necessarily have three dead astronauts on their hands, for a rescue mission could have been launched, though that would have taken weeks to prepare. Supplies could continue to flow to Moonlab and the crew could hunker down until rescued.

The media did provide nearly live coverage of the docking of LM and C/SM, and restarting of the Apollo. Coverage from liftoff to docking to powering up of the Apollo cast some doom and gloom upon the Moonlab program. Had docking failed, Cernan was prepared to go EVA and manually pull both spacecraft together. Whether or not it would have helped, it is probably best we never had to learn, but it spoke volumes of Cernan’s determination to not let any technical difficulties get between him and completing the mission.

Moonlab X’s luck changed for the better on March 8, 1978, when the capsule made a successful re-entry and splashed down only two miles from the recovery ship. Despite all the misfortune the astronauts faced during the mission, when all three were asked if they would go to the moon again given the chance, all three astronauts would not hesitate. Cernan said that he hoped a lunar colony was established by the turn of the century so he could retire to the moon. His wife was not amused. Like the crews of previous Moonlab missions, this was their final trip into space.

Moonlab, part four

IV) Rescue
After the landing of the third supply mission, many at NASA wondered at all the possible applications used on the hardware. Reinforced shelters and addition laboratory space aside, sending landing packed full of supplies on one-way trips to the moon were beginning to take a bite out of the budget. One proposal included a recently developed accordion passage to link the landers together for a future outpost. Renovating the interior of the supply ships would be a technical challenge, but that would pale in comparison to moving the landers close enough for the passageways to work. NASA lacks the capacity to launch any vehicle large enough to move spent supply landers. Even assembling such a machine on the lunar surface would require multiple launches and that meant additional Saturn Vb rockets. As one can imagine, the aerospace industry was in favor of continued launches and production of the Saturn series.

NASA placed salvaging material from Moonlab into planning its first, true outpost on the moon, which still lay off in the future. For the present, the landers would soon lose their usefulness as shelters and extra lab space. For Moonlab VII, the first Inflatable Habitat Module would be deployed in the trench dug by the moon dozer. The IHM appeared little more than a giant balloon on the surface. The first obvious difference is material; the IHM’s skin was comprised of Kevlar. Since it was to be buried after deployment, the skin was thinner than that of a Kevlar vest. In fact, the use of the material was more for preventing punctures from within the IHM than from without. The biggest challenge in construction the IHM would be in inflating the structure. Even using an atmospheric mix of 50/50 oxygen-nitrogen at 400 millibars, it would still require a large supply of air to inflate the structure. Moonlab VI arrived at the moon with a surplus of canned air, and the Moonlab VII LM would carry its maximum capacity to the surface in canisters of compress oxygen and nitrogen.

The IHM would provide Moonlab crews with a floor space of almost the same as the pit excavated to house it. The total living area of the IHM topped out at 510 square meters. The only part of the new module to be exposed to the surface would be the six square meter airlock. Once deployed, experiments from the supply modules and the Moonlab HM would be transferred to the more spacious IHM. The HM would retain its original function and would still act as living quarters for the crew, but with a new module buried beneath the regolith, astronauts now had near perfect protection against solar flares. One reporter commented on the ‘near perfect’ aspect, to which a NASA engineer replied that no matter how hard one tries, they cannot plan perfectly and there that the lunar environment was still full of unknown variables.

Astronauts had a slightly different attitude; the only guaranteed outcome on the moon was death if anything should go wrong. As two-thirds of the Moonlab crew came from test pilot stock, looking death in the eyes was nothing new. As for the other one-third; not a single scientist would dream of passing up the change to study the moon in person. For Moonlab VII, the mission specialist would be geologist John Maroni, the first “Italian” in space. Maroni was born to parents who left Italy shortly after Mussolini took power. He was born in New York, but as a youth his parents, like so many generations of immigrants, headed west. His father was not a farmer, but an engineer who managed to land a job in constructing the dams along the Columbia River. It was along this great river that Maroni developed an interest in geology. After earning a degree in geology, Maroni went to work in the oil industry, using what he learned to track down deposits of fossil fuels. When word went around in the 1960s that NASA was searching for geologists to send to the moon, Maroni jumped at the chance to be one of the first to study a new world. Of course he was not the only one to apply for the limited position of mission specialists.

Maroni was not the only John on Moonlab VII. Mission Commander John Young already visited the moon twice, first as command module pilot of Apollo X and later as mission commander for Apollo XVI. Like Maroni, Young developed an interest towards geology. Unlike the specialists, Young’s interest developed while preparing for Apollo XVI. Young’s career began in the Navy as a fire control office onboard the USS Laws. Not a promising start for an astronaut, but following the Korean War, Young entered flight training and ended up spending four years flying off careers before moving on to being a test pilot. He entered NASA as one of the Gemini Nine in 1962, making his first flight on Gemini III with Gus Grissom. His NASA career was almost derailed when he smuggled a sandwich onboard Gemini III, a feat that earned him a reprimand from the very rigid NASA brass.

The third man for Moonlab VII had the distinction of making his first flight into space on Apollo XIV, spending the time at the moon in orbit while Al Shepard and Ed Mitchell ventured to the surface. Steward Roosa served as an Air Force test pilot before being selected as one of the nineteen astronauts of Astronaut Group 5 in 1966, which called itself the Original Nineteen. Like with so many of the C/SM pilots so close to the moon, Roosa was more than ready to make the landing.

Said landing went flawlessly. Moonlab VII touched down on June 8. After running routine checkups on the HM’s systems and various experiments, the crew began the long task of deploying the IHM. The combination of its thin skin and the low gravity were almost not enough to allow for its deployment. All three astronauts were required to remove the container from the LM. Great care went into spreading the module into its pit. Despite promises of the fabric’s strength, nobody was willing to put its theoretical threshold to the test. One tear in the fabric and the IHM would be all but useless. Several days were required to unfold and inflate the structure.

During the course of its construction, NASA faced one of its most serious problems to date when the mission commander received a warning that his environmental suit’s integrity was compromised. His suit was obviously not torn open, for had that happened he would be dead in short order. A slow, steady leak began, most likely caused during construction work on the surface. Such an eventuality was not unseen, and within the HM there sat kits able to repair minor suit damage. As mentioned before, there was little that could be done for major malfunctions, but leaking seals could be patched.

With Young out of work until his suit was repaired, it was left to Roosa and Maroni to finish pitching the tent. Young’s suit was patched, and then filled to twice the HM’s interior pressure to test for further leaks. With the EVA workforce reduced to two-thirds, the mission schedule was effectively derailed. A shuffling of experiments and tasks planned later in Moonlab VII’s mission rippled through Houston, with lower priority events cancelled. Even early tasks requiring all three astronauts were postponed. The laying out of power cables between the IHM and the HM’s reactor had to wait until Young’s suit was cleared for EVA.

The most time consuming of the IHM’s construction came when the structure had to be inflated. Mission specifications called for a 50/50 mixture of oxygen and nitrogen and 400 millibars, but even at that deduced pressure, it took a great deal of time, to say nothing of canisters of air, to inflate the inflatable habitat. Before the IHM was buried, the crew orbited the structure several times, carefully checking for any leaks. A leak in such a structure would be worse than in the HM. If the original habitat suffered a leak, it would simply run out of air. If the IHM suffered one, it would run out of air and collapse. Even with reinforcing beams, NASA was not willing to risk a collapse while the crew slept, and thus the crew retained the original habitat as their living quarters. In the event of a solar flare, however, the IHM would offer superior protection from the lead-lined shelters of the supply landers.

Once construction and testing were completed, Moonlab VII’s crew began the process of burying the IHM. Burying the inflatable module was not as easy of a task as it sounds. The moon dozer could not simply drive over the top of the IHM, for its weight may cause the structure to collapse. The safety precaution caused a serious embarrassment when it became obvious that the entire structure could not be buried by the moon dozer. A two meter wide strip of exposed IHM sat in the middle of the compound. To fill this gap, engineers in Houston and the astronauts on the moon put their heads together and developed a low-tech solution. The last two meters would have to be buried by hand. With little more than buckets and scoops, the three crewmen spent two weeks of work finishing the last stretch of covering their new lab.

Once buried, the IHM was ready for business. It was not until late September that lab equipment was fully transferred from the HM and various supply landers to the IHM. Even with internal partitions, the new lab was far more spacious than the old. So much so, Maroni suggested that the next crew bring up a ping pong table. His suggestion was dismissed of course, but not because they lacked sufficient room. Moonlab VIII, as well as future supply missions, would transport more than enough equipment to the moon to fill any spacious gaps.

Less than a month into the operations of the IHM, Moonlab was again visited by its rivals from the other side of the Iron Curtain. On October 3, Soyuz 18 entered lunar orbit. As with previous Soviet missions, Moonlab was alerted in advance. Soyuz 18’s LM would land well outside any zone of concern for Moonlab at a distance of 112 kilometers. It was assumed the mission would be like any other landing; the Soviet flag would be planted, experiments and equipment deployed and some samples scooped up and taken back to Earth. The mission cruised along as planned until Pytor Klimuk re-entered the LM for his trip back to the Soyuz C/SM.

On October 4, after five hours on the surface, Klimuk fired up the LM’s systems and prepared for launch. All systems were in the green, but when the order to ignite was given, Klimuk was greeted with silence. The ascent engine did not fire. Klimuk soon found himself standing on top of a bomb, wondering if and when the engine would explode. Moonlab learned about the malfunction when the orbiting Apollo reflected signals back to Moonlab, which meant Houston learned about the incident around the same time that engineers back in the Soviet Union.

Several brilliant ideas on how to fix the LM’s engine circulated through the Soviet program, but none could be accomplished with the tools on hand. Nobody foresaw the engine simply not firing. Exploding, yes, but that was a situation they did not worry terribly about, for if it occurred the cosmonaut would be dead and the craft destroyed. A mad scramble by engineers in the Kazakh SSR to prepare a rescue mission ended almost before it began. Klimuk had with him not enough oxygen to survive, even if the rescue lander launched immediately. The Soviets faced facts that they would have a dead cosmonaut on the moon. Normally this would not be an issue, but thanks to Moonlab, NASA was already aware of the situation.

What happened next was something straight out of the movies. In 1969, a movie called Marooned hit the theaters. In it, an Apollo spacecraft was stranding in orbit when its retrorockets failed to fire. NASA scrambled to launch a rescue mission, which arrived the same time as a Soyuz capsule. The cosmonaut was not able to return them to Earth, but he did deliver enough oxygen for two of the crewmen to hold out until saved. Obviously in the case of the moon, delivering enough oxygen would not help much.

NASA management, as well as politicians at the highest levels of the Federal Government mused over what they should do. Old time Cold Warriors wanted to just leave the cosmonaut to his fate, but the soon-to-be outgoing Ford administration gave the order to retrieve the cosmonaut. Astronauts saving the cosmonaut would not only be the neighborly thing to do, it would also elevate the opinion of the United States around the world. At least that was what President Ford believed, and he hoped it would help him in the upcoming election as well.

Soyuz 18’s LM was just at the limit of the moon buggy’s endurance. A 112 kilometer trip would take twenty-six hours, and it would be every bit as epic as the voyage of the James Caird from the Shackleton Antarctic expedition. . Since they would be bringing the cosmonaut back to Moonlab, only two astronauts could make the trip. Young and Maroni would make the attempt. Roosa volunteered, but was overruled. If anything should happen to the other two astronauts, then Roosa would have to end the Moonlab mission and return to Earth. Maroni was trained to land the LM and fly the Apollo, but he was a geologist at heart, not a veteran pilot.

Communication between Washington and Moscow made it clear that the astronauts were coming to help, and the cosmonaut would be returned when Moonlab VII returned home in December. The order was given for Soyuz 18 to leave the moon and his comrade in the hands of their American rivals. That did not bode well for Vitaly Sevastyanov, who was leaving a comrade behind. There were those in Houston who were equally displeased, though for different reasons. Planners of the Moonlab program always made certain the station had a surplus of oxygen, and there was no risk of four people suffocating in the next two months. However, that did not mean everyone was happy that American oxygen was going to be wasted on a Red.

A more practical concern arose immediately as to what precisely they were supposed to do with Klimuk. They could ill-afford to have a body simply sit around until Moonlab VII departed. He had some knowledge of English, and anything that could not be communicated on site had to wait for the maddening three-second delay when dealing through a translator back on Earth. He proved to be an able assistant to Maroni, who often referred to him as a grad student; somebody to do the grunt work while the professor finished important tasks. He was a far better engineer than geologist. He earth science experience extended only as far as he was trained to find certain rocks. On other experiments and projects he pulled his weight.

He was familiarized with most of Moonlab’s systems, both in the HM and IHM. The only part off-limits was the lab’s power supply, a highly classified nuclear reactor. That did not stop Klimuk from trying to learn everything he could for his impending debriefing. In response to his curiosity, Young made the joke that he thought the accident was staged so the KGB could infiltrate Moonlab. While the cosmonaut worked away on the moon, the Soviets prepared a Soyuz to bring their man back.

On December 16, twelve hours after Moonlab VIII landed to relive the previous crew, as well as set a new record for how many men were on the moon at once, Moonlab VII headed for orbit. Because they were carrying Klimuk to a waiting Soyuz that was making its way to rendezvous with the Apollo, Moonlab VII could return only a handful of samples to Houston. At 1304, the LM docked with the Apollo spacecraft, which powered up without problems. At 1354, the Soyuz, carrying one cosmonaut, rendezvoused with Moonlab VII.

The Soviet moon program called for cosmonauts to go EVA in order to reach their landers and return to the mothership. This event that Klimuk trained for made transfer to the Soyuz easy. Neither Soyuz nor Apollo had compatible docking mechanisms, so he would have to make the leap one way or another. A guide line was thrown between the Soyuz and the LM, allowing Klimuk to climb away after saying his farewells and giving his thanks. Though risk of collision was negligible, Soyuz 19 gave the Moonlab astronauts a three hour head start before igniting their own engine and returning home. Klimuk received a hero’s welcoming upon landing, but the Soviets mad certain he never flew again.

Moonlab, Chapter 3

Eventhough I've hit 13 dances in the past 12 days, I still found time to write a chapter... ok, it's short, but I have a good excuse.

 

 

III) The Oldest Rookie
Moonlab IV sat on the launch pad in Florida longer than originally planned. The second supply mission was slated for a late May launch in 1975, but technical delays and a serious threat of a leak in the Saturn Vb booster delayed the launch until June 20, 1975. None of the Saturn V family of rockets had ever exploded, and NASA intended to keep that perfect record. If one were to explode after launch, Moonlab might see a premature ending, and if even one were to explode on the ground, it would bring the American manned space program to a halt.No leaks were found and it was later decided that a faulty sensor was to blame after all the other Saturn Vb boosters underwent inspection. Further tests on sensors bumped the entire project schedule back a month, forcing Moonlab V to wait until August.

The Moonlab IV supply LM made a perfect landing, almost exactly 1.6 kilometers (one mile) north of the HM. On board were enough supplies to last nine months. With the success of Moonlab III, mission planners debated expanding the original mission length of six months. Moonlab V’s mission was stretched to eight months, and after the delay of Moonlab IV would run from August 1975 to March 1976. There was some concern over the extended length voiced by NASA doctors. It was not a matter of if the crew could handle eight months on the moon but rather the running health of one crewman in particular.

Before his scheduled flight in the Mercury Program, Donald “Deke” Slayton was struck from active duty due to an irregular heartbeat. It was a condition he lived with his whole life and one that never affected his performance during WWII or as a test pilot. It also would have played no role in his scheduled mission, but NASA doctors worried over every irregularity and the NASA’s management feared a public relations disaster if they lost an astronaut in orbit. At the time, no doctor could say for absolute certain that weightlessness would not aggravate his condition, and that non-zero probability grounded Slayton.

In 1972, after years of lobbying NASA physicians and long periods between fibulations, Slayton was finally cleared for flight. The only flights planned for the remained of the decade were the Moonlab missions, and the doctors soon tried to backslide one their assessment when it became clear that Slayton would be going to the moon. They worried enough about astronaut health when they were in Houston. The issue was finally settled by management, when Krantz, Christopher Craft and NASA administrator James Fletcher stood by the original assessment; Slayton was go for Moonlab. However, they were forced to grant the doctors an emergence veto. In the event they came to a consensus that Slayton’s health was in ‘serious jeopardy’, then the mission would abort and the crew would return to Earth. At age 51, Deke Slayton earned the distinction of being the oldest rookie astronaut.

Moonlab V’s mission commander was another veteran of Apollo, though he never actually touched the surface. Thomas Stafford flew on Gemini III and XI, as well as commanded Apollo X, the mission that tested the LM in lunar orbit. He and Gene Cernan flew within 47,000 feet of the lunar surface. The ascent module of the LM lacked sufficient fuel to return from the surface. Officially it was to reduce weight for the launch, though it has been suggested it was insurance to prevent Stafford and Cernan from leaping ahead of Apollo XI. One can only imagine the frustration caused by being so close, yet never able to reach the goal line. On Moonlab V, Stafford would finally reach that line.

Mission Specialists for Moonlab V would be astrophysicist Edward Gibson, and his mission would be astronomical observations from the surface of the moon, as well as physics experiments conducted in the lunar environment. Unfortunately for Gibson, mission planners failed to take into account that a full Earth was far brighter than a full moon, rendering a good portion of the lunar night useless for observation. Instead, he turned his instruments on Earth during that period, studying the homeworld from afar. One photograph taken during the mission was almost as famous as Earthrise. The picture was of a half-Earth; one side blue and white, the other black except for a scattering of lights. The picture showed a detailed layout of cities in the western United States and Canada during the Terran night.

Moonlab V launched on August 12, 1975, after a brief delay caused by a faulty sensor in mission control. Slayton later voiced his annoyance on how a faulty indicator a thousand miles away nearly scrubbed his mission. If not for the quick work of technicians in discovering the fault was in the sensors and not the Saturn Vb, the mission might have faced a severe setback. A few hours later than originally planned, Moonlab V was off the ground and headed towards the moon. The crew touched down less than a kilometer from the Habitat Module on August 15. It was closer to the HM than mission planners liked, but not close enough that debris kicked up by the descent engine, or the engine itself, would cause damage to their living quarters.

The new crew began their stay by inspecting experiments left running by Moonlab III. The small garden within the HM, which consisted a grand total of four pots, gave promising results for a future of growing plants in a lunar base with local resources. A small tomato plant left behind survived the long day-night cycle and bloomed with several flowers. One problem the astronauts would be unable to solve was how exactly they were supposed to pollinate what was grown on the moon. There was no way NASA would allow honeybees to be kept in Moonlab. Biologists were not even certain bees could function properly on a world with no magnetic field.

NASA did permit the transportation of several mice to the moon during Moonlab V. The purpose was not to have rodents take a toehold on another world, but rather a long-term study on how life could adapt to low gravity. The mice born on Earth were of the least amount of interest; it was how their offspring would develop in lunar gravity that could give clues on how humans could develop and grow from conception to death off Earth. Sooner or later, humanity would leave Earth and it was not feasible for every woman to return to Earth gravity for the duration of pregnancy.

Would the mice grow to giant size in the low gravity? It was a common belief at the time, but as it turned out the mice born in Moonlab were not much bigger than those immigrants from Earth. Diet played a bigger role in determining size. Autopsies on the lunar-born mice showed that bone development would be a great concern to colonists in the far future. Each lunar mouse’s skeleton grew slighter and more brittle than their robust Earth cousins. Attempts to return live mice born on the moon failed when these lunar mice were killed by the force of re-entry. Structural tests on the bones indicated mammals born on the moon could function in Earth’s gravity, though a gentler means of transitioning from a trans-Earth injection to splashdown would be required to prove the hypothesis for certain.

Protests over Moonlab picked up again just after New Years’ 1976. Moonlab VI, the third supply run, sat poised to launch from the Cape. Ordinarily, a supply mission would not garner such recognition by anybody outside of NASA. The public was hardly excited about the flight of water, oxygen and free-dried food. However, Moonlab VI was to be different. In addition to nine months’ worth of supplies, it carried the moon dozer. The moon dozer would be the heaviest off-world vehicle launched during the 20th Century. Though it was smaller in volume than the buggy, and lacked a pressurized compartment, it made up for all this with its reinforced construction.

The moon dozer was developed as a construction vehicle in the early days of Moonlab. The HM would not last forever, and just one solid strike from an eraser-sized meteor could puncture its hull. The odds of being struck on any one mission were slim, less so than being struck by lightning on Earth, but over the years the risk would add up. What NASA wanted was a secure habitat, something built into the moon. That was where moon dozer came in. It would not bury the HM, but it would dig out and prepare a trench for the arrival of the Inflatable Habitat Module. The IHM would expand to greater volume than the HM and would be completely buried save for the airlock.

Construction on the moon did not drive the protestors either. The moon dozer was designed to operate during both day and night, and thus required something stronger than solar power to operate. Like the HM, a RTG powered the ‘dozer, and the protestors hated anything nuclear. When the protests on the nightly news were viewed from Moonlab, Stafford commented that the environmentalists would probably protest the ignition of the first, clean fusion reactor just because it was nuclear fusion. Experiments in extracting Helium-3 from the lunar regolith did not attract the attention of anyone save some scientists and engineers back on Earth, even though it would be the fusion fuel of choice. Continued lack of scientific knowledge back home led the majority of Americans to see helium as nothing more than something one puts in a balloon.

Despite the protests, Moonlab VI arrived on the revised schedule. Unloading and assembling the moon dozer required a great effort, even in reduced gravity. Like the moon buggy, it sat on top of the supply module and road down to the surface on a ramp. Unlike the ‘buggy, the ‘dozer was labeled ‘some assembly required’. Three days passed before the moon dozer was declared operational, and Stafford wasted no time in driving it to the HM. Fifty meters away from the HM, he dug the first scoop of regolith out of a hole that would measure 25 x 25 x 10 meters, wide, long and deep. The IHM would take up most of that space, giving the astronauts greater room to maneuver than the HM. The first IHM would be small compared to future designs.

Since the moon dozer was designed to operate in light and dark, when the lunar night passed overhead, the machine’s operation went indoors. A remote control unit came with the ‘dozer and was installed in the already cramp HM. Remote operations were far slower than manual as the astronauts had only a pair of cameras on the moon dozer from which to see their progress. Lighting was also a problem, but only for part of the lunar night. When the moon’s orbit took it into the gibbous and full stages of Earth, sunlight reflected from Earth sufficiently illuminated the landscape. Three weeks were required to excavate a pit that a trained construction crew could have managed in less than a day. With the pit complete, the moon dozer slipped into stand-by mode.

Moonlab V left the moon on December 15, with more than enough time to arrive home by Christmas. The mission returned to Earth with 120 kilograms of moon rocks as well as samples from experiments ran on the moon, including all of the mice. A second batch of rodents would return to the moon with the third manned Moonlab mission in the following year. The Moonlab CM splashed down in the Pacific new Kiribati on December 18. As with the previous return, the crewmen were subjected to rigorous medical tests upon returning to Houston. Slayton underwent the most thorough inspection. Aside from suffering the same rate of bone loss as the other two astronauts, the lengthy stay on the moon had no ill effect on his health.

Moonlab, Chapter 2

II) Procellarum BaseMoonlab I launched in the wake of the first Soviet moon landing. On April 12, 1974, Alexi Leonov touched down at Mare Nubium. Leonov spent barely six hours on the surface before returning to Soyuz 14. Unlike Apollo, the Soviets used own two cosmonauts per mission; one venturing down to the surface in the smaller Soviet LM, while the other remained in orbit. Leonov returned to the Soviet Union with twenty-two kilograms of regolith and rocks, far more than all the sample return probes combined.

Unlike Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldwin, Leonov did not have the world’s spot light cast upon him. He received the expected hero’s parade in Moscow, and was praised by the Soviet press as well as the presses of her vassals, but the only mention in American media was a brief mention of his landing on CBS Nightly News as well as various newspapers. There was a little concern voiced about what would happen if astronauts and cosmonauts were on the moon at the same time, but this was quickly silenced upon it was explained that the moon was a rather large place.

Preparations for Moonlab I continued through the spring of 1974, and the countdown to the first Moonlab launch proceeded much swifter than the countdown leading to Apollo VIII. The Saturn V flew with a near perfect record with the only malfunction being an engine in the first stage of Apollo XIII. NASA’s engineering team was confident that the Saturn Vb would prove just as reliable. This did not stop flight director Gene Krantz, or any other watchmen at mission control in Houston from sweeting. The Saturn V never failed, but with the amount of fuel it carried, it would take only one failure to obliterate a good portion of Cape Canaveral. A similar incident nearly happened with the Soviet’s N-1 rocket, and only a last-minute automated abort prevented it from wiping out their lunar ambitions.

Launch was scheduled for July 4, 1974, which brought mixed feelings from Mission Control. While the Fourth of July was all about launching rockets into the air, those rockets always exploded in dazzling displays. The NASA family was a rather superstitious lot, and worried such analogies would jinx Moonlab I. Their fears were unfounded, for in the morning of July 4, Moonlab I left Florida without a hitch. Real trouble did not occur until July 9, when Moonlab I prepared for its automated landing.

Glitches in the lab’s computer did not occur until after the landing sequence was initiated, thus well past the cancellation report. Engineers rushed frantically to solve the problem, uncertain if the problem were real or if one of Moonlab’s thousands of sensors was faulty. It would not be the first time a mission was placed in jeopardy because of a faulty indicator. Such incidents dated back to John Glenn’s flight, when a faulty sensor told Mission Control that his capsule’s heat shield may be loose. In the case of Moonlab, the sensor in question relayed data back to Houston indicating a dangerous list in the descending HM.

A second sensor gave a more positive report. It reported the HM descending normally and all systems green. Mission Control had to choose which sensor to believe. Redundancies in the HM’s landing program should automatically correct any list. Since no change was detected in the landing, either there was no list, or the software was also malfunctioning. The Moonlab engineering team insisted it was far more likely that the first sensor was malfunctioning than the second one as well as the landing program. Had they decided otherwise, Mission Control could have sent orders to Moonlab to change its trajectory, but remotely operating a landing vehicle with a 2.6 second lag was challenging at best.

Krantz gave the OK for the HM to continue its flight plan, allowing Moonlab I to touch down in the middle of the Ocean of Storms at 1404 on July 9, 1974. The experience was nowhere near as hair-raising as the Apollo XI landing, but it was enough to give the flight controllers a few more gray hairs. Moonlab II, the first of several supply missions, launched on September 12, landing less than a kilometer from the HM five days later. Along with a year’s supply of food, water and oxygen, Moonlab II also included the moon buggy. The mission ended without as much as a glitch in the system. It was almost too perfect for NASA, leaving high level players in Project Moonlab apprehensive about the third mission.

Unlike the two previous missions, Moonlab III would be manned. The mission would take three astronauts to the moon for a six month visit. It would be the first mission to leave a C/SM in orbit around the moon unmanned, virtually stranding the crew on another world. Earlier unmanned Earth orbital tests of the Block III Apollo proved it could remain dormant for up to a year, and be brought back to life without a major problem. All the hardware was proven and designs sound. Whether the capsule would actually awaken after its hibernation, the crew would not know for six months after reaching the surface. If not— contingency plans for a rescue mission were proposed, but by the time the spacecraft could be readied, launched and at the moon, supplies in the LM would have been exhausted.

A misfired Apollo was not the only emergency concern of the mission, though it ranked high. Six months on the moon was enough time for the health of any astronaut to decline. One concern was a sudden onset of appenticidits. With astronauts, being a tough a macho lot, NASA doctors feared that by the time they complained about abdominal pain, the three day return trip might be too long to save the crewman. There was some discussion about preventative surgery, removing the appendix before the astronauts left Earth. For something as long as a Mars mission, it would be a must, but the moon was close enough for alternatives. Moonlab was stocked with emergency antibiotics and other drugs. At the first sign of serious complications, these medicines could be administered before an immediate abort of the mission.

Each of the astronauts for Project Moonlab underwent basic field medicine. The vacuum of the lunar surface was a deadly environment even under the best of conditions. Odds were, that sometime during one of the six month plus missions, one of the astronauts would suffer injury. Astronauts underwent similar training regiments as Army corpsmen, including setting bones and patching wounds. Some of the training was more for a psychological benefit, for if an astronaut’s body received injury great enough to cause bleeding out on the surface then their suit was probably already punctured. Any injury serious enough to require doctors on Earth to talk the astronauts through would result in an immediate mission abort.

To command Moonlab III, NASA turned to one its more experienced moon hands, James Lovell. Lovell visited the moon twice during Apollo; first with the first trip to the moon on Apollo VIII and later for a landing on the Frau Mauru Highlands on Apollo XIII. Lovell intended to retire from NASA following Apollo XIII, but many in management and mission planning, including long time boss Donald Slayton, convinced Lovell to stay on for one more mission. He agreed, “as long as I don’t have to go with Frank again.” The Frank he referred to was Frank Borman, fellow astronaut, partner on Gemini VII and Apollo VIII, and good friend. Bormann retired from the program not long after Apollo VIII.

NASA would draw upon its experienced Apollo crewmen to command all of the Moonlab missions, with all commanders having already once walked on the moon. For pilot, NASA tapped Apollo XVI LM pilot Charles Duke, who has even more time on the surface than Lovell. The role of C/SM pilot would be a short one for all Moonlab missions, and all pilots would find their mission parameters to be broad and vague. Most of his time on the surface would be spent operating the moon buggy, attending experiments and assisting the mission specialists.

The first mission specialist of Moonlab was geologist Harrison Schmidt. The Science Corps astronauts were the envy of their fields. Unlike so many other geologists around the world, who would study lunar samples in ultra-clean laboratories, Moonlab scientists would get the chance to study the samples in their natural environment. Initial studies showed high amounts of light elements in the regolith and a low heavy metal content, disproving the co-accretion hypothesis. The moon also lacked volatiles, gases like nitrogen, carbon dioxide, etc. though its rock contained a great many of oxides. If a source of hydrogen could be found, then water could be produced on the moon, cutting back on the cost of supply missions.

Moonlab III sat on the launch pad in the early morning light of December 6, 1974. It was a chilly day at the Cape, though not so cold as to threaten any of the thousands of parts of the Saturn Vb. The only company the three astronauts had as they climbed the tower and entered the capsule were a few technicians who were eager to get as far away from the two thousand tonnes worth of high explosives that was the Saturn Vb as possible. Each Saturn launch cost far greater than any other booster, for unlike the Titans and Atlases that carried nuclear warheads, if one of the Saturn V family were to explode, it would have the yield of a small atom bomb. NASA could not afford to have a single Saturn explode on the ground. Should that happen, the manned space program would be shut down for an undetermined length of time.

At 1005, Moonlab III cleared the launch tower and began its three day voyage to the moon. Unlike other missions, the weightless period of Moonlab III did not give any of the astronauts space sickness. The lack of gravity has an adverse effect on the stomach, and half of the people to ever travel in space suffered from it while acclimatizing. After the third stage cleared Earth orbit and slid into a trans-lunar injection, the C/SM separated and deployed its solar panels before turning around and docking with the LM. Even after factoring in a third man for the landing, the Moonlab LM proved far more spacious than its ancestor.

Moonlab III entered lunar orbit on December 9, only slightly of course. A minor correction in orbit brought the spacecraft over the Moonlab HM by the sixth orbit. By the eighth orbit, it was time to land. Moonlab III’s crew had a long hike across the barren lunar wilderness to reach the HM. To avoid any possibly collision, Moonlab standard operating procedures called for LMs to touch down at least one-point-six kilometers (one mile) from the Habitat Module. The SOP applies to both manned and unmanned landings. After reaching the surface and hiking to the first supply lander, the crew unpacked the moon buggy and loaded it with as many supplies from the cargo module. Weekly schedules called for one run on the supply lander.

After spending their careers in Gemini and Apollo Command/Service Modules, as well as Lunar Excursion Modules, the HM was almost luxurious. In camping terms, the previous craft were tents while the HM was an RV by comparison. Comparisons aside, living in Moonlab would be no mere camping trip. Much of the time spent awake would either be spent outside or on experiments indoors. The latter was saved for the lunar night, when temperatures dropped well below -200 degrees. Environmental suits were designed for daytime operations and to radiate excess heat and keep the astronaut cool. While they could function briefly in the lunar night, long-term exposure would result in hypothermia.

Many of the Moonlab experiments would see whether or not man could survive on the moon for extended periods of time. It was hoped at the time that Moonlab would pave the way for a permanent American presence on the moon, similar to research stations in Antarctica. One of the biggest experiments for Project Moonlab involved living off the land. High-powered ovens were used to bake out elements from regolith, most notably oxygen. The ovens produced a small quantity of oxygen. Not enough to keep the astronauts alive on its own, but more than enough to prove the process worked.

Regolith would also be used in more conventional and familiar means. Along with a small hydroponics garden, the astronauts experimented with growing various crops directly in the regolith. Early experiments on Moonlab produced simple cement when water was added to the regolith. The lunar dirt lacked many nutrients plants required to live, forcing the addition of fertilizer to the mix. The only available manure on the moon came from the astronauts themselves, creating a long list of jokes among the Moonlab crews about “night soil”.

Water used for these small gardens, really little more than a few potted plants, came from another Moonlab experiment. Waste water produced by the astronauts went through an intense filtration and purification regiment, coming out of the machines as clean as it went into the astronauts. The crews were rather reluctant to drink water reclaimed from their own urine, and instead used this recycled water in the garden. The Moonlab water reclamation system was never 100%, and no matter how often water was recycled, there was always a loss and a need for more water to be introduced to the life-support systems.

Producing water from lunar oxygen and hydrogen was one possible solution, but the relative lack of hydrogen near Procellarum Base made it an expensive proposal in terms of energy. Schmidt, as well as other Moonlab mission specialists, proposed sending a probe into polar orbit of the moon to investigate the craters at the poles. Some craters at the North and South Poles were deep enough that their floors never saw the light of day. Billions of years of bombardment by comets and other icy debris may have left residue in these places “were the sun don’t shine”. Any raw ice that may exist in these locations would not only provide drinking water, but oxygen to breath and oxygen-hydrogen for fuel.

One of the many goals of Moonlab was to determine whether or not a permanent base could be established using local resources. If NASA, or any earthbound organization attempted to establish such a base without using materials from Earth would require a budget that runs in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Aside from concrete, the moon has an abundance of elements that could be used to produce solar cells as well as enough batteries to hold the charge for the lunar night. The batteries were largely a political decision. A fission reactor could provide ample power for the nights, but environmentalist concerns of launching that much fission fuel into space would spark protests far greater than Moonlab’s RTG, which was designed to last the seven year mission. A nuclear reactor for a full research base would likely run on the same fuel for more than twenty years, before requiring refueling.

With all the thought and effort that went into the experiments, one major detail of life on the moon was overlooked; the dust. With even a slight static charge, lunar dust would stick to any surface. Vacuum hoses in Moonlab’s airlock were thought to be enough to remove the fine powder that claim to everything. The dust would form concrete when coming into contact with moisture, proving a very serious health problem for anybody who inhaled a small amount. NASA doctors decorated each of the crewmen with a number of medical sensors, but had no way to examine the lungs directly. Each Moonlab astronaut had some exposure to the dust but none at a level high enough to cause permanent damage.

One incident early in the mission, happening on January 2, 1975, involved an involuntary reaction to sweat on the brow. Charles Duke’s dust covered hand smeared moon dust across his visor, seriously compromising visibility. Fortunately for Duke, it occurred during a routine outing to inspect the surface experiments littering the surface around Moonlab. As per Moonlab SOP, Duke was not alone on the surface, and Schmidt guided him back to the airlock where his helmet underwent a thorough cleaning and he retrieved his sweatband from inside. After that, he never forgot to wear the band around his forehead. NASA doctors would continue to badger all Moonlab astronauts for the remainder of the program, reminding them that sweat operated the same on the moon as it does on Earth, and thus nothing like in a microgravity setting.

The lunar nights proved to be long and trying. It was not that the astronauts had nothing to do, far from it. Many experiments were ran inside Moonlab. The real challenge came from having three egos locked in a volume the same as a small apartment some four hundred thousand kilometers from home. For the most part, the military discipline of most astronauts’ pre-NASA days held strong. Moonlab even had some advantages over capsules in that it was large enough that crewmen could grab small doses of privacy during the fourteen day confinements. EVAs occurred only when absolutely necessary as the suits were designed for the Apollo landings, which all happened in broad daylight. Lessons learned from Moonlab III were implemented in later missions in the form of redesigned environmental suits.

The term space suit was thrown out during the Moonlab Program since, as many individuals in NASA, the Press and so on pointed out that they are not in space, but on the moon. The new “E-suit” as it was dubbed was not that different from the other soft-bodied suits. The largest difference was in life-support; the new suits heated as well as cooled. Hard-shell suit development began even before Moonlab III touched down. The hard-shells would not require extended periods of prebreathing low pressure air mixes before EVA. Even with the lower pressure interior of spacecraft (running with less overall pressure but a higher O2 content), some adjustment was required. The hard-shells would allow occupants of a future outpost to live in a standard pressure interior and go EVA without the need of pre-breathing, since the hard-shell suits would hold the same pressure as the habitat.

On their down time, crews were able to call home. Calls were limited and scheduled at certain times as not to interfere with transmission of data or other communication needs vital to the mission. One of the more frustrating aspects of working on the moon was the time lag in communication. At one-point-three light-seconds distance, the round trip of a message ran at two-point-six seconds. It was small, but the hesitation was very noticeable. Crews of any potential future Mars mission might look back on the inconvenience and scoff at anyone complaining about a lag of less than three seconds. Two-way communication from any object beyond the moon would be all but impractical. Lovell commented on “having a conversation with a two-and-a-half second delay” when he was interviewed on CBS News from the moon.

Three decks of playing cards were smuggled on to the Moonlab HM before its launch. One engineer suggested smuggling a copy of Monopoly instead, but the idea was vetoed over concerns of how a heated match might affect the crew. Anything that could possibly cause a rise in tension was discouraged. Books were an addition to the crew quarter section of the HM, including a complete copy of Edward Gibson’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Somebody at Mission Control remarked that by the time anybody was finished reading the collection, it would be time to return home. In January, the Super Bowl was transmitted to Moonlab, where the crew took the day off to watch. Media outlets across the country were interested to know the crew’s favorites.

Moonlab went on alert on March 2, 1975, when a second Soviet moon mission entered lunar orbit. Moscow gave all notice to Washington on where it planned to land, as to not cause any interplanetary incident with the United States. Soyuz 15’s target was the Copernicus Crater, well away from Moonlab. The Soviets would make their closest landing to Moonlab in 1976, with an estimated distance between one hundred and one hundred fifty kilometers away, somewhere on the Ocean of Storms. While they had no contact with the cosmonaut on the moon, the Soyuz pilot entered into good natured banter with the crew when his capsule flew overhead. The Soviets would not bomb them, and if they did, the cosmonaut assured them that Moscow would let them know in advance.

A real bombardment occurred on April 9, though fortunately for Earth it was a natural assault upon the moon. A small meteor slammed into the ground fifteen kilometers away from Moonlab, excavating a seven meter wide crater. One of the many experiments ran during the Program was a moon-based radar designed to track threats such as this. What exactly the astronauts were to do if a meteor was on a collision course with them was not clear. Hours after the impact, Schmidt and Lovell were on site, collecting samples and taking pictures of the moon’s newest crater.

The moon buggy took the astronauts further away than the Apollo rovers. The furthest excursion of Moonlab II was to one of the Apollo landing sites. Apollo XII landed close to Surveyor 3, and Lovell and Duke inspected both objects during the February 21-22 drive. Pieces of XII’s LM were removed and sealed in sample cases for study on Earth, but unlike pieces of Surveyor 3 there were no bacteria discovered hiding in the shadows. The origin of the bacteria brought back by Apollo XII is still debated, with a growing number of scientists believing the samples were contaminated after Apollo XII left the moon, and not proof of life surviving in vacuum for years on end. Experiments delivered to the moon on supply missions attempted to duplicate conditions on Surveyor 3’s camera. None of the bacteria samples in the experiment survived exposure to the lunar environment for a three month period.

Moonlab III ended on May 10, 1975, without as much as an injury to any of the crewmen. After spending approximately six months on the moon, the crew was eager to return home. Even after returning to Earth, their mission would not be totally complete. One of the long-term experiments of the Moonlab Program was conducted on the crewmen themselves. Doctors would give all three astronauts a thorough check-up once they return to Houston, as well as extensive examination to see how well and how fast their bodies re-adapt to life on Earth. Any astronaut spending time on the moon is required to exercise on a daily basis. Often this involves simple EVAs in a suit with a heavy life-support package. Carrying it on Earth took a great deal of effort, but in the moon’s lower gravity is almost brought their absolute weight back to where it was on Earth.

Each astronaut suffered a degree of bone loss in the lower gravity, but nothing life-threating. Spending six months weightless was a far greater health hazard than simply weighing less. Six months also happened to be the estimated transit time for a Mars mission. Thoughts on and designs for “artificial gravity” argued over whether a Mars mission should have Earth gravity, Mars gravity or lunar gravity. Rotating living quarters at a lower rate would reduce to stress on the spacecraft, and Moonlab III proved that six months at one-sixth Earth’s gravity would still allow the astronauts to function upon reaching Mars. It was useful data, even if a Mars mission would eventually lay decades in the futures.

Upon return, Lovell retired from NASA and the Navy, returning to civilian life. Mission specialists Schmidt continued studying lunar samples for years after Moonlab III, though he too retired from NASA and returned to the lab. Charles Duke continued to serve with NASA for two more years, though he would never return to space. For almost all of the astronauts, their Moonlab mission would be their final mission. The test pilot spirit of the astronaut corps always pushed them for higher, faster and farther, and how could one top a mission to the moon? The obvious question would be to land on another planet, a feat that none of the crewmen of the Moonlab Program would live to see.