The Mountains of the Moon
Dear Susannah
There’s an air of desperation to our mission planning. A four year-round trip for as many weeks on the surface. But I’ve not heard anyone complain. The surface Hab consists, like the ship which brought it here, of shuttle tanks (the universal building bricks or modules that are the heart of this mission). Two to be precise, which Mina will guide down to the surface using remote systems on Galileo. It will be rough, all base camps are, but I suspect no one will mind. The location and the view will be more than adequate compensation, as will the knowledge that this is not a sim. We will be under the real rings of Saturn, beneath her sheltering embrace. The first humans to look up at those planet-circling spans.
I keep telling myself I shouldn’t really be nervous. After all I’m a veteran of two space walks and have now clocked up almost as many years in space. But landings are different. Any astronaut will tell you that. Especially when you’re just along for the ride, as I most definitely am. Not so bad for Tanya; she’s got something to do. The most important job of all in fact — getting us safely down onto the surface. But I’m just a passenger and it will be a nervous ride for me. Only the Onboards will observe it all with clinical detachment. For the rest of us, observers and participants alike, it will be the ride of a lifetime. I only hope it’s not the last ride I ever take.
The suits of course are not optional. If I want to go any further on this mission I have to wear one; and I have to ride down in the descent vehicle, a functional name for a functional machine — basically a diving bell with retro rockets and landing gear. Very Chesley Bonestell. But then, what isn’t on this mission? The suits are pure Bonestell, designed to protect the wearer from every conceivable type of environment, not just the hard vacuum of deep space. It looks, and in places feels like, a suit of armour. If you get a chance, check out Bonestell’s paintings sometime. You won’t be disappointed.
Come Walk On The Moon! Re-enact the first moon landings! Tread the lunar regolith and leave your footprints in the dust of another world. You too can follow in the steps of Neil and Buzz. Tee off with Al Shepard on the Fra Mauro highlands, or ride a moon-buggy with Dave Scott over Hadley Rille and the Apennine Mountains. Official astronaut wings for every subscriber. A SimShow for every historical occasion.
Not as popular as the soaps or the porn of course, those two great narcotics most humans are addicted to (even more popular than religion or sport, and is there much difference between the two anymore — Vatican Disney presents live from the Super Bowl, the Passion of the Jesuit 49’ers!).
I’ve earned my wings the hard way, Susannah. No short cuts, no easy rides. I know how they felt inside those flimsy landers, the sides of which were no thicker in places than a sheet of tin foil. Our machine is sturdier in design (“All the grace and finesse of a cannonball,” Tanya said) but there is still the sense of landing in the unknown. And not knowing if the ascent engines will fire again after prolonged exposure to the lunar night. If that happens there is little that our fellow travellers on Galileo can do, other than transmit our final messages back to Earth.
And there is little those messages can say other than goodbye.