day12 of 30

jedc nanowrmo2005
The Ark of 1984’s Future
Day 12 of 30

Back when the first GEO SpaceDock became operational, it was first used to build the initial spacecraft for the return to the Moon. It followed in the footsteps of Apollo, as it was the first manned landing since the early 1970’s. There had been some talk about a return to the Moon as part of a Mars adventure previously, but it was set 20 years in the future from then and so had been forgotten in the world energy crises, especially when someone in Congress had pointed out that the fuel for even one launch would consume the fuel that would heat the homes of 3,000 people who would therefore freeze to death, the talk of a Lunar and Mars project was mentioned no more.

But Apollo had a pattern that was being followed now, in that there were to be portions of the first expedition that would stay in orbit around the Moon, while the rest traveled in a separate vehicle to the surface, did their work, and returned to the orbiting spaceship for return to Earth. But it was very different from Apollo in that it started from GEO level, and the trip would end there too, no fiery reentry involved. Twelve people would descend to the lunar surface, while a token two would remain in the transfer craft. Since the energy change from GEO to Lunar Orbit was very little, the mother ship was immense, unlike Apollo that had to lift all from the ground.

Idealiana was one of the two to remain in the mother ship in orbit, while Artesiana was one of the twelve making that first return-to-the-moon landing; Artesiana would not miss that adventurous opportunity for anything; she claimed that she deserved to be on that expedition as reward for her work getting the sliding armature segment production going again.

The lunar landing craft was immense, too, as compared with those of Apollo days. All but the transfer shuttle was to remain as their initial Station Base 1 when they left, and had been built to serve as a shirtsleeve environment for the crew when they were not out working on the surface. It had facilities built in nooks, ranging from a Holopresence station, to gourmet cooking kitchen, to a copy of the library facilities nearly equal to that on Earth, in case of severance from Earth for awhile, they at least would have access to the best of knowledge so as to survive. Besides, there would be unknowns to face, despite all the prior research and thought done previously.

Outside, the crew set up high capacity com links to GEO SpaceDock 1 and to Earth directly. Then they put up a mirror solar focusing furnace set, for several temperature ranges and crucible sizes. Solar cell panels were set out to supply electric power directly to the facility, mounted sufficiently high so that most of the dust kicked up would not find its way to them. Three-fourths of the solar panels power went to storage, for the long Lunar night’s functioning, maybe sheer survival if things went sour.

One of their purposes was to raid one of the old Apollo sites for technology that had been lost. The intent was to leave the other sites alone for historical reasons, and even this one would be kept to some extent. But there was technological knowledge built into the gear left behind by the Apollo astronauts, devices that had been built with knowledge and technology, even some materials, that was now unknown. Some of the recovered hardware was to be evaluated in the engineering facilities of BaseStation1, the rest to be taken back to GEO SpaceDock1 and from there to the earth surface for more reverse engineering to be done on it.

Next to the StationBase1 landing craft, they used a lunar back hoe to dig a trench sloping away from the craft’s base, then dug a huge pit 7 meters deep. In this pit they laid a flooring of basalt blocks clear across the pit. More basalt blocks were laid up as walls that were formed as connected domes, to form compression structures, as they had no metals refining ability yet for roof beams. Once the blocks had been assembled, their junction edges were sealed by a molten glass bead, welded by a high power laser onto the basalt, inside and out. An arching tube went from the larger dome, to under the StationBase1, and was connected through airlocks. The inside of the closest dome was sealed against leakage, and soon was part of the shirtsleeve environment of an expanding StationBase1; it was buried under lunar regolith, becoming a haven from high energy particulate radiation, especially when the Sun might have sunspots acting up as it did periodically. It was still unshielded on the end where construction was still going on, but being in a deep pit to start with, there was adequate passive shielding.

Soon after most things were built there, the special Holopresence pain was applied to them. Up in the orbiting mother ship, Idealiana spent all her time in the Holopresence nook, continually flitting her consciousness around in the growing lunar base station, sampling this and that with virtual senses. occasionally she also would flit her awareness around in her own mostly vacated environment, making sure all was well there too. One of the reasons she stayed on the mother ship in lunar orbit, was that TV cameras were sending newscasts to the people on Earth, like in Apollo days that similarly had eager eyes to share in the adventure.

But the orbiter was considered boring, no newscast cameras there, and so Artesiana felt safe from recognition there. She had a new identity on record, but it was conceivable that Rationallo was watching the Lunar adventure newscasts and might have recognized her. Even though the entire space effort was conceived and for the purposes of the 3Musketeers people, it took the educated personnel and wealth of Tanfl people to make it happen. Although this venture of 14 people were all 3Musketeers people, most of the equipment had been paid for by Tanfl, and they expected a return on their investments on the project. Once it was established that the lunar StationBase1 was a safe and comfortable place to live, Tanfl people were going to start arriving to share in it, making sure their investment was going to be a continuing success. And to have new adventure to brag about when they returned home.

But for now, it was all 3Musketeers personnel that had their lives on the line, making the project happen. Many of them had intense education in the sliding armature engineering facilities, OJT alongside paired up with a Tanfl engineer as tutor. Now they were on their own, out here on the Moon.

As the heavy construction phase wound down, smaller projects became online. One of them had been created by Idealiana, and Artesiana herself took it out onto the lunar surface and activated it. Shaped as a half-section cylinder, half the cylinder was transparent glass, through which sunlight would flow; from the opaque half of the cylinder, a shield would rotate over to block the glass, during the long bitter cold lunar night’s 2 weeks at a time. An airlock was at one end, through which Artesiana entered once the structure was assembled and pressurized. In it were Quinoa seeds, planted in soil from their native environment on Earth. It was a miniaturized space farm, to see if vegetation could really be grown on the Moon, even in the best of conditions. Quinoa was able to repair its own DNA when damaged by radiation, enabling its survival in the high mountains of its native habitat. It also was considered the mother corn from which domesticated varieties sprang. What would it do here on the Moon? If it survived and propagated in this enclosure, some of the resulting seeds would be put in a similar enclosure, but using a soil derived from the lunar regolith. Where it would all go would depend on what happened in the previous steps, and it all would take time to explore, that is how the project got authorized.

Their real food supply, as now normal on Earth, was to be from a digestion tank that was soon set up in the subsurface igloo system’s facilities, and into it were placed their accumulated organic wastes, and even the wastes that had been left at the Apollo site long ago, was added to it, nothing going to waste. A large tracking periscope mirror system brought sunlight to the tank during the lunar day; then most of it would be shut down during the lunar night, just a biological start small area of the tank would be kept growing by battery powered lighting during the 2-week night. Most of the food had been brought from Earth, sustaining them until now, and so the digestion tank would only be needed for the 4 people who were to remain staffing the facility while the other 8 people would return to the mother ship and all would return to GEO SpaceDock1, according to plan.

After several months, the TV watchers on Earth tired of watching the now routine construction and operation activities of the lunar station, and so all but some of the external news cameras were shutdown and packed for return to GEO SpaceDock1. To them, adventure was over, back to their usual watchings for news.

Things were happening on earth, too. Rationallo became head of the new Tanfl Space Enterprises, for one thing. And he had an urge for some adventure, and learn about his new business first hand. Several smaller orbital transfer vehicles had been built at GEO SpaceDock1 after the lunar expedition left, and Rationallo gathered a crew of three, announced he was going to visit the lunar expedition’s mother ship, and find out what it was like first hand. They would occupy the 4 spaces vacated by the four people who were going to remain at the lunar base, when the mother ship returned to GEO.

Word of this impending visit quickly got to Idealiana.
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The various works in progress at the lunar StationBase1 were quickly brought to a stable point, and it was decided to head back from the Moon. All 12 of the station personnel rode up to the mother ship in orbit around the Moon, where they all had a great farewell party. Then the lunar transfer spacecraft returned to StationBase1 site. But this time one of them was different. Idealiana would stay at lunar StationBase1; one of the original permanent staff would instead return to GEO. That way, Rationallo would not discover her, she hoped.

Rationallo arrived at the lunar orbiting mother ship to find it already full of the staff from the newly built lunar base, who were ready to return to Earth. He had to content himself with a tour of the mother ship itself, and meeting with the staff and crew. Surprised to meet up with Artesiana, one of his wives-at-large among them, it was opportunity to catch up on news of how she was doing. He had last seen her when he gave her the responsibility to rebuilt the factory that was needed to build the 3mm sliding armature segments; she clearly had done wonderfully on that assignment. It had been key to making this very adventure possible.

He had wanted to tour the lunar facilities, but the timing was wrong for that, the transfer vehicle was already back on the Moon. He was irritated; timing was normally perfect for him, a sign of his management powers. Something was a bit odd. His tour of the ship found a curious nook, that Artesiana said was her personal space. It appeared to be an information terminal of a type unknown to him. He always made a point of making everything known to him: there were to be no surprises, definitely.

Show him, he demanded of Artesiana, of the Holopresence nook. Artesiana had only the day before arrived at the mother ship, and was improvising on pretending to have been doing the tasks so recently vacated by Idealiana. The Holopresence nook had always seemed a magical strange place to her, and no way to make it into something else now; or was there? She explained that it was a break time entertainment device, by which she could escape from the awareness of the drudgery of the day’s tasks. What was it to him? Surely he had no time for frivolities that the 3Musketeeers could indulge in. She offered him a bit of wine that they had been able to make, another of their frivolities, she said.

Well, OK, a bit of wine, he agreed. The wine downed and felt, he again felt curiosity at the entertainment nook. He could only make love with his number one wife, and so Artesiana was off limits; but he wanted a bit of this new entertainment device, best he could arrange for now, he decided. Turn it on, he said, show him some entertainment on it.

Artesiana complied, and sat in the nook, to search for something, she said, that might interest Rationallo’s intellectual powers. Activating it, she found herself aware throughout the mother ship, and more, also throughout the lunar station far below. And idealiana was there, in its Holopresence terminal. Aware of what was going on in the mother ship, Rationallo and all.

The library, Idealiana advised Artesiana, connect Rationallo to the library, where the Apollo science was stored, all about the elemental composition of the lunar regolith, for example. Idealiana would be the hidden librarian from then on: put Rationallo on, she said.

Here is the library on our heritage of lunar materials science, Artesiana said, as she positioned Rationallo in the Holopresence terminal, and activated it.

Rationallo thought that this indeed was good wine, and the entertainment very well done. In In fact, he had never before found information on lunar regolith so full of presence, so lively. He was really getting into the experience of being a process for extracting aluminum from lunar regolith, when it faded and he found he was in a curved structure, looking out through a window on the lunar barren wastefulness; yet inside were some small plants, growing, soaking up the sunshine. Suddenly he was a Quinoa plant, a creature that knew how to grow stem, leaves, even in a high radiation situation, like here on the Moon. And it felt of the joy of life.

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Rationallo woke strapped into a free-fall sleeping bag. His head hurt a bit. Wine, yes, he had too much wine last night. Other people were getting out of their sleeping bags, time to get the day going.

He marveled at the efficiency that these 3Musketeer people displayed as they prepared the orbital transfer mother ship for the return to GEO SpaceDock. Weren’t they mere 3Musketeer scum? And actually, he suddenly realized, his life was in their hands, as he and his crew of 3 were along just for the ride. He paid more intense attention to their doings.

Three days later he was at GEO SpaceDock1, and in another 6 hour’s ride on the space escalator carousel, he was at the Ecuadorian Andes Terminal, back on the ground.

Guardiano met him there. Guardiano would not go into space; he declared that he was intended to be a man of the earth, and would stay there. Yet he acknowledged that space was a place, a resource that affected the Earth. And now not just as a source of solar energy and a place for communications satellites to hang out, but a place of busy commerce, up there. So what, he asked to no one; it all is just a gameboard. And the traditions are the finest of rules, and he was not sure that the space ventures were fully in compliance with the rules.

Didn’t Rationallo understand that it was a world of people, he asked, a bit too much alcohol imbibed. Glad to see his friend Rationallo again, and in their favorite nightclub meeting place, Guardiano pursued his point. It was a world of people, and all else mere stage props, of no intrinsic value. It was only people that counted, and they had to establish a hierarchy among themselves; that hierarchy was the map of this world. The map showed the paths from anywhere, anyone, to anyone else. That is the playing board, the world of what really counts, all made of people. Who does what to whom, is the only law of this social land. And the social land, the hierarchy, is all the difference there is between raw nature and civilization. Do you understand? ... he demanded of his friend Rationallo, who was again a bit bleary eyed from a bit too much alcohol These drinks, they were getting to overwhelm him, he thought.

Rationallo was of the opinion that it was not so much the people that counted, it was the knowledge they had accumulated, and their ability to utilize that knowledge to control the world. Guardiano’s opinions were a valid part of that body of knowledge, true. And so were people and their aspirations.

He thought of Artisiana, her world of physical doings; that was what counted for her. To thrive on this earthly place, full of action, yet in an intelligent way, that was the spice of life, she portrayed. And carried that on into space, wherever there was stuff, and things to do with it, she could make life happen.

Yet here was his best friend, Guardiano, declaring another world. Was the world of people really the world for him? Nothing else in it except props? Artesiana’s world of vigorous physical thrivings; his own world of the powers of knowledge and planning. And maybe there was some substance to that wench Idealiana’s world of imagination too, it took all the pieces of a pie to make a pie. And yes, the world of people’s status relationships, that too was a powerful place, for without it, only nature ruled: the waves lapped on the seashore, the wind howled in the canyons, the beasts hunted in the night. People surely decorated that scenery quite interestingly.