IUUSTIAIION IV JOE KOTUIA
space for an "out-of-this-world" vacation By JOHN B. STEVENSON
Member, American Rocket Society
and ask you to take pictures of them floating in
space with the ship in the background. They do
the same for you before returning to the ship.
It is more than 64 hours since liftoff. You were
in your seat earlier for a mid-course correction;
you are now strapped in again for the landing.
The ship has been turned so that it is falling tail
first. You look out a port and can see the moon's
horizon looming up.
You are falling nearly 7,000 miles an hour
when the rocket automatically turns on. The
thrust of the motor decreases as the ship nears
the moon's surface. You can see that you are
below the level of a nearby mountain range when,
thump, the dish-like feet of the landing gear
touch and the motor shuts off. You've soft-landed
on the uneroded, airless surface of the moon.
You unfasten your belt and stand up. You have
weight again, even though it is only Ye normal.
Your ship is on a lunar plain which is criss
crossed with tire and tractor tracks. It has been
cleared of crevices and small craters.
Moon-Tal Room and Bath
You see an electric bus approaching. It has
an enclosed airtight passageway on one side. One
end of this passage can be raised so that its door
end can be brought flush against the door of the
ship's air lock. Thus all doors can open without
any loss of air.
The moon hotel is very much like an earth
hotel except that it is airtight and made out of
lunar masonry materials. You bathe, and your
space suit is taken, washed, and serviced. You
have your first moon meal on the top-floor ob
servation dining room, where you can look out at
the great man-made wonders of the moon.
You see the landing clearing, the return
launch pad, the rocket propellant factories, nu
clear and solar electric power plants, agricultural
domes and cave entrances, astronomical and ra
dio observatories, residential areas where the
people who work in these facilities live, and an
industrial area where certain types of products
can be made at a lower cost than on earth be
cause of free solar electric power, perpetual
vacuum, low gravity, and richer lunar deposits
of raw materials.
Later, you talk to some of the dedicated pio
neers who live here. You find they enjoy living
under artificial conditions where they control
the climate and never have bad weather. The 14
gravity is ideal for people with leg ailments and
heart conditions.
Sight-Cookie by Loops and Bounds
Dressed in your space suit, you leave the hotel
through an airtight revolving door. After you
push it a quarter turn, it stops for a few sec
onds so that the air can be pumped from the
right quarter into the left Then the brake is
released, and you revolve the quarter you are in
to the outside vacuum.
A short walkway leads to a pass between two
cliffs and then into a park where the natural
lunar landscape is preserved, except for a net
work of footpaths used for short hikes.
When walking these paths, you can take bound
ing steps five feet high and 20 feet long because
of the low gravity.
But this is only the beginning of your lunar
sight-seeing. A huge nuclear bus takes you on a
three-week trip all the way around the moon
over trails which were blazed by explorers in
nuclear electric tractors during the early '70s.
On your excursion, you see the man-made sites,
mining areas, and lunar oddities of nature.
After a bon-voyage party at the hotel, it's
time to return to the earth. Your Nova third
stage has been serviced and refueled. It lifts off
and ascends into a low mountaintop-skimming
orbit around the moon. You can see a network
of vehicle trails crisscrossing over crater floors
and lunar plains. You pass over the Russian com
munity and those of other nations.
In two hours you have completed 1 Vfe orbits
around the moon and are strapped in for the
firing which makes the ship leave the moon and
go into orbit around the earth. After 70 hours
and one mid-course correction, you are in your
seat again and the ship is at the closest point of
its return orbit, grazing the upper layers of the
earth's atmosphere. Your seat is swiveled around
so that your back is toward the nose of the ship.
Re-entry begins. You feel the force of multiple
gravities, and you can see the wings glowing red
hot. Then the ship bounds back into space for
one more smaller, cooling orbit. When it re
enters the second time, the pilot keeps the ship
up in the thin layers of air until he is in a glide
path going east across the Gulf of Mexico.
When the speed is reduced to subsonic, a jet
intercepts the ship and tows it back to the Cape.
It lands on a sea ski in the Banana River, and
a motor launch picks up the passengers. The
third stage is towed to a landing ramp near the
Nova launch complex where it is made ready
for its next voyage to the moon.
family Wnkly. Aprtl 7. IMJ
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