Herald and news., April 07, 1963, Page 44, Image 44

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Family Weekly April 7, 1963
Jit 'i' 'M't ff '' W
Come Aboard
on a
to the Moon!
In a few
" A ticket to the moon on next Thurs
il day's rocket, please."
The year is 1975. The scene is a travel
agent's office. And the speaker that
could be you.
Fantastic? Not at all. Our first manned land
ing on the moon should take place in 1967, and
within a few years after that, lunar vacations
should be relatively commonplace.
All you will need will be the price of a round
trip ticket (probably several thousand dollars)
and the ability to pass a minor physical checkup.
After that, you will be whisked to Cape Canav
eral, Fla., via ballistic passenger liner (as de
scribed in Family Weekly, Sept 2, 1961). You
might spend a short time in the beautiful resort
city of Cocoa Beach before boarding the majes
tic silvery Nova rocket that will take you out of
this world.
Just before flight time, a bus picks up you and
the other lunar tourists at the rocket port and
takes you to a van at the launch complex.
Here you put on your space suit, which is
much lighter and less cumbersome than the ones
used by our first astronauts. The suit is form
fitting, cotton-liner1 , and has a helmet which be
comes an oversized collar when not in use. You'll
wear this suit during the entire trip except in
the hotel on the moon.
The gantry elevator takes you up to the Nova
passenger cabin, which is in the third-stage sec
tion of the three-stage rocket The stewardess
directs you to your contour couch, checks your
seat belt, and secures the air-lock doors. You can
4 family Wrckly, April 7. 1KJ
Trip
short years, you'll be able to
hear the conversation over the ship's intercom
between the pilot and blockhouse. When the
countdown reaches zero, you hear a tremendous
roar as the 4,500-ton rocket lifts away.
When its fuel is gone, the first stage of the
rocket separates and is recovered by a special
patrol boat 300 miles out in the Atlantic. The
second stage also separates when empty and is
picked up.
The third-stage section in which you are rid
ing fires until it reaches a speed that will allow
it to coast to the moon in 55 hours. Then the
motor shuts off, and you are weightless. After a
few moments, the pilot announces over the inter
com, "Lunar tourists, you are on your way. You
may open your helmets and unfasten your seat
belts if you wish to float around the cabin."
The Newest in Bird's-Eye Views
There are grab rails along the aisles so that
you can pull yourself about At a porthole you
watch the earth through binoculars and enjoy
the beautiful spectacle once reserved for astro
nauts. You gaze at the glorious, star-studded
heavens and then at the moon, which already ap
pears larger than you have ever seen it
"Meal time," says the stewardess.
Everyone returns to his seat and fastens him
self in. The food is in a hinged-lid pan which
clamps onto your knee. A fork, pincher tongs,
and a plastic squeeze bottle for beverages are
clamped on the side of the pan and connected to
it by strings. All food is bite-sized. While you
are chewing, the lid must be kept closed so your
food doesn't float away.
Before the eight-hour sleeping period, you go
rocket your way through
to the rest room to wash up. You fasten your belt
to a hook and stick your hands inside a washing
tube. Pushing a valve with your foot causes
warm water to spray from several nozzles inside
the tube. A fan in the bottom of the tube pulls
the used water into a collector so little spheres
of the liquid don't float about the room. You suds
your hands and face, moisten a washcloth for
rinsing, and then dry yourself on a cycling
towel machine.
Sleeping weightless while strapped in your
couch is the easiest thing to do in space. When
you awaken, you eat breakfast, then the stew
ardess announces: "Those who wish to go out
side the ship, please form groups of three and
line up."
When it is your group's turn, the stewardess
ushers you into the air-lock chamber and closes
the inner door. You put on your gloves, plug the
lines from the radio and the air-supply container
on your belt into your collar receptacles, and
close your helmet The stewardess checks your
equipment and makes sure your safety line is at
tached to a rail inside the air lock. Then she
touches the decompress button, a sign reading
"Vacuum" lights up, and the outer door opens to
the black, star-speckled void.
Over her radio, the stewardess says: "Push
yourselves gently out the door and you will drift
away from the ship. By gripping your safety
line and applying friction to it, you can stop and
hover several yards from the ship. When you
want to return to the air lock, draw on your line,
hand over hand, until you drift back in."
While you are hovering in this immense emp
tiness, your companions hand you their camera
II "t, J'tf 1J Ji --i.r-iii i mm i
1 l,,, HI II i i in ii i
space for an "out - of - this
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 54 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 Vt 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-Tel 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
- world" vacation By JOHN
Member, American
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 Vt
gravity is ideal for people with leg ailments and
heart conditions. '
Sight-Seeing by Leaps 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
lUUSTDAllON BY JOE KOIUIA
B. STEVENSON
Rocket Society
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 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 Bubsonic, 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 WJcl. April 7. mi