Richard's Writings

Richard's Writings > Moon Maintenance

Moon Maintenance

I am the third generation of astronaut. I am one of the small group of men who have served a tour of duty on the Moon. They say an Astrotech returns from his nine-month tour a changed man, and I must admit it is true. We are a different breed of men from the original lunar pioneers, and with a very different job.

First came the true explorers, the Astronauts. These are men who began each new mission in the full knowledge that some as-yet-unknown force could swat them down to Earth, but they offered their lives to find out nonetheless. Even now, gray haired and retired, they walk with a swagger.

They were followed by the astronauts we now call Orbiters, well-paid scientists who utilize the zero gravity of the space-station fleet to perform experiments, create compounds, and study the Earth; just as they do today.

I am, as I have said, the third generation of astronaut to evolve, the Astrotechs. My job is in many ways no different from that of a dear old man we all called Uncle Charlie. He was the maintenance man of my apartment building when I was a kid, and the comparison with his job always makes me smile, especially as I wind my away over the eerie silver crags of the moonscape. I often think of dear old Charlie when I crawl across the dusty bottom of a crater, and I imagine I hear his saxophone echoing across the barren lunar wastes, just like it used to waft up the empty stairwell of our apartment building. Lonely and sad, the sax revealed a secret sorrow Charlie rarely allowed any of us to see. An appropriate sound to accompany the hauntingly vast and desolate spaces that surround you on the moon.

 

Coffee is the one little luxury I allow myself when I make my rounds; it's my especial pleasure. The shuttle I use for travel is designed to maximize every inch of available space, but I manage to squeeze in a thermos. Even three-day-old cold coffee provides the familiar warmth of home . . . you just can't imagine how necessary that becomes sometimes.

My rounds officially begin when I check out a shuttle from the duty officer. The base houses 30 shuttles, but no more than ten astrotechs are out at any one time; here, we have back-ups to the back-ups. We call the base '20-10', literally in deference to its latitude/longitude coordinates. We also fondly referred to it as 2010, a reference to Arthur C. Clark's sequel to his classic novel 2001 A Space Odyssey. 20-10 is right in the center of the crater Copernicus. It appears from space as a cluster of domes and tubes, a very simple, very portable, design. Everything had been made with transport in mind. The domes fit one into another like cups, and the tubes are telescopic and unfolded after the voyage. The whole structure was brought to the Moon in a series of five ships. Even the shuttles are designed for easy shipping; they are perfect cubes. There's no need for them to be aero-dynamic, not on a windless moon.

I direct my shuttle to the southwest, towards one of the few breaks in the crater wall. A stray meteor had smashed down the side of the crater around the time Ramses ruled Egypt. Once the direction is set I can relax and watch the stars. There's rarely a boulder or crater to steer around on this great, flat expanse. In less than an hour I'm through the breech in Copernicus and I next point the shuttle towards the crater Eratosthenes, two hours distant, but rising within sight on the horizon. The shuttle rolls along at 300 kilometers per hour, on three bulbous wheels, across the barren flats of chalk and dust. Hovercraft were considered for transport, but thrusters require liquid fuel, very heavy and expensive fuel that has to be carried a very long way. So we rely on rechargeable batteries, and drive around obstacles instead of fly above them.

Now on the open plain, aimed for Eratoshenes, I can sit back and sip some coffee. I watch the landscape for a time, but I always return to the stars. The shuttle, photosensitive, allows me a full 180-degree view of the heavens, and this is my favorite pastime while I creep towards the next landmark on my mission plan. I feel like a salesman looking out the train window at the slowly moving landscape, always dreaming of "beyond the horizon." It's not so much the knowledge that one is far away from home and family - every astrotech accepts this when he signs up for his tour duration of nine months - it's the drabness of everything, the monotony, that finally gets to a man. All is silent. All is white. There isn't even the change of day to night, for the sun shines continuously for 14 days, and is followed by a night of 14 days. A man caught away from base when night begins is doomed to wander blind in a minus 250 degree landscape. The shuttle can resist the 215-degree sunshine, but not that prolonged cold. We've lost two men to the night. Our only losses.

Twelve hours due south, across the Sea of Rains, lies the Bay of Rainbows. It is a wonderful place for a man starved for colors. The dust clouds drape in long streamers over and down the Jura Mountains, and as I approach from the plain floor I watch the refracted light shimmer and arc in pure rainbow colors, clear red blending to deep rich violet in seconds. The colors play in the sunlight east and west as far as the eye can see. Each two week period, when night is exchanged for day, or day for night, the extreme temperature flux brings forth new dust clouds from the mountain ridge, and the show begins anew.

This mission, however, I don't need to go so far south. Coming up to the towering rise of Eratosthenes, I turn southwest. Due west would be the more direct route, but there is still underground volcanic activity in that area, a place we call Seething Bay. And beyond, a blinding dust cloud fifteen meters high: the Sea of Vapors. So southwest I go, towards the great crater Archimedes and the mis-named Marsh of Decay. My course for four hours runs along the Apennine Mountains, and nine hours south are the Alps, Alpine Valley, and Birmingham. Funny how the old names continue to charm us. Someday they may build a Philadelphia, a Rome, or a Syracuse here on the moon. Will anyone remember the ancients who first owned these names?

Again, I merely set the course and the shuttle crawls along under its own guidance. And again, time for thought. I carry music with me: saxophone, of course, though some disks are nothing more than the sounds of trickling water and buzzing insects. I think of Copernicus, the crater home of 20-10. Viewed from the Earth it lies like a bull's-eye, with long white rays shooting out from it in all directions. These are the scars of an ancient impact, a drop of cream splashed onto a white tablecloth. I imagine my shuttle looks like a tiny gold bug on that tablecloth, scurrying along...

Archimedes rolls along to the left, with Autolycus ahead in the distance. The Apennine Mountains still flank me to the right, but they're ending soon and I'll slip through North Valley into the vast Sea of Serenity.

Compass directions are much more exact here than on Earth. A pulsating transmitter has been erected in Central Bay, exactly on the coordinates 0-0. Central Bay is our "North Pole" here on the Moon; it lies exactly in the center of the disk as seen from the Earth, the side of the Moon that always faces our home world. The transmitter in Central Bay sends out one pulse per second, a directional homing beacon which also ensures that all chronographs everywhere are in sync with the same Time.

I finally angle due west and face a flat expanse of smooth dust: the great Sea of Serenity. The Haemus Mountains shrink into the distance on my right, as do the Caucasus Mountains on my left. But in front of me the horizon line is entirely level. And stretched out before me is our farm. It is a light farm; more than a million square kilometers of solar panels. It is my task to replace the damaged panels. This is the Earth's great harvest of her satellite: Energy. On the six great plains of the Moon: the Sea of Clouds, the Sea of Moisture, the Ocean of Storms, the Sea of Rains, the Sea of Tranquility, plus here on the Sea of Serenity --- solar panels absorb the limitless energy of the Sun. Once a month, before the creeping long night sweeps over the plains, this energy is released from the six storage stations and pulsed up to the Earth. More energy than the world can use! At present consumption, at least. Replacement panels are stored in a cave found in Plinus, a crater strategically located between the Sea of Serenity and the Sea of Tranquility. I simply load a stack of twenty or so on the shuttle (the low gravity makes such a task easy) and drive out across the Sea. I can plug into periodic outlets which will indicate the broken panels in their sectors. It is as easy as changing a light bulb. The panels easily support the weight of the shuttle; only meteors hurling in from space can destroy them, and this happens rarely. It is the far side of the Moon, the so-called 'Dark Side', that receives the punishment from solar debris. That side also receives 14 days of sunlight, but facing outward from the Earth it is also subject to a tremendous pounding. Officially, this is why we do not work on the other hemisphere, but the real reason is closer to the heart: men simply will not work without the reassuring blue globe of home in the sky. During the long night, it's all we have.

By my chronograph I see it's been 28 hours since leaving 20-10, but I don't feel tired, or even hungry. The body adjusts to a limitless day in a similar fashion to flowers. Common sense tells me I must eat and rest before continuing on into the Sea of Tranquility. With eyeshades I am able to sleep for a few hours and later, refreshed, I continue. There are few panels that require replacement on this patrol, and in three hours I am ready to start back.

A particularly personal pleasure, when my rounds take me this far west, is to visit the Shrine of Apollo 11. All has been left as it was, and time disturbs nothing here. I walked around the LEM and tried to imagine the awe Armstrong must have felt when his foot first touched the lunar surface. His footprints are still here, mixed with others. There is the flag, and here the camera. Just as they were left in the twentieth century. On an earlier trip I passed a golf ball chipped by Apollo 17. The solar panels surround the shrine in a great hoop, the old and the new; together on a world that never changes.

I decided to take the northern route back to 20-10. Julius Caesar was the name given long ago to an area two hours wide of smooth rolling bumps, up and down, up and down, like an old sailing ship. Unseen on the left is the awesome Hyginus Cleft, a canyon that easily dwarfs the Grand Canyon of Arizona. It is three hours long, but at a place due south of Triesnecker I can cross on a land bridge that joins the west side to the east. Once across I aim northeast, skirt around Triesnecker, and aim for Central Bay. In an hour I pass Central Bay on my last leg towards home. I see the transmitter's beacon light on coordinates 0-0 pulsing out its homing signal for the other shuttles like mine...

I roll over the uncommon smoothness towards Copernicus, my thoughts drifting once again with the music from the speakers. I hear Charlie wailing in the stairwell, his saxophone speaking well of many things known and loved. His pride came from living well, and he performed his job with quiet pride as well.

 

I know that when I return to Earth I will visit him. He'll watch me come down the familiar old street from his favorite haunt on the front steps. The children of the old neighborhood will rally to my uniform and match their steps to mine. Their parents will point and smile proudly as the Astrotech walks by. But my first smile will be for Charlie, for I know myself to be a maintenance man, changing light bulbs on the Moon and, like Charlie, I'll be quietly proud of a job well done.

 

THE END