dark side of the moon part 1 and 2

a SciFi adventure)

Thanks to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and 100s of other space privateer corporations, space flight had become as common as taking a train from one city to the next. Or a flight from London to Amsterdam. 

Several space colonies were orbiting millions of Miles from planet earth. Mainly as holiday resorts or staging points for deep space travel. Now what was kept classified were the military and research colonies. Rivalries on earth had just shifted to space. 

Weapons had just moved to space. They watched each other on earth, so they must watch each other in space. 

On top of that the moon had become earth's biggest commercial venture. Every nation that could get to the moon to mine, went to the moon and mined. Those too poor either gave up their sovereignity to mightier richer Nations to starve off certain doom. Earth was much changed in 2050. The rich and powerful lorded over the poor just as the barons did in the 17, 18 and 19th centuries.

Chapter 2

"How is it going Justin" flight engineer Eve Smit said.

'Its going good, Eve. I spent three weeks on holiday in the underwater spar just off the coast of Bahamas. It was fabulous."

' What about the other two weeks' Eve added with a cheeky smile on her face...

'I heard what you guys got up to the other weekend...that's crazy. I thought you had given up drinking..' Eve laughed as she said this.

We were on our crew boat heading to launch pad 92. Space systems and transportation corp leased launchpad 92 from Blue Origin space systems. 

As you may know Blue Origin belonged to Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Space X was Elon Musk. 

Basically it was a duopoly... Between them they had the most launchpads along the offshore equator. It was cheapest and therefore most lucrative to launch along the equator and offshore. 

The space rockets were now reusable up to fifteen times a year but usually it never got beyond 10 times before they hauled the huge rockets to Florida for refurbishment. 

Space X and Blue origin had diversified their business model. As the originators of cheaper reusable rocket systems they had won all the major government contracts in the early days. 

First to reach Mars were the Americans, after the Chinese spectacularly miscalculated missed mars by a million miles and sadly lost all crew on board. 

What was significant with this flight to Mars, was that it was done by a private corporation, not NASA, not Roscosmos nor the Chinese space and certainly not the Indian space agency but Blue Origin. 

Not to be outdone, Space X landed on Mars and sent a mini space craft with a two man crew to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. They set up a communication satellite and flew back to Mars without issue. 

As our boat pulled up to the jetty of the offshore launch pad, the preflight prep crew were waiting. The journey from Florida Keyes to present location takes about 3 hours. 

Jack Ruben, the docking and telemetry engineer and Eve had both slept most of the way. 

I thought about the last weekend and tried to remember the girl I met. One minute we are drinking in the bar and next morning I wake up with her next to me..

She was quite the catch, a beauty. But she had brains too. Most of these girls I pick up at bars struggle to and 1 + 1. She was able to look at my flight plans to the docking station and the moon, calculate the docking speed and rendezvous points as if it was a nursery rhyme. 'I need to see her again. I hope I tool her number.' I thought to myself .

"Evening Commander Wyre'" one of the attendants ' can I take your bag?'

"Time to suit up Jack and where the hell is Eve? briefing is in under an hour," I said

"She has to do the medical because it is still within the five weeks when she fell ill."

Jack responded.

'I hope she is not pregnant or something. Then they would replace her with Hammer if she failed. Man hate that guys guts.. There is something I just don't like about him.'

Fortunately Eve passed the medical and joined the other two in the flight briefing room. 

The flight coordinator explained it was a crew change and resupply mission. Flying with us would be 10 guys from the Zeneca mining corporation. They were flying to delta spot B a huge mining complex. Zeneca was basically a front for the US government. It was an open secret that this was no private corporation. 

On our way to Delta Spot B, 20,000 miles  in space we would intercept a cargo supply capsule with 30 tonnes of food and supplies. 

To make logistics easier, food and other supplies are launched in a scheduled fashion on unmanned rockets. Once in space they orbit around the earth until they are required, thereby saving time and money. 

With the passenger crew strapped in, we were taken to the command module. 

We went through our systems checks, fuel, loads and weights. Ran a test of functionality. 

It was the flight engineer's job to check all the data of the flight the coordinates which had been inputted into the computer. Eve would have to manually input the figures into a simulator and it agreed with the onboard computer, I as commander gave the green light for the start procedure. 

When I gave the go. It took thirty minutes to fuel the oxygen tanks, run an integrity test once all clear. The minute countdown began, as the fuel hoses and escape tower unlatched..

10, 9, 8,.....2 main engines ignite, 1, we have lift of MarinaStar 1 to Delta Spot B on the moon.

A violent shaking ensued as the rocket it made it off the launch. This shaking lasted for no more than 45 seconds but you never got used to it. 40,000 pounds of thrust per second and the Almighty roar of the engine and every bone in your body being shaken like you are about to be broken into a thousand pieces. 

It is intense for us pilot the ships but it must be tough for guys going to work. 

You can feel the velocity increase as the force of the rocket breaks through the pull of gravity. We now use a two stage rocket. The fuel mixture is oxygen and a patent rocket fuel which can be compacted but expands to four times its size when heated and generates 10 times the force.

Stage one falls away and Eve glances on her dials that we are where we supposed to be when it happened. She gives the thumbs up. In another half minute the engines will switch off and the guidance system will put us in the correct navigational course. We will rendezvous with the cargo in 18 hours and then another 5 hours to the moon.

"3, 2, 1, main engines cut off", Eve announces.

On course to rendezvous with Dragon Capsule in T-20 hours. " 

The passengers have feed tubes and the ability to rotate their seats. But due to space limitations and other inherent dangers, they are pretty much strapped to their suits for the duration of the flight. Luckily they have trained for this and if need be, on their suits after eating and drinking, they can take sedative that will see them through the journey.

Chapter three: Moon give up your treasure to mother earth

You've got to go back to the late 1960s and 1970s, during the Apollo missions. 

When man landed on the moon, that was just the beginning of an even bigger technological advance. 

You see, the American government did not bother to waste time trying to debunk the myths that the moon landings were faked in a holiday studio. 

This served their purpose perfectly. 

On Apollo 11 Neil Armstrong and "Buzz Aldrin brought some samples back to earth. These were widely shared with scientists across the globe as was convention. The dust appeared to prove the moon was once part of the earth and the spectrometer analysis showed a higher the average presence of matter from cosmic regions such as the asteroid belt and ancient meteors. Nothing strange there.

It was the Apollo 17 mission which yielded something of greater value, according to recently declassified documents.

Now, the astronauts Kelly Scott and Brian Kidd, had completed their assigned tasks and decided to take the 'moon buggy' for spin. 

After an hour or so they reached a deep crater. You may say why this is of interest; on the dark side of the moon is in perpetual darkness because the sun never reaches this side as it is always facing away from the sun. 

When the light from the buggy shone on this crater, they gave off sharp silvery reflection. Most of the surface of the moon made up of dark soil, uninteresting. For rock fragments you have to dig. 

Kelly told Brian to log the coordinates as he started to pick up samples of the rock. A second thing, was some of this silver rock when he picked it up crumbled to a fine dust of a reddish brown rust colour. As if weathered or decomposed. So he collected it in two bags..marked sample 'a' and sample 'b'. Kelly had tried to see if there was a pattern to the deposition of these samples but that would have meant going through a crater that appeared over 50km wide and 20km deep (later confirmed by aerial moon survey maps).

Back on Earth with something new.

Back on earth, having returned with the samples, these were separated out from the regular moon rock samples. 

The first to analyse the rocks were the planetary geologists. They studied the impact site and then looked around to see if there were more in close proximity. This was the case in deed. Over an area of a 1000 square kilometres or more, there were craters of varying sizes. To guage the reflectance the spectral cameras used infrared so see if this reflective rocks where present or not, since at a distance light could not be shone on the craters. 

A report by the geogists concluded it that there was an impact event for sure. They argued as on earth so too the moon - these are tektites.

How can that be? These are not meteors that hit the surface of the earth, melt and are flung into the upper atmosphere before dropping to earth. They just don't have those specific characteristics. 

 It was certain what impacted the surface disintegrated into many fragments hence the number of crater sites. 

What was disputed was the nature of the rock. Some said it was an iron condritic meoterite and others refused and suggested that it was an asteroid of unknown origin. 

They could not explain the difference between sample a and sample b. There was no weathering on the moon. There is no suggestion their could have been water on the moon after the event nor before. 

Along came the Chemists

And this is where things got considerably more interesting. 

Sample a was silver. When hit it sounded metallic. Its weight was consistent with a light metal such as aluminum. So does it magnetize? No. Fine. Can it pass a current no. 

So is it a semi conductor, do we need to lower the temperature? Right. Nothing with supercooled temperatures. 

Over what temperature does this thing melt? Scientists and the industrial engineers were beginning to lose interest as their high hopes of finding some fabulous new material for advanced engineering use, were being diminished. 

'Oh just be done with already. It's of no use to us. Had it back to the geologists, they were already having fun with it', they said.

Sample a was heated in stages. First at 100 degrees Celsius. Nothing. 

Then 200 degrees Celsius. A slight expansion was noticed. The chemist, stopped the heating of the oven. Noted the parameters in his log book. He open to oven so to better get the sample and describe any physical changes, using gloves and a forceps, he picked up the rock. 

 Just then an almighty electric shock transferred from the rock, as a blue flash of lightening, throwing the forceps all the way across the lab. A distance of almost 20 metres.

Recovering from the initial shock the chemist could not contain his excitement. Noted the temperature: 200 degrees Celsius, rock sample 'a' electric current effect is observed. Need to measure the charge. 

He gets his multimeter and makes sure he wears gloves. It is a small rock sample only 20 grams in size. Roughly between 120 and 150 volts. He tried it after an hour. Same result. The temperature had cooled. But it had a current driving it. So it could not be handled for risk of shock. A month later same effect but a drop by 20 volts... 

Back on the spaceship

The MarinaStar 1 had been in orbit for almost 16 hours as it approached the rendezvous and docking to the free orbiting cargo supply with 30 tonnes of supplies. In was in Jack's hands now. He did his final calculations on the weights, speeds and fuel burns required to dock at exactly the same speeds. All was in order. 

We could see capsule B1 now but we still chasing it. A bright spot on the horizon.

The Zeneca crew if still awake we told to stop anything they were doing. Their seating would automatically become disabled to any movement. 

"Jack over to you now. Do your thing,' Justin said. 

" Roger that Commander Wyre"

At that moment ground control came on to the communication systems. 

Listen MarinaStar 1 you are go go docking and latching to capsule B1.

'Received. Over' responded Eve as she now had communications duties. 

Jack aligns the laser guidance system.. 20 clicks out. 

What?? Jack double checks his logs and rechecks. We should be 15 clicks out. Did he burn fuel longer than he should have slow down enough? 

No. He is certain. 3 seconds, 40 per cent throttle. Again two minutes when we rotate the axis...4 seconds 60 percent throttle.

Ground control. Do you see this? 

'Copy. We are examining it' they respond. 

'OK jack continue chase. Dock and latch. We have enough fuel for the landing. We will advice next steps.'

Fuel loads were calculated with precision. It was the case you drop your load on the moon and pick up returning traffic. A 7 hour turnaround time. No need for refueling. The gravity on the moon was a sixth of the earth's. But you still need enough fuel escape the Moon's pool, position yourself to enter the earth's atmosphere without burning up.

Jack docked. It lasted two minutes longer than it should have. Two minutes in space can be the difference between flying to China and ending up in Mexico or worse. 

We make our way to the moon. 

To be continued