Do you ever look at the moon on a clear evening? It is marvellous to think about how it affects our tides and the lives of the myriad animals that live on Earth. However, as someone who has been there and walked on the lunar surface, what I find most amazing is that we are able to get there at all.
In the vastness of space, it is such a tiny object and so far away. It is moving around its orbit of Earth at over two thousand miles per hour and we have to fire our rockets to complete our journey to arrive where the moon will then be forty-eight hours later, by which time it will have travelled around one hundred thousand miles. If we misjudge our trajectory, we will miss the moon completely and be heading away into the solar system with no way to return.
When we arrive in lunar orbit, there will be a short burn to slow us down and then we have to rendezvous with the Gateway, a space station no larger than a detached house, which is travelling in an eccentric orbit at thousands of miles per hour.
I’m not a pilot, but I have unqualified admiration for those who are responsible for the calculations which lead to a successful lunar orbit. How the Apollo lunar module crews managed to rendezvous with their command modules, armed only with the equipment they had in the sixties, never ceases to amaze me.
Orbital mechanics is not as easy as most people would like to imagine. In the early sixties, spacecraft missed each other by hundreds of miles when trying to rendezvous. Eventually, Buzz Aldrin managed to work out how to rendezvous in orbit and he wrote the handbook which today makes it seem routine.
Each of the fleet fired engines to enter translunar injection trajectories. We were on our way, leaving the domain of the Earth and heading for that tiny orb in the distance, the moon. Once we were beyond the Van Allen belts, hard radiation from outer space began to bombard our craft. Each ship had protective shielding, but we still trusted to luck that there would be no solar flares, because that could cause serious problems. Despite all of the moon missions in the last decade, the sun had managed to resist casting a dangerous flare at these mosquitoes which buzzed around its third planet and smaller satellite. One day our luck would fail and we’d be huddled together in the centre of the craft with the heatshield pointed towards the sun, and our fingers well and truly crossed.
Next year, NASA and Roscosmos would be launching two special water-filled, disc-shaped modules which will be towed to shield craft en route to and from the moon.
The two days transit passed quite quickly because most of us were talking about the mission, about each other’s lives as astronauts and how exciting it was to be in space. Yes, there was some trepidation about what might be facing us on the surface, but we also felt confident after our intense training at a replica of Moonbase in the Nevada desert.
Soon the main part of the journey was over, and we arrived in lunar orbit. Very slowly and gingerly, each of the spacecraft approached the Gateway. We could see, quite clearly, that there were four Dragonstars attached. The first job would be to detach two of them remotely and park them nearby. That would give us three docking ports to use to berth the three Orions, two Mings and two Uspekhs. As each unloaded its crew, it would be undocked, and Penny would work with the remote operation pilots to collect them all on the end of the Canadarm, Canada’s marquee support for all space missions since the shuttle. The Dragonstars could then dock once more ready to take us to the surface. The interiors of all the Dragonstars and each of the Gateway modules were irradiated as we entered just in case LRPs had arrived on the exterior of the Dragonstar we had used for our escape.
‘Ming 2 docked,’ I heard over the radio and checked it off my list. The two Uspekhs were next and then Orion 2.
‘Clear and undock as soon as you’re able, Chan,’ I said.
‘Orion 1, I have you captured,’ said Penny who was operating the Canadarm. ‘Chi, can you move Ming 1 in beside Orion 1 for me?’
I heard Chi answer in the affirmative.
As we docked and transferred our crews and supplies to the Gateway, we were then undocking and using the mechanical Canadarm to link the craft together using high-tensile cables.
Under normal circumstances there were never more than three or four deep space vessels at the Gateway. Nine ships plus the six Dragonstars being there at the same time was unprecedented. A veritable space fleet. After all the docking had occurred, Anna remotely turned one of the Dragonstars towards the Gateway, backed it off, and took some images of the entire fleet, less that one lander, as they sat silently with the edge of the moon behind them and Earth to its left. Spectacular. Then she brought it in and docked to the Gateway ready for our descent.
The Gateway has a very eccentric orbit, specifically chosen to allow access to many different parts of the moon. In thirty minutes, it would pass directly over Moonbase and we’d get a chance to see if there was any activity on the surface.
‘What do you think they might have been doing down there?’ asked Bill as we floated to one side of the Russian module with two of their military men, drinking what passed for coffee in orbit.
‘That’s the great imponderable,’ I said. ‘I’d imagine they’re trying to organise some method of reducing their need for consumables. They’ll have worked out that there is only enough food for six months plus whatever they can grow in the bio dome.’
‘Could they build a launch vehicle?’ asked a Russian captain.
‘We think it’s more likely that they’ll abandon their hosts when food becomes scarce, then conceal themselves in their parasite form until we come looking for them.’
‘But for now, they’re likely to have retained their hosts?’ asked Bill.
‘We think so. We hope so, otherwise they might be dead.’
Anna joined us. ‘Are you going to contact them or not?’
There’d been fierce debate over whether or not we could negotiate with them. They were obviously intelligent. Could we get them to surrender and allow us to study them?
‘Let’s see the reaction when we pass over them shortly,’ I said. ‘They must be observing the Gateway and with all these ships surrounding it, they’ll be sure to notice. The question is whether I should radio them to ask them to surrender or wait for an orbit to see if they contact us.’
‘I think we should maintain silence,’ said Bill. ‘Keep ’em guessing.’
‘There’s no reason to maintain silence,’ said Gillian, one of the Marines.
‘Why d’you say that?’ asked Bill.
‘Well, we can’t surprise them. Even if we don’t make contact first, a fleet of six Dragonstars descending around Moonbase is pretty much a statement of intent,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s been the military’s argument all along. The diplomats think we should try it, too, but it has been left for me to make the decision on the spot.’
‘Well?’ asked Anna.
‘I’m going to give them an hour after closest approach with all channels open. Let’s see if they’re going to make contact first,’ I said.
The Gateway had a high-powered camera on the outside of the Russian module. It was linked to a monitor. As the Gateway hurtled towards closest approach, everyone crowded into the ESA international habitation module to watch the screen. Never before had there been twenty-eight astronauts in orbit anywhere, let alone around the moon. Even with the additional CO2 scrubbers which had been brought by the Russians, systems were operating at their maximum capacity.
‘CO2 is getting close to limit in here, Mark,’ said Andrei, the senior Russian astronaut.
‘Pay attention,’ I said. ‘CO2 rising in here. I’m recording the screen. Ten non-military volunteers to go and wait in the Roscosmos habitat. Anyone else – any CO2 symptoms, leave this module immediately.’ I wanted all the military people to see Moonbase before we descended. We all had photographs and even a model to study, but here was a chance to see if anything had changed. More importantly – had been changed.
‘There it is,’ called Bill.
The camera had been set to maintain the com dome in the centre of the image. We were moving too fast for anyone to manually adjust the camera’s direction.
‘Can’t see any changes,’ I said quietly.
‘No one outside,’ said Pete Hazel who’d been to Moonbase in the past.
‘There’s a buggy standing near the atmos dome,’ I said. ‘Wonder why they’ve left it outside.’
‘Yes, odd,’ said Pete as the Gateway passed directly overhead. ‘Of course, they might not be able to communicate anyway. They destroyed the contents of the com dome, didn’t they?’
‘Yes, but that was probably because they didn’t want any of us reaching out to NASA until we’d been infected,’ I said.
‘But it could still be out of service.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘NASA has monitored Moonbase and detected nothing at all. The orbital cameras have also provided images about every forty-eight hours. There’s been very little movement detected. The problem is not having continual coverage which might have let us see any trips they’ve made away from Moonbase.’
‘They went to the Chinese habitat, didn’t they?’ asked Bill.
‘Yes, a short while after Linda and I escaped. They stayed for several days then returned to Moonbase. Of course, we don’t know if they left anyone in the Chinese habitat.’
Chi added, ‘We heard nothing from them while they were there and there’s been no answer to any communications from CNSA.’
Moonbase gradually moved towards the horizon of the camera view and eventually vanished. We’d learned nothing.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Spread yourselves more evenly throughout the habitats and we’ll let the others in here to watch the flyby.’
It was eight pm GMT. I picked up the intercom microphone and said, ‘I’m calling them at nine pm. After that, everyone should get the best sleep they can. Tomorrow will be very tiring.’
‘Mark,’ said Pete over the intercom. ‘We have a problem.’