A Trip to the Moon

                                       A TRIP TO THE MOON


     You fly aboard a very roomy lifting-fuselage sub-sonic jet airliner to Brazil, Somalia or Sumatra and check in to a hotel near the coastal rocket base. After a good night's sleep, your morning isometrics and a hot shower, you have an astronaut's traditional steak and egg breakfast, then take a limousine provided by Lunar Excursions, Inc. to the base. Rain is falling lightly. At the terminal you receive some safety instructions and you are guided to the space plane. You don't have to wear a spacesuit like astronauts of yesteryear did. A shirt sleeve environment is considered safe. Since it is a nuisance to dress and undress in microgravity, everybody wears a comfortable jump suit and slip on shoes with Velcro soles. The space plane is boarded just like an airliner is. You get strapped in and take a few deep breaths. The leather seated plane is more comfortable than the average jet liner. When everything is ready, the countdown begins and shortly there after you are off! The delta winged plane races down a mag-lev trak, reaches half the speed of sound and takes off horizontally like an airliner. It takes about eight incredibly long minutes to reach orbit. You feel your weight drain away when the engines shut down.

     Within half an hour the vehicle rendezvous with a space station in equatorial orbit. The plane docks and links up the airlocks. The station flight attendant comes aboard and guides you and 99 other passengers into the station. While floating around in the station you get to see the Earth from space for the first time. Not much was visible through the small windows in the spaceplane. The station has large, circular, water shielded silicone viewports. You can see Saudi Arabia below and your Taxi already docked at the station. At the station, you wait in the lobby while watching the Earth turn below.   The lobby has room for hundreds of people and lots of handrails in addition to Velcro floors. A voice on the loudspeaker anounces that it is time to board the taxi. Four hundred people will ride on the ship. It consists of a voluminous external tank with a spherical LOX tank and hybrid rocket motors attached. Solar panels extend about 40 meters to both sides. You go hand over hand on a knotted rope. Attendants with fan packs on their backs help some weaker people move along. Within there are 400 low mass plastic seats, sort of like lawn furniture. The taxi will not accelerate at more than one Gee, so heavy couches are not needed. There are stowage areas for you luggage and lavatories. There are squeeze bottles with drinks and space food sticks to snack on.

     The taxi fires its thrusters and the pilots maneuver the vehicle away from the space station. The aluminum and LUNOX burning rocket motors fire and the ship speeds up to about 24,000 miles per hour. About an hour and a half later the taxi rendesvouz with the enormous cycling station as it careens around the Earth. Since the taxi must match velocities with the cycler it also rides out to the Moon. The cycler consists of several booms over a hundred meters long with clusters of external tanks on each end that have been fitted out within. The cycling station will race through the Van Allen Belts rapidly and this will minimize radiation exposure time. Even so, the passengers and crew have dosed up on vitamins A and E to increase their radiation tolerance. The crew's quarters and control room are surrounded by water tanks to provide more radiation shielding because they will be exposed more often than once in a lifetime tourists. You enter at the station's hub and ride elevators down to the E.T. modules on each end.

     The cycling station rotates to produce one-sixth of a Gee. Not only does this prevent space sickness and the need to get doped up on Dramimine; visitors can sit down and dine normally with the aid of lunar equivalent gravity. A varied menu with bacon and egg breakfasts to steak, baked potato and salad dinners that can be eaten with a knife and fork is provided. Drinks are poured out of pitchers and imbibed from cups rather than squeeze bottles. The young concierges in their nice, tight white elastic outfits serve as waitresses during meal times in the Universe Room. Everybody lines up with trays and dumps their own garbage in the larger Cosmic Cafeteria. The food is all produced, frozen and canned on the Moon or in orbital farms, then cooked on electric ranges, in convection ovens and sometimes in microwave ovens to save time. The dinning halls are open between meals and all night long for people who like to play cards, socialize and drink tea or coffee. The small single cabin cafes and bars are also popular social centers. There are game rooms with pool tables, a cinema, a garden where fresh flowers, salad greens and tomatoes are grown, and a discoteque. The gym is open to all visitors 24 hours a day and contains showers, lockers, spring loaded exercise machines and some washing machines and electric driers. There are several hot tubs to relax in. The staff doesn't talk about it much, but there is an operating table and surgical insturments stowed in the sickbay in case emergency surgery is necessary.

     First class cabins have full sized Murphy beds with air mattresses, flat panel TVs, phones and a private bath. Tourist class cabins are a little smaller and have shared bathroom facilities. In steerage they really pack you in, but you still have full run of the cycling station.

     After almost seven days, the cycler reaches apogee. Everybody gets back on board the taxi and flys over to the space station at L2. This leg of the voyage takes several hours. The Moon, still 40,000 miles away, looms large in the firmament. The view from the L2 station observation dome through binoculars is even more fantastic. Craters, rays, rilles, mountains and maria wait below. In the L2 station, everybody is guided to the descent vehicles called simply "Moon Shuttles." Fifty people are jammed into small individual couches in each Moon Shuttle and the rockets fire. You experience some negative Gees and touch down a few hours later. The cabin of the Moon Shuttle is actually a bus called a FROG. It is lowered to the ground, detaches from the lander rocket and away it rolls. Ground crews attach wheels to the lander rocket's legs and tow it to the service hangars with a Moon tractor. The bus or FROG rolls across the smoothed out compacted soil of the Mare Imbrium Landing Zone and mates with the train station which consists of numerous modules buried under regolith for radiation protection. You walk through the rather small, plain train station modules made of ETs and board the monorail that runs on an elevated iron rail to ride at 100 miles per hour into more rugged and scenic territory near crater Eratosthenes between the Carpathian and Apenine Mountains. You have just begun to explore the Moon.