Moon For Sale

by Jeff Pollard

  “This is why it doesn't matter that none of you are geologists, because if you can pick up the right rocks, you can contribute more to the understanding of the Moon than any geologist alive.”

  “It's fitting that you would say this about the importance of data when talking about Tycho Crater,” Kingsley adds. “It's named for Tycho Brahe, who realized that to really understand astronomy, we would need mountains of data, lifetimes of close observations meticulously recorded so that later astronomers could use that data to make discoveries. But no such recordings existed. So he took it upon himself to be the person who started an unbroken chain, centuries worth of data, observations of planets and stars from nights across generations, it all starts with him. One night he noticed a new star appearing where no star had existed before. He recorded its precise location and brightness across many nights until it disappeared. Once telescopes were invented, we looked to that spot to see what might have caused this, but it wasn't until the 20th century that telescopes became powerful enough to see what was left. In the meantime, we gained the understanding of the inner workings of stars to know what it was Tycho was looking at. It was a supernova. And so, when we finally were able to visualize that spot, we saw what a supernova looks like four-hundred years after it exploded. Tycho Brahe didn't know what a supernova was, he didn't know what nuclear fusion was, and yet he contributed greatly to our understanding of massive stellar explosions just by keeping good records.”

  “Sounds like quite a guy,” Tim says.

  “He also had a pet elk that got drunk and fell down stairs and died and Tycho lost his nose in a duel over who was a bigger math genius,” K adds. “And he also wrongly thought the Sun went around the Earth.”

  “Why don't you have a pet elk?” Caroline asks Kingsley.

  “I don't have one yet.”

  The four pressure suits carried with the Pegasus lander are mounted externally, like phantom astronauts standing guard. The crew of Pegasus 3 is training with their lunar surface suits. The suits are like mini-spacecraft, docked to the airlock by the backpack. To enter, the astronauts climb into the suit through the backpack, then the opening is sealed behind them and they are free to leave. To return to the Pegasus, they must backup and dock their backpack into the port, then they can climb back out from where they came.

  “Why don't we just put on the suits like normal?” Richard Branson asks as he watches Tim demonstrate climbing through the back of his suit.

  “This way we never bring any lunar dust into the spacecraft,” K replies.

  “I thought the whole point was to get lunar dust and take it back with us.”

  “Lunar soil is nasty stuff,” K replies. “There's no erosion, no wind or water to smooth out the rocks and sand, so lunar soil is jagged, angular, it never gets smoothed out. It sticks to everything and its really bad if you breathe it in. That's why we can't just get in a suit and go outside and then come back in tracking all that stuff with us.”

  Tim finally gets fully into his suit and the cover closes behind him. Once he is sealed in, he undocks his backpack and steps away. There's a couple of small windows by the suit-ports and they look out and see Tim just outside, waving them towards him. A couple of technicians attach a harness to Tim's back, connecting him to a large helium balloon that roughly simulates lunar gravity.

  This Pegasus lander mock-up is set up in a six-story film studio in Hollywood. Rather than constructing their own lunar surface simulator, Kingsley bought one that was constructed for the Neil Armstrong bio-pic that was filmed the previous year. There's a mockup of the Eagle sitting in the center of the lunar landscape while the Pegasus is off to one side. The Eagle is attached to a litany of cables leading to a device on the ceiling capable of reeling in the Eagle and raising it up, a trick that was needed for filming the Eagle's ascent module's liftoff from the lunar surface. A bank of lights near the ceiling blankets the area in intense white light and is so bright it's painful to look near it, making the astronauts quite keen to use their gold visors to reduce the glare.

  Kingsley helps Richard and Caroline climb into their suits at the back of the Pegasus lander. The lander is split into two areas. The “front” includes the pilot and flight-engineer stations pressed right up against the windows to give them a good view of their landing site. This main cabin is about three meters by three meters and just over two meters tall. The docking mechanism is in the roof of this main cabin, and is accompanied by a small window to aid in docking if necessary. This main cabin is the home to the astronauts while they stay on the lunar surface and is roughly three times the size of the Apollo lunar module and even includes a bathroom capable of working both in zero-g and in 1/6th gravity. The beds are simple fold-down frames weighing just a few pounds each. When folded down, they turn the cabin into a double bunk-bed.

  At the back of the main cabin, opposite the pilot controls, is the airlock. The airlock is only about a meter deep and three meters wide. Aside from the four back-pack ports leading to the surface EVA suits, there is also a hatch that can be used in an emergency or to unload or offload cargo.

  Kingsley climbs into his suit and exits. He's quickly strapped to a balloon and then he jumps off the lander rather than climbing down, joining the rest of his crew as they hop around in simulated lunar gravity. They hop around like excited children. They take turns climbing the ladder on the Eagle and pretending to be Neil Armstrong.

  “Alright, enough playing around,” Josh Yerino says on the radio. He's sitting on top of the Pegasus lander, wearing a headset and holding a checklist.

  “What are we supposed to be doing?” Richard asks.

  “Dr. Tremblay placed two meteorite samples in there, you're supposed to be finding them,” Josh replies.

  “Well that's gonna be easy,” Caroline says sarcastically, looking around at 4000 square feet of rocks, talcum powder, and whatever else the movie business thinks lunar soil looks like. Caroline tries to bend down to pick up a rock but it's so difficult that she has to awkwardly take a knee. “Do the suits have to be this stiff?” Caroline asks.

  “I had them artificially stiffened,” K replies on the radio. “In a vacuum they're going to balloon out quite a bit, so these are mechanically stiffer to simulate that effect. Get used to it.”

  “What if I need to pee?” Caroline asks.

  “What do you mean?” K asks.

  “Was that question too complicated?”

  “You need to go right now?” K asks.

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, you need to get out of the suit, dock yourself back in,” K replies. Caroline hops up to the deck of the lander and backs her suit into the port but can't get it to line up.

  “Can you help me?”

  “You need to show me you can do it yourself,” K replies.

  “Oh, I'll figure it out, can you just help me right now?” Caroline asks. K sighs and hops up the ladder.

  “This is why they didn't take women to the Moon,” K adds as he removes the carabiners attaching the balloon to her suit and attaches them to a rail on the lander.

  “I'm sorry, is my bladder size ruining your day?” Caroline replies as Kingsley guides her backpack into the port.

  “You could train it,” K replies.

  “Do you train your bladder?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you just hold it as long as possible?”

  “Basically. If you want to really train yourself, hold it until you piss yourself,” K replies.

  “Is that a joke?”

  “I can't be quitting mid-EVA to take a leak,” K replies.

  “You actually do that?”

  “I wait till you're out of town,” K replies as he finally gets her backpack locked in place. K removes his balloon mount and attaches it to the rail, then he unscrews his helmet and takes it off. K takes the door and enters the airlock as Caroline climbs out backwards. He covers the microphone on his headset. Caroline flips her hair up as she
finally extracts herself. “You need to take this more seriously,” K says, his mic firmly covered.

  “What? I'm just going pee, Jesus K.”

  “I shouldn't have to tell you when to piss,” K says.

  “And I shouldn't have to tell you that you're a douchebag. I'm on a new medication right now, and I'm supposed to keep hydrated while I'm taking it. So I'm drinking a lot of water, hence the frequent peeing. Now would you stop bitching at me?”

  “What medication?” K asks.

  “Don't worry about it.”

  “But we can't have you peeing constantly and drinking tons of-”

  “I won't be taking this medication by the time we go on the mission. I'm not an idiot.”

  “What's the medication for?”

  “I said don't worry about it,” Caroline replies. “If you don't mind, I'm gonna go now. I've got an appointment in an hour.”

  “You're leaving?”

  “I have an appointment.”

  “You need to be taking this training more seriously,” K says sternly. “Josh is this close to grounding you as a mission hazard.”

  “He can't ground me.”

  “He's assistant flight director on this mission, he can ground anybody he wants.”

  “You said I was supposed to be the delicate flower that proves any idiot with millions to burn could go to the Moon. This seems to be an awful lot of training for a flower. Now if you'll excuse me, I have somewhere to be.” Caroline walks out of the lander, walking quickly through the fake lunar soil and off the lot. K reattaches his balloon carabiners and hops down on the lunar soil. K glances up and finds Josh glaring at him. K nods his head before resuming the practice EVA.

  With the practice EVA finished, the remaining crew disembark from their suits, covered in sweat. They take a breather, sitting on the edge of the Pegasus mockup and drinking from bottles of water. Josh Yerino stands below them with a clipboard in hand. “As you guys know, the actual Pegasus you're taking to the Moon is about to roll out to the pad in Texas. Launch Thursday, landing on the Moon is slated for Monday. I want you guys to get some rest. Kingsley, I know you want to go to the launch and then jet back to Mission Control and monitor every detail, but I don't want you jetting around and doing fifteen things. Right now you're not the CEO, you're the flight engineer for Pegasus 3, your training comes before your duty as the CEO. Tim, Richard, Caroline if she were here, and especially Kingsley, you guys, take the weekend off. Spend time with your families. Come back Monday and we're going to watch the Pegasus landing together as a team. Assuming all goes well, we have a party, we have a ton of press requests, you guys will be doing a lot of interviews, so be prepared for that. I don't want our team going on TV looking like they are exhausted. Once Pegasus is back in lunar orbit and waiting for you guys, I'm going to work you hard to get you ready for your mission. Harder than we're training now. A lot harder. We clear? Kingsley? You got me?”

  “Sure thing boss,” K says to an employee he not only can fire if he wishes, but he has fired before.

  “Relay that to the duchess,” Josh adds. “She needs to look good on TV, we can't have her looking like she just found out her puppy died.”

  “Maybe you should tell her that,” K replies.

  “Why?”

  “Because if I tell her to stop looking like her puppy died, she would literally kick me in the balls.”

  “And then she'd say, how do those puppies feel?” Richard adds.

  Monday

  “You're supposed to wear the flight-suit,” Kingsley says, pointing to a blue jump-suit hanging in the closet, identical to the jump-suit he's just put on.

  “I'm not wearing a stupid flight suit,” Caroline replies as she stands in the doorway to her closet in nothing but a towel. “We're not flying anywhere. We're hanging out in Mission Control, watching TV, then doing interviews. At no point today am I flying anywhere. So I'm going to wear, you know, women's clothes.”

  “But we need to wear them for the cameras. When we do press, we need to look like astronauts.”

  “That's just bullshit movie stuff for little boys, astronauts always wearing flight suits? I'm not wearing it.”

  “Well, if we have three guys in flight suits and a lady dressed normally, it'll look like we're being pretentious.”

  “Then you might want to change,” Caroline replies.

  “I thought we were wearing jump-suits?” Tim Bowe asks K as he arrives in mission control.

  “Well, she decided to wear women's clothes,” K replies.

  “So now we look like jackasses,” Tim replies.

  “Not we, just you,” K replies, wearing a suit. “And I suppose Richard, is he here yet?”

  “No not yet,” Tim replies. “You might want to text him and tell him not to wear the flight-suit,” Tim mutters as he gets up from his seat at the back of Mission Control. Caroline takes a seat next to Kingsley.

  “Where's he going?” Caroline asks.

  “To change clothes I imagine,” Kingsley mutters under his breath.

  “Oh boo-hoo, it's so hard being astronauts and trying to coordinate outfits. You guys have it so hard.”

  “Where's Branson?” K asks Tim Bowe as he returns to Mission Control wearing non-astronaut clothes, khakis and a t-shirt that looks like official SpacEx merchandise except it says “SpaceSex” and the rockets have been subtly replaced with penises.

  “No idea,” Bowe replies as he sits next to K in the back row of Mission Control.

  “Where'd you get the clothes?” K asks.

  “I bought them off one of the software guys,” Bowe replies.

  “He keeps spare dirty khakis?” K asks.

  “Nope,” Tim replies.

  “So one of my software guys is sitting at his desk wearing no pants?” K asks.

  “No shirt either,” Tim adds.

  “How much did you pay for the dick shirt?” K asks.

  “Dick shirt?” Tim asks, then looks down and realizes the true phallic nature of his new used clothes. “Shit. I thought it was a normal SpacEx shirt.”

  “You know I don't think you should be on TV as the first black guy to go to the Moon while wearing a shirt that says you work at SpaceSex.”

  “Might make me famous,” Tim replies as he gets up.

  “Where you going?”

  “To get a refund,” Tim says. Caroline enters as he leaves, sitting on the other side of K.

  “Does his shirt have a penis on it?” Caroline asks.

  “It's a long story,” K replies. “Did you get ahold of Dawkins?”

  “Dawkins?” Caroline asks.

  “Not Dawkins, the other British Dick,” K says.

  “Branson?”

  “Branson! Well, did you get ahold of him?”

  “Didn't answer. Missie's still trying to get him,” Caroline replies. “Why Dawkins?”

  “I'm listening to the audiobook of River out of Eden. There's a section in it about how evolution might work on other planets.”

  “You think you're gonna find E.T. on the Moon?”

  “Weirder things have happened,” K replies.

  “No, not really.”

  “Tim just bought a dick-shirt off a programmer's back. That's pretty weird.”

  The second Pegasus to fly is in high polar lunar orbit, docked to the Aquila-upper-stage-derived fuel depot that is currently the only component of SS Marie Juliette. The fuel depot is a 25 meter long, 5 meter diameter cylinder covered in a mirror-like gold-colored finish. It has a pair of small solar panels, a few antennas and radio dishes, and two mini-Raptor engines at the end. It has a node with 5 docking ports on its nose, with the Pegasus mounted to the front docking port. The fuel depot itself has no habitable space other than the interior of the docking node. The node is capable of transferring methane, oxygen, water, and monopropellant into and out of the fuel depot.

  The first Pegasus to fly had launched in 2019. It carried only a fracti
on of its full propellant load, making it light enough to fly on an Eagle 9. The lander cabin was loaded with cargo and the Pegasus flew itself to a rendezvous with SS Excalibur where it was unloaded. Then a pair of SpacEx astronauts took the Pegasus 1 away from the SS Excalibur. The Pegasus has no heat-shield, and is also weaker structurally than a Griffin, thus, if they were unable to get back to Excalibur, the crew would ultimately experience rapid fiery disassembly. They maneuvered away from Excalibur, deployed the landing gear, burned the engines several times, and then returned for a safe docking. Once docked, they tested out the prototype fuel depot attached to Excalibur. Pegasus 1 sat docked for weeks before they started testing it by transferring fuel in and back out, checking the fuel transfer technology, checking to see if the Pegasus tanks can handle multiple cycles with the cold propellants. It was taken out by a second crew months later, showing that the engine could be reused. The Pegasus 1 still sits attached to Excalibur, a test-bed for long-term reusable, refillable landers. It's also quite an attraction for those visiting Excalibur who get to see the inside of a lunar module and dream about writing two hundred million dollar checks.

  The lander is octagonal, 4.5 meters across and 7 meters tall. The lander is split nearly in half, with the top 3 meters devoted to the crew cabin and covered in silver Mylar, and the bottom 4 meters covered in gold Mylar The bottom is devoted to propellant tanks, landing gear, a pair of unpressurized cargo compartments that can be opened and unloaded on the lunar surface, a pair of mini-Raptor engines, water and waste tanks, and other hardware. It looks quite similar to the Apollo Lunar module, however the Apollo lunar module had a larger base that then tapered to a smaller ascent stage, making it A-shaped, while the Pegasus has a consistent cross section from bottom to top, save for the deployable landing gear. Both modules are split with a silver-colored top and gold bottom. The reason for the reflective foil is that direct sunlight is quite hot and the spacecraft needs insulation. It's obvious that the gold and silver-colored foils are reflective of visible light, however it's not so obvious that gold-colored Mylar is also efficient at reflecting infrared light, while the silver-colored Mylar is not. Thus, the silver-colored-Mylar allows a bit more heat in. So engineers use the less efficient silver Mylar on the crew cabin because humans like to keep the thermostat higher than liquid oxygen tanks would like it.