Moon For Sale

by Jeff Pollard

  On the Moon, we have a main sequence of craters. We have a lot of craters to study. We start small, with bowl-craters. These are small, they excavate a nice bowl-shape, their depth is linearly proportional to their diameter, about a one-to-three relationship. But above 20 kilometers in diameter this relationship changes to about one-to-ten. You still have a linear relationship between diameter and depth, but it's a different slope, larger craters are much shallower. Which makes sense because you have more energy in the impact, more melted material which then fills the cavity, while a very small impact may have basically no molten material and be done forming within a second or two. This point, 20 kilometers, where the transition occurs has been seen on Mars, Venus, even Earth, but happens at different diameters, based on the gravity of the body. So we know that the final crater formation process has a lot to do with the local gravity, and so anything we learn about this process can be extrapolated out onto other terrestrial bodies. We don't have many craters on Earth that we can study because of erosion. But Tycho Crater may very well be the best place in the Earth-Moon system in which we can study a large and young and still pretty pristine crater.

  Now as we go larger, we have complex-transition-craters between about 10 and 30 kilometers. These craters start showing incipient terracing, a flattened floor and even some uplift. Above 30 kilometers we get to complex craters. They have raised rims, terraced walls, flat floor with a central uplift peak or peaks. We don't know exactly how central uplift forms. There's the rebound theory like I just showed you with the water and oil. There's another theory that instead of this rebounding pull, there's a push caused by the terracing that forces up a central peak, almost like the way compression along tectonic plates creates rilles or mountain ranges, but instead of along a fault, this occurs in a circular manner.

  Once we get larger than 100 kilometers, we start the transition from complex crater to basin. Basins have multiple rings, are very very large, and we're not sure where this change occurs, but typically lunar geologists say 300 kilometers is a good boundary to differentiate between transition complex crater basins to a full-fledged basin. Tycho is at the upper range of these complex craters, and so you'll also be able to shed light on where this differentiation occurs and why.

  So on your mission, we're going to want to try to debunk one or both of the uplift theories. The Luna 100 team is landing near the central peak, so they should be able to give us a better idea of the peak material, and with core samples, should be able to give us a clearer picture of whether this is a compression formation from the collapse of the transient cavity, or if it's a rebound formation coming from deep in the mantle. Now you guys, on the rim, with a series of drill samples, hopefully will be able to figure out the size of this transient cavity, which can give us a clearer picture of this impact. Also, your core samples that are taken outside of the transient cavity should give us a very good idea of the stratigraphy of the area, that's the layers and their order. Then we can compare that to the stratigraphy in core samples taken inside the crater and inside the transient cavity, and that will tell us much about the crater formation process and how the crater rim and wall terracing is created. Remember in meteor crater, where the layers were reversed, we could tell because we knew the original order of those layers because of all the other data points we had from the area. We don't have core samples from this area of the Moon, so your core samples are going to be very important in laying down this original stratigraphy picture which we can then compare the stratigraphy of the crater. If we just had the one mission inside the crater taking out core samples, that would tell us a lot, but it wouldn't tell us the original order. I mean, if we found a layer of anorthosite, we could tell this was original lunar crust, but that doesn't give us the whole picture.”

  “You still following Jim?” Victor asks.

  “Oh sure. Anorthosite, breccia, plagioclase feldspar, pyroxene, I know my Moon rocks. On 13 we were going to be the first landing in the lunar highlands, trying to sample some of the original lunar crust, so I have flashcards of anorthosite tattooed on the inside of my eyelids. Granted, now that I think about it, those flashcards were based on what we thought lunar anorthosite would look like.”

  “See, he knows this stuff better than we do,” K says, elbowing Caroline in the ribs.

  “I understood some of those words,” Caroline says defensively.

  “We were supposed to land in Fra Mauro,” Jim says, “which is in the continuous ejecta blanket of the Imbrium Basin. So not only did we train to look at highland material and get some of that anorthosite, but also to find Imbrium ejecta.”

  “Right, because in Apollo, NASA picked sites that could sample multiple formations at once,” Victor adds. “Okay, let's go over our rocks. Jim you might want to keep it down since I'm sure you know these.” Victor puts up a picture of a white rock with twinges of crystal glimmering. “This is called The Genesis Rock from Apollo 15, it's one of the very few pieces of pristine original lunar crust that we have. It's made of...”

  “Anorthosite,” Tim says.

  “Right, it's almost pure calcium and aluminum feldspar. Here's a sample from Apollo 17.” The picture looks similar to the last one, but the bright somewhat crystalline white rock is dotted with yellow-brown material. “I don't expect you to know the name of this.”

  “Troctolite,” Jim Lovell says.

  “That's right, it's also an original crustal sample, no shock crystallization. The name troctolite just means that it's the same calcium-aluminum feldspar but mixed in with a little olivine, which is an iron-magnesium silicate. Geologists like to come up with funny words like troctolite which just corresponds to a little different ratio of minerals.” Victor flips to the next slide, showing a rock split into two different colored sections, one white and one a dark gray.

  “Breccia,” Jim says.

  “Right, breccia just means a collection of different rocks, almost like how we make concrete on earth. This is impact melt breccia made of troctolitic norite. The black stuff is melted rock from ground zero of an impact, and the white bits are pieces of crust, unmelted, that have been mixed and frozen into the molten impact material. Norite is just a fancy name for a rock without olivine, it's just a combination of feldspar and pyroxene. The Moon basically just has three minerals and you put together those minerals in different ratios and you've got all these fancy geologist names for those things, but they're basically just a Venn diagram of pyroxene, feldspar, and olivine.

  Pyroxene, specifically orthopyroxene, is a very important mineral. Because it has oxygen, this is the stuff NASA wants to harvest. You can turn this stuff into molecular oxygen for breathing air or rocket fuel. That's why you guys are going to the Moon in single-stage reusable landers. Lunar soil is about 42% oxygen by mass, but of course it's not molecular oxygen, it's all tied up in silicates and minerals. But that shows you just how abundant this stuff is. Then you've got around 21% silicon, 12% iron, 8% calcium, 7% aluminum, 6% magnesium. That's a lot of useful stuff. You process some aluminum and silicon and you've got computers, airplanes, you name it. Just imagine a foundry on the Moon, melting these lunar materials, extracting the oxygen, then processing the rest into aluminum you can use to build rovers or fuel tanks or what have you. Get one 3D printer and one foundry up there that are self-replicating and you've got yourself an ever-expanding colony that can make it's own breathing air. Throw up some greenhouses and you got sustainable agriculture. And you can make glass on the Moon, I've got some slides on here of pyroclastic glasses, green and orange, that were found on Apollo 15 and 17. So not only can we make glass, we can make stained glass.”

  “So what should we be looking for when it comes to this 3d printing, forge stuff?” Jim Lovell asks.

  “If you can find any pyroclastic glass we'd love to get that and get a better idea of the volcanic glass formation, that gives us a nice natural experiment in making glass in-situ. We also want several well-documented soil samples, different kinds of s
oil, so that we can run experiments on them and see what type of soil works best, what doesn't work so well, when it comes to both 3d printing lunacrete and also melting down and extracting oxygen.”

  Jim Lovell's wheelchair fits easily inside the Tezla QR, a prototype SUV with the now signature Tezla gull-wing doors which fold as they open so they don't swing out, but rather slide effortlessly skyward and thus make the name “gull-wing” a misnomer. Jim is staying at Kingsley's castle and rides home for the day with K and Caroline well after dark after a long day in simulators, lectures, fittings, and so on.

  “Thank you again for putting me up in your house,” Jim says as K catches up with the world on the in-wheel tablet.

  “Jim, I'm sending you to the Moon, you think I wouldn't let you stay in my house?”

  “Nixon never invited me to stay in the White House,” Jim replies.

  “Touche.”

  Caroline sits in the back with Jim, though she is quiet and stares at the window. “Maybe I shouldn't go,” Caroline breaks a long silence.

  “This crap again?” K asks.

  “I know fifty new words for rock, but I'm still not a geologist,” Caroline replies. “Send Victor, you know how excited he would be to go?”

  “He will go, he's gonna be on the second or third NASA flight,” K replies.

  “Then send Neil deGrasse Tyson or Brian Cox or somebody like that, they can make a documentary and bring wonder to millions.”

  “I already told NDT I'd send him to the Moon for half price.”

  “I don't mean to stick my nose where it don't belong,” Jim says cautiously, “but if the lady doesn't want to go, why not send someone else?”

  “She does want to go,” K replies.

  “She does?”

  “She just doesn't want to be the first woman on the Moon because she's a duchess and she thinks it should be someone who earned it rather than someone who was born into it,” K says.

  “You don't want to be the gal that put the first high-heel print in the green cheese?” Jim asks jokingly.

  “That's not exactly why,” Caroline says cryptically.

  “There are so many people who would kill to go, so why are you making her?” Jim asks.

  “Because she does want to go. That and she's fighting some kind of depression, one of those mid-life crisis, menopausal something or others. Cougar's malaise. And I'm going to snap her out of it.”

  “Mid-life crisis?” Jim asks. “You both look like you're 25 to me.”

  “This is what I get for being with a guy who thinks he can control everything,” Caroline says with a Stepford smile.

  “And this is what I get for trying to please someone who is tragically out of touch with what she wants.”

  “Oh am I?” Caroline asks.

  “The happiest I've ever seen you was on a spacewalk, and I practically had to drag you out of the ISS kicking and screaming to make that happen. And by the way, you, the first female to fly in a commercial space vehicle, both sub-orbital and orbital, are also the first female space tourist to go on a spacewalk. You're fine with those firsts, but first woman on the Moon is suddenly too important.”

  “Nobody cares about the first woman on a commercial anything. I'll be the first woman on the Moon, that's a bigger deal.”

  “It's not that big of a deal. Until somebody puts footprints on Mars, nobody cares about any of these firsts. These are footnotes on Wikipedia,” K says.

  “I'm with him,” Jim says. “You know I still hold the all-time altitude record? On 13, we were the only Apollo to do a free-return trajectory, the others all stopped into lunar orbit. So Jack and FredO and I still have the record for altitude. But nobody ever mentions that. Mostly people ask me about Tom Hanks. Hell, I don't even know what the altitude was. But everybody knows Roger Maris's 61 or Wilt's 100.”

  “400,171 kilometers,” K says.

  “Kilometers,” Jim mutters derisively.

  “What's Tom Hanks like?” K asks jokingly.

  “He's no Kevin Costner,” Jim replies sarcastically. “I know I might not look like much now, but you go Google me, I was Costner-eque,” Jim says to Caroline. “So if the only reason is that you don't want all that attention, I mean, I understand, Neil became pretty reclusive about it. I remember his barber started selling his hair. But you're already a celebrity, Neil was just a guy before 11. It's funny, we were all worried about how he would handle the PR of the first step. We knew he had to say something great and we didn't think he had it in him. I mean, you need a pilot to do a tricky maneuver, give me Neil. You want a guy to look good on TV, not so much. Give me Gene Cernan or Dave Scott. So it's funny that Neil pulled that rabbit out of his hat and came up with that brilliant line. It was just so out of character for him.”

  “Nobody wrote the line for him?” Caroline asks.

  “Nope, all Neil.”

  “That'd never happen today,” Caroline says. “We'd have test audiences and a team of writers working with marketing teams. I'll bet NASA has a team of writers working up first Mars step speeches.”

  “I've got a room full of joke writers next to my office,” K adds.

  “Really?” Jim asks. Caroline shakes her head.

  “Well now you've seen us bicker like a married couple. Still want to go to Tycho Crater with us?” Caroline asks.

  “I've had the experience of being stuck in a cockpit for two weeks next to Frank Borman. We were rather like a married couple after that two weeks. Gemini is really nothing more than a tight cockpit. For two weeks. No shower, no bathroom. You really get to know somebody in that kind of situation. And hey, you guys might bicker, but at least you're going to the Moon together. You know, most of the Apollo guys got divorced. I'm one of the few still married to the same woman.”

  “What's your secret?” Caroline asks.

  “Well, I didn't cheat on her, that's a big one. Lot of the guys back then had a mistress or two. Just the way the world worked. And if you can make it work until grand kids start showing up, that makes it a lot easier.”

  “We've got a long way to go before there's grand kids,” Caroline says.

  “How old are your rugrats?” Jim asks.

  “We don't have any,” Caroline says quietly.

  “Oh,” Jim says.

  “Houston, we have a problem,” Kingsley thinks but doesn't say.

  Chapter 26

  May 20th, 2020

  Today, not one, not two, but three rockets officially kick off the second phase of lunar exploration. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, is preparing to replace the Soyuz with the PPTS (Prospective Piloted Transport System), their new larger space capsule capable of carrying up to six astronauts and like Apollo, going beyond low Earth orbit. The Space Adventures Corporation has worked with Roscosmos to sell seats on the Soyuz to paying passengers for nearly two decades now. With Russia finally replacing Soyuz after a half dozen attempts over the decades (TKS, Kliper, Euro-Soyuz, et al.), they now have surplus Soyuz spacecraft that they don't plan to use.

  In Baikonour, Kazakhstan, one of these surplus spacecraft launches on a Soyuz rocket carrying two paying customers and an ex-Roscosmos commander. The Soyuz launches just as hundreds have before it. However, this Soyuz has a different destination in mind. The Soyuz itself is relatively tiny, weighing in under 8 tonnes, it doesn't have enough propellant on board to change its orbit very much at all. After the launch of this Space Adventures Soyuz, the crew of three will hang out in a parking orbit and await the launch of a second rocket: an Angara 5.

  The Angara is Russia's new rocket family. They have a modular design with a common booster core with a single RD-191 engine, a staged-combustion kerosene-oxygen engine derived from the RD-170 that powered the defunct Energia rocket. The Angara 1 features a single core with a single RD-191 engine and can put two to four tonnes into LEO, depending on the upper stage. The Angara 3 adds two more cores and so it launches with 3 RD-191s in a heavy configuration and can loft
nearly 15 tonnes. As you might expect, the Angara 5 features five RD-191 common boosters with a single core and four boosters. The Angara 5 can loft up to 25 tonnes to LEO, and is going to be the workhorse launch vehicle that will loft the Soyuz-replacing PPTS (also sometimes just called Rus). They can even use as many as 7 common cores to make a 40 tonne capable Angara 7, though this configuration has yet to be flown.

  While the PPTS has yet to fly manned, it is expected to replace the Soyuz by the end of next year and has launched once unmanned. Space Adventures Corporation has purchased an Angara 5 for this mission. It will be just the third Angara 5 to fly. This rocket will not be launching a space capsule. Instead, it will feature just the KVTK upper stage. Normally the KVTK will be the stage that pushes the PPTS into LEO. But without a payload above it, this KVTK will reach orbit with nearly 25 tonnes of liquid oxygen and hydrogen still in its tanks. The only modification to this KVTK is the addition of a docking mechanism.

  The Space Adventures Soyuz will wait in orbit for two days before the launch of the Angara 5 and the KVTK upper stage. Then the Soyuz will dock with the KVTK and on May 22nd, the KVTK will burn up its remaining fuel and send the stack toward the Moon. They'll release the upper stage and then proceed on a free-return trajectory around the Moon. They are unable to slow into lunar orbit as the Soyuz lacks the delta-v needed for such a maneuver (it would need 1.4+ km/s of delta-v to slow into lunar orbit and then accelerate back out again to return to Earth). So this is just a flyby. The price-tag: 90 million dollars per seat. The cost of the actual hardware is more than 180 million, but the Soyuz rocket and spacecraft are surplus that Roscosmos has no use for once PPTS comes online. The Russian Space Agency is not turning a profit, just limiting their losses on things they built anyway.