blog.Jelmer Oosthoek.nl

By Kirk Jones (2044)

He came back, he sure did! When unleashed the dog started to walk around. Very slowly at first, he seemed really on edge. What should he do with this freedom he was unfamiliar with? A spacecraft flew over, no sound of course but the dog noticed the machine and suddenly started running after it. I screamed — the dog could here me through the intercom — and shouted “come back!”, but the dog didn’t listen. I started running after him. Luckily my suit was one of the strong new ones so I needn’t to worry about falling. You should have seen me running after the dog. Everything grayscale, I think it must have looked like an old 20th century black and white movie. I thought I had lost the dog forever. I didn’t know then that an emergency measure had been installed in the dog-suit which caused an anesthetic substance to be released in the air supply. Just one commando and the dog would have fallen asleep. So everything wasn’t as grim as I envisioned it during these frightening moments. But the moments passed, because the dog came back. We had become good friends, I liked this dog a lot. So Charley, as I called him, returned to me and I could attach the leash again. I guess he had become bored from pursuing this strange object in the sky, an object he could never catch. He was breathing very fast with his tongue out of his mouth. Well, I guess the suit had passed the test!

I went skiing the other day. It was a tryout arranged by a friend of mine, a lunar entrepreneur. He is setting up a lunar ski resort. He found a good crater with a not too steep rim and collected a lot of lunar dust. The dust substitutes for snow and makes a nice ski track from the crater rim to the crater center. I tried it out together with him and some other folks and it was a big success! We all loved it, I think it will become big business. This Henry guy, French born, he is really into great things. If this works out he will sell the resort and start something else. Perhaps I’ll join him on some new endeavor next time.
Yes, skiing on the Moon, it really is something special. We had very strong suits of course so it doesn’t matter if you fall. But anyway the track had a thick soft layer of moondust and no hard rocks sticking out. The resort itself is mainly underground, underneath the crater and you have to take an elevator to the crater rim surface. There I put on my suit, strapped on the skis and went into the airlock with the rest. Outside the view was beautiful. I was standing on the crater rim looking down into the crater. Far down I could see the end of the track. I always love to see all these different tints of gray. The crater is a couple of kilometers in diameter and Henry is still investigating if he can dome the whole thing. But for now its skiing with open skies. Well, the typical lunar vacuum skies of course.
I wasn’t the first to go down, Henry did. We all had experience with skiing on Earth but when it was my turn to go I started sweating and trembling. But what the heck, I got over it in a sec and down I went. It was, and I have to be honest here, very much like skiing on Earth, albeit sort of a more slow-motion type. In any case, that was how I perceived it. This is caused by the lower gravity of course. The forward motion itself wasn’t so slow but the jumps and falls were. I really loved it and I’ll ask Henry if I can try it again. I helped design the strong resistant ski suits so if it’s time to test a new prototype I know I will be around again…

Not so long ago disaster struck my hometown of New Apollo Station. It was really dreadful, 12 people died that day. It all started when I was asleep, I woke up from a deep tremble. I looked outside my window but couldn’t see anything strange. Shortly after the alarm bells started to ring. My room became auto-illuminated and all my communication devices turned on and connected with the emergency channel. On the main screen of my apartment I saw a live news flash by the station security people. They showed vids of an enormous explosion in the fuel depot near the station. The vacuum of space couldn’t sustain the fire but oxygen from the station could. Somehow some seals which should have closed automatically after an event such as this didn’t work and there was a chance that the station had to be evacuated. Anyway that was what the security people said. I knew that evacuation wasn’t an option, the station didn’t have enough emergency capsules for everyone. So it was everyone for himself, like the titanic. I foresaw a lot of fighting over spacesuits, rovers and other oxygen carrying stuff. In the meantime I was completely calm, which I still find very strange, looking back. Nothing happened luckily, the seals were closed and the fire died quickly. Why was I so calm? I don’t know, fires in space are enormously dangerous. It was really a close call. Somehow I didn’t realize that, I still don’t. I guess I still behave as a terrestrial, not being able to adapt to the fact that there isn’t air outside. I heard about people who suddenly realize this, also one case on Mars. Its a terrible type of claustrophobia, these people can even endanger other because of their sudden erratic behavior.
As I said, 12 people died that day, 20 were wounded. The station has room for 1000 people so a lot of us knew one or more of the deceased. I didn’t, so it didn’t came that close to my doorstep. On the other hand it made me realize how dangerous a place we live in. I asked myself the question, why am I here anyway? Did I run away from Earth? I know I will go back to Earth in a couple of years and yes I indeed needed some space, I needed to go somewhere far away. The Moon seemed a logical place and my profession as a spacesuit designer helped a lot. Choosing to become a spacesuit designer of course already had the whole me-going-to-space-thing in it. I wanted to leave Earth the minute I learned about space.

I miss the blue skies. I can remember me sitting on a coach looking outside the window, seeing little white clouds passing by. The blue makes me smile. I still don’t know where the term ‘blues’ comes from, because I like blue so much. When I feel blue, I feel happy. On Earth I always was a bit depressed waking up, looking outside and seeing gray skies. And now, everything below the horizon is gray and the sky is black. I always smile when I see the Earthrise. That blue pearl surrounded by darkness, its the most beautiful thing one can ever see.
But things are going to change here. Space mirrors are being built which will provide reflected sunlight during the dark days. I read some terrie preservation groups have filed a complaint because the brightened areas will be visible from Earth. It won’t be a crescent Moon anymore, the Moon will look like a ninety degrees rotated smiley spider with many eyes. Each eye will be a station or a minesite. For us lunars it will be a big improvement but I guess the terries will really need some time to get accustomed to it. Perhaps one day one big mirror creates an eternal full moon.
Another great thing which is going to be implemented — something very familiar to scifi readers — is the doming of a crater. Its not the same as what Henry wants to do, but I guess he will also be very interested in the plans. Scientists have selected a 10 kilometer in diameter crater and even with the low gravity it is only very recently that material science came up with a material which is cheap enough to use for the dome. We’re not talking the average concrete here, this is nano designed stuff. If that’s not enough, it is semi-transparent and made from lunar raw materials. If they switch the transparency off the inside of the dome becomes a big screen. They can simulate an ordinary terrestrial sky, a Martian one, or even the sky on the surface of Europa with Jupiter on the horizon.
I think it won’t take much time until ‘doming’ stands for ‘creating a habitat on an alien world where humans can live’. Designs for domes on Mars were recently published by the same people who built the Antarctica domes on Earth. I imagine making a tour through the Solar System, visiting all the new domes on Moons, Planets and Asteroids. I’m so happy that these things are now actually happening, it has been set in motion and can’t be stopped anymore. It has a life of its own now. But how difficult it was to start up the motion! The mid 20th century rush into space ended abruptly after the end of the Apollo missions and it took three rather unhappy generations of space enthusiasts to start up the process again, almost from scratch. At the end, it were the entrepreneurs who opened up space again. Commercial space flight, orbiting hotels, space cruises. But now the ball is tossed back to science. The Moon is a becoming a scientific heaven. We are designing all sorts of new materials, new infrastructure, new machines, new biotechnology, new nano-technology. Where else can you design stuff needed in space then, well, in space?

To be continued, again…