Apollo 11 Site Preservation Excerpt from Tube Town- Frontier

 

Chapter Forty: RG and MM

 

Billy held a video call with Kwame Green, CEO of Lunar Experience Inc.

“Kwame, great to meet you virtually,” said Billy.

“Hi Billy, great to meet you, too!”

“Ahh, you’ve done your research as well – no 'Commander'. That title has always rubbed me the wrong way. It’s an outdated term that in no way describes what I do.”

“Okay then, what title would better describe you?”

“Hmm, maybe “Responsible Guy” because I’m responsible for the safety of over 100 humans in a place they are not designed to live, and I’m responsible for the success of a mission that has never been done before. Your turn.”

“Well, I’ve never put it in words before, but “Memory Maker” is what I would say. I’m all about creating experiences that people never forget. I create conditions where people can experience awe.”

“I think we’re in the right place for that. Let’s talk about some high-level things before we get into the details. You don’t have to sell me on the benefits of space tourism. I understand how important it is to grow the interest and support for space exploration from the people, who ultimately fund exploration.  I don’t control who gets licensed by the ISP for Moon tourism, but I do get input. I have to run a base that is doing important science and producing and launching spacecraft, while at the same time sheltering and feeding tourists in the same facility. It would be good if the successful licensee and I see eye to eye on the big stuff.

“I agree, lets discuss.”

“There is an average of six deaths per week in the U.S. National Park system on Earth. Of course, they have millions of visitors per year. We won’t have nearly that number of visitors in the beginning, but space is much more dangerous than Earth. We have to design everything we do with safety in mind. Your investors must understand that ISP is going to insist on safety and redundant systems – that’s the cost of doing business in space.”

“I agree,” said Kwame.

“I expect extraordinary cooperation between the licensee’s people and my crewmembers. Crewmembers are not tour guides. We will set up a process to train guides on space safety and Tube life. In case of emergency, Responsible Guy calls the shots, not Memory Maker.”

“Understood, RG,” laughed Kwame.

“I am particularly interested in the preservation of the Space Heritage sites on the Moon, especially the Apollo 11 site, while still making them accessible to visitors. I think the successful licensee should fund the construction of a protective infrastructure for touring the site.”

“That’s definitely in our license package. Everybody who makes the trip wants to see Armstrong and Aldrin's footprints. It’s a must-see. It sounds like you’ve got a design in mind.”

“I do. If you are the successful licensee, I’ll definitely share that with you. This piece needs to be a top priority. I’ve been out there, I’ve seen the footprints from a good distance. I know how fragile the site is. It only takes one numbskull to ruin it for all time.”

“Good point. There is always a certain percentage of knuckleheads in every group. I find that the percentage is even higher if the group is celebs and privileged.”

“The last thing I want to discuss is accessibility. I know you guys are going to make a ton of money from billionaires and millionaires, but I hope that you also provide experiences for people who can’t afford it.”

“Absolutely, my investors are very keen on providing opportunities to the public. We’re going to do giveaways and drawings for seats.”

“What percentage of seats?”

“At least 10 percent will be donated.”

Billy hesitated for a moment. “Hmm, I was expecting it would be more like 25 percent. You know, at 25 percent there is a much better chance that a kid from the streets of Mumbai or … Baltimore would get the experience of a lifetime.”

“You’ve done your research too. I hear you man, I would love to do that, but I don’t own this company outright ... yet.”

“Yeah, but you just took a call with a guy on the Moon. Tell your investors the guy on the Moon is going to be a lot more excited about working with a 25 percent generous Lunar Experience Inc. than a 10 percent generous Lunar Experience Inc. I think the public will also be excited about a generous Lunar Experience Inc. and it would be a heck of a marketing tool as you find fun ways to reward deserving people. You only live once Kwame, don’t just make this business, make this business awesome.”

“And I think I can sell. You could sell regolith to Lunites.”

“Good luck with your license application.” 

 

 

Chapter Forty-Five: Guide School

 

The road between the tubes was leveled and sintered in three Earth days. Billy then sent a small armada of Arbies loaded with food, spices, three big woks, methane burners, large regolith jars, Harvey, and two of his best kitchen cooks. He made instant friends as the three of them kept the woks fired up for hours, serving dinner to both shifts of the CNSA crew. Gerd Mueller brought over the concrete mixer, the sulfur kiln and the iron forms to create the big sulfur concrete interlocking blocks that were lifted into place by the Arbies. He worked with CNSA crewmembers to supplement the Arbies with some of their K-class robots. The first section of Yánjiāng Wu had been closed in with concrete blocks and was now being fitted with airlocks and blast doors on the launchpad side.

 

Days later, Kwame Green arrived along with three colleagues. After a tour of the Tube, they all met in Billy’s Office.

“RG, this place is even better than advertised!” exclaimed Kwame shaking Billy’s hand.

“MM it’s really good to see you,” replied Billy.

“What’s with the initials?” one of Kwame’s colleagues asked.

“It’s a space thing, maybe you’ll earn some initials someday,” replied Kwame. “Billy, this inquisitive young man is Emir, this is Yahaya and Eva.”

“Welcome to all of you. I’m sure Kwame already briefed you to call me Billy. So, tell me about the non-billionaire guests we will be having.”

Eva spoke up, “Billy, you may have heard the fabulous news that Lunar Experience has decided to institute a generous 25% give-back policy so 25 % of the seats for each Moon tour will be given away! The company’s community impact is one of the major factors why I joined the organization.”

“Neat!” said Billy, over-smiling at Kwame.

“We have a total of 50 seats on the April launch special, so 12 seats will be given away to kids and deserving people from Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.”

“Great, how much are the other 38 people paying?” asked Billy.

“Around $20 million for the special launch package. The International Space Station Hotel goes for $250,000 a night but all you get to do is be weightless and look down at the Earth. Up here, there is a lot more to do,” said Kwame.

“Around $760 million for the first trip, that’s nice,” said Billy. “And the ISP’s cut for the oxygen, water, food, room and board?”

“It’s a 60/40 deal. We get 60 percent; ISP gets 40 percent of the total. Of course, a decent chunk of our 60 percent goes to the space insurance premium for our cargo and liability risk. The pioneering billionaires who started space tourism were self-insured, but Lunar Experience has shareholders who insist on spreading the risk. There is no future for a robust commercial space industry without an insurance and reinsurance safety net.

“Yep, sounds like a pretty good deal,” said Billy.

“Regular tours when there is no launch scheduled will be less, but the crewed launch to Mars will probably be triple the price. That will be a monumental event. You become a part of history,” said Kwame.

“Should be quite a memory,” said Billy. “Let’s talk about the activities and attractions. Upon arrival, your guests will want to cavort around on the surface, do the astronaut bunny hop, and fall down just like we did when we got here. All of your guides will be trained on surface safety: suit malfunctions, depressurization, solar storms, micrometeorite protection. The de-dusting process is very important and must be strictly enforced.

Upon entry, I know you will want to do a Tube Town tour. We have constructed a plexiglass walled path through the Factory for our guests. Crewmembers are busy building spacecraft and doing science, so it’s important not to get in their way and please avoid chatting them up while they are working. Areas outside the path are restricted, and guests may not go wandering around in the Factory. 

The Commons is a good place for you to give orientations and as a base of your operations. You can set up a Lunar Experience office there if you want. We have also marked off an area of the Quarters where you can design and build the Guest Quarters. Our recyclable waste is available for your creative ideas.”

“Thanks Billy, but this is an area where we will invest in some infrastructure. Our guests expect a very high level of creature comforts for the amount of money they are spending. We will keep with the bohemian spirit of the Quarters, but our design team will build a resort hotel in the Quarters that we will call Villa Luna,” said Kwame.

“That goes for all the guests, right?” asked Billy.

“Right. Now some guests will have special dietary requirements…”

“They eat what we eat,” said Billy firmly. “We know you will want to offer a flight school in the Rec Section. We now have several flight enthusiasts who can train your guides. You will need to provide the thinsuits and flight suits for your guests.

“Yes, we will do that,” said Kwame.

“In the Farm, you’ll have access to Harvey or one of his team to talk about all the cool things going on back there. When a tour coincides with lunar night, which you will find is not actually that dark, I recommend a stargazing session via LPV outside the North End. It’s one of my favorite things.

“When the guests have downtime, I suggest we put them to work. By that I mean, give them the opportunity to work with one of our crew members in Tube Tree production. As we have time, we are continuing to build out our forest of Tube Trees in the Commons. We have a master plan that entails a forest of trees, paths, a pond, and robotic birds. I think our guests would enjoy helping build a forest on the Moon.”

“I like it,” said Kwame. “Especially the kids would enjoy that.”

“Let’s discuss offsite activities. I know that you have been working with the Space Heritage Centre on the Apollo 11 landing site. There are two huge concerns that I have – safety and preservation.

Regarding safety, the site is a good distance from here 1,300 kilometers. We need a road and a halfway habitat with power and atmosphere. The trip may have to be done in two stages depending upon the road and the speed of your vehicle. At the site, there should be a safety habitat with a cache of emergency supplies.

Regarding preservation, this is a very fragile site. It can easily be destroyed on purpose or by accident. I’ve thought about doming the site with moon glass or creating a transparent fence, but people want to get close and see the lander and the footprints.

Here is my concept. RegBots can build a meter-high regolith wall around the perimeter of the site. This prevents accidental intrusion by a vehicle and acts as a dust barrier from human activity at the site. Entrance to the site is only by an elevated lift system – like a ski lift. Two humans in pressure suits ride inside a plexiglass pod that is supported by cables attached to curved metal poles anchored inside the perimeter wall. The poles extend into the space above the site. Because of the low gravity, you can support a lot of weight over an exceptionally large span. The pods will traverse around the site and then will do a nice dip at the front of the lunar lander to get a good view of the ladder, the footprints, and the memorial without the ability to touch or drop anything onto the site.

“Billy, you’ve got a lot of great ideas and you’ve definitely thought a lot about the Apollo 11 site. I think we can be ready to go for the onsite activities, but I don’t know that we can get the Tranquility Base infrastructure in place by the April launch,” said Kwame.

“Now that our RegBots have built the tube road, we can transport them down there on Arbie sleds and get the perimeter wall built for you. The challenge for you will be whether you can get the pod lift built before the April launch. If not, the guests for the April launch will only be able to take pictures from outside the perimeter fence. We good?” asked Billy with a steely-eyed stare.

“We’re good, RG,” said Kwame.  

 

Billy messaged Jim Bosner.

Jim – I know you’ll be completing a security check on all our incoming guests. While you are doing that, I’d like you to make sure that the selection process on the deserving people is on the up and up. If someone succeeds in gaming the system, it will tarnish our mission – and really piss me off.

Thanks,

Billy

 

 

 

Chapter Forty-Six: Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote

 

 

Launch day was fast approaching. First and second stages were mounted, and payloads were being readied to top the giant cylinders.  In three days, the tourists and dignitaries would be landing. Things were getting hectic in Tube Town. Billy was going nuts.

“Nigel, road trip?”

“Bloody ‘ell!”

Billy wanted to inspect the new structures Lunar Experiences had built at the Apollo 11 landing site, Tranquility Base - and he wanted to get away. 

The road was smooth, and they made good time. Nigel was right in the middle of one of his old commando stories when a flash of movement appeared before them and a cloud of regolith poofed out of a hole in the sintered road. Billy skidded to a halt and they both jumped out of the LPV to inspect. Nigel scanned the horizon and then the sky. They were alone. The hole was about the size of a baseball and the sides of the hole were glazed like glass.

“Don’t get too close, that thing is hot and it's definitely metal, “said Nigel.

“Com3, mark this location, record a video from my visor and tag this file as meteorite impact.”

“Yes, Commander.”

“Yeah, let’s get back in the LPV,” said Billy glancing at the sky. Hopping back in the cab and closing the doors Billy looked up at the roof of the cab and said, “Do you think the ballistic mat would’ve stopped that?”

“Hell, no,” snorted Nigel.

“That’s what I thought,” said Billy. “That could ruin your day.”

 

Soon Billy and Nigel saw something yellow and shiny beside the road. It was a 3-meter-tall gold sculpture of an olive branch. At the top it read:

 

                                                Tranquility Base

                                                Space Heritage Site

 

“That’s from the Memorial Package!” exclaimed Billy.

“The what?” asked Nigel.

“Aldrin and Armstrong brought a memorial package that they left on the surface. It was a small gold olive branch, an Apollo 1 mission patch in memory of the crew that died on the launch pad, a silicon disc in an aluminum case engraved with messages from world leaders, and two Soviet cosmonaut medals. That sign is a recreation of the gold olive branch. Very nice.”

“You are such a space geek,” said Nigel.

The road ended northeast of West Crater. “This is odd,” said Billy checking his lunar positioning display. “We are almost a kilometer to the East of the landing site.”

There was a large, sintered area for vehicle parking. Billy and Nigel got out of the vehicle and walked toward a stainless-steel sign that said, “Eagle Entrance”. On the other side was a ballistic roof over a set of plexiglass rectangles attached to a cable lift. On the wall in front of them was a power switch with simple markings On and Off. Billy pushed the On button. The solar-powered batteries kicked on and the door to the first rectangle opened. Billy and Nigel entered. There was plenty of room for two people to stand next to each other in surface suits. There were handholds and elbow rests. As Billy and Nigel grabbed the handholds, the door closed and the plexiglass box turned opaque except for two oddly diamond-shaped windows on the front. The cable started a steep climb. It rose quickly up and up. At about 30 meters an old-time scratchy soundtrack started playing over the surface suit com.

“Program alarm. 1201. (beep)” 

“Roger,1201 alarm. (beep) “We’re go. Same type. We’re go. (beep)

“2,000 feet. 2,000 feet. Into the AGS, 47 degrees. (beep)

 

“Oh my God!” exclaimed Billy. “This is the original soundtrack recording between Mission Control and the Eagle lander. This ride is a recreation of Armstrong manually landing the lunar lander after he realizes that they overshot their target. Look- they were headed directly for West Crater and Armstrong flew the lander horizontally until they could clear the hazardous crater. There are the boulders the size of cars that he saw. This is the exact same track of the actual Eagle landing and the exact same view that Armstrong and Aldrin had!”

The plexiglass box headed straight for the huge crater then it leveled off and on a horizontal trajectory, headed toward Little West Crater. The original soundtrack continued as the ride entered the landing zone and the rectangle pod lowered to a stop and hovered directly above the actual descent stage of the lunar lander as the soundtrack played Armstrong’s transmission ended with “Houston…Tranquility Base…The Eagle has landed.”

The soundtrack stopped and a narrator’s voice began explaining the story of the Apollo 11 landing. The opaque box became clear and now Billy and Nigel had a full 360-degree view of the site, including below their feet.

Kwame’s team had constructed glass fiber reinforced concrete columns outside the perimeter of the regolith fence. The concrete was finished with a mortar mix of regolith to blend in with the surface. From the tops of the columns, slender, curved titanium beams extended into the site at various heights. The ends of the beams were connected to electric motors which controlled a continuous loop of high-strength cable. The box began to traverse around the site changing height and stopping at different locations as the narration explained the objects of interest - the Passive Seismic Experiment, the Laser Ranging Retroreflector, the American Flag. Sadly, the U.S. flag had been knocked over from the thrust of the ascent module and was barely visible covered with a light blanket of regolith dust. All the color was bleached out of the cheap nylon that had been exposed to the solar wind for more than 60 years.  Any attempt to touch it would undoubtedly cause the fabric to disintegrate. Billy asked Nigel to try the door. 

It’s locked,” he said.

“Good answer,” said Billy.

After the flag, the ride approached the lander again at the top of the ladder. It got within a meter of the ladder and slowly started moving down. It paused for the occupants to read the memorial plaque between the rungs of the ladder attached to the lander leg. 

Here Men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D.

We came in peace for all mankind. 

The box continued down and moved backward, away from the ladder. This was the 'One small step' view of the meter-long drop from the bottom rung of the ladder to the surface of the regolith. It was easy to see the footprints from the astronaut’s treaded boot covers still undisturbed in the regolith. Not far from the lander, Billy spotted a small rectangular shape under the dust. It contained a circular shape, something shiny and a small metallic box. “That’s the Memorial Package! Right there,” he said pointing it out for Nigel.

 As the box pulled away it did a panoramic pivot and then retraced the track to the East. As they returned they could clearly see Armstrong’s footprints leading to and from the rim of the Little West Crater where he had jogged to quickly get a panoramic camera shot of the landing site just before leaving. The regolith fence extended to guard the site on either side of Neil Armstrong’s footprints still visible on the crater’s rim. The man was gone, but his footprints forever remain.

As the box returned to the beginning of the ride, Billy turned to Nigel and said, “What did you think?”

“Really cool,” said Nigel “Plus it seems really secure. It gives you an up-close and immersive experience yet preserves the integrity and dignity of the site.”

“I could not have said that any better, my friend. Now I’m not so nervous about tourists coming here.”

 

Back at Tube Town, Billy checked in with Leo and the production team. They were on schedule for launch. In the Commons he found Kwame at the brand-new Lunar Experience office. Billy walked up to Kwame. Kwame studied Billy’s poker face.

“Well?’ said Kwame finally.

Billy bear-hugged him. “I knew I picked the right person for the job.”

“I thought Goldblum picked me,” replied Kwame.

“Uh-huh,” said Billy.