| Issue #39, December 22, 2006 |
On the Run
Slurpies, Krispy Kreme and A Tank of Gas at Moon Base I
By Dan Rattiner
NASA announced last week that they intend to build a permanent base on the moon. It will be a place where space travelers can stop off and stretch their legs while going from the Earth to Mars, or from Saturn to Venus if the stars are aligned properly so its on the way.
I see it therefore, sort of like an Interplanetary version of the Hess Stations we have out here. Use the bathroom, buy a road map, get a cup of coffee. Out at the pump, it will be all self-service. Pump the Rocket Fuel and use a credit card, or go inside and pay by cash in advance. Get a Krispy Kreme donut and a Slushy. And nearby there will be a little miniature golf course. Win a free game.
Of course the people working there will have to have a place to sleep since commuting to work would not be a practical option. And they’ll need a little food and general store and probably access to one of the videophones they will have there. I don’t think cell phones will work there, at least not in my lifetime.
The time frame for all this, according to NASA, is to have it in place there at the moon’s south pole by 2010. The sun shines on the moon’s south pole almost 24 hours a day. So multiple solar panels or maybe just one very, very large solar panel can power the whole place. I vote for the large panel. It could be standing upright like a fin on the domed roof of the building under which they have the Hess Station place. Maybe it would even be visible from earth: this big solar panel with red neon letters on it reading ON THE RUN. A swivel would turn it around and around for advertising purposes, although they could say it’s because it has to always face the sun. They’d get away with it.
I think Exxon/Mobil just opened a place with the name ON THE RUN at Exit 70 on the Long Island Expressway on the Manorville Road. I bet they’d give permission.
All of this, the business of building a base on the moon, is very good thinking in my opinion, though maybe not because of what NASA thinks. I think it is a real big chance, certainly our first real big chance, to escape Global Warming. I’ve heard in recent weeks that by 2040, all the fish in the seas will have died. I’ve learned that by 2099 many of our port cities will be underwater. It’s not pretty, what we’ve got coming up.
So here it is, our big chance to get off the planet. We’ve fouled this nest. So we fly the coop, and then, like the responsible citizens we are, we can get to this base on the moon and other bases like it there and we can look back at the earth up in the sky there and declare it a Superfund Site. One of these days, when the money is raised, we’ll fix it.
All of which brings me to the topic of Moon Law. That’s what they call it. I heard a discussion about it on Public Radio the other day. Apparently, there is such a thing. You can pass laws for moon behavior one of two ways. You can get a majority vote in the United Nations from the members to make something the law of the land there. Or you can simply have one country float a proposal around between the governments of maybe three or four major countries — consider that there are expected to be only three or four countries capable of starting a base there: China, Russia, USA, Japan, England and France — and so you get these six to agree and then if you get another ten smaller countries to agree, which gives you sixteen, then that’s a legal law you can apply to those living on the moon.
There will be no hitting, no pulling anybody’s plug outside the dome, no disorderly conduct and no stealing. The usual.
Of course, in order to have all this stuff, you’d now need a police force, a legal system and maybe a jail. In a few years, the place might look like a small western town, with an Opera House, a Town Hall, a Whore House and a Bar. Hopefully, they’ll figure out how to get cable so the men can watch sports. And of course you’ll need lots of cutesy shops for the women.
After that, one thing fast upon another, there will have to be Schools, and so forth and so on. The big thing, as far as I am concerned however, is that they’ll have this gigantic, curved bay door you’ll have to open to get in under the dome. It won’t be like now, where, out in space, a rocketship docks at the space station and the people scrunch down to crawl through this tube to get in. It’ll be like Star Wars. The rocketship will pull up, honk its horn or something and somebody will press a button and the big garage door will be opened into the airlock and you’ll be able to drive your whole spaceship right in just like in the movies. I like that idea.
But you know what I think? I think, eventually, the people at these space stations might start demanding their independence. Who do those people back on the dying earth think they are? Or the space stations could start fighting among themselves. Maybe at one of them they’ll be speaking English, and at another they’ll be speaking Arabic or Russian. And then one day, somebody is going to pull out a rifle and take a shot putting a hole through the flag that artificially flutters on the flagpole at the top of the big swiveling neon solar panel. (The bullet keeps going forever and ever out into the farthest reaches of the universe.)
Or maybe and this could be a clincher, some space travelers from Neptune will land their spaceship in the airlock — really weird looking Neptunians with six arms — and they’re going to want the air pressure set to a different level than it is for earthlings. And we’ll do that and put it on their bill and they won’t pay it. This is not good. They’ll be back.
So there you are. Wherever you go, you’re there. And with you there comes your troubles. There’s just no getting around it.
Pretty soon we’ll be looking for ways to make a base somewhere outside the solar system because the solar system will no longer be supporting life. It’s amazing how fast time flies.
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