I apologize for the lack of a post today, the issue lies entirely with me. I've been having some personal issues lately that have kept me from writing, certainly to the quality Eyes and you all deserve. Hoping next week will be better and perhaps more productive, and once again my apologies.
Take your time!
This TL is so incredible and so, so much effort has gone into it. I have full faith that whenever the next update rolls around it will be awesome.
No apologies; work on/deal with/rest from what's way more important. This'll keep.
Part III, Post 25: The manned Artemis 4 mission to the Moon
Good afternoon, everyone! After several slips to the right (for which I apologize), it's finally that time once again, for the final time in Part III. Before we dive in, I'd like to distribute a bit of kudos to some parties who richly deserve it.
First, I'd like to say thanks to Workable Goblin for being such a great collaborator on this TL for the past three years. It may not be as noticeable on the reading end, since I mostly handle the thread, but the amount of research and work he puts in is amazing, and even on those posts which he doesn't write, his contributions to editing my writing is greatly appreciated.
Second, I'd like to thank our valued adviser and occasional guest writer, the Brainbin, for all of his support. Working with him and getting to know him has been amazing, and his contributions to helping to flesh out the world of Eyes Turned Skywards are both fun to work on and greatly appreciated by Goblin and me.
Third, I'd like to thank our Turtledove-winning primary artist, Nixonshead, for all the time he's put into this Part's images that have transported us to so many amazing scenes. I'm eagerly anticipating what he's got in store during the hiatus, both for Eyes and other projects.
I'd also like to thank everyone else who has contributed to the TL, whether through other art, editing the wiki, contributing to commentary and discussion, or simply by returning here to read and support us week after week. Thanks to you all for everything you've done, and I look forward to working with all of our collaborators to bring you Part IV at the end of the hiatus later this year--we've got some great stuff planned, and more yet to be decided.
However, before we move into Part IV, there's one last thing: finishing Part III! Thus, without further ado, I'm pleased to present....
Eyes Turned Skywards, Part III: Post #25
With the Artemis 4 exploration habitat having landed on the moon care of the Janus cargo lander, all the pieces were finally in place for the return of humanity to their nearest celestial neighbor. However, before Don Hunt and his crew could follow Janus, their own launches needed to be scheduled and arranged; no easy task. No fewer than two Saturn Heavies would be needed to lift the Apollo and lander, and the Pegasus upper stage that would propel them to the Moon, while concerns about the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants of the lander and Pegasus boiling off during a long orbital stay meant that both needed to launch virtually simultaneously. NASA had only attempted anything similar three times before, once each with Skylab, Spacelab, and Freedom’s Challenger. In these cases, as with the Artemis architecture, NASA had attempted dual-launch of two rockets within a single day and the same-day rendezvous of the payloads on orbit, but unlike any of the previous examples, Artemis required dual-launching two Heavies, a major complication given the demands ongoing Freedom operations were putting on the VAB and LC39, not to mention the strain on Cape Canaveral’s range operations.
Because of this, merely scheduling the launch became a severe challenge. Lunar launch windows, restrictions on lunar operations caused by shifting sunlight on the Ocean of Storms, and necessary Freedom cargo and crew launches combined to bedevil even the cleverest planners, marking out weeks at a time as no-go dates: too filled with Freedom operations when the physical conditions were good, and contraindicated by poor surface lighting or lack of launch windows when an operations hole opened. While one Heavy was able to begin stacking immediately on the MLP so recently vacated by Janus’s launch vehicle, the second Heavy had to wait until the launch of one of Freedom’s Aardvark cargo missions in early December, only to be interrupted by the holiday maintenance stand-down. While the VAB crews did their best, it was not until after Commander Adams and his Freedom 42 crew made their way to Freedom on January 19th that the twin Heavies could become their singular focus, preventing any launch until March at the earliest. With a solid date that launch would be possible at last, planners could finally pin down the exact scheduled launch date, taking into account the need to land near lunar morning to maximize available surface time, the seven day transit to the Moon’s surface from Earth, and the need for margin in case of bad weather or other unexpected slips. After crunching all of these constraints, March 20th, 1999, was finally selected as the launch date.
Sadly, the margin would prove necessary, as NASA’s first experience with double-launching HLVs proved troublesome. Despite the readiness of the rockets themselves, the weather proved troublesome, with persistent elevated upper-level winds causing a 24-hour scrub on the first launch attempt. Fortunately, overnight the winds died down, and early the next morning crowds gathered to watch from the causeway were rewarded with the view of Artemis 4B cutting through low clouds, carrying the enshrouded Pegasus to a parking orbit to await the launch of the crew. A little more than an hour later, as the Pegasus finished its first orbit around the Earth, Hunt and the rest of the Artemis 4 crew rode their own Heavy to orbit in a picture-perfect launch, finding themselves only a few kilometers away from the Pegasus as they reached orbit. The next orbit was consumed as Hunt and pilot Natalie Duncan separated from the S-IVC which had injected them to orbit, transposed, and docked the Enterprise to the Galileo, then discarded the S-IVC and made yet another docking, using the large docking ring on the base of Galileo to capture the Pegasus departure stage. With all the pieces of the launch finally arranged on orbit, the mission was given the go ahead, and conducted the burn to at last take humans once more out of Earth orbit.
With the departure burn completed, and the Earth beginning to shrink behind them, the crew fired the pyros to detach the docking truss from the base of the Galileo, leaving the stage behind. Ground controllers used the residual propellants in the tanks to alter the depleted stage’s trajectory, aiming it out into a heliocentric orbit. Meanwhile, the crew completed the extension of the Enterprise’s solar panels (previously left partially retracted against the acceleration of the departure burn), and settled into the capsule and lander ascent stage for the four-day coast to EML-2. Leaving the Enterprise in orbit there, they then made the three-day descent to the surface as mission controllers brought the Janus habitat to full readiness, shaking off the torpor of its final lunar night and readying it to provide a landing target signal for the inbound crew.
Finally, on March 27th, the Galileo settled briefly into a lunar parking orbit, allowing some time for Hunt and Duncan to conduct final checks on the lander’s systems and set up the landing broadcast. Fueled by a surge in public interest and enabled by DSN upgrades, NASA had arranged to produce a live broadcast of the entire landing sequence, playing not only on their own network, NASAtv, but also on television channels around the globe and, in a first for the agency, as an Internet live stream accessible from anywhere in the world [1]. As an estimated audience of over 50 million in the United States and nearly four times that elsewhere [2] watched, Hunt and Duncan locked in the final parameters, and initiated powered descent. The lander’s RL-10 engines relit without issue, and began the burn to put the lander on its way to the surface. For the first several minutes of the 13 minute drop, Duncan and Hunt monitored the computer sequencer, identical to the automatic pilot which had guided Janus to its own landing 5 months prior. However, as the Moon rose up in the ports and turned from a ball they were flying past into a surface they were descending onto, the computer hiccuped. Throwing an error, it indicated that it was unable to square the velocity data it was deriving from Janus’ radio beacon with its own onboard inertial systems and landing radar. With the altitude and velocity ticking down, Hunt consulted with Mission Control in Houston, who found that there were no other problems with the cargo lander’s systems.
With the Spacelab 28 abort in his mind, Hunt considered the situation, and together with the Flight Director, he made the decision to disregard the beacon entirely and proceed to the surface using only the internal guidance systems and its pre-programmed trajectory [3]. Proceeding on precise math and dead reckoning, Hunt and Duncan continued the flight. About four minutes out from landing, the Galileo tilted vertical, allowing the crew to see their landing site downrange for the first time from an altitude of only a few kilometers. Janus and the landing site were right where they were expected to be. Not as consumed as Duncan and Hunt were with the task of flying the ship, Ed Keeler was the first to spot it, calling the “tally ho” as he first spotted the distinctive craters of the landing site several kilometers downrange, then picked the glint off of Janus. He pointed it out to Hunt, who matched the landing position estimate in the pilot’s heads-up display, and exclaimed, “Right on the money! Houston, it’s just like the sims. Pipper right on the target, and we’re headed in.” A final polling of the stations in mission control confirmed no issues, and the Galileo bored in to the landing site, shutting down the outboard engines to maintain manageable acceleration. Finally, in a cloud of dust kicked up by the remaining RL-10, the Galileo’s contact probes hit regolith. Duncan slammed the engine cutout, and the ship fell the last foot onto the lunar surface, settling with a crunch. As she and Hunt ran through the stay/no-stay checklists with mission control back on Earth, Keeler and Seleznev had the chance to look out through the rapidly-settling dust at the world they’d come to explore once again.
After the dust settled and Houston confirmed that the Galileo’s systems were nominal, the crew ate a short meal, then donned their EVA gear and, one at a time, cycled through the airlock into the lunar vacuum of the exterior porch. As the world watched from a deployed camera on the side of the descent stage, Don Hunt climbed down the ladder. Pausing on the final rung, he turned to the camera to deliver his PAO-approved speech:
“With these steps, we begin anew the exploration of our nearest neighbor, in peace and with hope for all mankind,” he said, before stepping off the ladder. On the surface, looking up at the rest of the crew on the porch, he continued. “All right, let’s get to work.”
There was certainly plenty to do. While Duncan and Keeler stayed on the porch to erect a small davit crane for lowering deck cargo to the surface, Seleznev stepped down the ladder, following Hunt to the final rung--where, like the commander, he turned towards the camera, following his own orders. First in Russian, then in English, he said “I am proud to be here on the Moon, continuing a long tradition of Russian space exploration, including with our American partners,” before jumping down to the surface. Once there, he joined Hunt in deploying the rover carried by the Galileo to the Moon’s surface.
Once they finished assembling the rover, Hunt and Seleznev took it for a brief circuit of the lander, then returned to help Duncan and Keeler wrap up the unloading of some critical supplies. Lashing them to the rover and climbing aboard, the crew drove the short distance to the long-waiting Janus lander as mission control remotely placed the Galileo into a low-power standby for the duration of the stay. The rest of the first hours of EVA were taken up with deploying and assembling the second rover, which had been brought aboard Janus, rigging Janus’ cargo crane, setting up some of the smaller surface instruments near the habitat, and, in a final round of PAO-friendly work, erecting the Russian and American flags and placing a plaque bearing the symbols of every nation involved in the program on the lunar surface in between the two, a procedure decided on as the best balance of recognition and national pride.
With that early business taken care of, and after almost four hours on the surface, the crew finally had the chance to cycle one-at-a-time into the habitat. Besides moving one step closer to their first moment of rest, this was also the first chance to test the dust mitigation techniques developed for Artemis. As each person entered the airlock, they used a small electrostatic/vacuum suction wand to remove as much of the dust accumulated during the EVA as possible, before cycling through to the geology lab, doffing their suits, and storing them there, isolating the remaining dust from the main habitat space. Finally, with the crew assembled and out of their suits with a minimum of dust left in the air, the crew moved into the main habitat. Before having a chance to eat, they had to clear out the galley and wardroom spaces, which had been used for the storage of bunks and other folding furniture that the crew had to move up the ladder into the inflated habitat dome. With their bedroom assembled and living spaces set up, the crew sat down to their first full meal on the Moon, and conferred with Houston about plans for the morning before turning in for rest after the first day of a busy mission.
With housework and PR chores out of the way, the crew woke up early on the second day of the mission preparing to begin the mission’s scientific work. No one was expecting Artemis 4 to uncover any revolutionary discoveries in lunar geology. The landing site had, after all, been quite deliberately selected to minimize engineering risk, returning to the relatively well-characterized Apollo 12 location rather than traveling further afield to higher-priority but riskier science targets. Even if Pete Conrad and Al Bean had been naval aviators rather than geologists, they had been quite efficient in returning samples from all around their landing sites and several nearby craters, not to mention deploying an ALSEP station and gathering a few pieces of the previous Surveyor 3 probe. About the only really novel science that could be expected was closer to engineering, using samples of the Apollo 12 descent module and Surveyor 3 to study the environment of the lunar surface and the long-term effects on human artifacts.
Nevertheless, there were reasons to be optimistic about Artemis 4’s scientific output. After all, the Apollo 12 mission had been barely more ambitious than Apollo 11, involving only two EVAs, both less than four hours long, and both carried out entirely on foot. By contrast, Artemis 4’s mission would last a full two weeks, with much longer EVAs scheduled for almost every surface day, and each of these would involve the use of vehicles similar to the lunar rovers of later Apollo missions. With more time on the surface and the ability to travel farther and see more, it was certainly plausible that the crew might encounter something which had simply eluded Apollo 12. In addition, in the person of Luka Seleznev they had not just a geologist but a bonafide lunar scientist, one who had cut his teeth analyzing samples from the Luna 16, 20, and 24 probes for his doctorate before moving into more conventional areas of research. If any mission could be expected to go over previously explored terrain and reveal a bounty of new results, this was definitely it.
Over the next two weeks, the Artemis 4 crew conducted a thorough survey of the areas surrounding their landing site before assembling a surface science station comparable to the ALSEP used on Apollo, though substantially more capable, then beginning expeditions further afield. Aided by their pair of rovers allowing them to travel beyond walkback distance, they sojourned up to 15 kilometers away from the habitat, deploying smaller science stations and collecting surface rocks and samples as they went. The crew quickly settled into a steady routine, the two pairs of Hunt and Seleznev and Duncan and Keeler alternating EVA and off days. Given the extreme physical exertions required for moonwalking, day-to-day struggles with recalcitrant sampling tools, and the build-up of dust on suits even with the end-of-day cleaning and dust mitigation techniques, these off days were always much appreciated by the crew, able to take a relative break from the hard work of EVAs and refresh themselves for the next venture outwards, even though they involved more time spent cataloging and analyzing of samples in the limited geology facilities and performing more time-consuming suit and habitat maintenance duties than true rest.
However, the missions weren’t all work. Compared to their Apollo predecessors, who had spent their three-day stays entirely in the limited space of their LM cabins, Hunt’s crew had access to a spacious and luxurious home-away-from-home, including a complete hygiene station, cramped galley, and (in the dome) individual sleeping quarters. The habitat had also been equipped on the ground with several kilograms per crew member of personal gear. Among his gear, Don Hunt had sent ahead a small personal library of a few classics from science fiction writers like Heinlein, Clarke, and Bradbury which had inspired him to an interest in spaceflight as a child. Nat Duncan joined the ranks of space musicians, bringing along a flute. Keeler took advantage of the benefits of the moon’s gravity to send among his allotment a French Press and a kilogram of ground coffee, which after some experimenting enabled the crew who cared for it to have fresh-brewed coffee most mornings before EVA, instead of the hot-water-mixed squeeze bags of instant coffee which were the norm on Freedom. The crew also took advantage of the first of April (their first rest day) to play some pranks on each other and Mission Control. During the middle of the mission, when high-sun conditions limited EVA durations, the crew was allowed several straight days off of EVA, preparing for the remainder of their mission, with the exception of a series of PAO-organized live interviews with several media outlets, including American national news and morning shows, across networks the BBC, PBS, CNN, RDF in France, ZDF in Germany, ORT in Russia, and FUJI-TV in Japan, along with wire services such as the Associated Press, Reuters, RIA Novosti, and AFP. Meanwhile, geologists and other scientists back on Earth compared the results accomplished so far and re-planned the second week’s activities in response to the past week of activity--a luxury in time and flexibility that the Apollo crews hadn’t been able to experience.
However, the highlight of the second week of EVA came on Day 10 of the mission, when the crew finally made the traverse to the Apollo 12 and Surveyor landing sites. In order to minimize damage to the site, the crew parked their rovers more than 75m away from the main landing site, and continued on foot [4]. The crew carefully catalogued the status of key artifacts with photographs, allowing scientists back on Earth to use them as “witness plates” of the results of nearly three decades on the lunar surface. By examining the surface conditions of these well-documented artifacts after having been exposed for so long, particularly dust buildup, micrometeorite pitting, and the general condition of the objects, scientists could gain insight into the lunar atmosphere, dust transit under the thrust of lunar vehicles, the frequency and impact of micrometeor events, and environmental and thermal stresses on the materials themselves. Engineers, meanwhile, would gain valuable information on the durability and response of various materials to the harsh conditions of the lunar surface over long time periods, valuable information for designing future lunar spacecraft or a lunar base.
Although in general the crew were instructed to avoid disturbing the artifacts directly, there were a few small exceptions. During the rush to load the LM for return home, Pete Conrad had accidentally left a magazine of color film outside the lunar module. If the Artemis 4 crew could locate it, they were asked to bring it home, as there was historic, scientific, and engineering value in the film--if it could be developed, some of the character of the radiation environment could be revealed in effects on the film of three decades of exposure, while it would of course be one of the few things transported from the Earth to the Moon and back. The second exception, although grounded in a solid engineering request, had more of the air of the public affairs office about it. In order to characterize the effects of the lunar environment on the descent stage and particularly the effects of the ascent stage’s liftoff, the crew had been requested to carefully examine every surface--including the top. However, in order to reach and photograph the top, given the stage’s three meter height, someone would need to climb the stage’s ladder--the same one Al Bean and Pete Conrad had used during their mission. Sensing a historic image, the PAO requested that one of the other astronauts photograph this ascent, while also indicating that it would be preferable if one of the American crew members took the responsibility for climbing. Drawing straws the night before, Nat Duncan had won the “honor” of this incredibly well-documented inspection. The photograph of her at the top of the remaining rungs was one of several stand-out images of the mission, reproduced many times in the press, while the engineering team were very interested in the conditions of the top of the stage, from the thin coat of dust to tears in the foil insulation caused by the liftoff of the Apollo 12 ascent stage.
Not everything they found at the site was the result of intensive pre-planning, though. While packing up to head back to Janus, Seleznev accidentally kicked something with his boot, sending it flying downrange--glinting very much unlike the lunar rocks littering the landing site. After a brief consultation with Hunt, the two of them abandoned their duties to search for the mysterious object. A few minutes later, just as they were about to give up, Seleznev again literally stumbled on it, this time fortunately not sending it flying. After calling over Hunt, Seleznev lifted the thing out of the lunar dust, revealing an odd metal box, clearly something brought to the Moon by the Apollo 12 crew. Battered by the lunar environment like the rest of the landing site, neither could quite work out what it was. Given it was clearly inert, not a catalogued item, and that much of the engineering value of its resting place had been destroyed by Seleznev’s boot, Mission Control requested that Hunt photograph the object and bring it back to Janus for identification. After Hunt shoved it in one of his pockets, the two made their way back to the rovers, driving back to the hab as NASA contacted Al Bean, still living in the city he and every other American astronaut had come to call home.
Bean arrived at Mission Control the next day, intrigued by a desire to figure out what, exactly, had been found--but with a sneaking suspicion as to what it might be. As Hunt would later relate the story, the moment Bean saw the image shown on the video-conference feed from Janus, his eyes lit up and the old astronaut exclaimed “That damned thing again!”. He explained that the fragment was actually a self-timer for the cameras used on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts, which he and Pete had conspired to bring to the Moon to photograph themselves standing side-by-side next to Surveyor 3. Unfortunately, when they were about to take it, they had been unable to find the timer in their sample bags, and had to leave without the photograph. Later, just as they were about to step back into the Lunar Module, Al had found it and, angry about the lost opportunity, had thrown it as far from the LM as he could. Delighted by the story, Don requested permission to bring the timer back to Earth, both as an artifact and as a sample of mechanical equipment left in the lunar environment. After the request had been granted, Hunt dumped one of his books to make room for the strange object in his strict return mass allowance.
The final days at Oceanus Procellarum were spent wrapping up the explorations, conducting last-minute checks of all emplaced instruments, and ferrying samples and gear from Janus back to the Galileo--the crew aimed to not repeat Conrad’s error in leaving any of their own samples behind, a task complicated by the presence of two vehicles instead of just one. The setting sun cast hard, long shadows around the landing site, complicating these tasks, though the crew were able to work thanks to lights on their suits and another source: Earthshine. Finally, on Day 14, the crew loaded the last supplies onto the rovers, and left the habitat for the last time. The habitat dome was left inflated, with the intention to use its pressurized top as a test of micrometeorite impacts, the ground crew watching for the tell-tale signs of pressure spikes from non-penetrating impacts and the pressure loss from larger ones. Thus, Janus would serve a final role as a stationary science platform on the moon. Though Hunt joked about leaving the keys under the mat as he descended the ladder to the surface one last time to join the crew bound for the Galileo and home, it wasn’t certain that the habitat could survive the upcoming night--supporting the crew had consumed most of its solar power and batteries, and there was a mere trickle left to keep the core systems warm and alive through the bitter cold of the lunar night. However, the answers to that along with the full scientific value of the Artemis 4 mission, would have to wait, as the crew finished their preparations.
The Artemis 4 mission left the moon on April 9, 1999, with the Galileo’s ascent stage blasting off from the surface in a perfect ascent and carrying the crew back EML-2, where the Enterprise capsule had been so patiently waiting. The crew brought with them roughly 350 kilograms of lunar samples, gathered during 10 days of EVA on the surface. Together, the Artemis 4 crew had logged 240 hours of surface EVA, a longer time spent on the surface in a single mission than during the entirety of Project Apollo [5]. Numbers for samples taken, kilometers traversed in the rovers, and other statistics set similar records [6]. Making rendezvous and docking, the crew verified that the Apollo capsule had survived its lonely vigil with no harm, then fired the Apollo’s engines to place the stack onto a path back to Earth. Compared to the constant activity and physical demands of the last two weeks, the trip home in microgravity was a near-vacation for the somewhat-exhausted crew, with the main activities being a series of medical tests comparing the effects of the two weeks in lunar gravity to with similar durations in microgravity--a useful human baseline to compare to rat re-creation of similar profiles conducted in Freedom’s centrifuge lab. Finally, only an hour or so out from entering Earth’s atmosphere, the crew moved the final items from the Galileo’s cabin and fired separation pyros to leave it behind. After making the final course corrections with the service module’s engines, that, too, was jettisoned, leaving the command module on course for its skip-entry while the other two modules met their final, fiery rendezvous.
Passing through their skip, then through final descent, the crew made an on-target landing in the Pacific off Hawai’i on April 16, 1999. In a one-time change from their normal procedures, seeking to cash in on NASA’s PR and public interest in the mission, the US Navy lent the USS Enterprise to assist NASA’s regular Apollo recovery team off Hawai’i in retrieving the command module Enterprise. Given the sheer multitude of press seeking to cover the landing, the carrier Enterprise’s flight deck seemed a valuable change from the typically cramped deck of one of their recovery boats, and NASA accepted. However, while the public focus was on the returning crew and engineers were seeing Janus through her first night as the center of a constellation of automated instruments on the lunar surface, scientists were eagerly beginning to digest the bounty brought back by the mission.
While lunar science and space engineering were the dominant scientific disciplines the Artemis 4 mission tried to address, they were not the only ones involved in the mission, nor were they the first to produce results. Hampered by the need to conduct time-consuming laboratory analyses and carefully curate materials, they fell behind other, speedier disciplines that had also leaped to become involved in the mission. Most of their results would stem from the surface science stations the astronauts had deployed in a small network around their landing site, particularly the larger central station set up nearby. Equipped with a wide range of instruments, including almost all of the non-selenological instruments, it was the centerpiece of scientific efforts on the Moon.
The most publicly visible and popularly appealing instrument was, of course, the Earth Imager, a small telescope aimed permanently at the Earth. While obviously less capable than instruments on satellites in low or geostationary orbit in seeing small details, it had the advantage of being able to continuously view the whole disk of the Earth as it rotated, allowing improved measurements of certain whole-disk values, such as average temperature or global albedo, while also measuring their diurnal variations. President Gore was also particularly interested in the possibility of continuously broadcasting the images taken by the telescope to the public, creating more awareness of the Earth’s health, like the famous Blue Marble image had done in the 1970s. While bandwidth considerations in the Deep Space Network made this infeasible, a webcam-like mode of operation--where images taken every few hours would be published to the Internet--was entirely possible, and quickly adopted. Indeed, immediately after the mission the feed became one of the most popular destinations on the entire Internet, with a significant fraction of the Internet’s users visiting at least once. Images from the Earth Imager also became popular as a source of relaxation and a center for meditation, allowing users to have a concrete focus to their thinking.
Besides the Earth Imager, several other instruments were designed to look up into the lunar sky instead of back down towards the ground, all with their own particular mission. The Solar Imager, another optical telescope, would be a valuable adjunct to the existing fleet of solar observation spacecraft, using its unique vantage point to carry out ultraviolet and short-wavelength imaging and spectroscopy on the solar disc, while the Earth Disk Radiometer would both supplement existing whole-disk Earth microwave radiometry and act as a valuable prototype for the small radio telescopes that would be flown on later missions to the lunar farside and limb. Meanwhile, a wide variety of magnetospheric and particles and fields instruments would investigate the behavior of the most distant regions of Earth’s magnetosphere, and its response to solar events, completing the mission’s set of astronomical and space physics instruments.
Of course, the surface science sites also had many selenological and geophysical instruments installed as well, which also raced ahead of their more sample-bound counterparts. Seismology was, as on the Apollo missions, a major priority, and the astronauts not only deployed the instruments, but also detonated a number of test charges on the surface to produce artificial seismic events. Besides the direct scientific value, by exploring a well-characterized site, where in fact the same exact thing had been done just under 30 years earlier, the performance and characteristics of the new Artemis instruments could be directly compared to the old Apollo instruments, allowing better use of the two data sets than otherwise possible. Additionally, heat probe instruments would clear up one of the major shortcomings of the Apollo geophysics data set, extending it past the Apollo 15 and 17 landing sites.
While scientists involved with the deployed instruments were collecting data and drafting papers, those more interested in the returned samples were finally beginning to start their own analyses. After being curated and catalogued at Johnson Space Center’s Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility, lunar rocks ranging in size from hefty chunks to microscopic beads began to fan out all over the world, fulfilling promises that had been made at the beginning of the program to NASA’s international partners. Balancing scientific value and diplomatic importance, rock samples traveled to the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry in Moscow, to the newly established Extraterrestrial Curation Facility on the outskirts of London, and to the equally new Institute for Lunar Studies near Tokyo, creating for the first time archives of lunar samples outside of the United States and Russia. Other samples traveled directly to researchers, both in the United States and elsewhere, for analysis.
What these samples revealed was in many ways unsurprising. After all, extensive study of the Apollo 12 samples had taken place for decades, and while the Artemis 4 astronauts had been able to travel farther, they had not had any revolutions in transport that had allowed them to travel to truly novel sites. To a great extent, Artemis 4 served more to confirm the views scientists already had of the site, a comfort as they moved to confront less well known areas. There was, however, one exception, and it was significant: water. While the presence of significant amounts of ice in permanently shadowed craters near the poles was widely accepted due to the results of the Lunar Ice Observer, it had been accepted dogma for decades that lunar rocks were virtually water-free, with levels measured in the parts per billion. If quantities of greater size were found, then the samples must have unfortunately been contaminated during transport, or in a few cases the hydration must have been the result of some unusual or extraordinary event, such as the rock incorporating material from a hydrated meteorite. Cracks in this structure appeared when samples from the Artemis 4 missions, using sample seals specially designed to resist damage from lunar dust, and preserved under unquestionably good vacuum conditions from sampling to analysis, were also found to have relatively high water levels, despite being, so far as analysis could otherwise determine, perfectly ordinary lunar rocks. The final blow came when those levels were discovered to be the same as previous “contaminated” Apollo 12 samples, clearly implausible if contamination really were the source of the anomalous water levels [7]. Most lunar scientists quickly accepted that water was in fact present within ordinary lunar rocks, a trend strengthened by detailed reexamination of samples from Apollos 15, 17, and 18, showing high volatile levels within volcanic materials returned by those missions. While future missions to more geologically exciting sites like the South Pole, the Aitken Basin, or beyond would undoubtedly have their own surprises, the discovery of lunar water showed that even the most apparently dull site could have secrets locked away in its rocks.
The final arena of scientific research advanced by the Artemis mission was not, in fact, science as such, but the practice and art of engineering. While some experiments had taken place on Freedom and Spacelab to investigate the effects of the space environment on materials over a long period of time, none had run for thirty years, the length of time Apollo 12’s descent module, ALSEP, and flag had remained on the lunar surface, let alone the thirty-two years endured by Surveyor 3. Nor had any investigated conditions particular to the lunar surface, such as the lengthy diurnal cycle, exactly the opposite of conditions found in low Earth orbit, or the pervasive dust. While the Apollo 12 site was left largely intact, the few materials that were returned were of significant engineering interest for this very reason, and researchers treated them just as carefully as the selenologists coddled their rocks and core samples. Unfortunately, not all of the returned samples were found to be of much value; the film canister recovered near the descent module proved to be entirely fogged by radiation on development, providing no data on the durability of photographic film under lunar conditions, nor any detailed measure of surface radiation conditions.
Elsewhere, however, other artifacts were traveling along quite different paths. After returning to Earth, what scientific evaluations could be performed with the timer Hunt had brought back were carried out. However, since both the test results and the timer itself had little technical value, it was decided there was more potential for public relations than science in the artifact. To that end, a ceremony was arranged in which Al Bean was invited to NASA, where he met the Artemis 4 crew and was presented with the timer. Possibly inspired by having it back in his hands, he returned to the canvas he had adopted since retiring and painted an “artist’s rendition” of what the photograph might have looked like later that year. In August, as he was painting, he convinced Pete to visit him so they could “recreate” the shot with a vintage Hasselblad and the very same self-timer, still functioning after thirty years on the lunar surface. Afterwards, he donated the timer to the Smithsonian, where it formed a part of a new display of space artifacts, joining the Enterprise command module, the Apollo 12 film canister, the Surveyor 3 camera Apollo 12 had returned, and an array of other pieces from the Mercury through Freedom programs.
However, while scientists were wrestling with the mysteries brought back with Artemis 4 and eagerly planning for the ways to maximize the value of the remaining five initial landings, and historians were discovering that there were still unknowns in even the most well-documented areas of life, the question of the future of Artemis was still up in the air. Despite the example of the Apollo missions, redirected into the space station program after just seven landings, NASA had been unable to look past the immediate need to fulfill the Artemis mandate to create a long-term program. Lloyd Davis, himself a supporter of persistent (if frugal) exploration, served as a lightning rod for criticism, with critique from Congress about insufficient ability to control costs on Artemis, Freedom, and the X-33 Starclipper program, and criticism around space advocacy circles for insufficient vision or leadership which many seemed certain was the only thing standing in the way of a variety of ambitious plans. For the Lunar Society, the Artemis program was a natural lead-in to their visions of government-led, commercially funded development of lunar resources, which Artemis 4’s water discoveries (combined with the LIO results) only encouraged. On the other hand, Robert Zubrin’s On to Mars group pinned the blame for lower political or public support on reaching for the “been there, done that” of the moon instead of going for Mars, which he continued to claim could have been done for the same cost as Artemis, however skeptical NASA and OMB analysts continued to be. Within NASA, many hoped that the Artemis missions could be transitioned into a continuing lunar exploration program or even a lunar outpost using the robotic lander architecture, but NASA was constrained by the disinterest of both President and Congress, who were questioning whether the United States should even continue past the six authorized missions. Even though work on Artemis 5 and beyond continued, the future of the program was still very much in the balance…
--------End of Part III--------
[1] Internet streaming being slightly more advanced than OTL thanks to higher bandwidth and enhanced early web.
[2] Numbers comparable with the other big media event of 1999, the wedding between Prince Edward of the United Kingdom (the Queen’s youngest son, born in 1964) and his commoner bride, which attracted 200 million viewers. At the end of the day, the wedding did attract a slightly larger audience than the lunar return, to the ire and disappointment of all the usual suspects. (Thanks to Brainbin for the calculations, and for writing the balance of this footnote.)
[3] Post-landing, it was determined to be the result of improper calibration of the beacon receiver on the Galileo, resulting in incorrect reception of the received signals.
[4] Thanks to Chris Bergin and NASAspaceflight for reporting on some helpful NASA materials relating to OTL evaluations of the value of inspecting an Apollo site and guidelines relating to the artifacts found there. The NASA full document is here, while the NSF article is here.
[5] In OTL, the Apollo total was about 185 hours. Thanks to Apollo 18, it’s about 207 here, but both are shorter than Artemis 4’s totals.
[6] In Eyes, the total for unmanned rovers is about 62 km as of 1999, including the OTL 47.5 km from the Lunakhods and about 15 km from the single active Mars Traverse Rover. The total for Apollo is 131 km, the OTL total plus 41 km on Apollo 18. We figure that Artemis 4’s traverses cover around 175 km. It’s more than either total, but not quite more than every other roving mission before it combined. Not quite.
[7] Compare OTL results discussed towards the end of this document as far as water within samples. It’s the difference between a few parts per billion and a few parts per million, nothing like what we know of shadowed polar craters, but that’s still a factor of 1,000 revision upwards.
First, I'd like to say thanks to Workable Goblin for being such a great collaborator on this TL for the past three years. It may not be as noticeable on the reading end, since I mostly handle the thread, but the amount of research and work he puts in is amazing, and even on those posts which he doesn't write, his contributions to editing my writing is greatly appreciated.
Second, I'd like to thank our valued adviser and occasional guest writer, the Brainbin, for all of his support. Working with him and getting to know him has been amazing, and his contributions to helping to flesh out the world of Eyes Turned Skywards are both fun to work on and greatly appreciated by Goblin and me.
Third, I'd like to thank our Turtledove-winning primary artist, Nixonshead, for all the time he's put into this Part's images that have transported us to so many amazing scenes. I'm eagerly anticipating what he's got in store during the hiatus, both for Eyes and other projects.
I'd also like to thank everyone else who has contributed to the TL, whether through other art, editing the wiki, contributing to commentary and discussion, or simply by returning here to read and support us week after week. Thanks to you all for everything you've done, and I look forward to working with all of our collaborators to bring you Part IV at the end of the hiatus later this year--we've got some great stuff planned, and more yet to be decided.
However, before we move into Part IV, there's one last thing: finishing Part III! Thus, without further ado, I'm pleased to present....
Eyes Turned Skywards, Part III: Post #25
With the Artemis 4 exploration habitat having landed on the moon care of the Janus cargo lander, all the pieces were finally in place for the return of humanity to their nearest celestial neighbor. However, before Don Hunt and his crew could follow Janus, their own launches needed to be scheduled and arranged; no easy task. No fewer than two Saturn Heavies would be needed to lift the Apollo and lander, and the Pegasus upper stage that would propel them to the Moon, while concerns about the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants of the lander and Pegasus boiling off during a long orbital stay meant that both needed to launch virtually simultaneously. NASA had only attempted anything similar three times before, once each with Skylab, Spacelab, and Freedom’s Challenger. In these cases, as with the Artemis architecture, NASA had attempted dual-launch of two rockets within a single day and the same-day rendezvous of the payloads on orbit, but unlike any of the previous examples, Artemis required dual-launching two Heavies, a major complication given the demands ongoing Freedom operations were putting on the VAB and LC39, not to mention the strain on Cape Canaveral’s range operations.
Because of this, merely scheduling the launch became a severe challenge. Lunar launch windows, restrictions on lunar operations caused by shifting sunlight on the Ocean of Storms, and necessary Freedom cargo and crew launches combined to bedevil even the cleverest planners, marking out weeks at a time as no-go dates: too filled with Freedom operations when the physical conditions were good, and contraindicated by poor surface lighting or lack of launch windows when an operations hole opened. While one Heavy was able to begin stacking immediately on the MLP so recently vacated by Janus’s launch vehicle, the second Heavy had to wait until the launch of one of Freedom’s Aardvark cargo missions in early December, only to be interrupted by the holiday maintenance stand-down. While the VAB crews did their best, it was not until after Commander Adams and his Freedom 42 crew made their way to Freedom on January 19th that the twin Heavies could become their singular focus, preventing any launch until March at the earliest. With a solid date that launch would be possible at last, planners could finally pin down the exact scheduled launch date, taking into account the need to land near lunar morning to maximize available surface time, the seven day transit to the Moon’s surface from Earth, and the need for margin in case of bad weather or other unexpected slips. After crunching all of these constraints, March 20th, 1999, was finally selected as the launch date.
Sadly, the margin would prove necessary, as NASA’s first experience with double-launching HLVs proved troublesome. Despite the readiness of the rockets themselves, the weather proved troublesome, with persistent elevated upper-level winds causing a 24-hour scrub on the first launch attempt. Fortunately, overnight the winds died down, and early the next morning crowds gathered to watch from the causeway were rewarded with the view of Artemis 4B cutting through low clouds, carrying the enshrouded Pegasus to a parking orbit to await the launch of the crew. A little more than an hour later, as the Pegasus finished its first orbit around the Earth, Hunt and the rest of the Artemis 4 crew rode their own Heavy to orbit in a picture-perfect launch, finding themselves only a few kilometers away from the Pegasus as they reached orbit. The next orbit was consumed as Hunt and pilot Natalie Duncan separated from the S-IVC which had injected them to orbit, transposed, and docked the Enterprise to the Galileo, then discarded the S-IVC and made yet another docking, using the large docking ring on the base of Galileo to capture the Pegasus departure stage. With all the pieces of the launch finally arranged on orbit, the mission was given the go ahead, and conducted the burn to at last take humans once more out of Earth orbit.
With the departure burn completed, and the Earth beginning to shrink behind them, the crew fired the pyros to detach the docking truss from the base of the Galileo, leaving the stage behind. Ground controllers used the residual propellants in the tanks to alter the depleted stage’s trajectory, aiming it out into a heliocentric orbit. Meanwhile, the crew completed the extension of the Enterprise’s solar panels (previously left partially retracted against the acceleration of the departure burn), and settled into the capsule and lander ascent stage for the four-day coast to EML-2. Leaving the Enterprise in orbit there, they then made the three-day descent to the surface as mission controllers brought the Janus habitat to full readiness, shaking off the torpor of its final lunar night and readying it to provide a landing target signal for the inbound crew.
Finally, on March 27th, the Galileo settled briefly into a lunar parking orbit, allowing some time for Hunt and Duncan to conduct final checks on the lander’s systems and set up the landing broadcast. Fueled by a surge in public interest and enabled by DSN upgrades, NASA had arranged to produce a live broadcast of the entire landing sequence, playing not only on their own network, NASAtv, but also on television channels around the globe and, in a first for the agency, as an Internet live stream accessible from anywhere in the world [1]. As an estimated audience of over 50 million in the United States and nearly four times that elsewhere [2] watched, Hunt and Duncan locked in the final parameters, and initiated powered descent. The lander’s RL-10 engines relit without issue, and began the burn to put the lander on its way to the surface. For the first several minutes of the 13 minute drop, Duncan and Hunt monitored the computer sequencer, identical to the automatic pilot which had guided Janus to its own landing 5 months prior. However, as the Moon rose up in the ports and turned from a ball they were flying past into a surface they were descending onto, the computer hiccuped. Throwing an error, it indicated that it was unable to square the velocity data it was deriving from Janus’ radio beacon with its own onboard inertial systems and landing radar. With the altitude and velocity ticking down, Hunt consulted with Mission Control in Houston, who found that there were no other problems with the cargo lander’s systems.
With the Spacelab 28 abort in his mind, Hunt considered the situation, and together with the Flight Director, he made the decision to disregard the beacon entirely and proceed to the surface using only the internal guidance systems and its pre-programmed trajectory [3]. Proceeding on precise math and dead reckoning, Hunt and Duncan continued the flight. About four minutes out from landing, the Galileo tilted vertical, allowing the crew to see their landing site downrange for the first time from an altitude of only a few kilometers. Janus and the landing site were right where they were expected to be. Not as consumed as Duncan and Hunt were with the task of flying the ship, Ed Keeler was the first to spot it, calling the “tally ho” as he first spotted the distinctive craters of the landing site several kilometers downrange, then picked the glint off of Janus. He pointed it out to Hunt, who matched the landing position estimate in the pilot’s heads-up display, and exclaimed, “Right on the money! Houston, it’s just like the sims. Pipper right on the target, and we’re headed in.” A final polling of the stations in mission control confirmed no issues, and the Galileo bored in to the landing site, shutting down the outboard engines to maintain manageable acceleration. Finally, in a cloud of dust kicked up by the remaining RL-10, the Galileo’s contact probes hit regolith. Duncan slammed the engine cutout, and the ship fell the last foot onto the lunar surface, settling with a crunch. As she and Hunt ran through the stay/no-stay checklists with mission control back on Earth, Keeler and Seleznev had the chance to look out through the rapidly-settling dust at the world they’d come to explore once again.
After the dust settled and Houston confirmed that the Galileo’s systems were nominal, the crew ate a short meal, then donned their EVA gear and, one at a time, cycled through the airlock into the lunar vacuum of the exterior porch. As the world watched from a deployed camera on the side of the descent stage, Don Hunt climbed down the ladder. Pausing on the final rung, he turned to the camera to deliver his PAO-approved speech:
“With these steps, we begin anew the exploration of our nearest neighbor, in peace and with hope for all mankind,” he said, before stepping off the ladder. On the surface, looking up at the rest of the crew on the porch, he continued. “All right, let’s get to work.”
There was certainly plenty to do. While Duncan and Keeler stayed on the porch to erect a small davit crane for lowering deck cargo to the surface, Seleznev stepped down the ladder, following Hunt to the final rung--where, like the commander, he turned towards the camera, following his own orders. First in Russian, then in English, he said “I am proud to be here on the Moon, continuing a long tradition of Russian space exploration, including with our American partners,” before jumping down to the surface. Once there, he joined Hunt in deploying the rover carried by the Galileo to the Moon’s surface.
Once they finished assembling the rover, Hunt and Seleznev took it for a brief circuit of the lander, then returned to help Duncan and Keeler wrap up the unloading of some critical supplies. Lashing them to the rover and climbing aboard, the crew drove the short distance to the long-waiting Janus lander as mission control remotely placed the Galileo into a low-power standby for the duration of the stay. The rest of the first hours of EVA were taken up with deploying and assembling the second rover, which had been brought aboard Janus, rigging Janus’ cargo crane, setting up some of the smaller surface instruments near the habitat, and, in a final round of PAO-friendly work, erecting the Russian and American flags and placing a plaque bearing the symbols of every nation involved in the program on the lunar surface in between the two, a procedure decided on as the best balance of recognition and national pride.
With that early business taken care of, and after almost four hours on the surface, the crew finally had the chance to cycle one-at-a-time into the habitat. Besides moving one step closer to their first moment of rest, this was also the first chance to test the dust mitigation techniques developed for Artemis. As each person entered the airlock, they used a small electrostatic/vacuum suction wand to remove as much of the dust accumulated during the EVA as possible, before cycling through to the geology lab, doffing their suits, and storing them there, isolating the remaining dust from the main habitat space. Finally, with the crew assembled and out of their suits with a minimum of dust left in the air, the crew moved into the main habitat. Before having a chance to eat, they had to clear out the galley and wardroom spaces, which had been used for the storage of bunks and other folding furniture that the crew had to move up the ladder into the inflated habitat dome. With their bedroom assembled and living spaces set up, the crew sat down to their first full meal on the Moon, and conferred with Houston about plans for the morning before turning in for rest after the first day of a busy mission.
With housework and PR chores out of the way, the crew woke up early on the second day of the mission preparing to begin the mission’s scientific work. No one was expecting Artemis 4 to uncover any revolutionary discoveries in lunar geology. The landing site had, after all, been quite deliberately selected to minimize engineering risk, returning to the relatively well-characterized Apollo 12 location rather than traveling further afield to higher-priority but riskier science targets. Even if Pete Conrad and Al Bean had been naval aviators rather than geologists, they had been quite efficient in returning samples from all around their landing sites and several nearby craters, not to mention deploying an ALSEP station and gathering a few pieces of the previous Surveyor 3 probe. About the only really novel science that could be expected was closer to engineering, using samples of the Apollo 12 descent module and Surveyor 3 to study the environment of the lunar surface and the long-term effects on human artifacts.
Nevertheless, there were reasons to be optimistic about Artemis 4’s scientific output. After all, the Apollo 12 mission had been barely more ambitious than Apollo 11, involving only two EVAs, both less than four hours long, and both carried out entirely on foot. By contrast, Artemis 4’s mission would last a full two weeks, with much longer EVAs scheduled for almost every surface day, and each of these would involve the use of vehicles similar to the lunar rovers of later Apollo missions. With more time on the surface and the ability to travel farther and see more, it was certainly plausible that the crew might encounter something which had simply eluded Apollo 12. In addition, in the person of Luka Seleznev they had not just a geologist but a bonafide lunar scientist, one who had cut his teeth analyzing samples from the Luna 16, 20, and 24 probes for his doctorate before moving into more conventional areas of research. If any mission could be expected to go over previously explored terrain and reveal a bounty of new results, this was definitely it.
Over the next two weeks, the Artemis 4 crew conducted a thorough survey of the areas surrounding their landing site before assembling a surface science station comparable to the ALSEP used on Apollo, though substantially more capable, then beginning expeditions further afield. Aided by their pair of rovers allowing them to travel beyond walkback distance, they sojourned up to 15 kilometers away from the habitat, deploying smaller science stations and collecting surface rocks and samples as they went. The crew quickly settled into a steady routine, the two pairs of Hunt and Seleznev and Duncan and Keeler alternating EVA and off days. Given the extreme physical exertions required for moonwalking, day-to-day struggles with recalcitrant sampling tools, and the build-up of dust on suits even with the end-of-day cleaning and dust mitigation techniques, these off days were always much appreciated by the crew, able to take a relative break from the hard work of EVAs and refresh themselves for the next venture outwards, even though they involved more time spent cataloging and analyzing of samples in the limited geology facilities and performing more time-consuming suit and habitat maintenance duties than true rest.
However, the missions weren’t all work. Compared to their Apollo predecessors, who had spent their three-day stays entirely in the limited space of their LM cabins, Hunt’s crew had access to a spacious and luxurious home-away-from-home, including a complete hygiene station, cramped galley, and (in the dome) individual sleeping quarters. The habitat had also been equipped on the ground with several kilograms per crew member of personal gear. Among his gear, Don Hunt had sent ahead a small personal library of a few classics from science fiction writers like Heinlein, Clarke, and Bradbury which had inspired him to an interest in spaceflight as a child. Nat Duncan joined the ranks of space musicians, bringing along a flute. Keeler took advantage of the benefits of the moon’s gravity to send among his allotment a French Press and a kilogram of ground coffee, which after some experimenting enabled the crew who cared for it to have fresh-brewed coffee most mornings before EVA, instead of the hot-water-mixed squeeze bags of instant coffee which were the norm on Freedom. The crew also took advantage of the first of April (their first rest day) to play some pranks on each other and Mission Control. During the middle of the mission, when high-sun conditions limited EVA durations, the crew was allowed several straight days off of EVA, preparing for the remainder of their mission, with the exception of a series of PAO-organized live interviews with several media outlets, including American national news and morning shows, across networks the BBC, PBS, CNN, RDF in France, ZDF in Germany, ORT in Russia, and FUJI-TV in Japan, along with wire services such as the Associated Press, Reuters, RIA Novosti, and AFP. Meanwhile, geologists and other scientists back on Earth compared the results accomplished so far and re-planned the second week’s activities in response to the past week of activity--a luxury in time and flexibility that the Apollo crews hadn’t been able to experience.
However, the highlight of the second week of EVA came on Day 10 of the mission, when the crew finally made the traverse to the Apollo 12 and Surveyor landing sites. In order to minimize damage to the site, the crew parked their rovers more than 75m away from the main landing site, and continued on foot [4]. The crew carefully catalogued the status of key artifacts with photographs, allowing scientists back on Earth to use them as “witness plates” of the results of nearly three decades on the lunar surface. By examining the surface conditions of these well-documented artifacts after having been exposed for so long, particularly dust buildup, micrometeorite pitting, and the general condition of the objects, scientists could gain insight into the lunar atmosphere, dust transit under the thrust of lunar vehicles, the frequency and impact of micrometeor events, and environmental and thermal stresses on the materials themselves. Engineers, meanwhile, would gain valuable information on the durability and response of various materials to the harsh conditions of the lunar surface over long time periods, valuable information for designing future lunar spacecraft or a lunar base.
Although in general the crew were instructed to avoid disturbing the artifacts directly, there were a few small exceptions. During the rush to load the LM for return home, Pete Conrad had accidentally left a magazine of color film outside the lunar module. If the Artemis 4 crew could locate it, they were asked to bring it home, as there was historic, scientific, and engineering value in the film--if it could be developed, some of the character of the radiation environment could be revealed in effects on the film of three decades of exposure, while it would of course be one of the few things transported from the Earth to the Moon and back. The second exception, although grounded in a solid engineering request, had more of the air of the public affairs office about it. In order to characterize the effects of the lunar environment on the descent stage and particularly the effects of the ascent stage’s liftoff, the crew had been requested to carefully examine every surface--including the top. However, in order to reach and photograph the top, given the stage’s three meter height, someone would need to climb the stage’s ladder--the same one Al Bean and Pete Conrad had used during their mission. Sensing a historic image, the PAO requested that one of the other astronauts photograph this ascent, while also indicating that it would be preferable if one of the American crew members took the responsibility for climbing. Drawing straws the night before, Nat Duncan had won the “honor” of this incredibly well-documented inspection. The photograph of her at the top of the remaining rungs was one of several stand-out images of the mission, reproduced many times in the press, while the engineering team were very interested in the conditions of the top of the stage, from the thin coat of dust to tears in the foil insulation caused by the liftoff of the Apollo 12 ascent stage.
Not everything they found at the site was the result of intensive pre-planning, though. While packing up to head back to Janus, Seleznev accidentally kicked something with his boot, sending it flying downrange--glinting very much unlike the lunar rocks littering the landing site. After a brief consultation with Hunt, the two of them abandoned their duties to search for the mysterious object. A few minutes later, just as they were about to give up, Seleznev again literally stumbled on it, this time fortunately not sending it flying. After calling over Hunt, Seleznev lifted the thing out of the lunar dust, revealing an odd metal box, clearly something brought to the Moon by the Apollo 12 crew. Battered by the lunar environment like the rest of the landing site, neither could quite work out what it was. Given it was clearly inert, not a catalogued item, and that much of the engineering value of its resting place had been destroyed by Seleznev’s boot, Mission Control requested that Hunt photograph the object and bring it back to Janus for identification. After Hunt shoved it in one of his pockets, the two made their way back to the rovers, driving back to the hab as NASA contacted Al Bean, still living in the city he and every other American astronaut had come to call home.
Bean arrived at Mission Control the next day, intrigued by a desire to figure out what, exactly, had been found--but with a sneaking suspicion as to what it might be. As Hunt would later relate the story, the moment Bean saw the image shown on the video-conference feed from Janus, his eyes lit up and the old astronaut exclaimed “That damned thing again!”. He explained that the fragment was actually a self-timer for the cameras used on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts, which he and Pete had conspired to bring to the Moon to photograph themselves standing side-by-side next to Surveyor 3. Unfortunately, when they were about to take it, they had been unable to find the timer in their sample bags, and had to leave without the photograph. Later, just as they were about to step back into the Lunar Module, Al had found it and, angry about the lost opportunity, had thrown it as far from the LM as he could. Delighted by the story, Don requested permission to bring the timer back to Earth, both as an artifact and as a sample of mechanical equipment left in the lunar environment. After the request had been granted, Hunt dumped one of his books to make room for the strange object in his strict return mass allowance.
The final days at Oceanus Procellarum were spent wrapping up the explorations, conducting last-minute checks of all emplaced instruments, and ferrying samples and gear from Janus back to the Galileo--the crew aimed to not repeat Conrad’s error in leaving any of their own samples behind, a task complicated by the presence of two vehicles instead of just one. The setting sun cast hard, long shadows around the landing site, complicating these tasks, though the crew were able to work thanks to lights on their suits and another source: Earthshine. Finally, on Day 14, the crew loaded the last supplies onto the rovers, and left the habitat for the last time. The habitat dome was left inflated, with the intention to use its pressurized top as a test of micrometeorite impacts, the ground crew watching for the tell-tale signs of pressure spikes from non-penetrating impacts and the pressure loss from larger ones. Thus, Janus would serve a final role as a stationary science platform on the moon. Though Hunt joked about leaving the keys under the mat as he descended the ladder to the surface one last time to join the crew bound for the Galileo and home, it wasn’t certain that the habitat could survive the upcoming night--supporting the crew had consumed most of its solar power and batteries, and there was a mere trickle left to keep the core systems warm and alive through the bitter cold of the lunar night. However, the answers to that along with the full scientific value of the Artemis 4 mission, would have to wait, as the crew finished their preparations.
The Artemis 4 mission left the moon on April 9, 1999, with the Galileo’s ascent stage blasting off from the surface in a perfect ascent and carrying the crew back EML-2, where the Enterprise capsule had been so patiently waiting. The crew brought with them roughly 350 kilograms of lunar samples, gathered during 10 days of EVA on the surface. Together, the Artemis 4 crew had logged 240 hours of surface EVA, a longer time spent on the surface in a single mission than during the entirety of Project Apollo [5]. Numbers for samples taken, kilometers traversed in the rovers, and other statistics set similar records [6]. Making rendezvous and docking, the crew verified that the Apollo capsule had survived its lonely vigil with no harm, then fired the Apollo’s engines to place the stack onto a path back to Earth. Compared to the constant activity and physical demands of the last two weeks, the trip home in microgravity was a near-vacation for the somewhat-exhausted crew, with the main activities being a series of medical tests comparing the effects of the two weeks in lunar gravity to with similar durations in microgravity--a useful human baseline to compare to rat re-creation of similar profiles conducted in Freedom’s centrifuge lab. Finally, only an hour or so out from entering Earth’s atmosphere, the crew moved the final items from the Galileo’s cabin and fired separation pyros to leave it behind. After making the final course corrections with the service module’s engines, that, too, was jettisoned, leaving the command module on course for its skip-entry while the other two modules met their final, fiery rendezvous.
Passing through their skip, then through final descent, the crew made an on-target landing in the Pacific off Hawai’i on April 16, 1999. In a one-time change from their normal procedures, seeking to cash in on NASA’s PR and public interest in the mission, the US Navy lent the USS Enterprise to assist NASA’s regular Apollo recovery team off Hawai’i in retrieving the command module Enterprise. Given the sheer multitude of press seeking to cover the landing, the carrier Enterprise’s flight deck seemed a valuable change from the typically cramped deck of one of their recovery boats, and NASA accepted. However, while the public focus was on the returning crew and engineers were seeing Janus through her first night as the center of a constellation of automated instruments on the lunar surface, scientists were eagerly beginning to digest the bounty brought back by the mission.
While lunar science and space engineering were the dominant scientific disciplines the Artemis 4 mission tried to address, they were not the only ones involved in the mission, nor were they the first to produce results. Hampered by the need to conduct time-consuming laboratory analyses and carefully curate materials, they fell behind other, speedier disciplines that had also leaped to become involved in the mission. Most of their results would stem from the surface science stations the astronauts had deployed in a small network around their landing site, particularly the larger central station set up nearby. Equipped with a wide range of instruments, including almost all of the non-selenological instruments, it was the centerpiece of scientific efforts on the Moon.
The most publicly visible and popularly appealing instrument was, of course, the Earth Imager, a small telescope aimed permanently at the Earth. While obviously less capable than instruments on satellites in low or geostationary orbit in seeing small details, it had the advantage of being able to continuously view the whole disk of the Earth as it rotated, allowing improved measurements of certain whole-disk values, such as average temperature or global albedo, while also measuring their diurnal variations. President Gore was also particularly interested in the possibility of continuously broadcasting the images taken by the telescope to the public, creating more awareness of the Earth’s health, like the famous Blue Marble image had done in the 1970s. While bandwidth considerations in the Deep Space Network made this infeasible, a webcam-like mode of operation--where images taken every few hours would be published to the Internet--was entirely possible, and quickly adopted. Indeed, immediately after the mission the feed became one of the most popular destinations on the entire Internet, with a significant fraction of the Internet’s users visiting at least once. Images from the Earth Imager also became popular as a source of relaxation and a center for meditation, allowing users to have a concrete focus to their thinking.
Besides the Earth Imager, several other instruments were designed to look up into the lunar sky instead of back down towards the ground, all with their own particular mission. The Solar Imager, another optical telescope, would be a valuable adjunct to the existing fleet of solar observation spacecraft, using its unique vantage point to carry out ultraviolet and short-wavelength imaging and spectroscopy on the solar disc, while the Earth Disk Radiometer would both supplement existing whole-disk Earth microwave radiometry and act as a valuable prototype for the small radio telescopes that would be flown on later missions to the lunar farside and limb. Meanwhile, a wide variety of magnetospheric and particles and fields instruments would investigate the behavior of the most distant regions of Earth’s magnetosphere, and its response to solar events, completing the mission’s set of astronomical and space physics instruments.
Of course, the surface science sites also had many selenological and geophysical instruments installed as well, which also raced ahead of their more sample-bound counterparts. Seismology was, as on the Apollo missions, a major priority, and the astronauts not only deployed the instruments, but also detonated a number of test charges on the surface to produce artificial seismic events. Besides the direct scientific value, by exploring a well-characterized site, where in fact the same exact thing had been done just under 30 years earlier, the performance and characteristics of the new Artemis instruments could be directly compared to the old Apollo instruments, allowing better use of the two data sets than otherwise possible. Additionally, heat probe instruments would clear up one of the major shortcomings of the Apollo geophysics data set, extending it past the Apollo 15 and 17 landing sites.
While scientists involved with the deployed instruments were collecting data and drafting papers, those more interested in the returned samples were finally beginning to start their own analyses. After being curated and catalogued at Johnson Space Center’s Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility, lunar rocks ranging in size from hefty chunks to microscopic beads began to fan out all over the world, fulfilling promises that had been made at the beginning of the program to NASA’s international partners. Balancing scientific value and diplomatic importance, rock samples traveled to the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry in Moscow, to the newly established Extraterrestrial Curation Facility on the outskirts of London, and to the equally new Institute for Lunar Studies near Tokyo, creating for the first time archives of lunar samples outside of the United States and Russia. Other samples traveled directly to researchers, both in the United States and elsewhere, for analysis.
What these samples revealed was in many ways unsurprising. After all, extensive study of the Apollo 12 samples had taken place for decades, and while the Artemis 4 astronauts had been able to travel farther, they had not had any revolutions in transport that had allowed them to travel to truly novel sites. To a great extent, Artemis 4 served more to confirm the views scientists already had of the site, a comfort as they moved to confront less well known areas. There was, however, one exception, and it was significant: water. While the presence of significant amounts of ice in permanently shadowed craters near the poles was widely accepted due to the results of the Lunar Ice Observer, it had been accepted dogma for decades that lunar rocks were virtually water-free, with levels measured in the parts per billion. If quantities of greater size were found, then the samples must have unfortunately been contaminated during transport, or in a few cases the hydration must have been the result of some unusual or extraordinary event, such as the rock incorporating material from a hydrated meteorite. Cracks in this structure appeared when samples from the Artemis 4 missions, using sample seals specially designed to resist damage from lunar dust, and preserved under unquestionably good vacuum conditions from sampling to analysis, were also found to have relatively high water levels, despite being, so far as analysis could otherwise determine, perfectly ordinary lunar rocks. The final blow came when those levels were discovered to be the same as previous “contaminated” Apollo 12 samples, clearly implausible if contamination really were the source of the anomalous water levels [7]. Most lunar scientists quickly accepted that water was in fact present within ordinary lunar rocks, a trend strengthened by detailed reexamination of samples from Apollos 15, 17, and 18, showing high volatile levels within volcanic materials returned by those missions. While future missions to more geologically exciting sites like the South Pole, the Aitken Basin, or beyond would undoubtedly have their own surprises, the discovery of lunar water showed that even the most apparently dull site could have secrets locked away in its rocks.
The final arena of scientific research advanced by the Artemis mission was not, in fact, science as such, but the practice and art of engineering. While some experiments had taken place on Freedom and Spacelab to investigate the effects of the space environment on materials over a long period of time, none had run for thirty years, the length of time Apollo 12’s descent module, ALSEP, and flag had remained on the lunar surface, let alone the thirty-two years endured by Surveyor 3. Nor had any investigated conditions particular to the lunar surface, such as the lengthy diurnal cycle, exactly the opposite of conditions found in low Earth orbit, or the pervasive dust. While the Apollo 12 site was left largely intact, the few materials that were returned were of significant engineering interest for this very reason, and researchers treated them just as carefully as the selenologists coddled their rocks and core samples. Unfortunately, not all of the returned samples were found to be of much value; the film canister recovered near the descent module proved to be entirely fogged by radiation on development, providing no data on the durability of photographic film under lunar conditions, nor any detailed measure of surface radiation conditions.
Elsewhere, however, other artifacts were traveling along quite different paths. After returning to Earth, what scientific evaluations could be performed with the timer Hunt had brought back were carried out. However, since both the test results and the timer itself had little technical value, it was decided there was more potential for public relations than science in the artifact. To that end, a ceremony was arranged in which Al Bean was invited to NASA, where he met the Artemis 4 crew and was presented with the timer. Possibly inspired by having it back in his hands, he returned to the canvas he had adopted since retiring and painted an “artist’s rendition” of what the photograph might have looked like later that year. In August, as he was painting, he convinced Pete to visit him so they could “recreate” the shot with a vintage Hasselblad and the very same self-timer, still functioning after thirty years on the lunar surface. Afterwards, he donated the timer to the Smithsonian, where it formed a part of a new display of space artifacts, joining the Enterprise command module, the Apollo 12 film canister, the Surveyor 3 camera Apollo 12 had returned, and an array of other pieces from the Mercury through Freedom programs.
However, while scientists were wrestling with the mysteries brought back with Artemis 4 and eagerly planning for the ways to maximize the value of the remaining five initial landings, and historians were discovering that there were still unknowns in even the most well-documented areas of life, the question of the future of Artemis was still up in the air. Despite the example of the Apollo missions, redirected into the space station program after just seven landings, NASA had been unable to look past the immediate need to fulfill the Artemis mandate to create a long-term program. Lloyd Davis, himself a supporter of persistent (if frugal) exploration, served as a lightning rod for criticism, with critique from Congress about insufficient ability to control costs on Artemis, Freedom, and the X-33 Starclipper program, and criticism around space advocacy circles for insufficient vision or leadership which many seemed certain was the only thing standing in the way of a variety of ambitious plans. For the Lunar Society, the Artemis program was a natural lead-in to their visions of government-led, commercially funded development of lunar resources, which Artemis 4’s water discoveries (combined with the LIO results) only encouraged. On the other hand, Robert Zubrin’s On to Mars group pinned the blame for lower political or public support on reaching for the “been there, done that” of the moon instead of going for Mars, which he continued to claim could have been done for the same cost as Artemis, however skeptical NASA and OMB analysts continued to be. Within NASA, many hoped that the Artemis missions could be transitioned into a continuing lunar exploration program or even a lunar outpost using the robotic lander architecture, but NASA was constrained by the disinterest of both President and Congress, who were questioning whether the United States should even continue past the six authorized missions. Even though work on Artemis 5 and beyond continued, the future of the program was still very much in the balance…
--------End of Part III--------
[1] Internet streaming being slightly more advanced than OTL thanks to higher bandwidth and enhanced early web.
[2] Numbers comparable with the other big media event of 1999, the wedding between Prince Edward of the United Kingdom (the Queen’s youngest son, born in 1964) and his commoner bride, which attracted 200 million viewers. At the end of the day, the wedding did attract a slightly larger audience than the lunar return, to the ire and disappointment of all the usual suspects. (Thanks to Brainbin for the calculations, and for writing the balance of this footnote.)
[3] Post-landing, it was determined to be the result of improper calibration of the beacon receiver on the Galileo, resulting in incorrect reception of the received signals.
[4] Thanks to Chris Bergin and NASAspaceflight for reporting on some helpful NASA materials relating to OTL evaluations of the value of inspecting an Apollo site and guidelines relating to the artifacts found there. The NASA full document is here, while the NSF article is here.
[5] In OTL, the Apollo total was about 185 hours. Thanks to Apollo 18, it’s about 207 here, but both are shorter than Artemis 4’s totals.
[6] In Eyes, the total for unmanned rovers is about 62 km as of 1999, including the OTL 47.5 km from the Lunakhods and about 15 km from the single active Mars Traverse Rover. The total for Apollo is 131 km, the OTL total plus 41 km on Apollo 18. We figure that Artemis 4’s traverses cover around 175 km. It’s more than either total, but not quite more than every other roving mission before it combined. Not quite.
[7] Compare OTL results discussed towards the end of this document as far as water within samples. It’s the difference between a few parts per billion and a few parts per million, nothing like what we know of shadowed polar craters, but that’s still a factor of 1,000 revision upwards.
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Finally!!! 
And the key advantage of the 14-day stay versus even a three-day stay is clear here, a lot more time spent on the Lunar Surface to get things done. And a nice touch, finding the timer that Al Bean had thrown away, in fact, IIRC, Bean had terrible luck with the cameras during the Apollo 12 mission so it's no wonder he didn't think about having the picture taken by the LEM when it was found.
And a sobering thought, while it looks like a good quarter-billion watched the landing live, that's a lot less (relative to population) than the Apollo 11 landing which occurred close to 30 years before.
And I take note of the fact that you just butterflied away the motorcycle accident that killed Conrad in the July of 1999 IOTL, seeing that he was around in the August to help Bean with recreating the shot he wanted to do on the Moon.
Best thing about this for me. The ability to have a proper cup of coffee in the morning on the Janus Surface habitat. There is no substitute for that. Though pouring it must be a tricky affair seeing as there's only about 1/6 of the surface gravity to keep it from splashing out, I'm guessing that's what you meant by the experimentations with regards to it.
And the key advantage of the 14-day stay versus even a three-day stay is clear here, a lot more time spent on the Lunar Surface to get things done. And a nice touch, finding the timer that Al Bean had thrown away, in fact, IIRC, Bean had terrible luck with the cameras during the Apollo 12 mission so it's no wonder he didn't think about having the picture taken by the LEM when it was found.
And a sobering thought, while it looks like a good quarter-billion watched the landing live, that's a lot less (relative to population) than the Apollo 11 landing which occurred close to 30 years before.
And I take note of the fact that you just butterflied away the motorcycle accident that killed Conrad in the July of 1999 IOTL, seeing that he was around in the August to help Bean with recreating the shot he wanted to do on the Moon.
Best thing about this for me. The ability to have a proper cup of coffee in the morning on the Janus Surface habitat. There is no substitute for that.
Though pouring it must be a tricky affair seeing as there's only about 1/6 of the surface gravity to keep it from splashing out, I'm guessing that's what you meant by the experimentations with regards to it.
Great update!
Nitpicks: to sojourn is to visit, stay briefly, not to travel, which is what you surely meant.
there's an 'i' out of its close code - '[/]i'
Nitpicks: to sojourn is to visit, stay briefly, not to travel, which is what you surely meant.
there's an 'i' out of its close code - '[/]i'
So good to see humans return to the Moon at last! So good there's a woman among them (the pilot in fact) and that they aren't all Americans. And the one who isn't is Russian.
And finding Bean's timer! I thought maybe they'd find his silver astronaut pin instead, but the timer is a much larger object to, um, stumble upon! Good thing it seems to be a durable little item though; I'm not thinking so much of the cosmonaut-geologist's tread on it, or rather kick, as Bean's frustrated toss! True, it would only have fallen down again under mere Lunar gravity--but that means it went higher than it would have on Earth, and wherever it landed hit with the full speed he put into the throw, not a whit cut back by air since there is none--wherever it went it hit just as hard as if Bean had slammed it directly to the dust at his feet.
Yet it still works! I'd have thought the gears might be a bit fused together or the spring broken by 30 years of alternating day and night heating then chilling it--since the impact apparently didn't. I guess we used to build some tough little mechanical gadgets, back in the day! (Or the Germans or Japanese did?)
I have a nasty little nitpick: The Artemis crews are not the first people to leave Earth orbit in a generation--no one ever has, not even ITTL. The Moon is of course in Earth orbit, as were the Apollos and as will be the Artemis ships. (Unless of course Part IV will have a visit to a Near Earth Asteroid by a modified version of one...plz plz plz? Oh all right they probably won't, and if they do we'll just have to wait for it, won't we.)
But we know what you mean--leaving Low Earth Orbit. Leaving the protection of the inner magnetic field. And after all, the Moon's orbit is less than 2 percent short of infinity, just one megajoule per kg down Earth's potential field versus the nearly 63 we live at the bottom of--orbiting it has half that in kinetic energy--in terms of potential between them and a Solar orbit they are as close as we are to just 30 miles up. And they do go out farther than Apollo did--all the way out to EM-L2, which I pointed out (in arguing against it) is as far from Luna as a geosynch satellite is from Earth and IIRC somewhat farther still. If they get there in just 4 days, they are on a fast orbit just a few hundred kilojoules short of escape velocity.
Anyway they the first in a generation to go to another world--Luna is a little world, but big enough to qualify as one.
And, ITTL, a sweeter one than we knew! Water! OK, a part per million may be three orders of magnitude more than we conventionally assume now, but it hardly makes for an oasis...
Except that there might be fluctuations in the concentration, eh? And a source to replenish and enrich the polar shadow frost traps, so there might be more there than we'd otherwise predict, and lesser shadow traps might have concentrated more in scattered places across the surface--in deep crevasses even in the Lunar tropics, perhaps? And water in the surface rocks implies water in the deeper ones, so outgassing from them might lead to pockets of ice or even trapped pools of liquid water in the rock below. Ice mining might be a profession as in Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
Anyway I see that you headed that off, or addressed it anyway with mention of how the Lunar Society and other space-fan factions are indeed excited by it--leaving others unimpressed though.
I would like to ask though, are there known to OTL sources of nitrogen in lunar regolith? If there's water there to be had, in certain choice locations and in frugal quantities, then I think nitrogen becomes the next limit on sustainable moon colonies. Astronauts might get by without breathing it for months and years, but you can't have a closed ecology without plants that need it to grow--and I bet they wind up needing it in the air, even though most of them don't metabolize it directly out of the air. So it will leak out and be lost, and unlike oxygen that certainly can be replaced, or hydrogen that apparently can be (a geology teacher who was a moonbase enthusiast once pointed out to me, even if there is no ice or other water source, the solar wind does stick to the lunar surface and linger a bit to make a half-assed atmosphere of sorts--he seriously thought enough hydrogen could be acquired that way to get by) or carbon that will leave the almost-closed cycle more slowly (there is far less carbon dioxide in normal Earth-surface air than nitrogen, and the molecule is less slippery, being heavier) the nitrogen will stand out as the thorniest problem in replenishment, unless it turns out there are rocks that contain enough of it and can be economically enough relieved of it.
) and that they aren't all Americans. And the one who isn't is Russian.And finding Bean's timer! I thought maybe they'd find his silver astronaut pin instead, but the timer is a much larger object to, um, stumble upon! Good thing it seems to be a durable little item though; I'm not thinking so much of the cosmonaut-geologist's tread on it, or rather kick, as Bean's frustrated toss! True, it would only have fallen down again under mere Lunar gravity--but that means it went higher than it would have on Earth, and wherever it landed hit with the full speed he put into the throw, not a whit cut back by air since there is none--wherever it went it hit just as hard as if Bean had slammed it directly to the dust at his feet.
Yet it still works! I'd have thought the gears might be a bit fused together or the spring broken by 30 years of alternating day and night heating then chilling it--since the impact apparently didn't. I guess we used to build some tough little mechanical gadgets, back in the day! (Or the Germans or Japanese did?)
I have a nasty little nitpick: The Artemis crews are not the first people to leave Earth orbit in a generation--no one ever has, not even ITTL.
The Moon is of course in Earth orbit, as were the Apollos and as will be the Artemis ships. (Unless of course Part IV will have a visit to a Near Earth Asteroid by a modified version of one...plz plz plz? Oh all right they probably won't, and if they do we'll just have to wait for it, won't we.)But we know what you mean--leaving Low Earth Orbit. Leaving the protection of the inner magnetic field. And after all, the Moon's orbit is less than 2 percent short of infinity, just one megajoule per kg down Earth's potential field versus the nearly 63 we live at the bottom of--orbiting it has half that in kinetic energy--in terms of potential between them and a Solar orbit they are as close as we are to just 30 miles up. And they do go out farther than Apollo did--all the way out to EM-L2, which I pointed out (in arguing against it
) is as far from Luna as a geosynch satellite is from Earth and IIRC somewhat farther still. If they get there in just 4 days, they are on a fast orbit just a few hundred kilojoules short of escape velocity.Anyway they the first in a generation to go to another world--Luna is a little world, but big enough to qualify as one.
And, ITTL, a sweeter one than we knew! Water! OK, a part per million may be three orders of magnitude more than we conventionally assume now, but it hardly makes for an oasis...
Except that there might be fluctuations in the concentration, eh? And a source to replenish and enrich the polar shadow frost traps, so there might be more there than we'd otherwise predict, and lesser shadow traps might have concentrated more in scattered places across the surface--in deep crevasses even in the Lunar tropics, perhaps? And water in the surface rocks implies water in the deeper ones, so outgassing from them might lead to pockets of ice or even trapped pools of liquid water in the rock below. Ice mining might be a profession as in Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
Anyway I see that you headed that off, or addressed it anyway with mention of how the Lunar Society and other space-fan factions are indeed excited by it--leaving others unimpressed though.
I would like to ask though, are there known to OTL sources of nitrogen in lunar regolith? If there's water there to be had, in certain choice locations and in frugal quantities, then I think nitrogen becomes the next limit on sustainable moon colonies. Astronauts might get by without breathing it for months and years, but you can't have a closed ecology without plants that need it to grow--and I bet they wind up needing it in the air, even though most of them don't metabolize it directly out of the air. So it will leak out and be lost, and unlike oxygen that certainly can be replaced, or hydrogen that apparently can be (a geology teacher who was a moonbase enthusiast once pointed out to me, even if there is no ice or other water source, the solar wind does stick to the lunar surface and linger a bit to make a half-assed atmosphere of sorts--he seriously thought enough hydrogen could be acquired that way to get by) or carbon that will leave the almost-closed cycle more slowly (there is far less carbon dioxide in normal Earth-surface air than nitrogen, and the molecule is less slippery, being heavier) the nitrogen will stand out as the thorniest problem in replenishment, unless it turns out there are rocks that contain enough of it and can be economically enough relieved of it.
The throw's not so bad, I think. Bean's no professional pitcher, and he's constrained by the mobility of the suit, so you're not looking at it hitting that fast, and it lands in dirt. It's pretty rugged, and it's surprising how that stuff can survive with conditions that are optimal. In my head, it kind of covers itself, giving some protection from the elements (and meaning Seleznev doesn't see it). Call it a tad of artistic license.
Call that artistic license too.I have a nasty little nitpick: The Artemis crews are not the first people to leave Earth orbit in a generation--no one ever has, not even ITTL.
We know that there's at least one polar crater that contains quantities of ammonia, which could be cracked into hydrogen (hey! rocket fuel!) and nitrogen--LCROSS found it among the 10% by mass of volatiles in the junk it kicked up when it hit its target IOTL. If you re-read the precursors post, a similar mission (BLAST) happened ITTL paired with the Lunar Ice Orbiter as LCROSS was with LRO, and with similar findings. That is, of course, only one site, and rather chaotically sampled but it says you might find your nitrogen source mixed in with your rocket fuel source, and measured by the ton. Such a polar crater would certainly find a place on NASA's wishlist for Artemis targets. We'll deal with if it gets selected and flown in Part IV....
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Been waiting a long time for this
This post feels like the payoff for the entire timeline - exciting as some of the other developments (manned and unmanned) have been.
To Shevek's point:
I think you *can* argue that the Apollo and Artemis crews broke earth orbit, since they achieved escape velocity, and only reentered a much higher orbit when they chose to enter lunar orbit (or in Apollo 13's case, chose to approach the lunar gravity field closely enough to assist a return back to earth). Had the Moon not been there, and had they not otherwise corrected their course, all these missions would have continued onward into deep space, yes?
This post feels like the payoff for the entire timeline - exciting as some of the other developments (manned and unmanned) have been.
To Shevek's point:
I think you *can* argue that the Apollo and Artemis crews broke earth orbit, since they achieved escape velocity, and only reentered a much higher orbit when they chose to enter lunar orbit (or in Apollo 13's case, chose to approach the lunar gravity field closely enough to assist a return back to earth). Had the Moon not been there, and had they not otherwise corrected their course, all these missions would have continued onward into deep space, yes?
Thank you. In a lot of ways, Artemis was the reason this TL existed. Back before Eyes was Eyes, a bit more than three years ago now, it began with my getting hooked on helping Workable Goblin out a bit with some math for a non-Shuttle moon mission and taking a shot at some station designs for the same TL. Part I was to let us get to those, Part II was obviously one, and Part III was to get to another. One reason that getting this last post written took so long was I kept running headlong into the weight of how much of the TL had been build-up to it. I'm really glad that it felt like it lived up to everything else.
Looking ahead into Part IV, the really fun thing will be building on this foundation we've now built--and we've got some fun stuff planned, some of which is hinted at here and there in Part III.
Not quite. Trans-lunar trajectories hover just a bit below C3=0 (escape velocity). It's only a few hundred m/s difference depending on the trajectory, but it is just slightly below escape. You could go for a slightly faster transfer that would be greater than escape, but it'd cost more in delta-v and I'm not sure what it'd be worth in terms of flight-time saved.
Of course, should the Moon vanish post trans-L2-injection on Artemis, I'm pretty sure that'd be a mission abort under any reasonable set of flight rules, so they'd be burning to get home anyway.
Morning all. With the exciting climax of the Artemis 4 mission, it's time for a final illustration round-up of Part III, in honour of which I've finally worked out how to embed the images into a single post
The set leads, of course, with Hunt's historic first steps.
The rest of the crew soon follow Hunt to the surface, and after a short drive they're soon busy setting up their home on the Moon.
A highlight of the mission is the EVA to the nearby historic Surveyor 3 and Apollo 12 sites. Time to reflect on how far we've come since those early days.
Valuable science mission, or expensive publicity stunt? Either way, it makes for a great photo!
After a marathon 2 week stay on the Moon, it's time to head home, and what more reliable vehicles could you hope to make that voyage in than Galileo and Enterprise?
Back on Earth there's no time to celebrate for NASA. Despite Artemis' early success, Davis knows he will soon have to answer Congress' inevitable question "Yes, but what have you done for us lately?"
The set leads, of course, with Hunt's historic first steps.
The rest of the crew soon follow Hunt to the surface, and after a short drive they're soon busy setting up their home on the Moon.
A highlight of the mission is the EVA to the nearby historic Surveyor 3 and Apollo 12 sites. Time to reflect on how far we've come since those early days.
Valuable science mission, or expensive publicity stunt? Either way, it makes for a great photo!
After a marathon 2 week stay on the Moon, it's time to head home, and what more reliable vehicles could you hope to make that voyage in than Galileo and Enterprise?
Back on Earth there's no time to celebrate for NASA. Despite Artemis' early success, Davis knows he will soon have to answer Congress' inevitable question "Yes, but what have you done for us lately?"
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*stands up and applauds*
Well done, well done, a most mighty congratulations to you! What an excellent and to a grand Part.
Have a very well deserved rest and I look forward to Part IV!
Well done, well done, a most mighty congratulations to you! What an excellent and to a grand Part.
Have a very well deserved rest and I look forward to Part IV!
For me, the Intrepid Descent Stage image is my favourite of the bunch. In surprisingly good condition given how long it's been there with zero maintenance.
Well, if anyone glanced at the NASA paper on preserving the pristine state of legacy landing sites, Lunar landing rockets do a shockingly widespread sort of damage--because the gases flow in a thin layer on the surface at high speeds, and pick up a lot of dust and gravel, which once set in motion tends to just keep on going a long way before it finally loses enough energy (by setting other particles into motion!
) to stop. But the lander stage of Intrepid was in the eye of the storm as it were; the Ascent Stage's exhausts were impinging directly on it which did some damage to be sure but it was designed to take it; meanwhile it would have swept all the dust quite away, so any dust found there now must be from later impacts.I'd hope, that if a Moonbase or four gets established someday, their landing fields would also soon be swept clean of dust, greatly limiting the damage later landings and takeoffs do as they blast down to and off of bare rock. The gases would still be there but might be much attenuated before they reach loose stuff to blow around.
So here's hoping Intrepid's lower stage, and all Apollo LM lower stages that landed, are all quite clean even to this day.