Bridge To The Moon: L1

(In which Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad talks of the first scheduled stop for the train, at Lagrange Point L1.)

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: Getting back to my trip to the Moon: for most of the journey, the Earth was getting smaller and the Moon was getting bigger, and gravity was getting lesser. When we were already most of the way to the Moon, we came to our first stop - a region in space called L1. They said it was a region where there was no gravity at all, because the gravity of the Earth was exactly opposed by the gravity of the Moon at that point. There were a number of space stations and satellites in that area - I remember seeing a small spaceship leave from L1 station on the Moon bridge, heading towards one of them, shortly after we stopped there.

We probably stopped there for an hour or so, and whoever wanted to, could go for a space walk. I opted to do so - most of us did. So we got into space suits - you had to use their suits, you couldn’t use your own, for insurance reasons. When you were in the suit, you could open your cabin air-lock, (which was locked and couldn’t be unlocked most of the time).

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter: How does an air-lock work, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad?

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: Well, when you were in the spacesuit, in the air-lock, with the doors locked securely and a tether securely attached, you pushed a button, (which did nothing if you hadn’t done those other things properly first), and the air was pumped out of the air-lock into a storage chamber, so that you were in a vacuum. (Of course you still had plenty of air ventilating your spacesuit.) Then you could open the outer door and venture into the dark void of space. When you were ready to go back in, the outside door would close behind you, the air would be pumped back into your cabin air-lock, you could re-enter your cabin proper, the air-lock would lock securely and you could take off the spacesuit.

Walking in space was a lot of fun. Our tethers were not very long. Even so, some people got their tethers tangled with other people’s tethers, and they had to untangle them before they could get back inside. Luckily, they made those tethers incredibly strong - they couldn’t be broken, (well maybe in the event of an asteroid strike, although I can imagine a person being broken into pieces but their tether being as good as new, and maybe their spacesuit as well!)

We were all using jets of gas of some kind, (with the mechanism incorporated in our spacesuits), to move around. You would just point it in the opposite direction to where you wanted to go, and squirt. With a little practice you could do somersaults, and all sorts of movements. And all this with the backdrop of a smaller, but still fairly large Earth in one direction, and an incredibly large-looking Moon in another direction, and nearby stationary space stations and satellites, and the train which was partially illuminated, and the Moon bridge, which could hardly be seen, (except where it crossed in front of the Moon or the Earth), but only a nearby part of the bridge - you couldn’t see a distant part of it without a telescope, even if it was in your line of sight to the Earth or the Moon.

When it was getting close to the time to depart again, we all went back to our cabins, either under our own steam, or by having the tethers retracted if you couldn’t manage to get yourself back in. Then we got going again for the final leg - to the surface of the Moon.

Next time:

Chapter Six To The Moon

(or read the whole story here: https://vocal.media/fiction/bridge-to-the-moon)