Bridge To The Moon

Bridge to the Moon

(a very, very, very, very, very, very tall tale)

by

N. E. Earthling

Contents Page (in original computer file)

(To give you an idea of the lenth of each section)

A Note on Language 3

Proloque 4

Chapter One The Journey Begins 7

Chapter Two The Awesomeness of Space 10

Chapter Three Facilities on the Train 12

Chapter Four The Bridge Itself 14

Chapter Five L1 17

Chapter Six To the Moon 19

Chapter Seven New Moon 21

Chapter Eight The Lunar Tour 25

Chapter Nine The Return 30

References 32

A Note on language

This tale about the future has been transcribed from tomorrow’s language into today’s, (or possibly yesterday’s, or perhaps even last Thursday’s), in Australian English. However, I used the word elevator instead of lift, (which is what we call those little rooms that move between floors in Australia, or between floors in any other country on Earth, not just Australian floors), because it just seemed right for the story somehow, and will be readily understood I believe by all English speakers. (Speakers of any other language may need to translate the word lift and the word elevator into their language themselves, and see which makes the most sense for them.)

Every effort has been made to make the story seem flowing, in words readers from this time, (about half past one as I write these words), will readily understand. There is however one word in chapter three which might be misleading. It refers to a blind on a window. However, what is actually being spoken of is a window that can switch from being transparent to being opaque, (which is something we actually have at half past one, but if it has a special name, I don’t believe most people are familiar with it). I wrote about the possibility of closing the blind, whereas what would really happen is the window, (which would not actually have anything covering it), would be made opaque.

Proloque

(In which a very, very, very, very, very, very old, but sometime wily ancestor, introduces the subject, and tells his much, much, much, much, much, much younger and trusting descendant, of the complications - as he (mis?)understands them - associated with building a bridge to the Moon.)

A great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather asked his great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, “Did I ever tell you about my trip to the Moon?”

His great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter replied, “No. I didn’t think you could ever afford a spaceship voyage.”

The great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, correcting his young descendant, explained, “I’m not poor, dear, I can afford a spaceship voyage to the Moon, but I didn’t go by spaceship - I caught the train across the bridge.”

The great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter exclaimed, “A bridge to the Moon!?!” for she had never heard of the Moon bridge that used to be. “Did Great-great-great-great-great-great-grandma go with you, or your children, my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, and my great-great-great-great-great-granduncles, and my great-great-great-great-great-grandaunties?”

“This was before I met your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother,” said Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad. “This was when I was a very, very, very, very, very, very young man, about two hundred odd years ago.”

“Really?” exclaimed the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter.

“Yes, really,” confirmed the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.

“Did you have a girlfriend, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad?” enquired the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter.

“Not at that time, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter,” answered the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. “Perhaps I wasn’t good looking enough or interesting enough, but my luck changed when I met your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. However, I had some great friends in those days.”

“Were they great, great, great, great, great, great friends?” asked the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter.

“Well they were great, but not quite that great,” replied the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather”. He then began his tale.

“In those days, the Moon bridge wasn’t actually fixed in place on Earth, and they would move the Earth end of the bridge up and down, so it would briefly connect with the Earth at certain times, in certain different places. They could connect the bridge permanently to the Moon, because we always see the same side of the Moon from the Earth. The Moon does wobble a little bit because of its libation, but basically it always shows the same side to the Earth.”

(For those of us unfamiliar with the terminology, the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather meant libration, not libation. Libration is the scientific term for the Moon’s wobbling, whereas a libation is an offering of an alcoholic drink.)

“What was holding up the bridge, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad?,” asked his great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter.

“Well, nothing really,” answered her great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. “It was just hanging in space. They somehow, (don’t ask me how), managed to balance the forces acting on it in such a way that it neither fell to the Earth, nor to the Moon. I seem to remember hearing something about it using the same basic principle as a space elevator.”

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad continued: “Because the Moon orbits around the Earth, and moves closer to the Earth sometimes and further away at other times, and because the Earth rotates every 24 hours, they thought they couldn’t attach the Earth end to a fixed point on Earth, so they had to engineer great mechanisms to allow the Earth end to move to different places on Earth at different times. They had to have lots of slack in the bridge to account for the vast differences in length required, and they could only keep one end at one point for a few minutes at a time. If it wasn’t for some of that slack, they would have had to have the Earth end constantly moving across the surface of the Earth - which would have worn a great trench in the surface while on land, then dragged through the sea, and caused terrible waves and too much drag, and would have pulled the Earth end of the bridge apart.

“Later, they extended the bridge a whole lot further and attached it permanently to the Earth, (passing above Earth’s northern polar regions, and incorporating an untwisting mechanism that operated once a day), such that it would have a little slack in it when the Earth and Moon were at their furthest points, and a lot of slack when they were at their closest. But the bridge was getting rather contorted as a result of all this movement, and it was also having an effect on the length of the day on Earth, (making days longer), and on the length of the lunar month, (making them longer too). People who said there were never enough hours in the day thought this was a good thing, but it was messing with the seasons, the weather and the climate, and animals and plants were getting terribly confused as well. Also, changes in the gravitational forces acting on different parts of the bridge, were putting large stresses on those parts, which in combination with how it was getting all contorted, threatened to break it to pieces. And when spaceship travel had become cheap enough that it was uneconomical to send freight over the bridge, they scrapped it and sold it to the Martians.”

“Wow!” said the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter. “I didn’t know that!”

“I was nearly going to go to the Moon again another time, when they built the Earth end extension, but thought better of it when the Earth end came away from the Earth and was flailing about wildly, hitting some places on Earth. In fact, that’s how the Grand Canyon and Mt. Everest were formed - the bridge hit part of America and dug out the Grand Canyon, and the rock and dirt from there flew up high into the stratosphere, and came down again and landed in the Himalayas, forming Mt. Everest.”

“Really? I didn’t know that!” replied the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, tickled pink that she’d learned a fascinating new fact from her great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.

“Well, I’m glad I’ve been able to teach you something”, said Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad, tickled somewhat pinkish himself, that he’d been able to pull the wool over the eyes of his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchild so easily.

Chapter One

The Journey Begins

(In which the old man, as a young man, leaves the planet.)

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: I won some money in the lottery and decided to go on the train to see the Moon.

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter: Can I call you 6 times Great-granddad for short?

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: Definitely not, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter. I’ve not been your great-granddad even once, let alone six times! In fact, your great-granddad, (or one of them at least), is my great-great-great-grandson, (I think).

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter: You can call me… (author’s note: at this point the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter said her name, which I have left out, so that whomsoever might read this, can imagine her howsoever they like, and not juxtapose an identity on her based on her name, other than that she is a she. Of course if any reader wants to imagine her differently, there’s nothing this author can do about that - apart from ask that you imagine her respectfully.)

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: Sorry, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, I call all my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, Great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson, or Great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchild, for cases where I’m unsure or where I might cause offence, otherwise I couldn’t possibly remember everyone’s names after so many generations of descendants. It’s hard enough to remember how many greats to say - I certainly wouldn’t want to get that confused! Nothing personal you understand, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter.

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter: Sure, nothing personal Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad.

Author: And that was how Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad got his nickname “Nothing Personal Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad”, which all his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren eventually started calling him for short, much to Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad’s annoyance. (Of course other relatives called him “Nothing Personal”, followed by their actual relationship to him - also much to his annoyance, especially when his ancestors started doing it.)

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: Very early one morning, I caught the train at Central Station, from which it travelled to the point where the Moon bridge was due shortly to touch down on Earth. The bridge was officially called Lastrange Bridge, I think, (after some scientist or mathematician or astronomer or something, that nobody had ever heard of, but was very important apparently), but everyone just called it the Moon bridge.

The train got to the place where it was to go onto the start of the Moon bridge. Looking up, I could see the end of that huge megastructure at a great height, with nothing but air below it, gradually coming towards us all on the train. After a few minutes I saw the end of the bridge gingerly land in place on Earth, and stay still there while the train moved onto it. Of course the start of the bridge was sloping up from the ground at only a very gentle gradient - otherwise the train couldn’t possibly get onboard it - then it fairly quickly turned upwards. It was amazing to see that bridge climbing up into the sky, getting skinnier and skinnier until you couldn’t see it anymore, with the Moon visible a very long way above, but very pale in the daylight.

The train, which was probably about a kilometre long and a few storeys high, came to a stop on the bridge, and a great number of clamps clicked into place around it. Then the end of the bridge lifted away from the surface of the Earth, and started rising into the sky with our train onboard - still at a very gentle angle - until we were high in the stratosphere. Then the train started moving along the bridge up to the Moon. The track actually moved along the bridge while the train stood still on the track, rather than the train moving along the track, otherwise they would have had to unclamp the train, and it would have fallen back down to Earth - which might have been just a tad uncomfortable. (It also cut down immensely on the amount of resources used to construct the bridge, as they didn’t have to build a track all the way across the incredibly long length of it.)

The seats swivelled so that passengers were always sitting up straight, (unless they adjusted the seat so they could lie back), while the train was climbing more or less vertically from the Earth. This meant passengers were actually looking at what had been the floor of the train, (but was now more like one of the walls), rather than towards the front of the train, if they were looking straight ahead, (but I imagine most were looking out the window, or engaged with entertainment of some kind).

I believe the train then gradually accelerated until it was travelling at a very great speed, and before long it was dark outside - not because it was nighttime, but because we were virtually out of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Chapter Two

The Awesomeness of Space

(In which Nothing Personal Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad, personally tells his great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, what it’s like to be in space.)

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter: So what was it like to be in space, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad?

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: Oh, incredibly exciting - and the views were simply amazing! (In fact you could say they were literally out of this world - and I really do mean literally.) There was Earth, just below, all blue and white mainly, looking so beautiful, like nothing I’d ever seen before, slowly rotating. I had such a feeling of awe! From such an altitude you can see how it just hangs in the blackness: our home - a home to millions of species, not just ours - just hanging and turning slowly in the immense emptiness, cradling all its life, protecting it unknowingly from all the dangers of space - but sadly not able to do much to protect it from whatever damage we may do to it through our ignorance or negligence.

I gazed down and thought about everyone down there; and all the cities, towns, villages, buildings, infrastructure, institutions, cultures, nations; all the history of people that had happened in the view I could almost encompass without needing to turn my head; and all the plant and animal life; and all the countries I’d been to and hadn’t been to; all the wars that had been fought, all the turmoil that had happened there, and all the good things too: the progress of humanity, the progress from there into space, where I now was. And I could see a dark strip crossing the Earth - which was the bridge that the train I was in was crossing - trailing down towards our planet, getting skinnier and skinnier, until I couldn’t see it anymore - just the Earth, slowly rotating below. And I felt a great sense of belonging to that planet, and loving it, and feeling protective towards it, and everyone and everything on it.

Author: At this point Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad went into a reverie, which was fine by his great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, because she had too. After a while Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad went on.

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: I looked out into space - mostly on the Earth below, getting gradually further and further away. I found it rather comforting to look at. I suppose it was comforting to see that it was still there and still in one piece - somewhere I could get back to one day.

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter: Were you floating when you got to space, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad?

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: No, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter. There was only one region in space where we floated, and that was when we got fairly close to the Moon. There’s still gravity in space - the reason you see people floating in spacecraft sometimes, (apart from when they’re in a place where two celestial bodies’ gravity cancels out), is because they’re in orbit around a planet or some other body.

You see, a spacecraft in orbit is actually trying to move away from the body it’s orbiting and travel in a straight line, while the body it’s orbiting is trying to pull the spacecraft towards it. The spacecraft neither gets away, nor falls towards the body, because it has enough momentum to avoid falling, but not enough to get away. This orbiting situation has the same physical effect on the spacecraft, (and everyone and everything in it), as would be felt if the spacecraft were falling towards the body, but without ever reaching that body, and this falling effect seems like weightlessness - and looks like weightlessness too - to everyone onboard.

Chapter Three

Facilities on the Train

(In which Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad recounts what passengers could do - in case they got bored - while on a train travelling through space between two celestial bodies.)

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: There were stairs and elevators to go between the different levels on the train - although going between the different levels wasn’t actually going up or down while the train was heading straight up, away from the Earth. Forward was up, and backward was down - “up” or “down” between the different “levels” was really just going sideways, because we were now ascending vertically from the Earth towards the Moon. So if you used one of those elevators while the train was going straight up, the elevator actually took you sideways. You could, if you preferred, walk along what had previously been a wall instead of using one of those elevators, because what had been a wall, was effectively a floor during the train’s vertical ascent. They also had elevators to go along the length of the train, which were more useful at this time, because they now took you up or down, whereas, before the train started heading straight up, they would have taken you sideways.

There were lots of different facilities on the train. As well as a few cafes and restaurants, there were bars, a theatre, a gymnasium, games rooms, an interfaith chapel / meditation room, observation cars, a few small shops, a hairdressers, a dentist, and a medical clinic. (There might have been other things, but that’s all I remember.)

I went to the theatre a couple of times during the journey. Of course you could enjoy pretty much whatever entertainment you liked in your cabin, including what was on in the theatre, but it’s a better environment in the theatre, and you have the company of all the other people in the theatre. I found that being in the darkness of space - at least it was always dark when you looked outside - made me want to have the company of others a bit more than usual. Maybe part of that was also because I was going to an extraterrestrial body, which, while very exciting, was also a bit unsettling.

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter: What was your cabin on the train like, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad?

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: Oh, it was rather small as I recall, but big enough - it wasn’t like I was going to be in it for days on end. It was just a place where you could put your luggage, or some of your things - if you had your luggage in one of the luggage cars - and relax and watch the view, or sleep, or eat, or do whatever you wanted to do. It also had a very nice bathroom, which was almost as big as the rest of the cabin, as I recall.

There was a window to look out of, with a blind, although there wasn’t much of a need to close the blind, as there’s no one to see you in space. Although, now I think about it, there were some instances when photos or videos appeared of people on the train, taken from outside, looking through a window. They’d been taken from satellites or passing spacecraft.

Chapter Four

The Bridge Itself

(In which Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad recounts what he recalls of that great, great, great, great, great, great piece of infrastructure he once traversed, so very, very, very, very, very, very long ago - and tells of an averted disaster.)

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: Looking out of the windows of the train, you usually couldn’t see that great, (mostly carbon), marvel of a bridge, due to the darkness of space - but sometimes light would hit it from somewhere, usually light from inside the train. In fact there were certain parts of the train where you could usually see the bridge - like the forward observation deck, where you could see the light from the headlights, lighting up the bridge ahead. I believe that was monitored by artificial intelligence, which also used other means to scan the way ahead, in case of any unexpected surprises; and of course, there were all sorts of scanners and monitors all over the bridge, from one end to the other.

There were robotic machines - every hundred kilometres I think - to carry out necessary repair work; with materials stores they accessed, which I believe were on the “bottom” side of the bridge - although it’s really arbitrary to call one side of the bridge the top and the other side the bottom, when it’s going straight up. What I really mean by the “bottom” side of the bridge when it’s reaching across the chasm of space, is the side of the bridge that the train isn’t travelling along.

About every thousand kilometres - I think - there was a passing lane where one train could wait for another to overtake it, or to pass by in the opposite direction. They also had spaceports at these places, where a spacecraft could land in case of an emergency of some sort.

There were also various ways to deal with any incoming foreign objects. I believe there were lasers that could shoot small items and vaporise them - for larger items they had to move that item, (or the bridge), out of the way, or open up a temporary gap in the bridge, provided they had enough warning. And given that all things in orbit around the Earth or the Moon were being tracked continually, and objects coming from elsewhere could usually be seen in plenty of time, this wasn’t a great problem. When you consider the vastness of space, even just between the Earth and the Moon: the bridge - even though it was incredibly long - wasn’t really that big a target.

However, a couple of hundred years earlier, in the twenty-first century, there were millions of human-made items orbiting Earth, with a lesser number orbiting the Moon - mainly bits of things that had fallen off satellites or rockets, or broken satellites themselves, or even flakes of paint that had come away from satellites - all potential threats to a bridge, or a train, or people, traversing space from the Earth to the Moon. (Yes, even paint flakes when you consider that they’re travelling at thousands of kilometres per hour!) Fortunately, all this space waste was removed long before the bridge was built.

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter: Did a train ever come off the bridge, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad?

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: Well yes, there was a time when a gap in the bridge was opened to avoid an asteroid that couldn’t possibly be nudged out of the way in time. After the asteroid had flown past, they didn’t have time to close the gap they’d opened, and the train - and the track it was clamped onto - just sailed off the bridge and kept going on its own, through space. They didn’t even attempt to stop the train before it came off the bridge, (only to slow it enough to avoid the asteroid), because it was going way too fast, and a sudden stop would have killed everyone onboard due to the immense g forces: and even if anyone had somehow survived that, they may have been killed anyway, because the train carriages could have broken up from within, and bits of train carriage and furniture and fittings could have crashed into people onboard, as the train came to a sudden stop.

Fortunately, the bridge was moved a little to one side as the gap was opened to let the asteroid through, (as part of standard safety measures). Therefore, when the train flew off, it didn’t crash into the bridge further on, but kept heading towards the Moon. They managed to intercept the flyaway train with a spaceship that docked to the back of the train, and the spaceship used its rocket thrusters to steer the train the way they wanted it to go. (In such circumstances, they would use mechanisms which were already part of the train, to reinforce the joints between the carriages - and the same thing goes for the track the carriages were on - in such a way as to make the entire train and track straight and stiff, instead of bending at each connection between carriages.) They also managed to dock another spaceship to the front of the train - and that spaceship, which had its thrusters facing in the direction the train was heading, was able to fire them to slow the train down. Then they used the first spaceship, at the back of the train, to fire its thrusters to move the train back onto the bridge, and a major catastrophe was avoided.

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter: Didn’t they know the asteroid was coming, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad?

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: Well, this happened during the Moon War, and evil forces were actually trying to ensure the train was hit by the asteroid. Fortunately the plot was discovered in time to avoid disaster.

Chapter Five

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.

Chapter Six

To the Moon

(In which Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad reaches that nearby, silvery, heavenly body.)

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: We were going down, not up, after leaving L1, even though we hadn’t changed direction, because we were now under the influence of the Moon’s gravity, rather than the Earth’s - so gravity was pulling everything towards the Moon, instead of towards the Earth, (as it had previously been doing up until we got to L1). The seats had now swivelled 180 degrees to how they had been before, unless passengers had clicked them in a fixed position - in which case they could have suddenly found themselves sitting upside down!

So what had been the ceiling in each cabin for most of the journey, but was originally a wall, was now the floor, and what had been the floor, but was originally a wall, was now the ceiling; and the original floor, (from when we were leaving Earth), was still a wall, as it had been for most of our journey, but it was a wall behind us now, not in front of us, (unless you turned your seat to face backwards - although there wasn’t a “backwards” really, because backwards was back up towards Earth, rather than down towards the Moon).

Additionally, the seats moved down some distance, so that we didn’t find ourselves sitting high above the floor and having to jump out of the seat to reach the floor, (which was the previous ceiling, or an original wall), or struggle to climb up to get into, if we were not already seated in it. And the other furniture in the cabins moved down to be in line with the seats. Oh! - and when we left L1 and the seats all swivelled 180 degrees, the rest of the furniture swivelled 180 degrees as well, so that nothing fell off as the gravity switched from one side to the other; and lids automatically went onto drinks, (unless you were holding one I suppose, although perhaps even then), just to make sure they didn’t spill.

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter: Sorry, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad, could you say that again please?

Author: Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad said all that again, (a few times), then continued with his story.

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: It seemed it was not all that long after leaving L1 that we were about to reach the surface of the Moon! By this time, the Moon was very large outside the train windows, as you could imagine. The track carrying the train got to the point where it stopped travelling directly at the Moon - like an arrow hurtling towards a target - and turned to come down at an ever less steep angle. Looking out the window, we could see much more closely than we can see them from the Earth, the familiar cities and towns - and we could even see their lights, (on part of the Moon that was in night), shining their welcome to us it seemed - and some of the larger lunar lakes, parks and gardens, (on part of the Moon that was in sunlight), under their invisible ceilings. As we got closer, some of the landscape looked quite industrial - and some quite barren, in large areas of virgin, grey Moon.

Before I knew it, we got to the point where the bridge ceased being a bridge and was actually infrastructure on the surface of the Moon! I wasn’t quite sure of the precise point where this occurred. All I can say for sure is that at some point there was no doubt we were travelling along the Moon’s surface. Soon afterwards we slowed right down and eventually stopped. Then all the clamps securing us to the track must have unclamped, and the train started moving again, independently of the track we’d been attached to, and pulled in to the Lunar-Earth railway station.

It was very exciting getting off the train on the Moon, especially as this was my first trip to an extraterrestrial body! So exciting, my memory of it is kind of a blur. I don’t really remember much about what happened between being on the train and when I got to my hotel, other than being excited, and moving in low Moon gravity.

I can remember some things about Lunar-Earth station, but really only from when I went back there to return to Earth. One of the things I noticed about it when I was leaving the Moon, was that it had many tracks and platforms, in order to cope with the great frequency of freight and passenger trains travelling along it.

Chapter Seven

New Moon

(In which our new lunar explorer starts to experience all the Moon has to offer.)

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: Although the Moon is very old, in a way it was very new to me - or I was new to it! At times I felt as if I was in some kind of funny, dark, grey, almost shiny junk yard, but without the junk, (most of the time), where I weighed practically nothing and could almost float: but if I jumped up I would always come down again - rather slowly! Sometimes I was exhilarated to think I was in space and on the Moon, and sometimes almost a little gloomy - I think because there wasn’t much colour on the Moon’s surface, and the sky was always black and almost always without visible stars! Fortunately, most buildings we went into must have been designed with this lack of Moon colour in mind, because I saw colour everywhere in most of them, and I found this rather cheering.

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter: Why was the sky without stars, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad?

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: Because there was too much light from the sun, too much sunlight being reflected off the surface of the Moon, and too much sunlight being reflected off the Earth. In that respect, it was just like being on Earth during daylight hours when you can’t see the stars - except the sky is black on the Moon instead of blue, (because of the almost total lack of atmosphere). However, if you stood in a shadow of a building or a mountain or something, and looked at the sky, you could usually see a few stars. And at night, you see a lot more stars than you can see from Earth, particularly on the far side of the Moon where you can’t see the Earth, which therefore has no sunlight being reflected from the Earth.

What I really couldn’t get over on the Moon was looking up into the sky and seeing Earth - large, (compared to seeing the Moon from Earth), and blue and white in the big, black sky. It never looked the same twice - sometimes full, sometimes half, sometimes a crescent, and constantly showing different continents and islands and cloud formations - but it always looked like it was where I belonged, and was patiently looking forward to having me back! I looked forward to getting back up, (or down), to Earth - but not for a little while yet.

Somehow on the Moon I could feel lonely, embraced, blissful, sad, scared, courageous, loved, and bursting full of hope, all at the same time. I loved my time there so much I cried, (a number of times), but I was glad when I got back.

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, (who was perhaps too young to be greatly moved by old people’s heart-felt reminiscences, or perhaps just didn’t know what to say in response to them): What did you do on the Moon, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad?

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: I went on a package tour of the Moon. A lot of the other people on the train I was on, were also going on the same package tour - in fact, the return train fare and the Moon tour were all part of a special deal. Not special in the sense that they rarely offered this deal, because they did it all the time. Special in the sense that you got a reduced train fare if you also purchased the Moon tour at the same time.

I’d already met some of the people going on the Moon tour, on the train, and I became quite good friends with some of them. A group of us would hang out with each other, every day on the Moon, and do just about everything together.

The tour took us to many of the 49 wonders of the Moon, including those on the so-called “dark side of the Moon”, which wasn’t dark at all, (except at night). You see, a day on the Moon lasts about two weeks, and a night on the Moon also lasts about two weeks, wherever you are on the Moon. So the “dark side of the Moon” is only in darkness for two weeks at a time, then in sunlight for two weeks - the same as the “light side of the Moon,” (not that anyone calls it that). After one lunar day and one lunar night, a lunar month of about 4 Earth weeks has passed.

The reason it’s called “the dark side of the Moon” is because it can’t be seen from Earth. The Moon is tidally locked into its Earth orbit, which means that it always shows the same side to the Earth. No one ever knew what the “dark side” looked like until spacecraft went around and took pictures of it in the 1960s.

Our Moon tour was planned so that it almost always took us to places that were in sunlight when we got to them, which meant we did a lot more travelling from north to south, or south to north, than from east to west, or west to east. We only really saw night once - and that was for only a short time. We also did a lot more travelling from east to west than from west to east, and when we’d finished the tour, we’d travelled completely around the Moon, heading west. We’d also taken one and a half Moon days, (or one and a half lunar months), to complete our tour. We first arrived on the Moon perhaps an hour after sunrise, and we left the Moon as it was getting close to sunset the next lunar day, but as we’d followed the day all around the Moon, we hadn’t properly experienced a lunar night. It seemed like it had been one six-week-long day, (except that the sky was always black).

I don’t know if you’re aware, but the whole Moon is on Greenwich Mean Time, (or, as the Moon people like to call it, Greenwich Moon Time). There are no time zones on the Moon, (well just the one - covering the whole Moon - I mean). Every point on the Moon always observes the same time as the time in London, Earth, (but without going forward an hour for months at a time for daylight savings). There’s no point in having different time zones when the daylight lasts about two weeks, and the night is about another two weeks long. The Moon people just observe a regular 24 Earth-hour day. They get up, go through the day, and go to bed and sleep, and do it all again in 24 hour cycles, all in continual daylight for about two Earth-weeks; then they get up, go through the day, and go to bed and sleep, and do it all again in 24 hour cycles, in continual night for about two Earth-weeks. So all the time we were on the Moon we were observing Greenwich Mean Time, (or Earth, London time).

On the Moon there are about four artificial weeks, based on Earth time - not that there’s any such thing as a natural week - in one lunar month; one lunar month in a lunar day; and about 12.4 lunar days in a year; and no seasons, because the Moon’s axis is nearly perpendicular to its orbit, and it doesn’t wobble enough to make any time of the year hotter or colder than any other!

On our first day on the Moon, (our first day according to the time of day in Earth, London, that is), we had free time. (Or, in other words, the tour didn’t start until the next day.) We, (that is, the group of friends I had made on the Moon train and I), settled into our hotel. Then we went outside to a park area of the hotel which had a flat, grassy area, and some sloped, grassy land, as well as a swimming pool, various courts for playing sport, and platforms people could jump off - either into the pool or into soft landing areas. We just spent hours walking, running, jumping; doing somersaults, cartwheels; playing leapfrog; throwing a frisbee; playing tennis, basketball; swimming; diving; riding bikes, scooters and skateboards and other things; and just generally mucking around in low Moon gravity; in a park; under an air-filled dome; under a jet black sky; in the sunshine; with the Earth about 384,000 kilometres above us.

We weren’t yet used to not being in Earth-days-and-nights, and it was something like midnight before any of us realised it wasn’t London daytime anymore, and we needed to get some sleep before getting on with the tour the next day. We had gone to eat in the hotel or at some nearby shops at various times before then, but I don’t think we’d observed regular mealtimes that day.

Chapter Eight

The Lunar Tour

(In which our intrepid traveller and friends are acquainted with many of the wonders of the moon.)

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: After breakfast the next day we started our six week tour of the Moon. It sounds like a long tour, but when you consider that it’s a tour of an entire heavenly body, it’s not that long really. There was still plenty that we didn’t see!

We travelled by train-bus along magnetic-levitation railways most of the time. Occasionally we went by road, and there were a few times when we flew by lunar shuttle rocket. Sometimes we were even catapulted from one spot to another over craters or rimae, (which are long, narrow channels in the surface of the Moon). Because there’s pretty well no atmosphere to speak of on the Moon, there was no wind to blow us off course of the capture nets. However our luggage would go by rail or road - the long way around, and some people opted to go the long way round, not quite trusting the catapult transport, although it never worried me. (By the way, you’ll never see a plane or helicopter on the Moon - unless perhaps if it’s under a city’s or town’s enclosure, using its air for lift.)

We went to many lunar cities, towns, villages, settlements, all over the Moon. There were probably never more than five minutes spent travelling away from human habitation of some type, even if just a farmhouse, when we were properly on the move. Part of the reason for this is the speeds we travelled at, but mainly it’s because of the extent of settlement of the Moon at that time, (which although extensive, was actually quite sparse settlement compared to today).

Of course all developments were under airtight enclosures which only let a little infra-red, and no ultra-violet light in, and no air out, if they were more than a few buildings together. Most of these places only had lighting that shone down to the ground, not up into the sky, so as not to cause too much light pollution of the starry sky at night.

Sometimes when we arrived somewhere, there would be a special reception prepared for us, according to the customs of the locals’ culture. You might think there would be just one Moon culture, but when you consider all the parts of the worlds where the Moon people had come from, there was quite a lot of difference between these receptions. Sometimes the peoples’ faces would be quite distinctive, sometimes they would wear traditional clothes of their people, usually the food would be different in some small way, (if not in a very big way), and there was often different music as well. Sometimes the proceedings would be more formal, sometimes more casual, sometimes there would be no proceedings at all, just an invitation to eat, drink, talk, perhaps sing and dance, and generally make ourselves at home. Some of these receptions had one distinct culture, and some were fusions of several, since they had people from sometimes vastly different cultures who had come together.

We went to a number of the Moon’s largest metropolises - cities of tens of millions of Moonites, largely concentrated in skyscrapers of hundreds of storeys, and often arranged in intricate patterns when seen from above, looking like starfish or spider webs or multi-armed creatures, with hubs at many points all through them. We would often get whole or half days off in these cities to explore them for ourselves, and some of my friends and I would travel by subway, or overland train, or raised trains - whichever way, usually vacuum tube trains or gravity-vacuum trains - or in vehicles that operated like some fair ground rides on Earth, (only on a much, much larger scale), that you would enter, then get swung high up in the sky, only to be placed gently down on the ground several kilometres away.

Sometimes on a day or half day off we would go to a concert, or play, or movie, or virtual reality, or augmented reality, or some other entertainment. Sometimes we, or I, would just take time out, and veg out or sleep. Of course there were many occasions to shop for souvenirs, or whatever you wanted to buy.

There were a few times when I went to a religious house, either in quiet contemplation on my own or for a religious ceremony - sometimes as part of the tour, and sometimes just out of my own interest. I would use these moments, and other times, to quietly say thanks to God for letting me experience the wonders I was experiencing, and the people I was blessed to experience them with.

The tour usually took us to various museums and art galleries, and a school or university or institute or hospital, (where we heard about space medicine), or two; in big cities, and sometimes in smaller places as well. Sometimes there were two or more options for what to do, and various ones of us would do some things, and others would do others, according to our interests, or moods, or the influences of friends.

We also saw lots of monuments; parks and gardens; zoos; a wildlife park - it’s funny seeing animals moving in low gravity; farms; industry; mines; a military installation or two - one of which was involved in the Moon War; some festivals; fetes; parades - the list goes on and on.

Perhaps the most poignant artificial things we saw on the Moon were artefacts of the Apollo missions, that saw the first people, (that we know of), walking on the Moon. We saw preserved footprints where various Apollo missions went, an Apollo lunar rover, and some of the flags the astronauts left behind - their tops and sides always straight and stiff on their poles and wires, nevermore waving as if in wind, since the time the departing lunar modules blasted them with their ejected gas, (and caused the Apollo 11 flag to fall over), as they ascended, taking the astronauts back to the command modules, in which they returned to Earth: something we Moon tourists could do with much less planning and expense, and more luxuriously, on the Moon train.

But the landscape of the Moon may have been more poignant than the Apollo artefacts - I’m not sure, I find it hard to compare them. Rocks; mountains; valleys; plains (called oceanus, maria, lacus, sinus, paludes - all latin words for formations of fanciful water on ancient Moon maps); Reiner Gamma (an area on the Moon that has a high albedo, or is unusually bright); dorsa (wrinkly ridges); rimae (those long, narrow channels mentioned previously); rupes (escarpments); caves (generally thought to be ancient lava tubes - apart of course from the modern, artificial caves); and of course craters - lots and lots of craters. And all of these features competing for space with the aforementioned cities, towns, villages, settlements, farms, etc. Some of these natural wonders were in specially set-aside lunar parks, and some were not - and at risk of development.

Some of the craters had been turned into water storages, overtopped with see-through, temperature-controlled enclosures - just like the ones over cities and towns - to guard against evaporation into space, or freezing. Some of these were used for water consumption, some as marine habitats, and some were used for recreation - swimming, boating, fishing, snorkelling, waterskiing, even some with wave machines for surfing. Some of us, myself included, went fishing, swimming, waterskiing and surfing on the Moon.

We weren’t just among plains and craters while on the Moon, we were often in mountainous areas, and we went skiing once on a ski-slope with artificial snow, under one of the huge, invisible ceilings over a city, in lofty, lunar heights. As I recall, part of this city was underground - carved into the side of a mountain. There were streets in a cavern with beautiful, coloured lighting, and lots of colour in the buildings, and on the walls, ceiling and floor of the cavern - colour from paint, colour from plants, and colour painted with light onto the walls of the cavern.

Among the less glamorous things we briefly visited on the Moon, were a cemetery and crematoria, a rubbish dump, and a sewerage works, (although these were options, and many of the people on the tour did other things instead). The Moonites, who tend to be a very environmentally-aware and efficient people, generally favoured a type of swift, high energy cremation of many deceased people at a time, with the ashes being scattered on the Moon’s surface - usually mixed with compost. (They would have individual funeral services previously, but leave the bodies to wait for the next cremation - which would generally not be attended by the mourners.) They used the same high energy incineration process with any rubbish they couldn’t recycle, (although they recycled something like 99.999999% of their rubbish). Sewerage was treated so effectively it was all recycled - either as potable water or compost - with no harmful substances remaining.

We visited the Lunar parliament and learned about the administration of the Moon. We were told about the Moon’s human history, from the first orbits of Earth rockets in the 1960s to the current time, with an emphasis on the Moon War and how it was quickly put down by the actions of the Moon people themselves, who were shocked that such a horrific thing should break out on their fragile rock and threaten their very existence, for the sake of the aggrandisement of a power-lusting few.

I think my favourite time on the Moon was when we went for a short time, east or west, (I don’t remember which now), into the night darkness, in an area which was largely undeveloped, to go stargazing. We looked back as we travelled, and watched, first the Earth set, then the sun set - and suddenly it seemed as if the heavens were drowned in millions of tiny fairy-lights, as the stars miraculously appeared! (Although they really scientifically appeared - but it seemed miraculous!)

When we’d gone some way further, we stopped and got out of the bus, in our temperature-controlled, relatively thin, but immensely strong, life-preserving spacesuits, speaking to each other, and some of us to friends and relatives back on Earth, while experiencing for a short time the reality of the Moon night. We couldn’t see anything on the Moon’s surface unless we shone a light onto it. We could only see each other, the bus, and the brilliant stars - which showed us where the sky ended and the Moon began, as a line of little lights which outlined the lunar horizon in 360 degrees. Then, after a while, we got back in the bus and headed back the way we’d come, and saw first the sun rise, (as the stars vanished again), then the Earth rise, back in the two-Earth-week-long Moon day, and kind of felt in a way that we’d returned to civilisation.

When we went round to the so-called “dark” side of the Moon, (really the far side of the Moon from an Earth perspective), that was when we seemed to be really disconnected from the Earth, even though we could still talk to people on Earth, with seemingly no more delay than when we talked to them from the near side. We saw the Earth set around the horizon as we headed west. The sun was still our constant companion, but we wouldn’t see our home planet again for the next two weeks. I guess we got used to this after a while, but sometimes I would think it was odd not to see the Earth in the sky, and I’d feel more homesick than usual.

Two weeks later we came back round to the near side of the Moon, and saw the Earth rise in the west. It was very, very good to see our beautiful home again, even if from about 384,000 kilometres away! And two weeks after that our package tour of the Moon came to and end, and it was time to catch the train back to Earth!

Chapter Nine

The Return

(In which it’s time for our well-travelled Earthling to head for home.)

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: I had mixed feelings about it being time to head back home to Earth. I was both happy and sad to be leaving the Moon. I didn’t know if I would ever return, and, as things have turned out, two hundred odd years later, I haven’t as yet - I probably never will now. At the same time, I was glad to be heading home.

At Lunar-Earth station we boarded the train heading back to Earth, and went through the previous journey in reverse. We moved out of the station some way, stopped, the train got clamped to the track, and the track started moving along the Moon bridge, (or the Earth bridge, from the perspective of someone on the Moon). We started climbing into the sky at a shallow angle, with our destination - the Earth - visible in the sky above us. Before long we started climbing steeply, heading more or less directly towards the Earth. We stopped again at L1, where most of us went space-walking in zero gravity again.

I’m sure I’ve never seen any more amazing sight in my life than when I happened to just find myself hanging there in space - in nothing - on a little thread: a lustrous azure jewel, slowly turning, showing its brilliancies, to one side; and a surprisingly large, silver-grey, somewhat pock-marked, but somehow still beautiful, boulder hanging in the nothingness to the other side; and the Moon train on the Moon bridge, at the ends of our little threads; and a scattering of weird paraphernalia just hanging around, not so far off in the perspective of space. And later that same day we got back to Earth!

Although we had the most spectacular view out the windows, it felt anti-climactic sometimes on the journey back home. It was good to have a group of friends to be with - I guess they provided some kind of psychological grounding or stability, sort of like a family. I remained friends with some of them for a very long time.

Of course there were all the same fun things to do on the train on the return journey, as on the trip out to the Moon, but some of my friends and I just hung out together, having food and drinks in one of the observation cars, talking about our adventures and our lives, while watching the approaching Earth.

When I got back down to Earth, I remember feeling very heavy until I got used to Earth gravity again! I also remember looking up to that new friend so far above in the sky, and, remembering something the Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan said, (although I think he was looking down at the Earth from the Moon, rather than up at the Moon from the Earth), I held up my thumb, and completely covered the Moon with it. The Moon was still there in my mind, in my memory, in my heart. I moved my thumb out of the way and saw the proof of its continued, long existence up there. I was connected with it now forever in my heart. It had claimed me in part, but of course so had planet Earth - much more strongly than its little, shiny satellite.

The Moon has always been something dreamy to Earth people, but I’d been up there, in its near-vacuum, in its fiery hot days and its freezing cold nights, although largely unaware of the temperatures or the dangers, protected by the extraordinary advances of our technology. We’d kind of been playing with the Moon as far as danger is concerned - almost not feeling how close to an agonising death we would be if our technology should fail - seeing the Moon’s marvels, which in many cases were humans’ marvels, but mostly the marvels of our nearby neighbourhood in this huge universe. I was so happy I’d been to visit it, but I was so loving being back on our little turquoise jewel.

The End

References

I did some internet research while writing this story. These are most of the webpages I referred to. Readers may find some of these references interesting and informative.

Transport

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarTram

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThothX_Tower

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_exchange_tether

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megastructure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_railway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity-vacuum_transit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

Atmosphere

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/science/atmosphere-layers2.html

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/atmosphere/

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LADEE/news/lunar-atmosphere.html

Orbit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_mechanics

Lagrange Points

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/754/what-is-a-lagrange-point/

https://ysjournal.com/space/lagrange-points-the-stable-regions-of-space/

Phases of the moon

https://moon.nasa.gov/moon-in-motion/moon-phases/

Phases of the Earth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_phase

Selenography (moon geography)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenography

Days and nights on the moon

https://science.howstuffworks.com/what-do-day-and-night-look-like-on-moon.htm

No seasons or weather on the moon

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2019/07/18/does-our-moon-have-weather/?sh=320768df45b2

Lunar calendar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_calendar

The moon seen from Earth

https://www.science20.com/robert_inventor/could_you_see_moon_city_lights_or_a_greenhouse_from_earth_just_for_fun-157480

Earth seen from the moon

https://www.natureinstitute.org/article/henrike-holdrege/the-earth-as-seen-from-the-moon

Seeing stars from space or from the moon

https://www.lunarsail.com/why-cant-you-see-stars-in-space/

Communication delay talking to Earth from the moon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%E2%80%93Moon%E2%80%93Earth_communication

Earthrise

If you do an image search on “earthrise” you should find some great pictures - some real photos, some partially computer-generated - of Earth from the moon.

Miscellaneous

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hypothetical_technologies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimbal

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-19050795