An International Mission to the Moon

by Jean Petithuguenin

  “The idea is ingenious, but it doesn’t take account of centrifugal force, and it’s sufficient to recall what becomes of substances subjected to the action of industrial centrifuges to anticipate the fate reserved for the passengers in such a projectile.”

  “I understand,” said Madeleine. “All that remains, in fact, is the system of the rocket, which you’ve just described to me. But it’s necessary, in that case, for the Selenit to carry a large quantity of explosive.”

  “An enormous quantity, my dear Madame, and that’s what creates all the difficulty of the enterprise, for the Selenit, as you see it, is obliged, for a useful weight of about a hundred tons, passengers included, to carry ten thousand tons of explosive. To store such a formidable charge, the Selenit had to be given that length of a hundred meters, of which only a fifth is occupied by the accommodation and its dependencies, the control room and the engine room.”

  “Why that colossal mass of powder? I don’t think that such a vast proportion is necessary to launch a shell.”

  “No—but the shell, which acquires its maximum velocity instantaneously, has no need to carry its explosive with it. The Selenit, on the contrary, whose velocity has to be augmented progressively, and which is constructed on the principle of the rocket, has to contain the charge whose progressive deflagration will draw it further on continuously.

  “Now, if it requires in these conditions, for example, ten kilos of explosive to bring after twelve hundred seconds, a one-kilo projectile to a velocity of twelve thousand meters a second, one has to add a certain charge to propel those ten kilos of explosive in their turn—but that second charge requires a third, and so on. It’s because of that that one is required to employ an enormous quantity of powder to launch a relative small useful weight.

  “On the other hand, it’s necessary to keep a reserve of explosive to slow down the fall on arrival on the Moon, and to avoid a brutal contact with our satellite. Finally—and this is the most important point of all—enough powder must remain on arrival to permit the projectile to depart again from the Moon and land without encumbrance on our globe, for there wouldn’t be any point in going go the Moon if we weren’t certain of being able to come back.”

  “Indeed. I admire you for having that certainty, in spite of the extraordinary difficulties of your expedition, and the risks to which you’ll remain exposed, in spite of everything.”

  “I’ll prove to you, Madame, before the departure of the Selenit, that we’ve anticipated the slightest details of our attempt too fully for there to be any shocks to fear.”

  At that moment Captain Scherrebek, the leader of the mission, approached. He had himself introduced to Madame Brifaut.

  “We have superb weather,” he said, “and a smooth sea. The conditions are ideal for our departure. I also intend to take advantage of it to allow the few friends who have consented to accompany us in the last week of our sojourn down here to visit the Selenit. As there isn’t much free space in the Selenit, we’ll organize several visits, only conducting ten people at a time. The first will be this afternoon after lunch. Would you care, Madame, to do us the honor of taking part, with your husband?”

  “With the greatest pleasure, Captain.”

  II. A Farewell Banquet10

  During lunch, at which Captain Murray, the commandant of the Montgomery, presided, the conversation, as one can imagine, revolved around the Moon, the Selenit, and the chances that the explorers had of reaching their target safe and sound and getting back again.

  In spite of the optimism that the guests were required to affect, it would have been easy for a perspicacious observer to divine that, apart from the members of the mission, the individuals present did not, in general, sincerely believe in the success of the extraordinary endeavor.

  Madeleine Brifaut, the only woman on board, occupied the place of honor beside the commandant, facing Captain Scherrebek. To her right she had Dr. Lang, the German member of the mission. He was a tall fellow with a short-cropped moustache and a shaven head, who paid a great deal of attention to his neighbor.

  As they were discussing the possible existence of an atmosphere on the surface of the Moon, the director of Mount Wilson Observatory took it upon himself to summarize present thinking on the subject.

  “One never observes clouds on the Moon,” he said, “but that’s not sufficient to demonstrate that our satellite is absolutely devoid of an atmosphere, for water might not exist either in liquid masses or in droplets suspended in the form of mist when the pressure falls below a certain limit, and if there are gases at the surface of the Moon their pressure can’t exceed one or two thousandths of that of our atmosphere. However, the observation of the occultation of stars has demonstrated that the refraction at the edge of the Moon, weak as it is, isn’t completely absent. The deviation of the star’s radiance varies between one and two seconds of angle.”

  “What does occultation mean?” Madeleine whispered, leaning toward her neighbor.

  “It is, Madame,” Dr. Lang replied, “the phenomenon produced when the Moon passes between a star and the Earth and prevents us from seeing the star, before which it forms a screen.”

  “One is led to admit,” the astronomer continued, “that a lunar atmosphere exists whose density is about nine hundred times weaker than that of the Earth. It remains improbable that it is composed like ours. It is supposed that carbon dioxide is dominant there, especially in the seas.”

  “Madeleine had recourse once again to her neighbor’s science. “The seas?” she murmured, astonished. “Hasn’t he just said that there can’t be any water on the Moon?”

  “The name of ‘sea,’ Madame, is thus improperly chosen. Ancient astronomers, who had observed dark patches on the surface of the Moon, mistook them for large expanses of water and gave them names that modern astronomers have conserved by virtue of a respect for tradition, but their error was recognized a long time ago. It is known today that the seas of the Moon are simply vast depressions, whose dark hue is nevertheless not easy to explain. There are great divergences of opinion on that subject.”

  “Isn’t it just the color of the ground entering into play?”

  “No, because it happens that some seas appear darker when they’re more fully illuminated by the sun.”

  “That is, in fact, odd.”

  “There must be elements there that absorb light, more fully the more intense it is. We know of only one substance on Earth capable of producing that effect, at least on a large scale, and that’s chlorophyll, the green substance of vegetation. As it has also been remarked that the lunar seas often have a greenish tint, some astronomers have concluded that they’re covered in a kind of vegetation.”

  “There might be forests on the Moon, then?”

  “Forests no—but perhaps something analogous to moss or lichen, which can live at the expense of the soil and the carbon dioxide contained in the almost imponderable atmosphere.”

  Meanwhile, at the other end of the table, people were also discussing the possibility of life on the surface of our satellite.

  “So,” asked Brifaut, “you don’t believe, Professor, that there are animate beings up there?”

  “Don’t put words into my mouth,” protested the director of the Observatory. “It’s certain that none of our terrestrial animals could live on the Moon, but it’s not scientifically demonstrated that living beings organized in a manner completely different from those we know couldn’t adapt to the special conditions of our satellite. Why, for example, shouldn’t particular organisms extract from elements in the soil the oxygen that terrestrial animals obtain from the atmosphere? Any why shouldn’t there be animate creatures that are even capable of doing without oxygen and deriving their vital energy from some other substance?”

  “But how will the members of the mission, who are created to live on the Earth, be able to subsist up there?” asked Madeleine.

  “Our precautions have been taken,” declared Scherrebek. “We’re provided with all th
at we need.”

  “You can’t, however, transport the conditions of Earth to the Moon.”

  “Pardon me, but that’s almost exactly what we’re doing. The problem isn’t very different from the one that has to be resolved when one undertakes an expedition to the North Pole. The polar explorer is created to live at an average temperature far superior to that reigning on the ice-sheet. He needs food, which he can’t obtain in the desert of ice. Well, he takes fuel, food and apparatus with him, and finds the means to subsist in the heart of the empire of death, thanks to supplies that come from the temperate regions of the globe. Do you want another example? There’s that of the voyager traversing the desolate solitudes of the Sahara, carrying the food and water that the sea of sand is incapable of furnishing.”

  “At the Pole, as in the Sahara, it’s only a matter of contending with an extreme temperature and alimenting oneself, but on the Moon it’s also necessary for you to carry the air to breathe.”

  “That’s true. Thus, we’ll be in the circumstances of men who, in order to subsist for a time at the bottom of the sea, employ a submarine or a diving-suit. In interplanetary space or on the Moon—which is to say, in a more-or-less perfect vacuum—we possess, inside the hermetically sealed Selenit, the reserves of air that are indispensable to us. On the other hand, we’ll have veritable state-of-the-art diving-suits, thanks to which it will be possible to leave our refuge and move individually on the surface of the Moon.

  Lunch had finished and the commandant stood up.

  Scherrebek assembled the people he had designated for the first visit to the Selenit, among whom were René and Madeleine Brifaut. A kind of gangway had been installed between the Montgomery and the vessel in tow consisting of a deep canvas gutter supported by two cables. One by one, ten passengers, conducted by Scherrebek, crossed that shaky bridge to the Selenit, whose catch had been unscrewed by a sailor. The sea was so calm that there was no danger of any accident for the people or the apparatus.

  III. In the Flanks of the Selenit

  The visitors descended by means of an aluminum ladder and found themselves in a large rectangular room, poorly lit by narrow portholes that were not very numerous.

  “This room,” said Scherrebek, is seven meters long, seven wide and as many high, forming a cube. It’s dark at the moment because the portholes pierced in the two lateral faces and the floor are submerged in the sea. Our vessel is equipped with electric lamps powered by dry batteries, but I haven’t turned them on because we ought not to squander the light.

  “The Selenit is presently lying horizontally; that’s the position that it will normally occupy on the surface of the Moon. At the moment of launch, however, when it’s completely submerged in the ocean, and during the journey from the Earth the Moon, it will be orientated vertically relative to the Earth’s radius. It follows that the back wall of the room, which is facing you now, and which measures seven meters by seven, will become the floor for a while.”

  “Damn!” said Brifaut. “That will upset all your equipment.”

  “No, for our precautions have been taken. Everything is carefully secured. The trajectory, in accordance with Esnault-Pelterie’s calculations, will only last a little more than forty-eight hours. We’ll be constrained to spend them on the rear wall, which offers the same surface area as the normal floor.”

  The Dane operated a mechanism in one of the interior walls and lowered a section of the paneling.

  “This is a folding couchette, which can, as you can see, be lifted up to the wall again and secured there, after the fashion of a trap-door, when not in use. There are ten similar ones disposed in two superimposed groups of three and two of two. Aluminum ladders permit the upper bunks to be reached. That dormitory occupies about four-meters fifty of the length. In the remaining space, the walls of the room are filled with cupboards for clothing, crockery, instruments of every kind and folding chairs. Beneath the groups of two couchettes, which leave a free space at floor level against the forward all, two trunks have been placed, which can serve as benches and which contain various supplies, including medicines.

  “By looking through one of the portholes you can see that it affects the form of a tube. The length of the tube is one meter fifty, because that’s the thickness of the wall it traverses. As the diameter of its section is only fifty centimeters, however, you can appreciate that it only offers a rather limited field of vision. One has to be content with these very narrow windows is one wants to avoid accidents. It’s necessary, in fact, to achieve a perfect isolation. With that objective, we’ve constructed a triple hull. An initial shell, which envelops this room and the other chambers of the Selenit, is composed of an agglomerate of cork, equipped with a network of aluminum beams and wires; it’s twenty centimeters thick.

  “Around that first shell, hundred-kilo cylinders of compressed air are arranged, and under the floor there is an abundant provision of oxygen tubes designed to supply the diving-suits. A trap-door of agglomerated cork, fitted into the middle of the floor, permits access to those tubes as and when needed.

  “Another shell constructed like the first, of the same thickness and separated from it by a space of sixty centimeters, forms a second rigorously sealed envelope, It’s covered with a thin sheet of aluminum.

  “Finally, the external wall of the Selenit is constituted by armor plating, similarly lines with agglomerated cork. It’s separated from the intermediary shell by an interval of fifteen centimeters, in which there’s an absolute vacuum. In those conditions, exchanges of temperature with the exterior are extremely difficult and practically non-existent, which is indispensable for crossing the interplanetary void and enduring without inconvenience the formidable alterations in temperature produced on the surface of the Moon. Connections are naturally ensured in places by a network of aluminum beams.

  “The portholes are equipped with three windows, each corresponding to a shell. Those that are enclosed at the level of the two exterior hulls are hermetically sealed and there is a vacuum between them. The third—the interior window—is movable; it can be unscrewed in order to slide an agglomerated cork plug into the hole in the event that the sun’s ardor renders that precaution necessary.

  “Each window is composed of an assembly of twenty-two crystal disks one centimeter thick, separated from one another by one-millimeter sheets of mica. One thus obtains transparent blocks perfectly proofed against variations of temperature and shocks. Finally, a mechanism that can be operated from inside permits sheet-metal shutters coated with heatproof varnish to be slid over them externally.

  “To remedy the insufficiency of the field of vision provided by the portholes, we possess several periscopes that can be maneuvered by sliding them in tubes through the hull.”

  Scherrebek opened a little door in the front wall, and the visitors were able to observe that on that side too, the partition was impressively thick. Like the others, it was composed of agglomerated cork, although it simple served as a separation between the crew’s lodgings and the pilot’s cabin.

  The latter terminated in a point at the front, by virtue of the symmetrical narrowing of the walls, the ceiling and the floor. It was provided with four portholes and two periscopes.

  “Like all the chambers of the Selenit,” said Scherrebek, “this one is destined to be utilized in two orientations, one vertical and the other horizontal. You can see here the acoustical funnels by which the pilot remains constantly in communication with the mechanic in the engine room and can also make himself heard in the crew cabin. He has before his eyes optical instruments that permit him to measure the apparent diameter of the Moon or the Earth and to deduce therefrom the Selenit’s own velocity. An astronomical telescope mounted in one of the portholes and rigorously parallel to the axis of the vessel serves to study the sky and determine direction in accordance with the position of the stars.”

  Scherrebek took his guests back into the crew cabin and crossed it in order to open another door in the rear. He penetrate
d into a room only three meters long with a ceiling noticeably lower than that of the principal room. The free space was limited by cupboards aligned on the walls.

  Pointing at the ceiling, Scherrebek declared: “There’s a lined reservoir here containing five cubic meters of water, which is an amply sufficient supply for ten men for thirty days, and even permits domestic uses.”

  He opened one of the cupboards.

  “These wardrobes contain ten diving-suits of a special type, capable of resisting an interior pressure of one atmosphere in an absolute vacuum. The various items of apparatus possess articulations of great suppleness, although perfectly sealed. All the parts have a double wall, lined with insulating substances. A receptacle pierced with numerous holes receives a dose of caustic soda designed to absorb the carbon dioxide and water vapor given off in respiration. Tubes of compressed oxygen regenerate the air contained within the diving-suit.

  “The man is not narrowly imprisoned; only his legs are boxed in the diving-boots. His body and head retain a certain play, and in particular, he can withdraw his arms from the metallic sleeves if he has some manipulation to carry out inside the apparatus. He can carry food and drink inside the body of the suit. A special double-walled valve permits him to reject organic debris outside.

  “The metallic head is fitted with an anterior window and two lateral windows of double thickness, separated by a void, on the same principle adopted for the Selenit’s portholes. Screens of smoked glass or lead can be slid behind the viewports—an indispensable precaution on the Moon, where no atmosphere attenuates the sun’s ultra-violet radiations.”

  The Montgomery’s passengers also visited, on the same side as the suit-room, the food-stores, which contained, in particular, a large quantity of pemmican, the agglomeration of meat, vegetables and fat well known to polar explorers. The heating system was powered by means of a slow-burning powder whose gases were distributed into all the compartments of the Selenit by means of pipes and radiators; that apparatus provided protection, when necessary, against the extreme cold of the long lunar night. To protect against overheating, if the sun became too hot, compressed air could be released, which determined a considerable lowering of temperature.