by Bob McDonald
WHAT YOU NEED
An assortment of tools—screwdrivers, pliers, hammer, pen and paper, paper clips, a knife, a fork, and a spoon (or whatever implements you can find)
Assorted screws, nails, nuts, and bolts
A scrap piece of wood
A bowl
A box of cereal
A carton or jug of milk
Thick winter gloves or hockey gloves
WHAT TO DO
Put on the gloves.
Grab the screwdriver and one screw.
While wearing the gloves, try driving the screw into the wood with the screwdriver.
Once you’ve accomplished that, grab the pen. Keeping your gloves on, write a note on the paper, trying as best you can to keep your handwriting neat. Can you read what you wrote?
Next, open the cereal box and pour yourself a bowlful. Open the carton of milk and pour some on your cereal without spilling. Now try to eat it with the gloves on.
Congratulations! You are now a tool-using space walker.
How did you do? I hope there’s no spilled milk! Now imagine what it’s like for astronauts working with tools in zero gravity. And remember: you can’t drop anything in space. If you do, it will float away and you’ll never see it again!
21 When Will We Go Back to the Moon?
It has been more than fifty years since the first human beings landed on the moon. On July 16, 1969, the mighty Saturn V five-moon rocket—the largest machine to ever fly—slowly lifted off the launchpad, riding atop a pillar of fire. In a small capsule on the tip of the rocket were Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.
Four days later, on July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin guided their lander, Eagle, onto the surface of the moon, and the famous “one small step” was taken by Armstrong. He and Aldrin became the first humans to walk on another world. For a moment, the world was united as people everywhere shared in humanity’s greatest adventure.
There were five more lunar landings after Armstrong and Aldrin made the first boot prints in alien soil. In total, twelve men have actually walked on the surface of the moon. Some of them have even driven an electric car among the craters. The last footsteps were from Gene Cernan in 1972. No one has been back to the moon since.
American astronauts are slated to return to the moon sometime in the 2020s, first in a new moon space station, then down to the surface.
The type of rocket that went to the moon—the mighty Saturn V—was twice as high as Niagara Falls. A new rocket called the SLS, or Space Launch System, is planned to be even taller. And other rockets such as the Falcon Heavy and Starship, both from SpaceX, are almost as big.
The small capsules that carried astronauts to the moon were called the Command Modules. They held three people. A new Starliner capsule has the same shape but is much larger and carries a crew of four to six. And another, called Dragon 2, holds seven.
You might be wondering why a new spacecraft looks the same as one that was used half a century ago. Why not something with wings?
The short answer is that it worked before, so it should work again. Since it takes a lot of energy to get to the moon, something small without wings is easier to fly. Besides, you’ll recall that wings are only used to land back on Earth. There’s no air on the moon, so why bring wings?
Here’s how it will work. The first trip back to the moon will not actually be to land on it but to build a space station, Deep Space Gateway, that will orbit around it.
Like the International Space Station but smaller, Deep Space Gateway will be built out of linked modules made by many countries. It will be a home for astronauts to study the moon from above before anyone goes to live there.
Once Deep Space Gateway is finished, the next missions will be able to focus on returning to the surface of the moon. The world’s largest rockets—the SLS, the Falcon Heavy, or the Starship—will carry a crew and capsule into orbit around the Earth. Once in space, the astronauts will take off on a three-day journey to the Deep Space Gateway. When they arrive, the crew will rendezvous with the other astronauts who work at the lunar-orbiting station and pick up their lunar lander. Some of the crew will enter the lander while the rest remain in the station.
Landing on the moon will be its own exciting challenge. Since there will be no air, wings or parachutes won’t be any use. Instead, as the lunar lander descends, it will use its rocket engine to slow itself and drift down slowly, like a helicopter. Landers have unusual shapes because they don’t have to be aerodynamic. They don’t need nice, smooth bodies like airplanes. The lander will kick up lots of dust, but hopefully it will manage a clean landing. Once it does, astronauts will finally step out and onto the surface of the moon once again.
Back on planet Earth, we will rejoice. We’ll look up into the sky in wonder. We’ll celebrate. But there will be one big difference between this lunar mission and the ones in the old days: this crew will be on the moon to stay. They will be there with a habitat, living quarters, and laboratories to live for months at a time so that they can conduct scientific experiments, collect samples, and test equipment that will eventually be used to explore Mars.
The lunar habitat will be made of similar modules to the Deep Space Gateway. They’ll be hooked together but will lie on the ground rather than float in space. The habitat might even be inflatable, ready to be blown up once the astronauts get there.
One thing that’s nice about living on the moon as opposed to Mars is that astronauts will see the Earth out of their habitat window. The moon also offers a wonderful viewing platform for the stars because there is no atmosphere or clouds, so the view of the universe is incredibly clear.
It’s also a chance to explore more of the moon itself. There’s one area of the moon that may be the most unusual and interesting of all: the South Pole. There’s a crater at the bottom of the moon where the sun never rises above the rim. Remember, the sun shines mostly around the equator of the moon, just like it does on Earth, so at the South Pole, the sun is very low in the sky. That means the floor of this crater is always in shadow. Shadows on the moon are extremely cold—cold enough for ice to exist. On the moon, ice would be as valuable as gold because it would provide drinking water and could be used to make rocket fuel for an eventual voyage home.
But ice on the moon, again like gold on Earth, is not easy to get to. The ice exists at the cold and dark bottom of the deep moon crater, which is hard for machinery and astronauts to reach. On the other hand, the edge of the crater—the top of the rim—is in sunlight all the time. We see the same effect on Earth during the summer in the high Arctic, where the midnight sun stays up for months at a time.
One idea is to place solar panels at the top of the crater rim to produce electricity from the sun, build a colony there, and send robots to mine the ice down in the crater floor of the moon. You might have heard of water as H2O. That means it is made of hydrogen and oxygen. If water is taken apart, using electricity drawn from those solar panels, then the oxygen can be used for breathing and the hydrogen can be burned as rocket fuel.
Living on the moon means more than just work all the time. There has to be some playtime as well. So far, only one person has played a sport on another world. In 1971, Alan Shepard, commander of Apollo 14, took two golf balls to the moon. Using a makeshift club, he fired off two shots. The first he flubbed, but the second supposedly went out of sight, thanks to the low lunar gravity. The problem with lunar golf is there’s no turf. The moon is one giant sand trap. And with so many craters, how do you know which one is the hole?
Other sports could be just as fun. The moon is smaller than the Earth, so gravity is not as strong there. If you lived on the moon, you’d weigh one-sixth your weight on Earth. Imagine the trick shots you could make in basketball, or how high you could leap in the high jump. What if we melted some of that moon ice and made it into a skating rink for figure skating? Quad jumps? Heck, you could probably spin ten times before coming back down. In fact, you’d be jumping so far, they’d have to make
the ice surface a lot bigger. The first Olympics on the moon would break all records!
On the other hand, another group of space scientists thinks it would be a waste of time going back to the moon because we have already been there. They think we should skip the moon and go straight to Mars.
What do you think?
YOU TRY IT! Moon Habitat
WHAT YOU NEED
Chairs, tables, blankets, and sheets
Two large pieces of cardboard
Packaged food supplies for twenty-four hours
Pillows and blankets (or a sleeping bag)
A computer loaded with games and information about the moon
WHAT TO DO
Using the furniture and blankets, build a habitat as large as possible with three sections that are connected together: section one is the smallest and is for sleeping only, section two is the food storage, and section three is the gathering room.
Place the cardboard sheets between each of the sections of the habitat to simulate sliding doors.
Try to remain in the habitat without coming out for twenty-four hours. (Bathroom breaks are allowed, but you have to return immediately without getting any supplies from the house.)
During your stay, imagine you are really on the moon. Find out as much as you can about your new home. Look at maps and find places you would like to visit, such as the dark craters at its South Pole that contain ice. Plan expeditions and talk about what kind of equipment you would need.
Building a habitat on the moon will take a lot of planning because the crew will need to bring everything with them from Earth. Habitats will also be small at the beginning—about the size of a small house—which means that people will have to live together in close quarters. There is also no internet on the moon (yet), so entertainment will have to be brought along in the form of games and predownloaded programs.
Thankfully, the moon is close enough to the Earth that you will be able to make calls to your friends back home. On Mars, that will not be an option because the red planet is so far away. It can take up to twenty minutes for a signal to reach Earth and another twenty minutes for a return, so conversations from Mars will have to be one-way messages or videos.
22 When Can I Take a Vacation in Space?
Everyone who has flown in space has had fun up there. Floating around weightless like Peter Pan, playing with food, performing crazy stunts never possible on Earth. Who wouldn’t want to join in on the fun?
If you want to fly in space today, there are three ways to get there. You can climb aboard an American rocket. You can ride a Russian Soyuz rocket. Or you can take a flight on the Chinese Shenzhou rocket. These are the only ways to reach space at the moment, and to fly in any of them you have to train for years.
But all that is about to change. Soon, you’ll be able to take a spaceflight just for the fun of it, and you won’t have to be an astronaut to do it.
Companies around the world are building a new generation of spaceships—small, cheap rockets designed to take tourists on the vacation of a lifetime. Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo is a combination of a rocket and an airplane that seats six passengers and two pilots. It’s carried high in the air by a large airplane called WhiteKnightTwo. The spaceship is released from the plane, fires its rocket engines, and takes the passengers on a thrilling high-speed ride almost straight up above the Earth’s atmosphere to the edge of space. When the rocket engine shuts down, the passengers unbuckle their seat belts and float around weightless for a few minutes, enjoying the view of the Earth and the blackness of space.
After the space plane reaches its maximum height, it begins to fall back to Earth. Everyone returns to their seats and hangs on for an exciting dive back down into the atmosphere before they glide back to the same runway the space plane took off from.
Another spaceship, called New Shepard, uses a capsule with very large windows that sits on top of a rocket. The ship blasts off straight up from the ground and goes just above the atmosphere, where the capsule separates and the people inside experience a few minutes of weightlessness. Then both the capsule and rocket come straight back down separately, with the rocket booster using its engines to land and the capsule floating down by parachutes.
Both of these spaceships are designed to take tourists into space and are operated by private companies. That means anyone can buy a ticket to space.
If you want to spend much more time up in space, you can even buy a ticket up to the International Space Station. You would travel to Moscow, to train with the Russian space agency, then fly to space on a Soyuz rocket alongside professional cosmonauts. After a week on the space station, you would come back with another crew who had been living in space and are on their way home. Several space tourists have already made the trip. One thing they had in common: they were all very rich. That’s because a ticket to the International Space Station costs about $50 million! Tickets for the shorter tourist flights will be much cheaper: only $250,000.
The cost of flying in space might seem expensive right now, but when airlines first started many years ago, only rich people could afford to fly. After a while, as more people took to the air, the price of a plane ticket came down. Today, many people can afford to fly on an airplane. Maybe the same thing will happen with spaceflight. We’ll let the rich people get it started, then the rest of us can fly later.
In the future, it will probably be possible to spend a week at an actual hotel in space. It won’t be very big, but it will be made just for tourists, so you’ll have your own room and a window to look down on the Earth. Eventually, more modules will be added, which means there will be more room and more things to do up there.
But these small space hotels are just the beginning. Imagine really large structures shaped like giant Ferris wheels that slowly turn. In your room along the rim, there would be artificial gravity created by the spin, so you’ll be able to walk around like you do on Earth, except that you’ll be in space.
While you’re there, if you want to experience weightlessness, just go to the center of the wheel, where you would weigh nothing at all. That would be the best place to put the space swimming pool. Can you imagine what the pool would be like in a space hotel? Because of the weightlessness, the water in a regular pool would float all over the room! But if the pool were in the shape of a big drum that slowly spins, the water would stick to the inside of the walls. Think of the fun you could have swimming all the way around the walls and ceiling and doing slow-motion dives!
Vacations in space are just in their infancy. For now, there’s no space hotel or weightless swimming pools, and there are no trips to the moon… but even that is coming soon. The one giant leap into space you may be able to take in the future—and it is really out of this world—is, in fact, a moon trip. You won’t land or get to walk on the moon, but you’ll get to go there, fly around it, and return home again. The trip would take about a week. No tourist has made the trip yet, and that could be because of the cost. A ticket to the moon costs only… one hundred million dollars!
While we wait for commercial spaceships to be built to take us to the moon and beyond, there’s a way you can feel like you’re flying in space and experience the weightlessness astronauts do by flying in a very special airplane made by a company called Zero G. It uses a big airplane affectionately known as the “Vomit Comet.” It’s called that because some people get sick riding in it. I was fortunate enough to fly in this plane, and happily, I did not get sick!
The airplane is an airliner with most of the seats removed and all the windows covered up. You sit in seats that are at the back of the plane, and as it takes off, you can’t tell what the plane is doing because you can’t see outside. You’re inside a big hollow tube. All you can hear are the jet engines.
When the plane reaches a special zone over the ocean, everyone gets out of their seats and lies on their backs on the padded floor. The roar of the engines gets louder as the pilots point the plane upward at a steep angle. Then the plane is put thro
ugh a special arc called a ballistic arc, which is the same type of curve that a baseball, football, snowball—anything that is thrown through the air—follows. And remember: when anything is falling through the air, it’s weightless until it hits the ground.
As the plane comes over the top of the curve, everyone inside rises off the floor and floats weightless inside. It’s as though someone simply turned gravity off and your body no longer stays down. Everyone in the plane I was on immediately began to laugh hysterically as we bumped into one another and slowly bounced off the walls. I had an urge to wave my arms and kick my feet as though swimming through water, but that doesn’t work in the air. In fact, the more you wave and kick, the more you tumble out of control, with a good chance of kicking someone else in the head.
It takes very little to set your body in motion. Just the slightest touch on a wall or the floor sends you floating in the opposite direction, and once you start moving through the air, it’s really hard to stop yourself until you hit something. Soon, you learn to slow down and take your time, which is why astronauts seem to move in slow motion. They have to be gentle or they will spin out of control.
After thirty seconds of floating, the airplane ends up pointing steeply down toward the ground. Instructors in the plane with you yell out, “Feet down!” That means point your feet toward the floor. As the pilots pull the airplane out of the dive, you float gently back down to the floor, and as it continues through the bottom of the curve, heading back up for the next maneuver, gravity comes back, getting stronger and stronger until you weigh twice your normal weight from the force of the plane climbing. That’s what it would feel like to be on a planet much bigger than the Earth, where the gravity is stronger.