The Five Pods

The planet next door .. Poster courtesy of Wikipedia

FREAKY FRIDAY

After weeks of drought, we are being deluged with rain today. I’m surprised at how busy everything is. I had to fight for a parking place at Tom Thumb. We Dallasites rise to the challenge of inclement weather!

TO THE MOON

Today’s topic harks back to one of my first blog entries, Destination Moon. In that blog, a main suggestion was to use more robotic devices for a lot of the grunt work – remove the expense of manned shuttles. I still recommend that and have more to elaborate these 10 years later.

AND THE MOON FIRST

There are two Mars initiatives right now – a NASA manned mission for 2035 and a Dutch consortium aiming for a much more ambitious 2024 manned mission. Mars is an 8 month journey away.. Its thin air and arid surface are little more inviting than our moon. The moon is only 240,000 miles away from Earth – a hop and a skip. Were anything to go wrong with lunar supplies or setup, a correction could be on the way in a matter of hours. The moon is completely without air – its challenges are more extreme. All the better to have that be our exploratory playground. If we can conquer the moon, Mars should be a piece of cake with its CO2 atmosphere and water rivulets. Baby steps first – and the Moon is our perfect setting for that.

FIVE PODS

My idea for a lunar colony involves robotic delivery and assembly of piece parts before a human even arrives. The basic infrastructure of the colony is ready and waiting for humans to make it hum as an integral whole. Let me describe briefly the 5 basic “pods” that would need to be landed – these aren’t necessarily order of importance:

ENERGY POD – The energy pod would be either a solar or nuclear powered generator of electrical current to power and control just about everything else.

AIR POD – The air pod would contain copious breathable air in the same mixture as the Earth’s biosphere.

WATER POD – The water pod would contain fresh, drinkable water. The pod would be huge, like a water tower reservoir on Earth.

REQUISITIONS POD – This pod might be the most interesting.. It would contain food, clothes, medicine, building supplies, tools, and just about anything needed by the lunar inhabitants. Its contents would be air and temperature controlled to maintain earth-like quality.

RETURN FUEL POD – This pod, like the H2O pod, would be very large. It would contain thousands of gallons of rocket fuel (also temperature controlled), for return space journeys.

The pods would be robotically landed and assembled. Fuel and food would come last, when the receiving pods were tuned correctly. Obviously the colony would have many other things going on -- landing areas, transmission lines, dormitories etc. But these 5 initial pods would lay the groundwork for everything. The assembly could be done remotely from Texas or Florida. All systems would be “go” before any lives are at stake. Why would I have such elaborate fantasies about a space colony? Because I think we are at a juncture where it could really happen – such ventures might be undertaken for real. If a Mars Rover can take panoramic pictures and soil samples, a Lunar Robot could snap pre-fitted pods and pipes together. Let’s just do it in a logical order – Moon first, pods first. Humans, safely and comfortably, would come next.

© 2015 Snillor Productions