Space Stations, Boats and The End of the Sunday drive.

On to the Moon.

At long last, Someone, or should I say, Something...being a large Corporation, has taken on board the ability and necessity of Man to not only travel to the moon, but indeed to live there.

In the August 4 edition of TIME Magazine, General Electric announce that their Missile and Space Vehicle Department ( hey, you didn't know they had such a Department, did you!?) have released a massive report on how, and how soon, a Colony can be established on the moon, as well as an 

 estimate of the cost. 

"G.E believes that no major breakthroughs are required, only modest improvements in the space art."

Reading further in, maybe one drawback could be that the project will require the equivalent of 200 Saturn rocket ships.

" Two hundred Saturns will be needed. together with massive upper stages and a host of other fancy equipment , to soft land 10 colonists and 500,000 lbs of equipment on the moon."

"Like Noahs Ark: One Saturn cluster with its upper stages and lunar landing retro-rockets is expected to soft-land 2,370 lbs of cargo and two men and their life support on the moon. .....Cargo ships will home in on beacons (already set-up) and land  their load within half a mile of it. When all essential articles have arrived safely, the colonists will arrive , two by two, like the animals entering Noahs Ark. Their first job will be to assemble the litter of cargo and empty vehicles into connected habitations that can be filled with air from earth. "

" As soon as the colonists are reasonably snug, the ten colonists (or those who survive) will start a project that will be doubtless close to their hearts: getting back to earth. In the clutter of equipment on their dusty lunar plain, they will find enough rocket engines, heat  shields, navigation instruments , and other parts to assemble five return vehicles, each of which can blast two men off the moon and land them hopefully in good condition, back on its surface." 

"Chapel and Garden: About many of the details of the moon colony, G.E are necessarily vague, but the cost of the whole show they have estimated closely. The Saturn launch site, apparently on a tropical island, will cost $342,694,000 , including $1,520,000 for a chapel and $40,000 for moving a native village. The Saturns will cost $4.9 billion . Grand total for establishing the ten-man colony: $7.9 billion (in todays dollars) .

"The whole job can be accomplished, says G.E. in (7 years) and the colony can be kept on a permanent basis , perhaps with translucent domes and cheery gardens , for only $920,600,000 per year" 

Most of us would be outraged that G.E suggest that they / we  intend to spend $1,500,000 on a Chapel at the launch site but only $40,000 to move the native village!! 

And do we as a Nation, no, as a World, need to spend $920,600,000 per year to keep such as base?

Such sums are outrageous in todays world, but back in August 1961,  exactly 50 years next month since this Edition of TIME Magazine came out, those sums must have been totally unimaginable. More worrying is the sketch (photo above) of the proposed space colony. If you look closely there is a large American car in a garage and a boat remarkably like mine (which is a 1960 bondwood job) which appears to be half-sunk in the sand. Actually the said boat looks remarkably like my boat the day I "parked" it on a reef and tore off the rudder in the process.

And even more worrying is the "space ship" in the back ground which looks very much like a hot-water service , complete with blunt end, taking off.

Thank God this project never got off the ground. I doubt that a hot-water service spaceship would ever make it that far anyway.

But can you imagine the cost of petrol on the moon, to run the American gas-gussler depicted in the carport!? That alone, would put an end to a Sunday drive, even on the Moon.


Ned Hoskin.
www.WedByNed.com.au

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