Landing on the Moon

The most depressing obstacle to voyaging to the moon is how to raise money (about $10 billion) to pay for fleets of gigantic rockets and floods of expensive fuel. Other problems, if less immediate, are more entertaining. In the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Astronomer H. Percy Wilkins, Ph.D., F.R.A.S., tries to figure out where to land on the moon.

As every space fan knows, the spaceship will approach the moon tail first, its rocket motors blasting hard enough to cancel the speed of falling through the moon's gravitational field. As it nears the surface, it will extend three spring-cushioned legs on which (if all goes well) it will come to rest in a vertical position, undamaged and ready for the earthbound blastoff. This delicate maneuver requires a level landing site; if the spaceship were to hit the lunar equivalent of the Grand Canyon, it would have small chance of seeing the earth again.

The moon, says Dr. Wilkins, has plenty of level plains (misnamed "seas"), but to land on one of them would be like landing in the middle of the Sahara Desert. There would be nothing of interest nearby for the voyagers to explore. The moon's interesting parts are its mountainous areas, and they are mostly so rough that no spaceship could land on them without a disastrous crash. Dr. Wilkins thinks that the best bet would be to land inside one of the moon's great craters. Some of them are rough inside, but others look fairly smooth.

The apparent smoothness may be an illusion. Dr. Wilkins believes that the moon's surface is solid, not covered with dust, but he fears that it may be cluttered with small, sharp-edged ridges. Through the early telescopes, the ridges could not be seen, but as telescopes have improved, more and more of them have appeared. There is a good chance that even the smoothest-looking parts of the moon may be cut-up badlands. Dr. Wilkins suggests that moon voyagers make no advance decisions about landing sites. Their spaceship had better approach with caution, like a crippled airplane picking out the likeliest cornfield.

Even the most cautious approach may not assure a safe landing. It is possible, says Dr. Wilkins, that the moon is made of brittle, bubbly rock, with many fragile cavities just below the surface. This treacherous stuff may be too weak to support an appreciable weight. The spaceship that blunders into it will be in no condition to take off again for the long voyage home.

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