Steam­boat (Lunar Lan­der from “Golf and Out­gassing”): This is the pri­ma­ry space­craft used by Annie Mac­In­turn­er and Mil­ton John­son for their mis­sion in the Fra Mau­ro region. Steam­boat is a mod­ern lunar lan­der designed for a two-day sur­face stay. It com­pris­es a descent stage, which remains on the lunar sur­face (sim­i­lar to Apol­lo lan­ders), and an ascent mod­ule that returns the crew to lunar orbit. Annie showed the man­u­al flight of the ascent mod­ule when she used a con­tin­gency tra­jec­to­ry to escape a crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion. It acts as a com­mu­ni­ca­tions relay, and mis­sion con­trol can remote­ly or man­u­al­ly shut down its pow­er sys­tems, demon­strat­ing high con­trol flex­i­bil­i­ty. The lan­der’s posi­tion, approx­i­mate­ly 1,300 meters from the Apol­lo 14 descent stage, sug­gests a com­pact yet pre­cise land­ing capa­bil­i­ty. Mose Crane and Nils Carmike sub­se­quent­ly used this design of lan­der for their lunar land­ing on the rim of a crater near the Lunar south pole (“Descent into Darkness”).

Torn MacAlester’s Fabulae Lunae

The Lunadyne Incident  and Other Stories (buy now)

Fabulae Lunae 1

Thunder Moon Tussle (buy now)

Fabulae Lunae 2

Mask of the Joyful Moon