Frontier Foundations — Shackleton Rim

Fron­tier Foun­da­tions – Shack­le­ton Rim

Moon Dis­patch

Mose’s guar­an­tee from the Astro­naut Office is a land­ing on Shack­le­ton Rim and an ice core from a per­ma­nent shad­owed region.

Moon base hard sci­ence fic­tion: air, water, pow­er, and the nar­row buffers that keep the Habs alive.

From the reader’s van­tage across the Fab­u­lae Lunae, the pole is not where you go because it is con­ve­nient. It is where you go because the ice is in the dark. Every­thing else — land­ing pads, pow­er, radi­a­tion shel­ters — is eas­i­er on the equa­tor. The his­tor­i­cal argu­ment is the one Nils Carmike states before any­one has put a boot on Shackleton’s rim: we only find out if the ice is there, and how much, if we get a sam­ple. Then, we have jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for fur­ther mis­sions. Under Con­rad Station’s boots, that sam­ple is still the unpaid foun­da­tion. The habi­tats drink from tanks and claim some frac­tion in the recy­clers, opt­ing for ship­ping water from Earth instead of find­ing a Lunar source. The rim is where some­one first had to stand in the light and send a core into the black to earn the right to build any of it.

The Detection / The First Lesson

Per­ma­nent­ly shad­owed region or Dark crater — same place, two names. A floor that nev­er sees the Sun stays cold enough to hold ice while the rim bakes in per­ma­nent light. Pow­er on the rim. Water in the shad­ow. They jus­ti­fy going there pri­mar­i­ly because of the water, but they can­not prove the water exists until they bring up a core.

The first les­son makes the shel­ters a wast­ed effort. Nils says it plain. There are two things that ruin the plan. The ice isn’t there. Or he doesn’t know how much there is. Peo­ple can do every­thing else more eas­i­ly at the equa­tor. The pole is only jus­ti­fied by the sam­ple. Mose Crane, sev­en­ty-one, every class of vehi­cle since the Shut­tle, hears it and names the mot­to. Do what is nec­es­sary. He already has the guar­an­tee from the Astro­naut Office. What I say goes. Includ­ing the crew. The back room planned three EVAs. Mose can put the core first. The offi­cial expla­na­tion for a polar land­ing feels inevitable only after the sam­ple exists. Before it, the rim is a bet.

The Local Problem

The site is Shackleton’s rim. Not the floor. A rough cir­cle of light around the crater, and a floor black­er than the stars beyond it. The lander’s shad­ow runs a hun­dred meters toward the dark. Hous­ton gives them a sta­ble six hours after a man­u­al land­ing. Mose flies him­self. This is how we do that.

The hard­ware is already split. Two rovers on site from the robot­ic attempt — one on the rim, one stuck on the floor with a core it may not have recov­ered. The lan­der brings one pres­sur­ized rover. They will use the rim rover the way the robots did. Mose does not want tele-oper­a­tors in the hole. Astro­nauts cov­er­ing astro­nauts. Nils is with him because he stud­ied the PSR retrieval. The core is the mis­sion. The rover on the floor is a bonus if it does not cost the sample.

A body on the rim is in sun­light and has pow­er. A body on the floor is in a cold trap cold­er than Plu­to’s sur­face. The core has to come up the same slope the rover failed to climb. Lat­er, the drill sticks. Mose falls. Nils drops the core to catch him, and it slides out of the lights. The rim is still the only place the light holds.

What Still Follows

Con­rad does not drink from Shack­le­ton. It drinks from the infra­struc­ture able to ship water to the Moon. The same physics still rules. Water is half the mass of a person’s con­sum­ables. Every kilo­gram not lift­ed from Earth is the argu­ment that put a lan­der on the rim of the crater. Luna­dyne and the Mason inter­ests already under­stand the fold­er. A polar sam­ple is lever­age. A miss­ing sam­ple is a sta­tion built on a bet.

The three-day lag is the part the guar­an­tee nev­er cov­ered. Mose could order the EVA. He could not order the core to stay in a man’s hands when the com­man­der was down. Under Conrad’s boots, the ques­tion is the same one Nils asked before they launched. How much ice is actu­al­ly in the dark, and what are you will­ing to spend to find out before you build the rest of the sta­tion on the answer?

If the rim was only jus­ti­fied by the sam­ple, what is Con­rad stand­ing on now that the core went down the slope?

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Fur­ther Reading

• The Luna­dyne Inci­dent and Oth­er Sto­ries — “Descent into Darkness”
• Thun­der Moon Tussle
• Mask of the Joy­ful Moon
• Relat­ed site posts: Fron­tier Foun­da­tions — Dark Craters, Hard Tech & Sci­ence — Retriev­ing the Rover, Char­ac­ter Spot­light — Mose, Char­ac­ter Spot­light — Nils Carmike

The Joy­ful Moon is still watching…

and the core still has to come up.

— Torn MacAlester

Still rid­ing the trails with Nils, Gen, and the whole Fab­u­lae Lunae crew

🚀🌕