Riding the Emptiness

The cost of getting to the Moon is too high to sustain permanent human habitats. People and equipment for small stations can be transported via rockets, but even small habitats are unlikely to be sustainable because of the cost of rocket trips from Earth. Tens of millions of dollars are spent to put a single human in orbit; that will never do.Permanent settlements won't be sustainable if rockets are the only means to support human habitats on the Moon.It's the huge gravity well of Earth and the lesser one of the Moon that are likely to keep humanity off of the Moon. Rockets are expensive and most of the weight of a launch goes into fuel and boosters that are completely used up. Payloads are small and the dollar-per-pound cost is enormous.Two engineers have already made the cost of transporting cargo from Earth orbit to lunar orbit cheaper with their new solar-enhanced lightships. Now they have an idea for creating a much cheaper approach to beating the gravity wells. With the support of Smith Space Industries, their target is to bring costs down enough to make the Moon a second permanent home for humanity. Trips to Earth orbit have to be cheaper, but that's only a start on the company's program to make life on the Moon sustainable.Rockets cannot be the whole solution. In the new plan, nothing will be thrown away. What goes into space and travels to the Moon will be used and reused to make the Moon humanity's first home away from Earth. Rockets will become a minor part of the grand plan.

Christine Wellington is a power engineer who has signed a contract for consulting services on the Moon. She's been to orbit around Earth, but never stayed on the Gemini space station or flown to the Moon itself. The scope of work for her project is to certify the new Farside solar farm and the power beam network that connects all of the solar farms on Earthside and Farside.She's a tourist for a short time on the Moon. After that, she walks on the Moon at the South Pole, rides in a motor home-like rover to get to her destinations, and encounters some unexpected surprises. It's an adventure of a lifetime for the young engineer. Steve Besik's writing goal is to contribute new ideas to science fiction.Steve's primary reading interests are science fiction and military history. Writing interest at the moment is space travel, especially changes to near-term technology that might result in interplanetary space travel by humans (rather than automated probes).He was educated as an engineer and spent most of his working life in information technology. He is a supporter and frequent user of Wikipedia.For comments, questions, or corrections, Steve can be reached at sbesik@artiplex.net.