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Show .o I' J oao Q a Odpdo aonDfiixpD'Dss BcpsocHJd GOoa Staima m to-- M MJcoxoXio'!:D m cms imam ffim i ms by Mo. Patrick Powers is going to be a man There really moon. In fact, there are go. ing to be quite a few Just as surely as you are reading this, you will be reading soon within a few short years of man reaching the moon. It could happen in five years. It will surely happen in ten. There are still some tough problems to lick rocket propulsion, missile guidance but they are technical mat ters in which constant Droeress is being made and which will be solved. We have reached the stage now to plan for man after he gets to the moon. . The great challenge confronting us is not so much how to get to the moon but how to accommodate ourselves to our satellite when we reach it. The moon is not going to be too hospitable! In fact, it would be hard to imagine a more sullen, dismal, bleak, uninvit ing piece of territory. In the first place, when man gets there he may find a searing, blistering temperature it would be like stepping into an oven. Or he could find that the . temperature is down to . 240 degrees below zero, making the weather in the Arctic and" Antarctic seem like Miami Beach. And, with no atmosphere encircling the moon to exert a temporizing and restraining influence, the temperatures on the moon continually fluctuate from one extreme to the other. It's as if the moon were a piece of steel and the sun the forge. When the sun is . shining upon the moon a period of 212-degr- 4 ee Family Weekly, April 19, 1959 about two weeks then the moon is at a white-h- ot pitch. But when the face of the moon is away from the sun also about two weeks then the satellite becomes as frigidly and inhumanly cold as cold steel. Undoubtedly, there is some sort of transition period from extreme hot to extreme cold and then back again in which temperatures more typical of earth are approximated. Chances are, such periods would be quite brief perhaps only a matter of hours but even if man could arrive on the moon during this period it would be small consolation for him. He wouldn't be able to just step out of his' rocket ship, even if it were a pleasantly balmy 80 degrees outside. For one thing, the sun's rays hit the moon directly, without any softening and diffusing process,. as on earth. So everything about the moon may be affected by cosmic radiation and extremely harmful to man. Even if this weren't so, man wouldn't find much of a welcome or anything conducive to his well-bein- g. There is no air on the moon, no semblance-o- f oxygen. He couldn't breathe. In other words, the plain fact is that man cannot live in the moon's environment. In order to stay on the moon, he must bring along his own environment from earth. Before he can step out of his space ship, man will have to wear a helmet containing the oxygen he needs to breathe. Everything else that man needs to . : A scientist-soldie- r, the author came by his calling naturally. His father, now retired, was a colonel in the Army chemical i I NS4 corps. Major Powers, a West Pointer, studied aerodynamics and missile theory at the University of Southern California. He is currently assigned to the Pentagon with the research and development command, the Army's missile unit. sustain him will also have to come from the earth his food, his shelter. The moon is so barren it doesn't even have any water. That will also have to be supplied from earth. as rr is very difficult for man Justpicture infinity, the concept of space without end, so is "it hard to conceive of the utter bleakness and desolation of the moon. It couldn't sustain life in a single blade of grass. It's a dead world, so bereft of even the most elemental influences on the earth that there are no such things as different seasons there. .There isn't even any weather on the moon! There are no clouds, no rain, no wind, no erosion. Except that it runs hot or cold, it's a place of complete ' sterility. It doesn't even have much gravity to speak of. A man who weighed 200 pounds on earth would ; , weigh only 34 while on the moon. There isn't any noise on the moon, at" least nothing transmittable. One wouldn't hear sounds on the moon because there aren't any air waves to transmit the sounds. You couldn't carry on a conversation on the moon. You couldn't hear a person talk you would just see his lips move. Yet man will not only go to the moon but inhabit it. It is important that he do so, for the moon is a very valuable piece of. real estate. But in order foreman to be .able to "take over" the moon, it's possible that a "new breed" of man will have to be v cultivated on earth; With its weightlessness, its sound-lessneits utter forlorn state of being, the moon is so different from anything on earth that the people selected to go to it will have to be isolated at a fairly early age, say in their teens ss, |