Free Moondust by Andrew Smith Page B

highland sites with
13
and
14,
in search of broader insight into the Moon’s origin. Prior to the first landing, scientists had divided into two camps on this issue, defending their respective positions with evangelical passion: there were the “cold mooners,” who believed our moon to have formed out of wandering debris which had gathered into a sphere over billions of years and gradually been wooed to the Earth, and the “hot mooners,” who saw evidence of volcanic activity in all her features and believed she had once been geologically “alive.”
Apollo 11
had settled this argument, because the rocks Armstrong and Aldrin had collected on the Sea of Tranquillity included a grey slab of volcanic basalt, meaning that the “sea” was in fact a sea of congealed lava. The Moon had been alive. Nonetheless, while there were many similarities with Earthly basalt, there were enough significant differences to pose problemsfor hot-moon adherents to the hip “fission” theory, who believed that Earth’s companion had been torn from her own infant belly by a massive collision, possibly with another planet. There was still a lot to learn and scientists hoped that rocks from the rim of Cone Crater, which would have been ejected from deep beneath the surface by the immense force of the impact which had created it, would help.
    The outer slopes of the crater rose rough, pocked and high before the LM, wearing the scars of eons of assault from space. Ed Mitchell was looking forward to standing at its peak and gazing down into it: it was as wide as four football fields laid end to end and as deep as two and a half, and to reach it he and Shepard would travel far further from their LM haven than anyone had before. To help them carry their tools, they had a small cart, which they would pull, and a photomap for navigation, but from the beginning Mitchell realized that navigation was going to be much harder than expected, because against the oil-slick sky and flaring sun, he saw only a desert swell of dunelike hillocks; a furtive landscape strewn with depressions and craters which revealed themselves only when you were almost on top of them, like a collection of mischievous kids playing hide-and-seek. Again the lack of atmosphere and curvature of the land played tricks, made everything look closer than it was – confusing, disorienting. He was trapped in a dusty hall of mirrors a quarter million miles from home. With difficulty, he and Shepard found their first geologic sampling stop, then their second, and finally began their climb.
    The ground on the slopes was solid, but its undulation and the litter of rocks was greater than had been expected on the basis of the first two missions, and every time the cart’s wheels hit one, it reared up in slow motion, threatening to overturn and launch its cargo into the void. In the end the men decided to carry it and quickly grew exhausted from the effort, but trudged on in their restrictive suits anyway, turning only once to savour a view of the crater’s smooth outer slope, now zagged with silvery cart tracks leading all the way back to the LM, which glinted like a toy. By Mitchell’s reading of the map, they were almost at the top, but the scene wasn’t as his training had led himto expect: there were no large boulders skirting the rim – the deepest of the ejecta and the greatest prize for geologists – and moments later the reason for this became clear. What they’d imagined to be the rim was merely another rise. The side of Cone Crater still stretched dauntingly up and out before them. Shepard breathed: “We haven’t reached the rim yet,” while his partner radioed Mission Control with the words “Our positions are all in doubt.” Shepard’s pulse had reached a worrying 150 bpm.
    On the ground, discussions were taking place between doctors and scientists as to how important it was to reach the top.