Chapter 455 - 446 MTV Selection_1

"Contact Commander, we have a problem."

In the not-so-spacious ascent vehicle of "Full Moon," four astronauts were busy pinching their noses with simple masks:

They were trying to figure out how to get rid of the moon dust in the cabin.

Anyone who frequently visits the Moon knows it’s easy to get to the Moon, but hard to remove dust.

Moon dust, being rich in metal content and thus abundant in static electricity, easily adheres to objects and is a significant factor in reducing the lifespan of detectors.

It’s equally harmful to astronauts; these particles can easily enter the body, and inhaling too much can cause lung diseases and functional impairment. It’s also quite corrosive to spacesuits.

The spacesuits used on the International Space Station can last many years with proper maintenance, but those recovered from the Apollo 11 mission were declared of no value, with heavily damaged surfaces.

Of course, NACA had considered this problem before landing and came up with a small brush to remove as much moon dust as possible before entering the cabin.

The Dust mission’s countermeasures were similar, just enhanced with magnetic adhesion and electrostatic absorption features.

However, during several extravehicular activities, the amount of moon dust adhering to the equipment was more than expected, and the cleaning for the Artemis rescue wasn’t thorough.

It was a disaster for Victor and Koch, with their spacesuits almost completely covered in moon dust. The brushes were worn out, and they couldn’t clean them thoroughly, so they had to enter the cabin as is.

After sleeping, the astronauts woke up to find the cabin full of floating moon dust, so they all bent over to clean it up bit by bit:

Cleaning was necessary; if these tiny particles got into the circuits and caused any failures, the first batch of astronauts returning to the Moon could be wiped out.

The tight space was hardly enough for four, but the ground crew didn’t have any good solutions for the moment.

The best measure would be to add a transition chamber at the exit, where astronauts would be sprayed with cleaning fluid in the chamber and then have the moon dust slowly removed with an electrostatic generator, after which it would be safe to take off the spacesuit and enter the living quarters.

But obviously, "Full Moon" didn’t have enough space for such arrangements; only future permanent bases would have this function. For now... they made do.

The current environment in the lander wasn’t just cramped due to two additional people; there were many other problems:

First, food and water consumption had doubled, turning what was once ample storage into just enough;

The oxygen supply wasn’t a big issue as leftover fuel from the lander could be used,;

The biggest trouble was going to the bathroom. Although the four astronauts could tolerate using a portable toilet and the smell, it was different with a woman present.

When Koch embarrassingly said she couldn’t hold it and they couldn’t possibly go out to avoid it, the three men had to turn towards the wall and chat quietly, even though Koch said she didn’t mind.

What was once a novel and adventurous journey to the Moon had lost its allure, and all four astronauts were looking forward to heading into space as soon as possible.

Koch and Victor were particularly interested in "U-Tu," knowing that its living quarters with a weight of 50 tons were far more comfortable than the "Gateway."

Although they couldn’t solve some of the problems they faced for the time being, they were faithfully recorded by the ground team to be considered for future improvements.

...

"We must have this transition chamber in our design for the reusable lander. Otherwise, it poses too much harm to the astronauts.

It’s like the workers previously in mines and fiberglass production lines, except the harm from moon dust is even worse."

After learning about the problems encountered by Dawn III, Lin Ju immediately checked whether their own lunar development plans had taken this into account.

After all, the reusable lander they were developing, in collaboration with the Fifth Institute, was somewhat similar to the "Blue Moon" in configuration, weighing around 40 tons. Although it was larger, it was still challenging to fit a transition chamber.

The person responsible for liaising and designing the lander was Guo Shen, who was currently overseeing subsystem design projects and was together with Lin Ju in Qiongzhou.

He took out the preliminary design sketch of the New Yuan lander and, pointing at its unique round hatch, said:

"Currently, I’m planning to use the folding airlock chamber proposed by the space agency, the same technology that Union applied on their Ascender II for extravehicular activities.

The airlock chamber is designed to be flexible and inflatable, expanding upon landing."

The advantage of a flexible airlock chamber is that it’s light and compact for launch, which hardly uses the already scarce space, making it an easily implementable solution for small landers.

But upon seeing this, Lin Ju’s first thought was of the scene from "Mars Rescue" starring Matt Damon, where the habitable module’s airlock chamber exploded into the sky—and now it was a flexible design, which seemed somewhat unreliable.

Guo Shen explained, "The technology for flexible cabin sections has been in use for quite some time, and various countries are developing this new technology. It might seem unreliable, but as technology progresses, it will quickly mature."

"But our work environment is the lunar surface, where it needs to frequently expand, which is very demanding. Moon dust particles will also constantly wear down the inflatable walls."

"This..." Guo Shen was also troubled. The current design of the reusable lander was, in fact, a modified version of the MTV cargo spacecraft originally used for fuel transport, with limited potential for modification. If the airlock chamber is designed inside the craft, it would greatly reduce the available space, which seemed counterproductive.

"Then perhaps we could make the airlock part of the ground equipment, fit it with wheels to become a lunar rover, and just dock it upon the lander’s landing. It’s a bit of trouble, but it would reduce the risks significantly," Guo said.

This suggestion was a bit of a workaround, but Lin Ju had to admit it was indeed effective and was a solution.

Developing a larger model was, of course, possible, but the reusable lander was slated for use this year, and the same configuration as the MTV cargo spacecraft would save on costs and simplify maintenance; it wasn’t so easily modified.

If only the Moon had an atmosphere, a space shuttle could land directly. Most of ... Lin Ju’s mind flashed with something; he thought hard for a while and finally remembered one lander currently in development: the XN-90.

The structure of the XN-90 was certainly no issue; when used on the Moon, it could reach a lift-off mass of 300 tons, and fitting an airlock chamber into its enormous size of 72x44 meters wasn’t a big deal.

Of course, they couldn’t rely on the XN-90 yet, but... if they didn’t need to take off from the ground, they wouldn’t have to wait for NACA anymore.

After all, once lunar fuel production was self-sufficient, switching to lower-thrust hydrogen or methane engines would be enough, overcoming the most significant technical hurdle.

The structure... Hadn’t the prototype for the XN-90’s body already entered production? Wouldn’t it be feasible to modify it into a conventional power lander at this pace?