The Red Stuff

(Note: The Government is of the opinion that in the present critical situation the widest possible publicity should be given to the facts of the case and the events which gave rise to it. It is, therefore, with official approval and encouragement that the proprietors of WALTERS SPACE-NEWS here reprint in pamphlet form the account first published in both the printed and broadcast versions of the issue of that journal dated Friday, 20th July 2051)

Here is an official Government emergency warning:

“From now until further notice Clarke Lunar Station will be closed to traffic. No vessel of any kind at present on the Station may put to space, nor will any local craft be permit­ted to take off from there. All vessels now in space, whether earth­ward or outward bound, scheduled to call at Clarke must make imme­diate arrange­ments to divert to Whitley. Outward bound craft will ground at the normal Whitley Lunar Station base; earth­ward bound vessels will be directed to the emergency field and must ground there. Any vessel ignoring this instruc­tion will be refused grounding and be dealt with severely. It is empha­sized that any vessel grounding at or near Clarke for any reason whatsoever will be refused permis­sion to leave. This warning is effective imme­diately.”

It is likely that only a few of the millions who heard that an­nounce­ment, or the versions of it in other languages, broad­cast on the evening of Monday last, 16th July, took any great notice of it, in spite of its serious­ness of tone. After all, though we call this the Space age, only a frac­tional percen­tage of us have ever been or ever will be in space.

Readers of this journal cannot fail to have been troubled, more likely alarmed, by the order, but they think of space in a specialized way as some­thing directly affecting their calling or livelihood.

But to the average man, what is the Moon? It is an air­less, cheer­less cinder, the scene of some mining, useful as a testing ground for space condi­tions, but chiefly notable as a way-station appar­ently designed by provi­dence for the conve­nience of space-voyaging humanity. He knows that it is impor­tant, but he does not know how impor­tant, nor why.

He knows, perhaps, that the Clarke Lunar Station was first opened over fifty years ago, and that it was so named in honour of the octo­genarian Doctor of Physics who did so much to further space-travel, but he does not realize what, in terms of mathe­matics, of power and pay-load, the exis­tence of such a Station and fuel­ling base means. Nor that its absence would entail sus­pension of space-travel almost entirely for a very long time, until we could com­pletely orga­nize our methods — if we could.

Luckily we are not altogether denied use of the Moon by the closing of Clarke; we can still operate through the Whitley Station — at present. But if that cannot be main­tained in use, the question of conti­nued space-travel ships of the present types becomes grave to the point of hope­less­ness.

To our regular readers parts of the account which follows will not be new, but it has seemed to the editors desir­able that at this critical junc­ture all the infor­mation available should be collated and presented to the public in the form of a narra­tive giving as honest a picture as possible of the present situ­ation, and its poten­tiali­ties.