Reaching for the Stars: A Space Colonization Quest

Roksana Przygocka is an astronaut. And today, she is flying off for the mission of her life. Under her, in a great roar of flames, the rocket takes off. This is it. Roksana is going to the Moon.

"Artemis 5, this is Kourou. You are GO for orbit. Repeat, you are GO for orbit".
The voice bring her out of his dazed state.
"Kourou", she responds, "this is Artemis 5. Roger, GO for orbit."
There is not much for her to say. This is mostly perfunctory anyway, the staging and maneuvering is performed by the onboard computer. She is only to take control in case of issues. But there will be no issues today, she knows. She is going to the Moon!
"Artemis 5, this is Kourou. Stand ready for translunar injection."
Roksana's heart is loud in her chest. There is no going back now, once thrust has begun she will start on a path that will take her further from the Earth that he has ever been. The numerous failure risks that she gamely ignored earlier are coming back now – what if ignition doesn't start, what if staging fails, what if, what if? - but there is no time for such worries.
"One minute to the burn. The duration will be 4.53 minutes. Burning… Shutdown."
She feels the acceleration: thrust has begun. Roksana forcibly relaxes her breathing. On the screen, she watches as the Earth start growing steadily smaller.
"Kourou", she says into her comm, "burn completed. You copying our residuals?"
"Affirmative. Good burn, residuals are on the order of 20 cm per second or less, they will not be trimmed."
"Kourou, is there anything else you need on the burn status report?"
"This is Kourou, negative, over".
The reassuring chatter help her relax further. Everything is ok, the mission is going perfectly – there is no need for worry. Settling more comfortably into her seat, she prepares for three long day of minor course corrections before her destination is finally reached.
***
"Artemis 5, this is Kourou with the readback of the lunar orbit insertion burn. The ignition time for that burn is 75 hours 49 minutes 49 seconds. Duration of that burn 6 minutes 2 seconds, retrograde and the change in velocity 889 meters per second. The expected orbit following that maneuver is 313 by 114 km. To repeat the LOS AOS times we will lose signal with Artemis 5 at 75 hours 41 minutes 23 seconds as it goes behind the Moon. Given a successful lunar orbit insertion we will acquire the signal at 76 hours 15 minutes 29 seconds. Landing in 2 hours 42 minutes."
Roksana can barely listen to the readout. The moon fills her hatch window, half of it in the deep shadow of the Earth and the other gloriously lit up by the light of the Sun. They are approaching from beneath the Moon's orbit, aiming to take a polar orbit, so Roksana is perfectly placed to look at the lunar South Pole. The view is breathtaking, the low-angle light illuminating the mountains of the craters' rim while keeping the depths of the craters in deep darkness. It takes her only a few moment to localize her destination, Shackleton Crater. Anticipation coils in her gut.
***
"This is Kourou at 76 hours, 16 minutes. The lunar ascent/descent module should now be undocked from the command and service module. Do you confirm?"
"This is Artemis 5 Lunar AD module, confirmed."
"This is Kourou. We're presently 2 minutes and 35 seconds away from the separation burn of the command module to give the Lunar Ascent/Descent Module and the Command Module a separation distance after descent orbit insertion maneuver of about 3 kilometers. Artemis 5, you have the GO for the separation maneuver."
"This is the Lunar AD module, ready for maneuver, over."
As Roksana watches, the command module in which she spent the last 3 days start drifting away from her. The trickiest part of the mission starts now – the descent maneuver is not computerized.
"This is Kourou, we're now less than one minute from the scheduled time for the descent orbit insertion maneuver performed by the lunar ascent/descent module on the backside of the moon. Of course, we will lose radio contact with the spacecraft. Lunar AD module, are you ready?"
"Lunar AD module, ready, over."
"This is Kourou, GO for lunar descent maneuver, repeat, GO for Lunar descent maneuver!"
Heart thundering in her chest, Roksana starts the burn. She is on her own now: the reassuring contact with Kourou will be impossible for the first stages of the lunar descent. But it is fine. She eyes the lunar landmarks she knows by rote: Shoemaker, Amundsen, Cabeus craters, and of course, Shackleton Crater. She will have to carefully keep them in her sight to land in the target mountain, but she has practiced this a thousand times. She will be just fine.
"Lunar AD module, Kourou standing by. Over." The radio crackles. Finally back in contact!
"Kourou, Lunar AD module, receiving you loud and clear!"
"Lunar AD module, how did it go?"
She smiles.
"Kourou, everything going swimmingly. Beautiful!"
"Good to hear! We're standing by for you, Lunar AD module."
***
"Kourou here, 5 minutes to ignition for power descent. Lunar AD module if you copy, you are GO for power descent, repeat, you are GO for power descent."
"Understood!"
"On my mark, 3:30 until ignition!"
"Understood."
"Mark."
"Artemis 5, start ignition. Repeat, start ignition!"
And so it starts. Keeping a close eye on her distance to target, Roksana starts the burn.
"Artemis 5, Kourou here. Looking good, keep it up!"
The stress is intense. If she messes this up she will splatter on the lunar surface. But she knows how to deal with this, she is prepared. Using slight movements, she adjust her angle of approach. She needs to land on a mountain, she needs to find a relatively flat surface on the mountain. She identified one hours ago from much higher up, but now she can't find it anymore. Where is it? Where is it!
On the sunlit summit, crater-side. There! She forbid herself from giving a small sigh of relief. She is not done. Some more minute adjustments to her angle of approach see her carefully plummeting toward the flattened spot on the summit, several hectares wide, that she identified. She up the thrust some more, falling too fast, now it's good. Ok. 12864 meters to target, falling at 146 meters per second. 11456 meters. 10289. 8763. Raise thrust some more. 67 meters per second. 5438 meters to target. Is she going too fast? No, this is just right. 4387. 3985. A bit more thrust, speed to 35 meters per second. Bit more thrust. A little bit more. 20 meters per hour. 985 meters to target, practically there. Speed at 5 meters per second. A safe speed. She carefully, carefully keep the spacecraft level with the surface that she can see very well now, the ground mercifully flat. The spacecraft slowly approaches, the regolith now flying off from the engines' thrust. She slows the spacecraft some more, now falling slower than a feather. Less than a minute later, she feels it, a slight impact, ever so slight.
She is touched down. She has done it! She has safely touched down! Heart thundering in her chest, ready for the most important moments of her life, she shut down her engines.
She steps out of the lunar module. "Another giant leap for mankind", she says, knowing everybody from Arkangelsk to Ushuaia is listening to her, "United for world peace".

Far from her, in the control room in Kourou, thunderous applause fills the air.

From up here, the lunar landscape is beautiful: high chains of peaks circling pitch-black craters, and above the Earth hangs low over the horizon, a magnificent blue and white disc half in shadow. As Roskana starts setting up the cargo she brought with her, she imagine the lunar base soon to occupy the summit: a wondrous place of spacious rooms buried under the regolith, large solar panels drinking up the light of the Sun, and astronauts of all nationalities working together under the earthlight.
But Rome wasn't built in a day, and it must all begin with her. She starts her long trek to the bottom of the crater. Walking on the Moon is odd – the low gravity make each step take slightly longer than they should, but she get used to it soon enough. Half an hour later she reach the bottom of the crater, illuminated only by the light of her suit, she smiles. Ice glitter like diamonds on the ground. She fill her bag with regolith, then walk back to the base. She empty her bag in an innocuous and quite simple instrument. A minute later, the machine gift her a glass filled with clear liquid.
Smiling, she bring it to her lips, and enjoy a glass of ice-cold lunar water.


Though Roksana Przygocka was not the first human to walk on the Moon, her short, televised walk on the Moon rekindled the enthusiasm for space exploration among the public. While there, under the eyes of most of Earth's population, she tested a number of systems utterly necessary for the establishment of the lunar base, among which water extraction from the water-rich regolith of Shackleton Crater and the production of rocket fuel from said water.
Later flights from the Artemis missions would continue setting up the base, installing buildings covered of regolith for protection against solar radiations and installing all the infrastructure necessary for the base to be semi-permanent, among which a small glasshouse and enough fuel extraction capacity to fully refuel the Ascent/Descent module.
Excerpt from History of Space Colonization, Harper Editions


And now for the most important vote of the quest so far:
How to name your new Lunar Base?
[]Shackleton Base
[]Kofi Annan Lunar Base
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