The Red Planet

From the second BBC radio series of ‘
Journey into Space’.

First published 1956 by Herbert Jenkins Ltd.

All the characters in this book are purely imaginary and have no relation whatsoever to any living person

Yet today, in the Bay of Rainbows, stands Luna Colony --a vast monument to man’s engineering skill. There all air has to be manufactured and every article of food, clothing and equipment still has to be brought from Earth, for the Moon, being a barren globe, can supply us with nothing but a few raw materials which have to be ferried back to Earth before they can be put to any kind of use.

That men are on the Moon at all is due to the now historic trip of the first atomic-powered space ship Luna, captained by Jet Morgan and manned by his crew of three; Lemmy Barnet, radio engineer, Stephen Mitchell, the Australian astronautics engineer who designed the ship, and myself, Dr Matthews, known to the rest of the crew simply as ‘Doc’.

But why bother to establish a Colony at all, you may ask? There are a number of reasons, but the most important is that from the time Luna first landed on the Moon it was realised that at last man had a jumping-off ground from which to reach the more distant planets--in particular, Mars. And it was to this end that the work of Luna Colony was principally directed, for there was a time limit on the project, as I will now explain.

Mars is the nearest planet to the sun outside the Earth. In other words, the orbit of the Earth lies inside the Martian one. Neither orbit is circular, but elliptical. However, the Martian orbit is more elongated than the Earth’s and the direction of the elongation is not the same. In consequence, the paths of the Earth and Mars lie closer together in some places than in others. Earth and Mars travel round the sun in the same direction, but do not, as it were, travel hand in hand. Not only does Mars travel more slowly than the Earth, it also, because it is farther from the sun than our own planet, has much farther to go. Consequently the Earth is constantly overtaking and passing Mars.

When the Earth lies in a direct line between the sun and Mars, it is said to be in ‘opposition’ to the Red Planet. Oppositions occur about every 780 days and it is then that the distance between the two planets is at its minimum; this minimum distance varying, of course, according to whether the opposition takes place at points along the orbits which are close or not so close to each other. The smallest possible distance during an opposition is 35,000,000 miles and the greatest 63,000,000.

‘Close’ oppositions occur approximately every fifteen years and since 1900 there have been five. The opposition of 1924 was one of the closest of the century and, although nobody on Earth could have had the remotest idea of it at the time, not even the astronomers, it was one of the most important Martian oppositions in history. But just as important, perhaps, was the last which took place in 1971. In that year, using the Moon as a jumping-off ground, the attempt to reach Mars was made.

You may wonder why we should go to the trouble of assembling a fleet on the Moon when we could take off from the Earth direct. It is because the lower gravitational pull enables us to take off with larger ships and propel them with far less fuel expenditure.

The construction of Luna had been child’s play compared with the present project. Now, instead of just one ship, we were to take a whole fleet. It was estimated that the quickest possible time in which a space ship could reach Mars was approximately six months. But, perhaps, before I go into any details of the type of ship necessary for this great journey to the Red Planet, I had better remind you of a few more facts about the planet itself.

Mars is, of course, with the exception of Venus, the nearest planet to our own and, as planets go, it is quite small. Its diameter is approximately 4200 miles, nearly half that of our globe; its mass is little more than one-tenth that of the Earth and, in consequence, its gravitational pull is also far less. A man weighing fourteen stone on Earth would weigh nearer five on Mars.

But, in many other respects, Mars is very similar to Earth and has been called by some astronomers ‘Earth’s little brother’. Mars rotates on its axis in almost the same time as the Earth and its day is 24 hours 37 minutes in length. (The Moon’s day, you will remember, is 14 Earth days in length.) The Martian axis tilts at an angle of 25 degrees to its orbit; the Earth’s at 23 1/2. Seasonal conditions, therefore, are very similar to those we know on Earth except that, because of its longer journey round the sun, the Martian year is nearly twice as long.

Like the Earth, the poles of the Red Planet are ice-covered and, as summer approaches, these ice caps are seen to melt, and then to expand again during winter. The existence of these changing climatic conditions and the fact that Mars has an atmosphere made it almost certain that some kind of plant life existed there.

The sharp contrasts of colour that characterise the Martian surface--greens, blues, purples and reds, have been closely studied from the observatory established at Luna Colony, and what is believed to be vegetation has been observed to change colour with the seasons, just as vegetation does down on Earth. But what this vegetation is, whether it is forest, grass, fern or just moss, could never be established until man set foot on his little neighbour in space.

And then there was the vexed question of the ‘canals’ (or ‘canali’, to give them their correct name). For years after they were first discovered by Schiaparelli in 1877 these elusive features were the subject of fierce controversy. Many astronomers declared the canals did not exist at all. The argument was not settled until the establishment of the lunar observatory where, with no atmosphere to blanket out or distort the physical features on the Red Planet, the canals were indisputably proved to exist and were photographed hundreds of times. But it no longer seemed that the canals could have been made by any intelligent beings and it was almost certain that they did not contain water (which was a popular belief of the nineteenth century).

The problem of the ‘canals’ was one of many mysteries which we hoped to solve by our journey to Mars. But first we had to get there. Although we planned to land on Mars when it was close to the Earth, it was necessary to travel 355 million miles through space to reach the planet, for our ships could not travel in a straight line as the Moon ships virtually did. The reason for this is not hard to see. As I have already explained, the Earth, revolving in its orbit inside the Martian one, is constantly overtaking the planet. We travel round the sun at an average speed of 18 1/2 miles per second. Mars, on the other hand, travels at an average speed of only 15 miles a second.

If it were possible for the Earth to move over from its orbit into that of Mars, it would overtake it at a rate of 3 1/2 miles a second and eventually the two globes would collide. The Earth cannot, of course, deviate from its orbit but a space ship, leaving the Earth-Moon system at a carefully calculated speed and on an equally carefully calculated course, can. It can ‘drift’ outwards from the sun on a spiral path until the orbit of the Red Planet is reached. Once in the Martian orbit the speed of the ship can be adjusted until it matches that of the planet and, provided, of course, that the planet has already reached the same point, a landing can be made.

Such a journey takes six months or more and in that time the Earth will have travelled halfway round the sun and reached a position directly between the sun and Mars.

You can see that the slightest miscalculation could mean disaster to such a project and almost certain death for every man connected with it. But this was the least consideration in the minds of those chosen to take part in the great adventure.

We would be away from Earth for two years in all; six months’ travel each way and a year on the planet itself. Consequently, nearly all our ships were freighters, carrying equal amounts of fuel, food, water, oxygen and scientific equipment. Our supplies were estimated to be enough to last for three years--after our experience on the Moon we intended to leave a wide safety margin.

Of the ships we were taking--and we were taking eight in all--only three could actually make a landing on the Martian surface. In the interests of economy the others were constructed to travel only in airless space. Because of this, only ten men would be able actually to touch down on Mars. The remaining crews would have to stay within the freighters in free orbit about a thousand miles above the planet’s surface.

We would land on the southern ice cap. We realised that the temperature would be extremely low in those regions and that it was almost certain we would be unable to venture out of the ships at night. But it was only at the ice caps that we could be sure to find a surface smooth enough to land on. Once we had established a Polar Base, we intended to unload tractors and make our way towards the Martian equator, exploring the planet as we went.

The flagship of the fleet, the Discovery, was to be manned by the same men who had made the first journey to the Moon. We were to take off on April 1st, 1971.

By March the Mars Fleet was ready to leave but, looking back over the project now, I realise that from the very start it was ill-fated for, even before takeoff, things were against us--ominous portents, had we then known it, of what was to come.

The floor of the Bay of Rainbows is as flat as any surface you can find on the Moon, and measured from cape to cape (Laplace to Heraclides) the bay is 143 miles in width. In the north-east are the Jura mountains; a magnificent sight when the low sun lights up their peaks, many of which rise to twenty thousand feet or more.

The bay was chosen as the site of Luna Colony for various reasons. Being situated in a high altitude (only 450 from the lunar pole) the day temperature does not rise to the heights it reaches at the equator. The bay also offers a flat and fairly solid surface (the depth of dust there being far less than in all other ‘seas’ so far explored) on which to construct the launching ground and, at the same time, a cliff face into which the Colony is built.

Why is it necessary to live underground? For protection; against the extreme heat, intense cold and meteor showers. On the Moon, meteors take the place of weather as a subject of conversation. Sometimes days go by (Earth days, that is) without a meteor fall being recorded anywhere near the Colony. At other times, fortunately rare, they fall so thick and fast that it is not safe to go outside until the shower has passed.

Ninety-nine per cent of the meteors which travel Earthwards never reach its surface; they have burned themselves out long before. But every meteor that approaches the Moon is vaporised, not by an atmosphere, but by striking the lunar surface. And whenever a meteor strikes, an explosion, large or small according to the size of the missile, takes place and another scar is added to the Moon’s face.

These small pits, or craters, looking rather like small shell holes, dot the lunar surface everywhere. However, the northern hemisphere of the Moon is less affected by meteor bombardment than the southern and, in particular, that part of the Sea of Rains in which the Bay of Rainbows lies.

The Colony extends into the mountains for a depth of two miles. The only outbuildings are the Colony entrance, the observatory domes and the ‘rest rooms’ where men off duty can sit and gaze through a thick, transparent roof at the stars or the Earth, a huge, brilliant globe which waxes and wanes just as the Moon does when seen from home.

And it was in one of the observation domes that the first disaster occurred.

The chances of a meteor hitting Luna Colony, protected as it is by the mountain range, are very remote. The chances of a meteor actually hitting the dome, the most vulnerable part of Luna City, are incalculable--and yet it happened. One moment the four men who were in there had been enjoying their view of the universe, the next the precious artificial atmosphere had rushed out of a gaping hole, leaving the men in a vacuum. It happened so suddenly that none of them could have realised it.

Fortunately the rest of the Colony suffered no harm. The airtight door leading into the observation room stood up to the pressure and did not give way. Soon the damaged section was permanently and hermetically sealed off from the rest of our underground city.

Two freightermen were killed in that accident. For two years they had been training as crew members of the Mars Fleet and then, only a few days before takeoff, their lives had suddenly come to an end. Of course, we were prepared for such an emergency and had replacements standing by for every man in the expedition. But it was a sad business and something we could well have done without.