We’ve landed. It took six hours at an unnerving high speed.
Several of us got sick. The ship was barely large enough to handle all twelve
of us, plus two crew members. I’m glad others piloted the craft for us.
We went very slowly at first, but the StarTram covers 2,000 miles to get the proper acceleration. We were packed in, shoulder to shoulder, sweating onto each other’s survival suits. We had helmets over our heads, in case a tiny hole in the ship began leaking our oxygen into the upper atmosphere as we left the planet. The burnt desert landscape rolled by, faster and faster until it was just a dusty blur, and the increasing pressure felt like it would melt my arms into my seat. We hit 3 times normal Earth gravity at some point before the ship curved steeply up on the ramp and soon, the cloudless blue sky peeled away and the endless black universe was revealed.
The sudden release of pressure made my head swim. We were warned that our inner ears might cause us to feel like there was no up or down, so we should focus on the differences between the floor – where our feet pointed – and the ceiling, where the tops of our helmets would be reflected to the plastic paint. They had painted the ceiling and floor different colors to make it easier for us to focus, but the effect didn’t help. One of the Araboa named Zariah, I noticed, kept her eyes tightly shut, and Yuda, the other Araboa, was whispering something to herself over and over, that I couldn’t make out through her helmet. I wondered if the Araboa had retained some kind of religious vestiges, superstitions to keep them safe instead of social structure and support. Vivien, Natsuki, and Samira – our three intrepid and sturdy Ikin – looked green, and Samira coughed up bile into her helmet. Ihsan gripped her seat. She was strapped in beside me, and we looked at each other.
“It is like capsizing boat, in terrible storm,” she said. I nodded, which made the disorientation worse.
After another hour, while the pilots checked every inch of the ship to make sure nothing had gone wrong exiting the atmosphere, we were finally allowed to take off our helmets. Samira kept her head bowed in shame as she wiped the bile off the glass.
The ship has no systems to make artificial gravity, so the pilots were floating as they checked various instrument panels and readouts. I will feel better about this experience when I can understand what they’re doing.
No one was brave enough to get out of their seats during the entire flight. I think Zariah went to sleep at some point. I hope by the end of our stay at Moon Base that we will all feel better about space travel. I don’t know how miners do it.
I don’t have the energy to write any more today, so I will pick things back up tomorrow. Moon base is very beautiful, but I need to rest.
We went very slowly at first, but the StarTram covers 2,000 miles to get the proper acceleration. We were packed in, shoulder to shoulder, sweating onto each other’s survival suits. We had helmets over our heads, in case a tiny hole in the ship began leaking our oxygen into the upper atmosphere as we left the planet. The burnt desert landscape rolled by, faster and faster until it was just a dusty blur, and the increasing pressure felt like it would melt my arms into my seat. We hit 3 times normal Earth gravity at some point before the ship curved steeply up on the ramp and soon, the cloudless blue sky peeled away and the endless black universe was revealed.
The sudden release of pressure made my head swim. We were warned that our inner ears might cause us to feel like there was no up or down, so we should focus on the differences between the floor – where our feet pointed – and the ceiling, where the tops of our helmets would be reflected to the plastic paint. They had painted the ceiling and floor different colors to make it easier for us to focus, but the effect didn’t help. One of the Araboa named Zariah, I noticed, kept her eyes tightly shut, and Yuda, the other Araboa, was whispering something to herself over and over, that I couldn’t make out through her helmet. I wondered if the Araboa had retained some kind of religious vestiges, superstitions to keep them safe instead of social structure and support. Vivien, Natsuki, and Samira – our three intrepid and sturdy Ikin – looked green, and Samira coughed up bile into her helmet. Ihsan gripped her seat. She was strapped in beside me, and we looked at each other.
“It is like capsizing boat, in terrible storm,” she said. I nodded, which made the disorientation worse.
After another hour, while the pilots checked every inch of the ship to make sure nothing had gone wrong exiting the atmosphere, we were finally allowed to take off our helmets. Samira kept her head bowed in shame as she wiped the bile off the glass.
The ship has no systems to make artificial gravity, so the pilots were floating as they checked various instrument panels and readouts. I will feel better about this experience when I can understand what they’re doing.
No one was brave enough to get out of their seats during the entire flight. I think Zariah went to sleep at some point. I hope by the end of our stay at Moon Base that we will all feel better about space travel. I don’t know how miners do it.
I don’t have the energy to write any more today, so I will pick things back up tomorrow. Moon base is very beautiful, but I need to rest.
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