Back to the Moon - New Steps.

Chapter 2

What does Team 2 have to do now?  "Well, i have a special guest here, she wants to be an Astronaut and i classify her suitable." told Alexander to the Team. Lisa Doya, the new Astronaut, was standing right next to Alexander Kerman. "Hello, im Lisa Doya, im 21 years old, im from Scotland and... Euh... Yeah." said Lisa. "Ok team, you should go ahead and talk for a bit while i give Lisa a tour of the complex." told Alexander. Alexander and Lisa left the room.

Complex tour.

"Well im pretty sure you know that the designing, planning and meeting area is near the entrance, lets go to the old rocket hangar" said Alexander. Alex and Lisa walked to a massive plane hangar, ah well, its filled with rockets so it is not really a "plane" hangar. "Look! This relatively small one is the Alexander 1, my first ever rocket that made it to space. This is the last real one of its kind. Right next to it is the Alexander 2C, its 2x times bigger and it brought us alot of science information about space. Right next to that i have the Alexander 3 rocket, it send our first satellite into orbit, it also put my son, my daughter and Zara, the first underaged and so far youngest astronaut in space. She was 8 years old, now she is 16 and also an experienced spacecraft pilot." told Alexander. "So whats with the graffiti on those rockets? It looks depressing." asked Lisa. "Well, a 7 years ago, when Lieke Naaktgeboren, our president, dissapeard, i had to move to Syria to continue the program. I worked there untill 2053, so i left the complex abonded for 3 years. We cleaned the graffiti in all the rooms expect the rocket hangar, some decoration could not do bad." told Alexander.

After the old hangar, they went to hangar 7, their most awesome hangar so far. "Look! My favourite hangar! Where the big rockets sleep! This hangar is actually 3 massive hangars attached to each other. It is 300 meters long! Do you see that rocket there? Thats the Harman II, the heaviest rocket we have so far, it can carry 22 tons to LEO. That is the thing that is going to send us to the Moon soon! We have 3 of them in total." told Alexander. "So where are all the capsules?" asked Lisa. "Well, those are all sold out to museums, that was the only way we could earn money when Lieke dissapeard." Alexander replied.

Next up was the production building, yet another hangar, but smaller. "So here is where we build our tanks, engines, heat shields and other things. We have some HARE's here, the rocket engines used for the Harman II. And we also have some HTVE's here, the ones we will have to use for our lunar lander. We used them on previous lunar missions, like the Maan 7 mission, wich brought samples from the Moon back to Earth." told Alexander.

Afterwards, they went to the Astronaut training complex. 2 small hangars, one with a Zero-G plane and the other one with a capsule simulator, a vacuum room and a G-force simulator. "So, this is where you will train, it is like a playground! Not much here is done now. Since we cancelled the manned program a few years ago, we are trying to clean it up now." said Alexander.

Their tour was done, they was more to see, but Lisa said it was enough and they went back to the design room. What have they talked about?

Team 2: Boredom

Alexander and Lisa left the room for the tour. When the door was closed, there was an akward silence. "Should we secretly design a Moon Rocket?" suggested Dimitri Pekar, Alexanders best friend. "Do we have enough space? Resources? Money?" asked Bill Kerman to his team. "We have enough space, Hangar 4, 5 and 6 can hold a Saturn V each. Resources and money? Well, lets wait when we finish the first mission so we got our money, so we can get our resources and stuff like that" answered John Kerman. "You know what? Lets leave the rocket for later, im probably going too far." said Dimitri. "Ok, some what now?" said Bill. Bill took a closer look at the drawing of the lander. Bill is an experienced engineer, he needs to take a look at a design for at least 10 minutes, to see if it is plausible enough. After 10 minutes of akward silence, Bill finaly said: "I see no flaws.". Nobody said something back. They where either brainstorming, sleeping or drawing random smileys.

After 3 hours of boredom

Checking time

"Come on people, we are going to check your designs and see if they fit." told Alexander. Both teams went to the meeting room. Alexander looked at the drawing of the METSS-D1. He shaked his head. ''I dont think its a good idea, the habitation module is too large and heavy and the small Soyuz-like capsule is too small for a 1-2 week mission, i don't think its a good idea.'' told Alexander to Team 1. ''All that work for no reason? What are we going to do?'' asked Zara Bruin. ''Tommorow  we will work on the METSS-D2 and the transfer stage all together, ok?'' Answered Alexander. Team 1 was dissapointed. ''Ok then, sir.'' said Johannes Pannes dissapointed. ''Now the lander is a pretty plausible design, but it can only hold 1 person, so we cant keep it for future missions, so we will work on our second lander also tommorow.'' told Alexander. ''And i got to say, the thing with the teams was not a good idea, we wont ever do that again.'' told Alexander. ''Okay people, you can go home now, tommorow we will be designing the second lander and a new and better METSS'' reminded Alexander to the designers

Alexanders walked down the gravel path to his bicycle. Dimitri Petrov approached Alexander. ''Dimitri! How are you doing my friend!'' said Alexander to Dimitri. ''Hello! Well i drew this thing while we did nothing for those 3 hours, it is a rocket we could use for our future missions, it could carry up to 130 tons into LEO. So its better than the Saturn V! You like it?'' said Dimitri. Alexander looked at the drawing. A smile started to grow on Alexanders face. ''Awesome thing my friend. We can take a look at it later, but our first mission will be done with the Harman II, okay?'' told Alexander to Dimitri. ''Yeah of course, thanks! Do svidanya! I have to keep care of the kids! Ya vernus!'' said Dimitri.

End of Chapter 2