Bridge To The Moon: Proloque

(In which a very, very, very, very, very, very old, but sometime wily ancestor, introduces the subject, and tells his much, much, much, much, much, much younger and trusting descendant, of the complications - as he (mis?)understands them - associated with building a bridge to the Moon.)

A great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather asked his great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, “Did I ever tell you about my trip to the Moon?”

His great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter replied, “No. I didn’t think you could ever afford a spaceship voyage.”

The great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, correcting his young descendant, explained, “I’m not poor, dear, I can afford a spaceship voyage to the Moon, but I didn’t go by spaceship - I caught the train across the bridge.”

The great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter exclaimed, “A bridge to the Moon!?!” for she had never heard of the Moon bridge that used to be. “Did Great-great-great-great-great-great-grandma go with you, or your children, my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, and my great-great-great-great-great-granduncles, and my great-great-great-great-great-grandaunties?”

“This was before I met your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother,” said Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad. “This was when I was a very, very, very, very, very, very young man, about two hundred odd years ago.”

“Really?” exclaimed the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter.

“Yes, really,” confirmed the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.

“Did you have a girlfriend, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad?” enquired the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter.

“Not at that time, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter,” answered the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. “Perhaps I wasn’t good looking enough or interesting enough, but my luck changed when I met your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. However, I had some great friends in those days.”

“Were they great, great, great, great, great, great friends?” asked the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter.

“Well they were great, but not quite that great,” replied the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather”. He then began his tale.

“In those days, the Moon bridge wasn’t actually fixed in place on Earth, and they would move the Earth end of the bridge up and down, so it would briefly connect with the Earth at certain times, in certain different places. They could connect the bridge permanently to the Moon, because we always see the same side of the Moon from the Earth. The Moon does wobble a little bit because of its libation, but basically it always shows the same side to the Earth.”

(For those of us unfamiliar with the terminology, the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather meant libration, not libation. Libration is the scientific term for the Moon’s wobbling, whereas a libation is an offering of an alcoholic drink.)

“What was holding up the bridge, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad?,” asked his great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter.

“Well, nothing really,” answered her great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. “It was just hanging in space. They somehow, (don’t ask me how), managed to balance the forces acting on it in such a way that it neither fell to the Earth, nor to the Moon. I seem to remember hearing something about it using the same basic principle as a space elevator.”

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad continued: “Because the Moon orbits around the Earth, and moves closer to the Earth sometimes and further away at other times, and because the Earth rotates every 24 hours, they thought they couldn’t attach the Earth end to a fixed point on Earth, so they had to engineer great mechanisms to allow the Earth end to move to different places on Earth at different times. They had to have lots of slack in the bridge to account for the vast differences in length required, and they could only keep one end at one point for a few minutes at a time. If it wasn’t for some of that slack, they would have had to have the Earth end constantly moving across the surface of the Earth - which would have worn a great trench in the surface while on land, then dragged through the sea, and caused terrible waves and too much drag, and would have pulled the Earth end of the bridge apart.

“Later, they extended the bridge a whole lot further and attached it permanently to the Earth, (passing above Earth’s northern polar regions, and incorporating an untwisting mechanism that operated once a day), such that it would have a little slack in it when the Earth and Moon were at their furthest points, and a lot of slack when they were at their closest. But the bridge was getting rather contorted as a result of all this movement, and it was also having an effect on the length of the day on Earth, (making days longer), and on the length of the lunar month, (making them longer too). People who said there were never enough hours in the day thought this was a good thing, but it was messing with the seasons, the weather and the climate, and animals and plants were getting terribly confused as well. Also, changes in the gravitational forces acting on different parts of the bridge, were putting large stresses on those parts, which in combination with how it was getting all contorted, threatened to break it to pieces. And when spaceship travel had become cheap enough that it was uneconomical to send freight over the bridge, they scrapped it and sold it to the Martians.”

“Wow!” said the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter. “I didn’t know that!”

“I was nearly going to go to the Moon again another time, when they built the Earth end extension, but thought better of it when the Earth end came away from the Earth and was flailing about wildly, hitting some places on Earth. In fact, that’s how the Grand Canyon and Mt. Everest were formed - the bridge hit part of America and dug out the Grand Canyon, and the rock and dirt from there flew up high into the stratosphere, and came down again and landed in the Himalayas, forming Mt. Everest.”

“Really? I didn’t know that!” replied the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, tickled pink that she’d learned a fascinating new fact from her great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.

“Well, I’m glad I’ve been able to teach you something”, said Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad, tickled somewhat pinkish himself, that he’d been able to pull the wool over the eyes of his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchild so easily.

Next time:

Chapter One The Journey Begins

(or read the whole story here: https://vocal.media/fiction/bridge-to-the-moon)