KAYAKS IN SPACE!
Forget Everything you’ve ever seen or heard or imagined or read about astronauts exploring on the Moon. It won’t happen that way.
The Science fiction stories and movies, and the Apollo videos all show the Brave Astronauts getting in their space suits, (and everybody else has to get in theirs, too, because the entire Lander has to be open to vacuum to open the airlock) and then opening the Airlock to the vacuum of space, and then gaily walking out on the surface of the Moon to put up equipment, get in their Moon Buggy, and gallivant off around the surface, taking pictures and playing golf.
They left out some pretty important stuff. Like it takes HOURS for an astronaut to become acclimated to being in a space suit. If the suit was pressurized to the same internal pressure as the capsule, or Habitat, the pressure would hold their arms and legs so stiff they couldn’t move. So the pressure in the suit is at a bare minimum. To allow the astronauts to breathe enough Oxygen at such a low pressure, the atmosphere in the suit must be almost totally Oxygen, rather than an Oxygen/Nitrogen mix as is normal.
So they have to take a couple of hours of reduced atmosphere breathing for their bodies to get used to the 100% Oxygen.
It ISN’T a quick change of costume. It takes hours . And then you have to pee.
Besides that, the Moon Dust is toxic, and so abrasive, it is like millions of microscopic razor blades tearing at the fabric of the space suits. The last 3 days on the Moon of the Apollo 17 mission, was spent trying to repair their space suits
And breathing the Dust is practically deadly.
So we come to TWO conclusions: Space suits won’t work for more than a couple of days, and bringing suits and equipment back into a Moon Habitat from off the Moon’s surface is practically a death sentence.
So we need a personal conveyance that has a hard shell that is mostly left outside the habitat, that can be entered from the inside of the habitat, and used to get around the surface of the Moon, repair and place equipment, and collect samples.
A hard shell, personal mobile vehicle. A Space Kayak! Much like underwater personal Deep Sea Submersibles, these will be imperative for work on the Moon, or in space.
They have made great progress in developing remote grabbers and manipulators for use in surgery, and underwater submersibles.
And the computers and monitors used to control such manipulators are also pretty sophisticated. Sometimes wheels are better suited for transport on a planetary surface, and sometimes articulated legs work better.
In the movie "2001, A Space Odyssey" Their external mobility capsules were spherical, and practically 10 feet in diameter. That is unwieldy. The boats that will be needed will be skinnier, looking more like a large covered canoe, or large Sit-inside Ocean-going kayak.
I’m still working on designs. More forthcoming later! Stay tuned!
See you On The Water!
Harmon