“The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever.” – Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

I work on the Lunar Gateway program. This is a proposed crewed platform that will trail the Moon and support crewed Moon missions. It is interesting work, and it sounds glamorous, but my job is prosaic. I am part of a team analyzing the data needs of Gateway. Last week I was given an unusual assignment. My boss’s boss was given a document to review and comment on. As is typical for these types of assignments, he gave the job to my boss. Due to a combination of people being absent and others being busy, he passed it on to me.

The document contained the high-level requirements for equipment to be used to explore the Lunar surface: This includes the Lunar surface spacesuits, the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (think of a two-seat lunar dune buggy), and the Pressurized Rover (analogous to a four-seat off-road sedan). Send your comments in by next Tuesday, I was told.

For those not engineers, technicians, or mechanics, requirements are the rules specifying the performance of a system. Systems are designed to meet those requirements. As an example, consider a car. It is built to meet requirements as to the number of people it can hold, how much cargo it can carry, gas mileage, and emissions standards. Want a radio or wireless capability for your car? That has to be in the requirements. That brake light at the back of the roof of your car? The result of a requirement. I was being asked to review the requirements of the surface mobility systems for completeness and adequacy.

What I found remarkable was the request to review the requirements. Reviewing requirements documents is part of what I do. Rather, I marveled at what I was reviewing; vehicles to explore the lunar surface. In the 1950s, when I was born, vehicles to roam the Lunar surface were science fiction. Yes, Colliers had published illustrated articles by  Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley outlining their vision of exploring the Moon’s surface, but it still ranked as science fiction to many.

The Moon Colony from the Colliers series

I grew up during the Space Race, which culminated in the Apollo Moon landings of 1969-72. Despite the Moon buggy, Lunar exploration was still more science fiction than fact. I started working on the Shuttle program in 1979. At the time, most of us at NASA believed we would soon return to the Moon. After all, we had walked on it less than ten years earlier. None of us believed it would not be until well into the 21st century that new efforts to take manned spacecraft (it was still manned back then, not crewed) beyond low Earth orbit would begin.

Now I was looking at a document defining the performance of lunar surface vehicles and systems. As part of my job. I was to provide comment on it and improve the requirements. The science fiction I had read in my youth is turning into reality. I was part of that.

Skeptics will likely say it will never happen. That NASA does not have what it takes to return to the Moon or reach Mars. They may be right about NASA, but humans on Moon and Mars will happen, and sooner rather than later. Commercial companies are already putting people into space. India plans to launch its first crewed vehicle into Earth orbit by the end of this decade. China has a space station second only to ISS, and larger than the forthcoming Lunar Gateway. It is still growing. And the Chinese have their own plans to put humans on the Moon (the superior Han Chinese, in their view) and build outposts there. The issue is no longer if, but rather who?

Tsiolkovsky was right. Mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever.