REAPERS of the DUST - A Prairie Chronicle - And you want to go to the Moon!

REAPERS of the DUST - A Prairie Chronicle is a small book, a collection
of stories about the hard times of a North Dakota family during the
1930s depression and drought.  It is by my cousin, Lois Phillips Hudson,
who was born in 1927.  She gave me a copy back in December of 1995 and I
just finished reading it again.
http://shop.mnhs.org/moreinfomhspress.cfm?Product_ID=233

Why do I mention this if we are talking about setting up a colony on the
Moon?

Sometimes we just think about the adventure and forget what it takes to
overcome what nature throws at us.

The first story in the book is entitled "The Dust Storm" and I would
like to copy the first paragraph and while you read it, think about what
it will be like on the Moon, in a spacesuit, putting up with talcum
powder glass grit that will get into every nook and cranny.  Think about
what the gloves of the spacesuit will do to your fingers as you battle
the stiffness of a pressurized suit.
- LRK -
------------------------------------------------------------
Two SPRINGS AGO, according to local newspapers and to coughing, red-eyed
service-station operators in the Rocky Mountains, we drove through the
worst dust storm Wyoming had suffered in eighteen years.  The wind was
prematurely aging the young Rockies, pushing dusty fingers under the
loosening fragments of thin topsoil that covered the grazing plateaus,
picking up the small greenish gravel from the road shoulders, and
hurling dust and gravel into the air at sixty miles an hour.  If we
dipped into a trough between plateaus, its shelter enabled us to see the
laden wind rising over the mountains and the sky running in massive
dirty currents above us.  After reaching the Coast we replace the badly
pitted window glass, had the car repainted, and cleaned the seats, floor
mats, and window crevices.  Yet months after we thought we had breathed
the last Wyoming grit, we turned on the defroster and blew bits of the
Rocky Mountains all through the car
------------------------------------------------------------

There may not be any wind on the Moon but the fine regolith will electro
statically stick to whatever it contacts and as the terminator advances
you may find it rising into space and settling on items as the lunar day
begins.  This dust won't be rounded grains but rather sharp and
abrasive.  How will you work in this harsh environment?
- LRK -



http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/aurora/Moonbase.jpg [2.8 meg]



http://moon.jaxa.jp/ja/gallery/moon_base/IMAGE/moon_base06_s.jpg [54 KB]

Will the Moon be a land of opportunity or hardship?
Still want to go?

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update

==============================================================
http://shop.mnhs.org/moreinfomhspress.cfm?Product_ID=233

Reapers of the Dust

*By: Lois Phillips Hudson*
Format: Paper, xvi, 173 pp., 1984
Publisher: MHS Press
Usually ships in: 1-3 business days

ISBN 0-87351-177-8

/A Prairie Chronicle/
First published in 1965, her childhood recollections of living in North
Dakota are what Lois Phillips Hudson used to spin these unusual, moving
stories of simple, joyful days and of continuing battles with the
hostile elements on the Great Plains during the 1930s. Lois Hudson is
recognized as a major chronicler of America's agricultural heartland
during the grim years of the Great Depression.

New Introduction by the author

Snip
==============================================================

WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

==============================================================