For the first issue of the Observer Magazine of 1965, John Davy went on a tour of locations involved with the US moon-shot programme, ‘the most breathtaking venture in history’ (‘Target moon’, 3 January 1965).
He found Lem (the Lunar Excursion Module) ‘squatting, shiny and new, in a hangar on Long Island… it looks precisely like something that has crept off the cover of a back number of Astounding.’
At the Manned Spacecraft Centre near Houston, Davy ‘climbed into one of the 7,000lb Gemini spacecraft, which is hooked up for training purposes to a vast, winking computer’.
After a dig at the rival cosmonauts – ‘who seem to be fired into orbit after a year’s training or even less’ – we moved on from the epochal nature of what was planned and focused on eating and going to the loo.
Day 1’s 2,500-calorie pack was ‘sugar frosted flakes, sausage patties, toast squares and orange-grapefruit juice’, which suggested they were sending children up first. Day 3 was ‘beef pot-roast, carrots on cream sauce, toasted bread cubes, pineapple cubes, tea’.
There were no specific details of the ‘ingenious clip-on device called the Hydro John Urinal Mark I’, and a similar vagueness about the Hydro John Water Closet: ‘The use sequence simulates earthbound procedure with additional features which are extremely conducive to psychological acceptance.’ The additional features included ‘avoidance of manual activity’ (ie no paper).
Other devices included ‘a clockwork razor with a built-in vacuum cleaner to prevent the cabin filling with snippets of weightless beard’. Those straight-edged Americans sure were worried about those commie beards, even in space.
What was the moon going to be like? ‘Astronauts may find a surface covered with mile-deep dust, or a filigree rock like reindeer moss, or “fairy castles” of cemented dust, or something like expanded foam,’ wrote Davy.
The moon, as any fule kno, is made of cheese. It’s a wonder they made it at all.