A New World
My dear family,
If you ever find this, I must confess something. In 1972, I wasn't in Vietnam. I wasn't supposed to tell anyone, but if you have found this, it probably doesn't matter anymore. Back in 1965, I and a handful of other pilots were selected for a non-public team of astronauts, who would participate in covert missions in space for our government. We wouldn't get the glory and fame of regular astronauts, but our country needed us, and so we were there.
In early 1972, we were told that for an unspecified period of time, our country had a secret satellite orbiting the Moon. They never told us what it did, or why it was there, just that a few weeks prior, it had crashed to the surface on the dark side of the Moon for unknown reasons and that the data it carried was crucial. The government needed to recover it, and thus was sending me and two other astronauts to reclaim the satellite's memory module. The equipment of the planned Apollo 18 mission was essentially transferred to us. From what we'd been told, the Apollo team was furious. They had a reason to be after all. It seemed that whoever we've been under was much more powerful than NASA. The whole mission was top-secret obviously.
I was officially deployed to Vietnam, while in reality, we underwent extensive training for the mission. After a couple of months, we found ourselves standing on the launch pad in front of this behemoth of a rocket, that would take us to the Moon. I was the mission commander, while Lt. Carver was the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) pilot and Lt. Ackermann was the Command/Service Module (CSM) pilot.
The flight to the Moon took roughly three days. After arriving, we made a couple of orbits around it. Each time we flew behind the horizon created by the Moon itself, I felt a bit of helplessness when our communication to the whole world went dark, as the signal got obscured by the spherical mass of rock and dust below us. The dark side of the Moon was nothing like the light side, which we see on almost a daily basis. Instead of smooth grey fields and tranquil lunar seas, it was completely covered in dark, deep craters and holes, like as if it was being slowly eaten away by the universe itself. It was finally decided to begin the descent to the surface. I and Carver exchanged wishes of good luck with Ackermann and in the Lunar Module named Charon, we separated from the CSM named Trinity.
After we announced "Charon has touched down," our response wasn't cheers and applause, but just mere "This is Trinity, congratulations, Charon! I'll relay the news on the other side. Be safe out there pals."
Just like that we became cut off from the rest of the world. Ackermann was our only link. While he was above the light side, he could communicate with ground command, and while above the dark side, he could communicate with us. Never both at once. Even though the CSM's orbital period was roughly two hours, we would be in touch for only about 35 minutes each orbit.
We landed on a flat plane inside a huge crater. Contrary to what some people believe, the sun shines at the dark side of the Moon the same way as the light side. The amount of light depends on the lunar phase. It was still shining daylight in the place where we landed, but we knew that it would go dark in a few days. I felt excited and curious about what awaits us in this alien world.