the times | Thursday October 15 2020 1GM 17
News
Eleven days before the Apollo 11 astro-
nauts set off for the moon in July 1969,
Neil Armstrong was asked whether he
would take any trinkets of Earth with
him. He replied tersely: “If I had a
choice, I would take more fuel.”
It emerged that his fears were justi-
fied. Fuel on the first manned mission
to the moon was one of the primary
perils among many. By the time he and
Buzz Aldrin stepped on to the moon on
July 16, alarms were telling them they
had less than 30 seconds of fuel left.
As countries once again contemplate
lunar landings in a space race that may
lead to permanent habitation on the
moon, fuel is at the forefront of con-
cerns. It now seems that the answer is
the first “petrol station in space”.
The construction would be attached
to the Lunar Gateway, a space station to
orbit the moon. And the fuelling
station, or module, is being built in Bris-
tol, Belfast and Harwell in Oxfordshire.
The British arm of the aerospace
company Thales Alenia Space is creat-
ing the module that is due to be
New space race fuels plans for lunar petrol station
Tom Knowles launched in 2027. It will help to keep the
Lunar Gateway refuelled using xenon
and chemical propellants.
The announcement comes as part of
an agreement signed by the UK Space
Agency, Nasa and other international
partners this week that lays the ground-
work for a mission to the moon.
Nasa’s Artemis mission plans to land
the first woman and the next man on
the moon by 2024. The British govern-
ment has earmarked £16 million for the
first phase of this programme. It is be-
lieved that a sustainable presence on
the moon represents a stepping stone to
the first human mission to Mars.
The 40-tonne Lunar Gateway will be
a staging post for astronauts as they
move back and forth to the moon. The
refuelling station will help to extend the
space station’s life well into the next
decade. It is likely to be launched on
Falcon Heavy rockets, designed by
Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, from the
Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
The station will feature a small pres-
surised tunnel with windows to give
astronauts a view of space and sight of
any robotic operations they are con-
trolling. It could also be used to prepare
for the fuelling of missions to Mars.
The lunar space station is being
created as a joint effort between Amer-
ica, Europe, Japan and Canada, with
each partner in charge of developing a
different section.
It forms part of the Artemis Accords,
signed this week to govern the conduct
of all countries involved in the Nasa-led
mission to the moon and set the frame-
work for further space exploration.
The accords dictate that signatories
keep each other informed of activities,
use compatible systems, provide emer-
gency assistance to each other and
allow mining for resources. It has notbeen signed by Russia and China, who
are also likely to launch missions.
In Italy, Thales will build a pressur-
ised section for the Gateway in which
four astronauts can live and sleep. It will
carry protection against small meteor-
ite impacts, as well as guards against the
increased radiation in space.
“It’s very exciting to be part of this
great expedition,” Xavier Roser, who is
overseeing the project at Thales, said.
“This Gateway station is paving the way
for a new path of exploration. It’s
demonstrating technology both to
access the moon but also to prepare the
big leap to Mars.”
Spacecraft arriving from Earth willdock at the space station, with four
astronauts able to stay there for three
months. Plans published by Nasa sug-
gest that astronauts could travel to a
base camp on the moon for about a
week at a time.
Thales has a long history of work in
space exploration. Its factory in Turin
worked on the International Space
Station. It will also make a system to
communicate between the Lunar Gate-
way and the moon.
Amanda Solloway, the science minis-
ter, said: “Creating the first ever space
fuel station on British soil is yet another
example of how we are leading the
world in space innovation.”patrick kidd
TMS
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Mileage in a
royal motor
The broadcaster Iain Dale won’t
forget the car he bought 26 years
ago. It was a green Audi Cabriolet
with white leather interior and
only 4,000 miles on the clock.
“Why would anyone get rid of a
car at 4,000 miles?” he asked. “It
was Princess Diana’s,” the dealer
replied. Dale snapped it up and
sold it in 1996 for a small profit,
which helped him to open a
political bookshop in Westminster.
Dale has a nagging regret, though,
that he didn’t hold on for another
year. “I sold it before she was
killed,” he tells the What Were You
Thinking? podcast, “and was told
that the person who bought it sold
it to someone in Malaysia or
Singapore for £1 million.” If true,
they were mugs. The car appeared
at an auction in April with a guide
price of £40,000 and failed to sell.The transport minister set out plans
yesterday to install temporary
roadside lavatories throughout Kent
to help desperate motorists caught
in Brexit-related traffic jams.
Finally, Boris Johnson has met his
Portaloo. Charlie Connelly, author
of a book on the Channel, who lives
in Deal (which is better than No
Deal), observes that this is a fine
example of the government wanting
to “have its urinal cake and eat it”.lesson he couldn’t refuse
Today would have been the writer
Mario Puzo’s 100th birthday. Puzo
adapted his bestselling novel
into screenplays for the
first two Godfather films,
starring Marlon Brando,
right, but admitted later
that he felt he didn’t know
what he was doing,
despite winning two
screenplay Oscars for
it, so when he was
asked to write the
script for Superman
he decided to learnthe trade properly. Puzo bought a
book on screenwriting and
discovered that the first chapter
was titled “Study The Godfather”.sage business plan
At Monday’s meeting of the 1922
Committee, Theresa May asked
the prime minister if business
could be represented on Sage.
Boris Johnson mansplained to his
predecessor that Sage stands for
the Scientific Advisory Group for
Emergencies and if you add
Business it becomes phonetically
close to Beige (presumably the
Science bit would become silent,
which may suit him). How about
making it the Scientists Against
Businesses Opposing Tiers
Advisory Group for Emergencies,
or Sabotage for short?After yesterday’s item on careers
advice, Michael Wilcox emailed to
say that when he was at school in
Huntingdonshire the careers master
was a Yorkshireman whose
suggestion was invariably to tell boys
to “try banking”. However, in his
broad accent it sounded to them like
“bonking”. Wilcox says this was
“truly wonderful advice for a teenage
boy about to be released from the
strictures of a boarding school”.a law unto himself?
Given how lawyers gossip, it is a
surprise that the author of The
Secret Barrister, a bestselling
exposé of the law from 2018, has
kept his, her or their identity
hidden. Reviewing the follow-up,
Fake Law, in The Critic, John
Bowers, QC, says that many think
it is Joshua Rozenberg, former
legal correspondent at the BBC.
The Secret Barrister refuses to be
drawn but says that since
Rozenberg has interviewed him/
her/them on Radio 4, using an
actor to deliver the words, “it
would make a smashing
twist”. Rozenberg denies it
(well, he would) but adds:
“I’d quite like to be SB
when I grow up.”