Moonbase Alpha (Space: 1999)
Moonbase Alpha is a fictional Moon base and the main setting in the British science fiction television series Space: 1999 (1974-77).
Primarily a scientific research station, at the start of the series, Moonbase Alpha houses 311 personnel including scientists, astronauts, medical personnel, and security officers. It is under the command of John Koenig. Four kilometres wide and up to one kilometre deep, it is a totally self-sustaining facility, with the different areas connected by a series of high speed "travel tubes". Alpha also has a fleet of Eagle Transporter spaceships, used for a variety of purposes throughout the series, which are housed in underground bunkers and then raised on launch pads for take-off.
Buildings and structures
Moonbase Alpha
Located in the Moon crater Plato and constructed out of quarried rock and ores, Moonbase Alpha is four kilometres in diameter and extends up to one kilometre in areas below the lunar surface. The complex extends outward from the central Main Mission tower in a series of concentrically arranged curved structures connected by travel-tube transit tunnels. (The look is more than reminiscent of Clavius Base in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.) Apart from the central tower, the surface buildings are two to three storeys in height.
Originally, the base was designed to serve as both Earth's primary space research and exploration centre and a monitoring station coordinating the nuclear waste disposal areas on the Moon's far side. Construction began on 3 February 1983, but was briefly halted during the 1987 world war. Construction commenced afterwards under the auspices of the new World Space Commission. Though operational and occupied for years, final completion of the Alpha construction project occurred in 1997. and the accumulation of solar energy. Earth-normal artificial gravity is generated by eight towers surrounding the complex. Water is obtained from ice deposits under the lunar surface, recycled and purified. Nutritional requirements are met by a variety of familiar-appearing foodstuffs produced biochemically on Alpha This diet was supplemented by frozen-food products imported from Earth before all contact with home was severed in September 1999. (At the time of "Breakaway", about eighty percent of food and water products were produced chemically on Moonbase.)
The international pooling of technical skill and resources after the War of 1987 resulted in the advanced construction of Moonbase Alpha. The operations and living areas are both functional and spacious (unlike early space capsules and Earth-orbiting stations). Main Mission, the control centre of the installation, is a massive, multi-leveled room. Opening into Main Mission from behind large sliding doors is the Command Office, which includes a large conference and conversation area. Corridors run eight feet wide throughout the base and the pipes and wiring trunks that festooned the walls of previous ocean-going military vessels and spacecraft are concealed behind four-foot-by-eight-foot modular panels.
All Alpha personnel have their own suite of rooms in the Residence Section with sitting room, sleeping alcove and private bathroom. Suites with a separate, larger bedroom are available to married staff members. The Recreation Section boasts a gymnasium, private work-out rooms, a solarium with adjacent sauna and swimming pool,
Several buildings are given over to research in a number of scientific fields including astronomy, geology, chemistry, biology and astrophysics.
In contrast, Year Two revealed that an underground complex had been constructed and expanded upon between the two series and that the majority of Alpha's command, operations and living centres had been relocated there. The vulnerable Main Mission had been abandoned in favour of the safer underground Command Centre, a smaller control room with many of the same features of Main Mission. The Medical Section once occupied an entire building on the Moon's surface and included several large wards, trauma, casualty and diagnostic units, intensive care wards and operating theatres. Underground, it was reduced to a few rooms, the main Medical Centre acting as a combination patient ward, examination room and surgery all in one. Living quarters were now one small room which did not even appear to have a private bath.
Other facilities revealed in Series Two were a complement of offensive laser batteries which had been installed around the Moonbase complex (starting in "The Metamorph"). These large weapons were stored underground and raised to the surface when deployed. They had a range of at least forty-three thousand kilometres and were controlled from the Weapons Section, a small, bunker-like room. In "The Exiles", the Golos cylinders were taken for examination in an 'underground research area', a laboratory facility constructed inside a lunar mountain on the rim of the crater containing Moonbase. This secure area, designed for the performance of potentially hazardous experiments, was connected to Alpha only by travel-tube and boasted its own Eagle landing pad.
Launch pads
There are five launch pads visible around the base. These have extending/retracting boarding tubes via the reception building for access to the Eagles and visiting spaceships. These launch pads are circular but have descending cross-platforms that lower the Eagles into underground hangars for storage and maintenance.
Travel tubes
Travel tubes provide rapid transit between the various sections of the base and to and from the via a cylindrical travel capsule which contains seating for either four or six passengers depending on the unit being used. Easy access to and from main corridors and reception areas is via double-sliding doors on either side of the capsule. Access to the launch pad is through the end door, which opens directly into the boarding tube connected to the Eagle. There is the capacity for the occupants to suspend motion in mid-travel with an emergency stop button.
As would be expected, the use of the travel tube network requires a good deal of power; in the event of an energy crisis, travel-tube service is among the first systems suspended.
Anti-gravity towers
There are eight anti-gravity towers surrounding the Alpha complex; the anti-gravity fields are used to boost the Moon's 1/6g gravity and stabilise it to a near 1g Earth normal within the Moonbase structures. In the episode "Black Sun", Victor Bergman formulated a way to increase the power of the anti-gravity generators in the towers to produce an enhanced anti-gravity forcefield effect. The drawback of the Bergman forcefield is that it requires more energy than the four main generators are designed to produce; the generators from the entire Eagle fleet are required to supplement the power supply in order to sustain it for any length of time.
In an alternate timeline, as shown in "Another Time, Another Place", the towers were transferred to the Earth for unknown reasons.
Orbital satellite
A vital component in Moonbase's tracking and communications systems is its orbital satellite. Situated in a high lunar orbit, the satellite acts as a radar- and sensor-tracking station as well as a transmitter relay and observation platform. Like the Moonbase communications system, it can transmit on the powerful 'interstellar' frequency. When the Moon was engulfed in a high-energy plasma cloud following the controlled destruction of an asteroid, the orbital satellite was used to triangulate the position of Alan Carter's missing Eagle using the interstellar-strength transmissions of the satellite, Alpha and Koenig's Rescue Eagle (after said Eagle was equipped with the proper transmitter).
By the time of "Breakaway", there had been a significant number of problems that looked as if they were related to radiation leakage. The rogue planet Meta had been discovered as it passed through Earth's solar system and a flight crew for the long-range Meta Probe was conducting training exercises on the far side of the Moon in the vicinity of Area One. The two primary Meta Probe astronauts, Eric Sparkman and Frank Warren, displayed all the symptoms of radiation sickness—cerebral malignancy, disorientation, coma—and died. A number of workers at Disposal Area Two also died under similar circumstances. short of those instructions which would threaten the safety of Alpha.
It is stated that John Koenig is the ninth commander of Alpha. In the second series, "The Lambda Factor" introduced Chief Engineer Pete Garforth.
Service Section
Service encompasses data analysts, clerical staff, the botanists and technicians tending the hydroponic farms and botanical research units, as well as the never-seen kitchen, laundry and janitorial personnel. Throughout the series Sandra Benes appears to be the Service Section chief working from her station in Main Mission/Command Centre.
Reconnaissance Section
Reconnaissance Section astronauts fly the Eagles and other ancillary Moonbase craft. They also frequently operate in Main Mission/Command Centre as flight controllers during survey and reconnaissance missions. Reconnaissance works in conjunction with Technical Section to assure the Eagles' transporters are constantly checked, maintained and on stand-by for immediate action. Chief Eagle Pilot Captain Alan Carter serves as section chief. In the days before the Moon's departure from Earth, Reconnaissance was responsible for all aspects of the deep-space flight missions deployed from Alpha (see the Uranus Expedition, the Astro Seven Mission to Jupiter, the Ultra Probe (Scientific and support personnel can be drawn from the Research Section as needed.) The main tasks of Medical Section are: to maintain the physical and psychological health of all Alpha personnel and to carry out experimentation upon all factors affecting humans residing in space, i.e. human life-science and psychology experiments. The section chief is Doctor Helena Russell, assisted by Doctor Bob Mathias, Doctor Ben Vincent, Doctor Ed Spencer and Doctor Raul Nunez. As the practitioners of an isolated community, these five physicians have many specialties between them—space medicine, neurology and neurosurgery, cardiology and cardiac-organ transplant, infectious disease, ophthalmology, pathology, emergency medicine and trauma surgery.
Medical maintains "stretcher teams" perform the same function on space missions. There is also a "surgical team" In the event of high physiological stress of a staff member, Computer will offer a verbal and hardcopy warning to the medical staff on duty.
Security Section
Security guards are on stand-by to control internal disciplinary problems, sentry duty at strategic or restricted areas, defense functions during survey and reconnaissance missions and search-and-rescue missions. All guards carry stun-guns and sometimes rifles or small missile launchers when the situation allows. They are trained as space arms specialists. Defense teams are deployed during red alerts to strategic areas throughout the complex and usually consist of two to four guards. Tony Verdeschi is head of Security, although he does not appear until Year Two of the series.
Defensive and offensive capabilities
* Each of Moonbase Alpha's five main launch pads houses an underground hangar that stores a number of Eagle Transporters. During Year One, only seven of Alpha's Eagles are armed,
* Meteorite and radiation defence screens can also be used in a defensive capacity. The Bergman anti-gravity forcefield is the ultimate defence measure, but it cannot be used without advance notice; its power requirements are enormous and the main unit generators must be supplemented with power generators stripped from all servicable Eagles for the shield to function for any length of time. Much of this network of large underground bunkers was used for the construction of the underground Alpha seen in the second series.
Dark side of the Moon
The far side of the Moon is often improperly called the dark side of the Moon. The first scene of the show had a caption stating the location of the nuclear waste disposal storage being on the dark side of the Moon, although the caption also stated it was 9 September 1999, so the caption meant it was the dark side of the Moon on 9 September. It was also referred to as "the far side" by the character Ouma during the episode. The far side of the Moon, while always away from Earth, will still be illuminated by the sun, thus there is no area of the Moon that is permanently dark. This error was noted by Isaac Asimov, who wrote two articles on the scientific inaccuracies of the show. Unfortunately there was a new moon on 9 September 1999 so the far side was illuminated and the near side was the "dark side" on that date. (This can be seen on a moon-phase calculator, e.g. StarDate.)
Primarily a scientific research station, at the start of the series, Moonbase Alpha houses 311 personnel including scientists, astronauts, medical personnel, and security officers. It is under the command of John Koenig. Four kilometres wide and up to one kilometre deep, it is a totally self-sustaining facility, with the different areas connected by a series of high speed "travel tubes". Alpha also has a fleet of Eagle Transporter spaceships, used for a variety of purposes throughout the series, which are housed in underground bunkers and then raised on launch pads for take-off.
Buildings and structures
Moonbase Alpha
Located in the Moon crater Plato and constructed out of quarried rock and ores, Moonbase Alpha is four kilometres in diameter and extends up to one kilometre in areas below the lunar surface. The complex extends outward from the central Main Mission tower in a series of concentrically arranged curved structures connected by travel-tube transit tunnels. (The look is more than reminiscent of Clavius Base in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.) Apart from the central tower, the surface buildings are two to three storeys in height.
Originally, the base was designed to serve as both Earth's primary space research and exploration centre and a monitoring station coordinating the nuclear waste disposal areas on the Moon's far side. Construction began on 3 February 1983, but was briefly halted during the 1987 world war. Construction commenced afterwards under the auspices of the new World Space Commission. Though operational and occupied for years, final completion of the Alpha construction project occurred in 1997. and the accumulation of solar energy. Earth-normal artificial gravity is generated by eight towers surrounding the complex. Water is obtained from ice deposits under the lunar surface, recycled and purified. Nutritional requirements are met by a variety of familiar-appearing foodstuffs produced biochemically on Alpha This diet was supplemented by frozen-food products imported from Earth before all contact with home was severed in September 1999. (At the time of "Breakaway", about eighty percent of food and water products were produced chemically on Moonbase.)
The international pooling of technical skill and resources after the War of 1987 resulted in the advanced construction of Moonbase Alpha. The operations and living areas are both functional and spacious (unlike early space capsules and Earth-orbiting stations). Main Mission, the control centre of the installation, is a massive, multi-leveled room. Opening into Main Mission from behind large sliding doors is the Command Office, which includes a large conference and conversation area. Corridors run eight feet wide throughout the base and the pipes and wiring trunks that festooned the walls of previous ocean-going military vessels and spacecraft are concealed behind four-foot-by-eight-foot modular panels.
All Alpha personnel have their own suite of rooms in the Residence Section with sitting room, sleeping alcove and private bathroom. Suites with a separate, larger bedroom are available to married staff members. The Recreation Section boasts a gymnasium, private work-out rooms, a solarium with adjacent sauna and swimming pool,
Several buildings are given over to research in a number of scientific fields including astronomy, geology, chemistry, biology and astrophysics.
In contrast, Year Two revealed that an underground complex had been constructed and expanded upon between the two series and that the majority of Alpha's command, operations and living centres had been relocated there. The vulnerable Main Mission had been abandoned in favour of the safer underground Command Centre, a smaller control room with many of the same features of Main Mission. The Medical Section once occupied an entire building on the Moon's surface and included several large wards, trauma, casualty and diagnostic units, intensive care wards and operating theatres. Underground, it was reduced to a few rooms, the main Medical Centre acting as a combination patient ward, examination room and surgery all in one. Living quarters were now one small room which did not even appear to have a private bath.
Other facilities revealed in Series Two were a complement of offensive laser batteries which had been installed around the Moonbase complex (starting in "The Metamorph"). These large weapons were stored underground and raised to the surface when deployed. They had a range of at least forty-three thousand kilometres and were controlled from the Weapons Section, a small, bunker-like room. In "The Exiles", the Golos cylinders were taken for examination in an 'underground research area', a laboratory facility constructed inside a lunar mountain on the rim of the crater containing Moonbase. This secure area, designed for the performance of potentially hazardous experiments, was connected to Alpha only by travel-tube and boasted its own Eagle landing pad.
Launch pads
There are five launch pads visible around the base. These have extending/retracting boarding tubes via the reception building for access to the Eagles and visiting spaceships. These launch pads are circular but have descending cross-platforms that lower the Eagles into underground hangars for storage and maintenance.
Travel tubes
Travel tubes provide rapid transit between the various sections of the base and to and from the via a cylindrical travel capsule which contains seating for either four or six passengers depending on the unit being used. Easy access to and from main corridors and reception areas is via double-sliding doors on either side of the capsule. Access to the launch pad is through the end door, which opens directly into the boarding tube connected to the Eagle. There is the capacity for the occupants to suspend motion in mid-travel with an emergency stop button.
As would be expected, the use of the travel tube network requires a good deal of power; in the event of an energy crisis, travel-tube service is among the first systems suspended.
Anti-gravity towers
There are eight anti-gravity towers surrounding the Alpha complex; the anti-gravity fields are used to boost the Moon's 1/6g gravity and stabilise it to a near 1g Earth normal within the Moonbase structures. In the episode "Black Sun", Victor Bergman formulated a way to increase the power of the anti-gravity generators in the towers to produce an enhanced anti-gravity forcefield effect. The drawback of the Bergman forcefield is that it requires more energy than the four main generators are designed to produce; the generators from the entire Eagle fleet are required to supplement the power supply in order to sustain it for any length of time.
In an alternate timeline, as shown in "Another Time, Another Place", the towers were transferred to the Earth for unknown reasons.
Orbital satellite
A vital component in Moonbase's tracking and communications systems is its orbital satellite. Situated in a high lunar orbit, the satellite acts as a radar- and sensor-tracking station as well as a transmitter relay and observation platform. Like the Moonbase communications system, it can transmit on the powerful 'interstellar' frequency. When the Moon was engulfed in a high-energy plasma cloud following the controlled destruction of an asteroid, the orbital satellite was used to triangulate the position of Alan Carter's missing Eagle using the interstellar-strength transmissions of the satellite, Alpha and Koenig's Rescue Eagle (after said Eagle was equipped with the proper transmitter).
By the time of "Breakaway", there had been a significant number of problems that looked as if they were related to radiation leakage. The rogue planet Meta had been discovered as it passed through Earth's solar system and a flight crew for the long-range Meta Probe was conducting training exercises on the far side of the Moon in the vicinity of Area One. The two primary Meta Probe astronauts, Eric Sparkman and Frank Warren, displayed all the symptoms of radiation sickness—cerebral malignancy, disorientation, coma—and died. A number of workers at Disposal Area Two also died under similar circumstances. short of those instructions which would threaten the safety of Alpha.
It is stated that John Koenig is the ninth commander of Alpha. In the second series, "The Lambda Factor" introduced Chief Engineer Pete Garforth.
Service Section
Service encompasses data analysts, clerical staff, the botanists and technicians tending the hydroponic farms and botanical research units, as well as the never-seen kitchen, laundry and janitorial personnel. Throughout the series Sandra Benes appears to be the Service Section chief working from her station in Main Mission/Command Centre.
Reconnaissance Section
Reconnaissance Section astronauts fly the Eagles and other ancillary Moonbase craft. They also frequently operate in Main Mission/Command Centre as flight controllers during survey and reconnaissance missions. Reconnaissance works in conjunction with Technical Section to assure the Eagles' transporters are constantly checked, maintained and on stand-by for immediate action. Chief Eagle Pilot Captain Alan Carter serves as section chief. In the days before the Moon's departure from Earth, Reconnaissance was responsible for all aspects of the deep-space flight missions deployed from Alpha (see the Uranus Expedition, the Astro Seven Mission to Jupiter, the Ultra Probe (Scientific and support personnel can be drawn from the Research Section as needed.) The main tasks of Medical Section are: to maintain the physical and psychological health of all Alpha personnel and to carry out experimentation upon all factors affecting humans residing in space, i.e. human life-science and psychology experiments. The section chief is Doctor Helena Russell, assisted by Doctor Bob Mathias, Doctor Ben Vincent, Doctor Ed Spencer and Doctor Raul Nunez. As the practitioners of an isolated community, these five physicians have many specialties between them—space medicine, neurology and neurosurgery, cardiology and cardiac-organ transplant, infectious disease, ophthalmology, pathology, emergency medicine and trauma surgery.
Medical maintains "stretcher teams" perform the same function on space missions. There is also a "surgical team" In the event of high physiological stress of a staff member, Computer will offer a verbal and hardcopy warning to the medical staff on duty.
Security Section
Security guards are on stand-by to control internal disciplinary problems, sentry duty at strategic or restricted areas, defense functions during survey and reconnaissance missions and search-and-rescue missions. All guards carry stun-guns and sometimes rifles or small missile launchers when the situation allows. They are trained as space arms specialists. Defense teams are deployed during red alerts to strategic areas throughout the complex and usually consist of two to four guards. Tony Verdeschi is head of Security, although he does not appear until Year Two of the series.
Defensive and offensive capabilities
* Each of Moonbase Alpha's five main launch pads houses an underground hangar that stores a number of Eagle Transporters. During Year One, only seven of Alpha's Eagles are armed,
* Meteorite and radiation defence screens can also be used in a defensive capacity. The Bergman anti-gravity forcefield is the ultimate defence measure, but it cannot be used without advance notice; its power requirements are enormous and the main unit generators must be supplemented with power generators stripped from all servicable Eagles for the shield to function for any length of time. Much of this network of large underground bunkers was used for the construction of the underground Alpha seen in the second series.
Dark side of the Moon
The far side of the Moon is often improperly called the dark side of the Moon. The first scene of the show had a caption stating the location of the nuclear waste disposal storage being on the dark side of the Moon, although the caption also stated it was 9 September 1999, so the caption meant it was the dark side of the Moon on 9 September. It was also referred to as "the far side" by the character Ouma during the episode. The far side of the Moon, while always away from Earth, will still be illuminated by the sun, thus there is no area of the Moon that is permanently dark. This error was noted by Isaac Asimov, who wrote two articles on the scientific inaccuracies of the show. Unfortunately there was a new moon on 9 September 1999 so the far side was illuminated and the near side was the "dark side" on that date. (This can be seen on a moon-phase calculator, e.g. StarDate.)
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