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Why does the moon base have windows?
Granted, we see it only for Jamestown and the Soviet Base may well be different (there is a teensy bit of evidence for at least part of the Soviet base being underground - which is proposed for Real Life moon bases for many reasons), but why does the American base have windows?Now, the Real Life ISS has windows but a) it is much closer to earth (it is deliberately kept in a low orbit despite there still being non-negligible atmospheric drag to keep it within earth magnetic field and protected from at least some cosmic radiation) and b) nobody up there is equipped with guns
So Jamestown has a bigger radiation problem due to windows (yes, there are ways to make glass transparent to visible light but opaque to other wavelengths, but you'll need several meters of shielding for the worse stuff like solar storms - and you'd get that "for free" with an underground base. And the other issue is of course the danger of the rather thin hull being penetrated by fast-moving objects. Now on the moon that does not have an atmosphere of appreciable density that could be micro-metorites - or bullets. So why did they not bury the station under several meters of regolith?
- Digging and building a base underground takes a lot longer than just landing a pre-fabricated structure. Plus, they still need to be able to see what's outside for potential threats or dangers.
- It could also be to help combat feelings of depression and isolation, especially in crew members who don't leave the station often for EVAs. Having an underground base, while practical, would mean those crew members were a quarter of a million miles away from home without windows. Gordo went crazy in the original base and went out on walks to escape the claustrophobia. Just imagine that without even being able to look out at the sky.
Why are the Soviets still using pure oxygen?
While the Americans had lost three astronauts during Apollo 1 due to the pure oxygen atmosphere (which is acknowledged on screen), the Soviets also lost a cosmonaut
to the same issue in 1961. Why are the Soviets who know of both incidents still using pure oxygen? The ISS for example, does not. Neither did MIR.
to the same issue in 1961. Why are the Soviets who know of both incidents still using pure oxygen? The ISS for example, does not. Neither did MIR.- While spacecraft no longer use pure oxygen, spacesuits still do in the real world to this day. Using pure oxygen allows the air in the suit to be kept at a much lower pressure, which makes the suit more flexible so the astronaut can actually move their arms and legs without pushing against so much air-pressure trying to force the suit's extremities to point straight out like an inflated rubber glove.
English ability as the plot demands?
The cosmonaut who is shot by the space marines but only injured, not killed was ostensibly reaching for the translation card just like his comrade. So why on earth does he later when he is in the American base know enough English to say I wish to defect?. Did he learn English in secret and thought the situation involving people pointing guns at him and saying threatening things in English was not a good situation to use his knowledge of the English language? And no, defect is not a common English term - especially not in the verb meaning - and where exactly would he picked that up? There is no internet in the USSR at this point in time. So why did he not at least say something like "No weapon, translation in box"?
- You have to remember, the card also has the communications frequency of the Americans written on it at the top. He may have been able to speak some english, but needed the card to transmit to the Americans. To elaborate, assuming that the USA and USSR use the same communications technology as our timeline, American spacesuits transmit and receive on the S-band, at around 2.2GHz. Meanwhile, the Soviet program generally used lower- frequency radio transmissions, at around 15-131MHz, depending on the mission (note that the specifics are significantly harder to locate compared to NASA). While one of the Moonrines was transmitting on the Soviet frequency, she would have to have immediately set her frequency back to US bands, as she proceeds to talk with her allies after delivering the message.
Dumb Design?
The climax of Season 2's Finale relies in many ways on designs of various parts of Jonestown that seem... let's just put "highly improbable" here. For example, the entire plot point relies on a nuclear reactor that needs active cooling, which while the norm for earth-bound big reactors (and a big part of the problems with Fukushima and Chernobyl) is something the prototypes/projects for space bound reactors (Kilopower, SP-10 and RAPID-L) deliberately avoid. It is possible (albeit a bit difficult) to design a nuclear power plant in such a way that it always "fails towards the safe side" i.e. stuff like cooling or control rods automatically fall in place if systems are disabled or power fails and do not need active power to be maintained. So it is quite inexcusable for a reactor whose failure has the potential (as stated in the show, this is almost certainly Artistic License – Nuclear Physics) to "render Shackleton crater uninhabitable for a thousand years" to be designed in such a failure-prone way. That's a hazard even without Space marines shooting through the main control computer. It is further at the very least strange that the nuclear reactor, if it isn't deliberately far away from any habitats of the space station (you know, to get distance between the radiation source and the crew) has important parts of its wiring "outisde" exposed to the vacuum of space and requiring a space suit and an EVA to access - as any astronaut who has done an EVA will tell you, doing anything with those gloves is a pain in the lower backside. The third design flaw is perhaps the only excusable one but still highly questionable - why have entry and exit points of your base without space suits? If by whatever absurd coincidence someone happens to be trapped in the hatch, shouldn't they have access to a suit to leave it when they are cut off? Now granted, space suits are to an extent personalized and having a suit in the hatch would not guarantee that it fits the spacefarer who is trapped there, but isn't it worth trying? Granted, there is one argument against it and it is the same argument that leads to the all-oxygen atmosphere: Weight.
, SP-10 and RAPID-L) deliberately avoid. It is possible (albeit a bit difficult) to design a nuclear power plant in such a way that it always "fails towards the safe side" i.e. stuff like cooling or control rods automatically fall in place if systems are disabled or power fails and do not need active power to be maintained. So it is quite inexcusable for a reactor whose failure has the potential (as stated in the show, this is almost certainly Artistic License – Nuclear Physics) to "render Shackleton crater uninhabitable for a thousand years" to be designed in such a failure-prone way. That's a hazard even without Space marines shooting through the main control computer. It is further at the very least strange that the nuclear reactor, if it isn't deliberately far away from any habitats of the space station (you know, to get distance between the radiation source and the crew) has important parts of its wiring "outisde" exposed to the vacuum of space and requiring a space suit and an EVA to access - as any astronaut who has done an EVA will tell you, doing anything with those gloves is a pain in the lower backside. The third design flaw is perhaps the only excusable one but still highly questionable - why have entry and exit points of your base without space suits? If by whatever absurd coincidence someone happens to be trapped in the hatch, shouldn't they have access to a suit to leave it when they are cut off? Now granted, space suits are to an extent personalized and having a suit in the hatch would not guarantee that it fits the spacefarer who is trapped there, but isn't it worth trying? Granted, there is one argument against it and it is the same argument that leads to the all-oxygen atmosphere: Weight.