I鈥檓 an astronaut and I鈥檝e landed on the moon. I鈥檇 like to do a painting of the magnificent desolation I see before me, but in the interests of getting close to my subject, I鈥檇 like to paint while standing on the lunar surface, not looking through a window. How should I go about it?
鈥� Two main challenges will face you in trying to paint the lunar landscape without looking through a window. The first is that if you have no window between your face and the landscape, then you and your eyes will be exposed to a near-vacuum low pressure and all the moisture will rapidly boil off, leading to major organ damage and, eventually, death. The second problem is that the same moisture loss will happen to the paint, causing it to become a dry, crumbly solid.
Astronauts always have an impermeable barrier between their skin and the vacuum of space and normally look out through a face shield in their spacesuit. Other than resorting to another kind of impermeable transparent barrier, the only option would be to release a very large flow of air in front of your face at a rate fast enough to keep the pressure on your face close to normal. But then you would be looking through a very noisy and turbulent wind flow. You would also have to make the air humid to prevent your eyes drying out, but then this moisture would form a fine mist of ice crystals, further compromising your attempts to get a pristine view.
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鈥淎stronauts always have an impermeable barrier between their skin and the vacuum of space鈥�
For the paint, you could cheat by putting the canvas and the paints inside a glass-fronted, pressurised box with sleeves and gloves mounted in it. However, now you would have a window between your eyes and the canvas, rather than between your eyes and the landscape.
Alternatively, you would need to use paints that remain liquid in a vacuum. These would have to be based on oil-like compounds with low volatility and very high molecular weight, but given their high viscosity it would be hard to paint fine detail with them. Or, of course, you could do a sketch with pencils. Ultimately, though, if you want an accurate recreation of the scene, stick to taking photos.
Simon Iveson, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia
鈥� As water-based pastels and conventional oil-based paints vwill boil off very, very quickly, your intrepid exoartist must work with vacuum-tolerant materials and boards. They should go retro with charcoal sticks and coloured chalks, or use vacuum-grade silicone grease, designed to operate in low-pressure environments, to carry their mineral pigments.
Nik Kelly, Liverpool, UK
鈥� If you were a trained artist, you would make sketches, as pencil and paper would be fine in a vacuum for a short while, and you could also take written notes about the colours in the scene. Then you would use these as the basis for the artwork you would paint while back in the studio, either on Earth or on MoonBase 1.
John Davies, Lancaster, UK
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This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淟unar landscape鈥�