Peary Station was the first permanently occupied base at the Lunar north pole, and the scientists there keep busy looking up and down at the same time. Peary Crater was chosen because it’s the oldest, largest crater near the pole, making it perfect for the study of deep ice cores to reveal the solar system’s origins. Some of the smaller craters inside Peary are permanently in shadow, making it the perfect spot for a large-aperture optical telescope to peer up out of the solar system’s plane. Some scientists work remotely with the distant radio astronomy array, some develop efficient extraction of Aluminum, Titanium, and rare metals, and others work on growing plants in low gravity.
Conducting science takes lots of resources, and the mine in Whipple crater was first established to supply Peary Station. We make weekly deliveries of water, volatiles, and other chemicals with automated vehicles, but sometimes we make the twelve-hour haul ourselves if we need to barter. Since it’s well-stocked and the closest place to have any selection, Mac calls it Bart’s Bait and Tackle.
This time we needed to replace some spare parts for our heavy equipment and get a replacement cryo-pump and liquid hydrogen piston set for the cracking station. The deep-core drill the Europeans run means we frequently have overlapping inventory requirements, and this secondary economy saves us the expense of having new parts tossed all the way up from Earth.
Anne, the base commander, made us work for the deal, but we all ended up happy with what we got. And Mac got a complementary MRE of tuna nicoise.