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"You have to budget the number of fuzzy rules you use to control a system. It turns out, you can state the optimality principle in three words: 'patch the bumps.'"
- Bart Kosko

Moon Skis  
  Special wide skis for travel on lunar powder.  

Okay, Verne and others have discussed getting to the moon. But once you are there, how are you going to get around?

Over the western horizon hung the Earth at last quarter, a green-blue giant moon...

MacIntyre bent down without a word and picked up the wide skis necessary to negotiate the powdery ash. Charlie followed his example. Then they swung the spare air bottles over their shoulders, and passed out through the lock.

Technovelgy from Requiem, by Robert Heinlein.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1940
Additional resources -

This is not as far-fetched as you think. Skiing on sand is done right here on Earth - it's all the rage in Dubai.


(Sand skiing on the dunes of Dubai)

Spend the morning skiing down the high dunes, with refreshments. On the way back to Dubai, enjoy dune bashing and camel riding.

Robert Heinlein also described moon skiing, an Eagle scout badge requirement, in his 1949 story Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon, published in Boy's Life.


(Cover of 'Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon' by Robert Heinlein)


(Moonskis in 'Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon' by Robert Heinlein)


(Pulling a toboggan on the moon in 'Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon' by Robert Heinlein)


(Side-step uphill skiing from 'Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon' by Robert Heinlein)

Apollo 17 geologist Harrison "Jack" Schmitt actually lamented "too bad I don't have my skis!" from the mountaneous Taurus Littrow Valley. Eventually, he perfected a kind of "lunar cross-country style" that worked like this:

"In the moon's low gravity, you can ski above the moondust--and I did. Imagine swinging your arms and legs cross-country style. With each push of your toe, your body glides forward above ground. Swing, glide, swing, glide. The only marks you leave in the moondust are the toe-pushes."
(From Jack Skis the Moon)


(Skiing on the Moon [Ulrich Lotzmann])

In his award-winning novel Dune, Frank Herbert spends a lot of time talking about how the native Fremen needed to walk across sand dunes so as not to attract the planet's giant sand worms. I wonder whether the sound of schussing would have been safe...

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Requiem
  More Ideas and Technology by Robert Heinlein
  Tech news articles related to Requiem
  Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein

Moon Skis-related news articles:
  - Skiing That Soft Lunar Powder
  - Snowboarding On Mars? Heinlein Was Ready
  - Skiing On The Moon - Skiing on Asteroids?

Articles related to Space Tech
Solar X-Flares Disrupt North American Radio And Navigation
Restructure An Asteroid, Spin It, Get A 'Space Habitat' With Gravity?
Quadruple-Star System Now Forming
Nuclear Rockets To Fly In Space!

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