Their exhaustive training notwithstanding, it will inevitably be with reluctance that the first astronauts on the moon turn from staring at the awesome expanse of barren rock, with the earth suspended above, to the business at hand-the study and sampling of the lunar surface and environment. These men will probably be the crew of Apollo 11, as yet unselected, who could reach the moon as early as July, a flight pioneered for them by the Apollo 8 astronauts (see p. 7). How they will spend their precious time on another world is being planned down to the minute by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which is even mapping their footsteps in an effort to make the most of the few hours allotted to the climax of man's centuries-old lust for the moon. The plan has been changed dozens of times in the past and will probably be changed several more. The latest schedule, however, gives the two astronauts just 22 hours on the new frontier, while the envious third man waits in orbit aboard the command module. The Apollo 11 astronauts' first surface task-it would be their choice even with no official schedules-will be to make sure that the spidery lunar module spacecraft, their only link with home, survived the landing intact. At this, including a brief respite for a meal if excitement lets them eat, they will spend three and a half hours. The next item, incredibly, is eight hours of sleep. The fact that the first men on the moon may feel somewhat other than sleepy (I might as well have been standing on my head on top of a flagpole, as far as going to sleep was concerned, said Astronaut Donn Eisele of his first night aboard Apollo 7) has not escaped the space agency, which plans to provide sleeping pills. The snooze is necessary, the agency believes, to ensure that the crew will be alert for the rigors of walking in the moon's alien, one-sixth-normal gravity, and for the painstaking preparations for departure. With their surface time more than half gone, the astronauts will at last begin preparing to leave the spacecraft and put their own feet on the moon. From various lockers and compartments, they will collect several hermetically sealable sample containers, along with specialized tools for gathering pieces of the lunar rock. A longhandled scoop and a pair of extended tongs will enable the astronauts to pick up surface samples without having to bend too far over in the cumbersome space suits. Several small cylinders, called drive tubes, can be stuck into the ground to collect samples from a foot or more below the surface. Then both men will don their EVA space suits, designed to provide extra protection from micrometeorites and radiation during extra-vehicular activity, and at last they will unpack a group of scientific experiments, to be deployed on the lunar surface. This, for many who can see beyond the adventure, is the real point of the space program-even if it takes a back seat SPACE SCIENCE