She walked up the front steps into her apartment building, through the front door, climbed a flight of stairs and walked down the hallway to her family’s unit. Entering, she dropped her wet backpack on the kitchen table, as her mother greeted her kindly. Her little brother Jurobei was sitting in front of the TV, furiously playing a video game. He barely looked up. She went straight to her room and threw her wet coat on her bed. Remembering the backpack, she went and retrieved it from the kitchen, and then without even taking a break, she took out her books and began what would be hours of homework.
After an hour, she stopped. Her mind wandered to some of her favorite memories. These were of staying with her uncle Kantaro, in the Hokkaido prefecture in the very north of Japan. She would stay there for a couple of weeks every summer. It was so beautiful and peaceful there – like another world almost. Being an island, and a mainly agricultural one at that, meant it took on a unique culture distinct from its mainland as islands all over the world do – one that was more laid back and relaxed.
What she loved most about being there was looking up at the stars. Hardly any were visible in Tokyo, but there it was just breathtaking: millions upon millions blazed from one end of the night sky to the other. Uncountable, immovable, incomparable. The Milky Way stretched clear and bright from one horizon to the other. To think that even its misty tendrils were made of millions of stars truly took her breath away. She never got tired of looking at the night sky. A couple of years ago, her uncle had given her a telescope for her birthday, and she used it there. Its power brought out the planets in stunning detail, and far-away galaxies became visible.
Her father, a typical Tokyo salaryman, would be home around eight, and would criticize her grades as usual. However, she had learnt over the years to build up a wall inside herself and just pretend to listen when he did this. She knew he meant well deep down, and loved her, but they had just never seen eye to eye for as long as she could remember. She didn’t hate him, but didn’t really like him either. He belonged to a generation that had seen Japan go from being a world leader to a country mired in economic depression. Seeing his own father’s soul crushed as his business was crushed had changed him – she was sure of that. But, that was many years ago. Right now, she wished he could just see her for who she was; not only for her achievements.
The stars were her go-to place, her happy place. She shoved the books aside and pulled up a simulation of the universe. She travelled instantly from star system to star system, looking at them from all angles, standing on the planets, and wondering what it would be like to really be there. Only after spending a while completely immersed in the universe could she pull herself away to resume her homework. She was consciously disobeying her father by taking time out like this, but she was getting close to the point of no longer caring.
Kinuko was jolted rudely back into the present with the announcement that they were on their final approach to landing. She wondered how she could have been out for so long, when it had only seemed like a minute.
The crew touched down on a hot, muggy morning. A waiting shuttle, blessedly equipped with air conditioning, took them to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Once there, they were escorted into a large, nondescript single-story building. Inside, they walked down long, labyrinthine corridors, and eventually to a door operated by a key card. Even before entering, they could see through the glass walls what lay inside: a large rocket engine vacuum test chamber. It looked like a vast air-handling duct, with thick plate-glass windows in the side. They had to be thick, because inside was a vacuum. Many pipes and wires went in and out of the chamber, and just beyond it was a shiny three-meter-diameter cryogenic gas tank with its associated pipework.
Walking up to the chamber, they could see the transformative object that would make their trip possible. It was a silver cylinder, about the size of three beer kegs stacked end to end. On one end was a nozzle, not unlike a traditional rocket engine nozzle. Out of it shone what appeared to be a brilliant bluish-white light.
“This, ladies and gentlemen,” said Christopher, grinning like a child on Christmas, “is what’s going to get us to Mars and back. The VX-500 VASIMR engine. VASIMR stands for Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket. It uses no chemical combustion. Instead, an electrical power source uses radio frequency generators to heat an inert fuel, in this case xenon gas.” He nodded to the spherical gas tank. “It’s heated until it becomes plasma, at which point it’s ejected from the exhaust at 250 kilometers per second. This extreme velocity means that although the mass of the ejected gas is tiny, the force it produces is enough to propel a spacecraft to extreme speeds. And,” – he added, smiling with great satisfaction – “the engine can be running for our entire trip. No more of this high-thrust and then coasting the rest of the way stuff. The thrust this puts out compared to a chemically-propelled rocket is tiny, but it’s on all the time since it uses fuel so efficiently. That’s how we are going to get to Mars in half the time it would have taken via a traditional transfer orbit. About three months in all. We’ll spend half the trip accelerating, and the other half decelerating.”
The others took all this in, while marveling at the engine running in the chamber. Emile spoke up, “With constant acceleration we will have gravity aboard for the entire trip.”
“Yes, sir,” Christopher replied. “It might only be around one-thousandth of Earth’s gravity, but yes. About one centimeter per second per second of acceleration. Hard to believe that’s going to get us there, but since it’s constant…” The others understood. On a spaceship, even a tiny amount of gravity made things considerably easier than complete weightlessness. Things wouldn’t float off randomly or, if they did get lost, you would know roughly where they had settled when looking for them later.
Their next stop was Darmstadt, Germany. They would meet with an ESA design team there, to review the layout of the ship’s laboratory and modes of access to the remote sensing instruments. Aleksandr and Tung-Chi sat together on this flight.
“You know, Tung-chi, from reading your bio it almost seems like you were groomed for this mission,” Aleksandr said. “Four years in the PLA, technical school, tours on the Chinese space station, and a degree in geology.”
“I had never really thought about that, but yes,” Tung-chi replied. “It seems like most of you were in the right place at the right time, in some respects, but I always had the feeling I was being steered on a certain career path. It was like the Chinese wanted to do something extraordinary in space before the IDSA even existed.”
“Oh, really?” Aleksandr was now paying full attention.
“Our space station has been flying for twenty years now, and is starting to look rather ordinary from a purely technical perspective. China’s political and economic power is so great now, that I have the feeling the Party leadership wants to do something spectacular. That would be the icing on the cake, if you will. So, it only makes sense that we joined forces with the other nations to go to Mars. That certainly puts us in the big leagues. But, beyond that, I’m not sure. I do get the feeling there’s going to be a bid for glory, somehow.”
Later, in Darmstadt, when they were alone, Emile said to Aleksandr: “You know, there’s something weird about the way the Chinese revere Tung-chi. I mean, our countries are proud of us, and are sending their collective hopes and dreams along with us, but they practically worship him.”
Aleksandr nodded, and pursed his lips the way he always did when he was in deep thought. Then he spoke like a man who had something he needed to get off his chest: “I had noticed that too. The state-run media practically paint him as a god, and not just because his father is high up in the Communist Party. That wouldn’t be so strange if he were the first Chinese citizen ever to go into space, but this is an international mission. It’s not like the country has an inferiority complex they’ve got to compensate for – just the opposite, actually.” He shook his head. “Strange. Can’t just be the Eastern way of looking a
t things, else Kinuko would be getting the same kind of treatment in Japan. I don’t get it.”
5
T-minus 1037 days
The crew stepped into the virtuality chamber. This was the first time they would see the International Mars Explorer as more than a set of diagrams or computer renderings. They flew along its length outside, pausing to examine each major section. It took their breath away.
First was the hexagonal array containing 390 silver VASIMR nozzles, replete with glowing plasma emitting from each one like a narrowly-focused flashlight beam. Next was the blocky form of the self-contained nuclear reactor, also hexagonal in cross-section, and slightly narrower than the engine cluster. This was flanked by two large silver cylinders with rounded ends, which were the tanks of xenon gas. Then came the long, spindly truss section separating those pieces from the rest of the craft. It was so long and thin it looked like it would snap easily, even though they knew it was rigid and extremely strong.
At the forward end, the truss disappeared into the center of what looked like a large over-inflated car tire, only without a hole in the middle. This was ten meters in diameter, and five meters long. This was another true space flight innovation: an inflatable structure. The command module, as it was known, would serve as the crew’s main work area and their command and control deck. Its outside color was a rusty orange.
Forward of the central module the truss was flanked by two more sausage-shaped inflatable modules, known as side A and side B. These were twenty meters long and five meters in diameter, and were aligned lengthwise with the ship’s axis. These modules contained the main crew living areas; each crewmember had a tiny individual sleeping cabin. There were also food stores, water tanks, galleys, bathrooms, a laboratory, and the parts shop. They were connected to a central tunnel, running down the inside of the truss, that led back into the command module, providing pressurized access between all the living and working spaces.
The central tunnel also led forward to the next module, which was the docking port. This was metal, and had two ports, one either side, so that two spacecraft could be docked at once. Forward of this was the airlock, allowing the crew to perform spacewalks, otherwise known as extravehicular activities, or EVAs. This was the last pressurized section of the ship. Forward of here were life support systems, oxygen and helium tanks, recyclers for air, water and solid waste, avionics, communications antennas, and the scientific instruments and space-exposed experiments. One of the main instruments was a powerful one-meter reflector telescope. Another was a rail gun, which could launch a small copper impactor at high speed at a scientific target, so that it could be studied remotely.
The crew gazed upon the slender form of the Explorer with a mixture of awe and fascination. Myriad advances in technology were gathered here, from many decades of research and human spaceflight experience. Russia was supplying the engines and reactor. America supplied the truss and living spaces, plus the central computers which ran the ship. Japan provided many other complex, hidden structural elements, the communications, and the attitude control thrusters. China provided the docking port and airlock, and Europe many of the main science instruments.
The inflatable modules were built by a Las Vegas-based company. They were pressurized to one atmosphere – the equivalent of being at sea level on earth. This outward pressure kept the modules extremely strong and rigid. There was no danger of them bursting, as they were rated to many times this pressure. The inflatable skin was over half a meter thick and comprised many different layers, which made it more resistant to micrometeoroid impacts than a metal structure would have been, as well as being lighter and easier to transport into orbit (in a deflated state).
They spent the morning touring the outside of the ship and talking about the many onboard systems. After lunch, they toured the inside.
6
The command module was, of course, the same shape on the inside as on the outside – like a slightly-flattened pumpkin, so that the “floor” and “ceiling” were four meters apart, and the outer wall was curved outwards, with a maximum diameter of ten meters. The terms floor and ceiling only applied when the ship was under power, of course, because only then would there be any microgravity – due to acceleration – that would provide a sense of up or down.
Two convex glass dome windows were set on opposite sides. These were one and a half meters wide, and bulged outwards in a hemisphere to provide a 180-degree view of space, and the forward and aft portions of the ship. More than one crewmember thought of how fun it would be to float with their head inside the dome and the interior lights off, to have the feeling of free-floating in space.
The entire inside wall was a computer interface. It could understand speech, touch, gestures, and expressions, and would facilitate everything from navigation to communications to entertainment to onboard systems control. There were actually four identical computers, to provide redundancy. They all monitored each other all the time, and if any one of them was found to be malfunctioning it would be automatically shut down.
They spent a while in the command module. The only thing obstructing the view from one side to the other was the exposed part of the central truss, which ran straight up through the center of the room. The triangulation bars on it were plenty wide enough to comfortably pass through, however, to gain access to the central tunnel that ran up through it. The crew then traveled up the tunnel. After five meters or so, there were two hatches on either side that led to the side A and side B modules. They took a right-hand turn into side B.
There was a tunnel about one-and-a-half meters in diameter that ran the approximately twenty-meter length of the module. From this was a branch to the crew accommodation section. Four cabins, each about the size of a large closet, were clustered there. (The other four cabins were in side A.) Following the main passage forward, they passed a tiny galley, which was barely bigger than an airplane’s bathroom. Next to this was the actual bathroom, which was about the same size. Then there was a small workshop, which was only a little larger than a crew cabin. In this was one of the most important things they would need if something malfunctioned: the parts fabricator.
The parts fabricator – known as the “fab” – was a 3D printing device, that could manufacture anything from electronic circuit boards to mechanical parts. Thus, they could “print” in flight any part that they might need, up to a size of roughly fifty centimeters cubed. This avoided having to take a large stock of parts with them. There were also traditional hand metalworking tools and a tiny lathe, plus a precision CNC laser cutter. Forward of here were the food stores and water tanks.
Touring side A, they found it to be almost the same: four crew cabins, another galley, and another bathroom. Instead of the parts shop, however, was a laboratory, four meters by six. Two walls were comprised entirely of racks for the experiments to be performed during the mission, and the others contained equipment for analysis of the rock and soil samples collected. Forward of here, again, were food stores and water tanks.
The two sides had duplicate, redundant life support systems and crew facilities. This was so that if one side were hopelessly compromised, they could live in the other. Each module could be sealed off from the others very quickly in the case of a pressure hull breach.
Returning to the central tunnel, they floated forward about another thirty meters to the docking port. This was a large metal structure, roughly cube-shaped, with square docking hatches on either side. The only other place to go, forward of here, was the airlock. This was another metal structure, about the same size as the docking port, where their eight custom spacesuits were stored. The airlock itself protruded from one side, with a hatch about one and a half meters wide. This led to the airlock chamber, which could fit two suited astronauts comfortably, or three at a push. The pressurization and depressurization controls were located inside; on the other side was the hatch that led directly out into space.
7
T-minus 1001 days
REUTERS
– The China National Space Administration announced today that it will send a huge scientific package to Mars, consisting of an orbiting observatory and a rover that will explore the planet’s surface.
“This will be an excellent complement to the Chinese participation in the International Mars Explorer mission. Mankind’s knowledge of Mars’ rich scientific treasures will be enhanced, and China’s space technology program will deliver this in tandem with the international mission,” Xun Chen, President of the CNSA, was quoted as saying.
No announcement has been made about the launch date of the mission.
Arthur C. Clarke had once again predicted the future decades in advance, without even trying. He posited that the only way to get payloads into orbit with any kind of economy was to fully reuse the entire launch vehicle, much as an entire aircraft is reused between flights. It was thought for a long time that economical spaceflight may be possible using spaceplanes or single stage to orbit vehicles. However, it just required too much propellant to take any meaningful payload to orbit using just one stage, as the entire structure had to be hauled to orbit and then re-entered. Rocket vehicle structures could not yet be made light enough, with the required strength, to achieve this.
A happy medium was found between fully disposable rockets and reusable single-stage rockets: reusable multi-stage rockets. In this way payloads were launched with three stages but, as each stage burned out, it piloted itself back to Earth for reconditioning. The stages landed vertically, under propulsion, with the first stage touching down exactly where it had lifted off after hurling the rest of the vehicle into the upper atmosphere. The second stage traveled much further when it was spent, so it had to land a few hundred kilometers away (still vertically, under its own power) and be recovered. The third stage was, ironically, easier to recover than the second: it would just make a complete orbit before re-entering and touching down at the launch site.
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