“Yes, I’m almost sure of it, looking at the surface composition and the pockmarks and craters on it,” Martin replied. “There is the remotest possibility that it’s an extinct comet – i.e. it’s passed close to the Sun so many times that all its volatile materials have been ejected and it’s now just the shell. That would mean it isn’t solid and could break up when we hit it, but I don’t think it’s one of those. Those are rare – they usually disintegrate. My professional opinion is it’s a rock, and we’d only get a small plume of material when we hit it, not a complete breakup.”
“How close for the instruments to still be able to track it?” Nikita asked.
“Let me work it out real quick.” He did some calculations on his tablet. “About 20,000 kilometers.”
“OK. And can we hit it precisely enough that we hit the right side if it, so any ejected mass goes away from us instead of towards us?” Aleksandr asked.
“Hopefully.”
“Hopefully? Either we can or we can’t,” Aleksandr pressed, in an irritated tone.
“Well, it’s a rail gun system, and the weight of the projectiles is known to within a millionth of a gram, so its aim is pretty exact.”
“Well, okay. We still have about three hours before it gets here, so I’m going to get the go-ahead from Mission Control to do impact observations. I bet they’ll have specific data they want us to get, too.”
Aleksandr relayed the information to Mission Control, and waited around for an answer. Nikita yawned. “At least we aren’t going to have to change course to avoid it. But I’m going to stick around. I want to see this. Let’s wake Kinuko up, too, when it’s a bit closer. She’ll want to see it.”
They busied themselves with other tasks, while the space rock approached. Scientists on Earth had now been able to take a look at their recorded footage and observations of it, and agreed that it was very likely a free-flying rock and wouldn’t pose any threat if hit by a small copper projectile fired from the ship. Mission Control gave the go-ahead to impact it.
An hour before showtime, they woke Kinuko up to come and join the party. Her eyes widened when she saw the (now much larger) image of the rock tumbling towards them. “Wow, I didn’t think we’d see an asteroid this close up. Hopefully it is an asteroid, coming in on that trajectory. With the speed and direction and it’s coming in from, it’s definitely from outside the Solar System. It could be a very long period comet that’s gone extinct. Still, I trust you guys and the observers on Earth. I think we should wake the others up, too. They’ll be annoyed if they miss it.”
Soon, all eight crewmembers were gathered expectantly in the hub.
* * *
Interactions with the Cosmos – The Blog of the International Mars Explorer
We’re going to get our first up-close look at a piece of cosmic debris. This is special, because it’s from outside the Solar System. Its makeup may reveal clues about the early formation of the Solar System. It could well be billions of years old. This is one reason why manned space missions are so important – we can make on-the-spot decisions about what science to carry out.
-Kinuko Sasake
[Attachment: a picture of the space rock.]
* * *
Martin said, “Okay, everyone, we’re going to launch the projectile at about twenty-two minutes and thirty seconds before closest approach. It will take six minutes and forty seconds to reach the rock. The closing velocity will be fifty kilometers a second – forty from the rock’s velocity and ten from the projectile. The total energy released from the impact will be 625 megajoules, the same as 150 kilos of TNT. That ought to kick up a pretty good dust plume, and probably make a hole so we can see what’s under its crust.”
The others nodded approvingly. The minutes ticked by. The rock grew larger in the telescope’s view.
“Computer, load projectile and calculate firing solution for radar target 1A at 20,000 kilometers distance,” Martin said.
“Confirmed. Firing will be automatic, in one minute and thirty seconds.”
“Sixty seconds.”
“Thirty seconds.”
“Ten seconds… five seconds… impactor away. Successful firing confirmed.”
The half-kilogram lump of copper had been accelerated from zero to ten kilometers per second in the space of eight meters, and was now speeding away from them on a collision course with the rock. The front end of the ship bucked in reaction to the tons of force exerted on the projectile. The crew hit the wall of the hub quite unexpectedly. The truss creaked from being momentarily bent.
“What the heck?” Alessia said, before they all realized what had happened. Nobody was hurt. After they had recovered from this shock, Martin said: “Now we just sit back, and watch the show.” They settled down and watched, fascinated, as did the scientists on Earth (with a light-time delay of eight minutes).
“Two minutes to impact.”
The rock was now close enough (in cosmic terms) that it now appeared to move against its starry background.
“One minute.”
“This is pure science fiction,” Tung-chi marveled. “We could be on the starship Enterprise or something.” Martin counted down the last seconds. There was a bright flash near the rock’s center.
“YES!” they cheered, as one. Within seconds, however, their jubilation turned to horror. They had kicked up more than a dust cloud. The whole thing began to break apart, in slow motion. An alarm much like a klaxon sounded, as the computer blurted out: “LEVEL ONE PROXIMITY ALARM!” as it detected pieces breaking off it whose track would pass very close to them.
There were now lots of small squares around lots of individual rocks on the screen, as the main rock fragmented. Each had a letter and a number assigned to it, as its radar target designation. The next window listed all the targets, and the list was growing very long, very quickly. There were flashing red squares around the ones that would come near them.
“Oh, shit!” Aleksandr said. “Seal off all the modules! Prepare for a possible pressure breach!”
Christopher pulled up the ship’s systems interface and hit the panic button. “WARNING: PRESSURE HULL EMERGENCY!” now blared, on top of the proximity alarm, as the hatches connecting all the modules to the central tunnel swung closed and locked.
“We have about eight minutes until the debris cloud gets here,” Aleksandr said, with an edge of panic in his voice. Then he opened a video chat with Earth. “Mayday, Mission Control. Mayday! The impact observation went horribly wrong. We are about to fly through a cloud of fine debris. We are locked down and prepared for an impact.” As best we can be, he thought to himself. Even a small rock would vaporize them at the speed they were traveling.
All they could do was watch as the debris cloud grew. Bigger chunks broke apart into clouds of smaller rocks. The radar picked them up and gave them numbers as fast as it could, until its limit of a thousand was reached. In the telescope view, the cloud grew, and ever finer particles became visible as they sped towards the Explorer. The majority of the cone of debris would pass behind them, thankfully, but they would fly through some of it.
“I guess it was an extinct comet, after all,” said Martin, grimly. “It was just a bunch of dust held together by its own weak gravity. It had a crust of regolith on it that made it look like a hard surface, so we thought it was an asteroid. It would have disintegrated anyway by the Sun’s tidal forces, when it got to perihelion, but that doesn’t do us much good now…”
“Four minutes,” Aleksandr said. They all watched the display anxiously, as the cloud of debris continued to expand, and ever-smaller shards became visible. Some of it was indeed going to come pretty close to them.
“Nikita, would it do any good to turn the ship so we’re facing it? That would minimize our profile, so we have less chance of getting hit,” Aleksandr asked.
“Um, not really. We’re crossing the debris field as fast as it’s coming towards us. Turning would just mean we flew through it sideways. It wouldn’t change
anything.”
“Okay. Three minutes,” he said, panic rising in his chest.
“Computer, set the radar to show only the closest 100 objects to our trajectory,” Martin said. Red squares appeared around 100 of the fragments. “Show their trajectories and their closest approach pass to us.” Another window opened showing a two-dimensional view of their trajectory and those of the rocks. Five would pass within ten kilometers of them. Three would pass within two kilometers. “There are literally millions of fragments, boss. These are only the ones we can see.”
Aleksandr nodded. They all knew that even a one gram pebble at forty kilometers a second would vaporize whatever part of the spacecraft it hit, and it would be game over. Neither they nor the radar would even see it coming.
“Two minutes,” Martin called out.
They huddled together instinctively, as if that would do them any good if the worst happened. Martin put his arms around Kinuko and held her tight without even thinking about it. She didn’t object.
“One minute.”
Alessia prayed under her breath. They knew that worrying wouldn’t change a single thing. Their training had taught them to be calm and clear their minds first of all in a crisis, before doing anything. Action was nothing if it was done in a panic, as it could easily be the wrong action.
“Thirty seconds,” Martin said. The debris cloud continued towards them at unimaginable speed. Some fragments would be as small as grains of sand, but still deadly and completely undetectable by either sight or radar. Martin counted down until the hellish sandstorm began. Particles appeared on the screen as soon as they were detected, and then disappeared almost as quickly as they whizzed by. They closed their eyes, not wanting to see the end coming. They tensed their bodies instinctively against any impact, and listened for bangs or explosions, even though death would come before the message could travel to their brains. Every so often they would open one eye and glance at the screen.
This went on for thirty terrifying seconds, as their very existence balanced on a razor’s edge.
And then, no more.
They exhaled. “We made it!” said Martin.
“Holy shit!” Christopher exclaimed. “I hope we don’t get into any more scrapes like that before we get home!”
“We’re okay, Mission Control,” Aleksandr said into the still-open video chat channel. Mission Control had only just received the original mayday message. Their eight minutes of terror would be just beginning.
Another full minute passed before Martin realized the instruments were still running, and had been through the whole ordeal. “We were observing the whole time,” he said. “That’s an unprecedented level of data about the internal makeup of comets.”
“Well, I hope they like the data. It nearly cost us everything,” Aleksandr grumbled. “We must not screw up like that again.”
“Can we go back to bed now?” Emile asked. This brought some much-needed laughter.
“I am afraid not,” said Aleksandr. “We will need to debrief with Earth. That will take a couple of hours at least. Then we can get some rest.”
* * *
@KR_IME: GOD’S SHOTGUN NEARLY GOT US. WE FIRED FIRST, THOUGH.
* * *
43
T-plus 63 days
“What are you thinking about?” Emile asked Alessia, as she gazed out at the stars.
“Going to the surface of Mars,” she replied. “We're going all this way. We'll be just above the cloud tops, but we won't be able to actually go there and stand on the surface. Why couldn't we take a lander and an ascent stage with us?”
“I can answer that one,” said Christopher, who had floated over as he overheard the conversation. “There are three main factors at work. One: we're pushing the limit of everything. We don't yet have the power to go anywhere we want, when we want, even with these engines. So, we had to take advantage of the right launch and return windows to get favorable orbits to do a lot of the work for us. That meant we had to finish the ship in a certain amount of time. Two: to push more mass to Mars and slow it down again, we'd need a bigger reactor. This one is the biggest one we could put in orbit with the current launch boosters available – even if it did involve resurrecting the N-1. And three, the space agencies just couldn't afford it. The economy's been bad for years, before the current troubles. So, there you have it. It's been debated endlessly, but we just couldn't do it in the end. So that's why we're just going to the moons.”
The others nodded.
“Yeah...” she said, wistfully. “Imagine what it would be like, though, to stand there on the rocky landscape, under the orange sky, feeling the wind blowing on you. To be the first, or one of the first, to actually stand on Mars.”
“Yeah. I guess it's still only for unmanned rovers for now,” Christopher replied. “We're proving out so much technology on this mission, though, that I don't doubt the next one will be a manned one to the surface. If it's done by the IDSA, which it very likely will be, the question is: who'll get to be the first one to set foot on the surface?”
They looked around at each other and shrugged.
“Maybe they will have some kind of a lottery system,” said Emile. “Or maybe whichever nation contributes the most.”
Martin floated over to join the conversation.
“So, is it true that we have to take a toy Lexus to Phobos?” he asked.
“Yes, unfortunately, it is,” said Christopher. “And that's not even the worst part. We have to take a solar-powered camera there, that we leave pointing at it.”
“Say what?”
“Yeah. It's, like, their latest SUV or something. They want it perched on top of some dirt mound – not like there are any other kinds of mounds on Phobos – with this camera looking at it. Then they can get shots of it with the sun at different angles, etc. Ideally they want Mars in the background, too.”
“Holy crap. What a waste of science time. We've traveled halfway across the Solar System – or so it feels – and we have to shoot a car commercial?” Martin replied, incredulously.
“Yeah. They're paying the IDSA 100 million dollars for it,” said Christopher.
“Should be 200 million, if you ask me,” Emile said, “shared equally among the astronauts.” The others grinned.
“How are they going to get the images back? Will they have a direct feed from the camera, or are they going to use MarsNet?” Martin asked.
“If they're using MarsNet, that's some serious roaming charges,” said Christopher.
“Yeah. Plus, then they'll be using up bandwidth that's meant for scientific data. So, not only would they be using the capacity that we have for getting stuff to Phobos' surface, and our time, but also our data sats. Lovely.”
“Commercialism has been in spaceflight since a long time ago, though,” Alessia said. “There were soft drinks on the old space shuttles, and then that toy Ford floating around outside the ISS. Not to mention numerous commercials for clothing, watches, computers, etc. from the ISS. Especially once Bigelow got involved.”
“True. Although I think we should 'accidentally' destroy the Lexus after we take off. A shot from an impactor ought to do it,” Christopher joked.
“Don't even go there, after the close call we had with that thing,” Aleksandr said from the other side of the hub.
“I know, but don't you think it would be funny?” Christopher continued, “blasting it out of the water, so to speak, along with a chunk of dirt from Phobos?” The team chuckled.
“Or use the laser on it,” Martin replied. “'Accidentally' burn it while we're surveying the surface. Hey, if we're capable of nearly destroying ourselves before we even get to Mars, imagine what else we're capable of!”
“I say inappropriate use of mission resources and equipment,” Nikita joked, as he drifted over. “I am the proxy for Lesley Jones, and she says no.”
“Okay, mama,” Christopher replied.
“And no inappropriate tweeting, either.”
“Okay, mama.�
��
The conversation paused awhile, as they pondered their own thoughts.
“Where are you from, Nikita?” Christopher asked.
“Siberia. Novosibirsk.”
“Where is that, exactly?”
“The middle of nowhere. Literally. You think you’ve seen somewhere that’s in the middle of nowhere? You haven’t, until you’ve seen Novosibirsk. It’s pretty much in the middle of Siberia, and you’re talking thousands of miles, not hundreds, of wilderness. There’s a few cities within 200 miles, but not much else. It’s barren and very, very, cold.”
This piqued Christopher’s interest, as he had a fascination with Russia. “What’s it like there?”
“It is a beautiful city. It started out pretty small, but they decided to make it a stop on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Almost overnight, it turned into a boomtown. It has a beautiful chapel in the center of the city. A Russian Orthodox chapel. That is the only real tourist attraction. Apart from the railroad.”
“How cold does it get in winter?” Martin asked.
“Minus forty Celsius.” They all shivered instinctively at the thought of it.
“Life there is hard,” Nikita continued. “Harder than it was under Communism, at least according to my mom. I didn’t really know my dad – he was an alcoholic, and left the family when I was three.” They nodded sympathetically.
“Back in the day, my mom said, they would provide everything for you. Most people worked in armaments factories, or supporting industries. Then, overnight, Communism fell and everything changed. They tried to divide everything up fairly, so that the people got what used to belong to the government. In some ways it worked out, but some people exploited the system and amassed many assets before the market price had been fixed. Then they sold them back to the government for many times what they had bought them for!
“After that, public services started to break down. Here’s one example: the storm drains, all through the city, used to get cleaned and maintained properly. After Communism, nobody bothered to maintain them. So, every spring, four feet of snow melts and the city floods. The water is over a foot deep. It happens every year, and still nobody does anything! It is crazy.
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