Back to the Moon-ARC

by Travis S. Taylor

  “It almost looks like there is another lander here. See the odd shape of this rock? The reflectance data I just pulled up doesn’t match a natural rock formation. It looks more like the remains of a spacecraft. But the image is simply too poor to make it out. I looked in the catalog, and there are no known missions that landed near here, neither Soviet nor American. And if the Europeans or Japanese had done it in the last several years, then we would know about it. Very odd.”

  “Hmm,” Upchurch responded, “do you think we’ve found a crashed flying saucer or something? Hardly likely. More likely another ‘Face on Mars’ that will go away when we get the better imagery. I’d recommend you forget about it for now.”

  “Probably not aliens, you think?” Britenstein laughed. “If the data rate were higher, we could watch the Altair land on the surface almost as soon as it actually happens. The cameras on this bird might even be able to resolve Stetson as he takes his first walk across the surface. Now that would be cool.”

  “Mariam, you’re right. With only low-resolution data, we cannot recommend the site for a landing anyway. Too risky…Too bad,” Morton added. “Now, back to the task at hand. We have two excellent choices that meet all mission criteria. Which shall it be?”

  The debate resumed, and the remains of China’s failed attempt to land a robot on the Moon remained undiscovered.

  Meanwhile, some 240,000 miles away in lunar orbit, the Lunar Mapper spacecraft was following its slowly repeating trajectory around the Moon. Its camera was working flawlessly after nearly a year on the job. If someone had been there looking around, they might have noticed a glint on the horizon, occasionally captured by the spacecraft’s primary camera. The camera was pointed toward the lunar surface, and not out into deep space. The glint was photographed a few more times over the next several minutes as the images were sent back to the Earth in nearly real-time by the spacecraft’s onboard telemetry system. Data analysis was not conducted in real time, so there was no one looking when the small projectile collided with the Lunar Mapper spacecraft at a relative velocity of four kilometers per second. While the projectile was traveling at less than half the velocity of a spacecraft in low Earth orbit, it was moving eight times faster than a bullet, packing sixty-four times the destructive energy. The collision obliterated the little mapping spacecraft.

  Only after the data stopped did anyone look at the last few images sent back to the Earth from lunar orbit; it was then that the “glint” was observed and the idea put forward that the Lunar Mapper was victim to either a piece of space junk or an errant meteorite. Both were incredibly unlikely events, but the reality was something so unlikely that no one even considered it.

  The Lunar Mapper spacecraft, set to continue taking high-resolution images of the Moon for at least another half a year, was the victim of a piece of depleted uranium deliberately sent to collide with it. The uranium projectile that impacted the spacecraft had been launched several days before from China. The launch was hailed by China as a lunar flyby mission that would use the Moon to slingshot the spacecraft toward the sun for future solar-weather observations. But unbeknownst to the rest of the world, the real goal of the mission was stopping all high-resolution mapping of the Moon for at least the next two years. Building upon their demonstrated capability to destroy a satellite in Earth orbit, which they did in 2007, China had quietly developed a capability to intercept and destroy any spacecraft in the Earth-Moon system. Lunar Mapper was the first target; no one in China asserted responsibility for the attack or even acknowledged that an attack had taken place. And though analysts in the National Reconnaissance Office later suggested in appropriately classified memoranda that China was responsible, no one at NASA had a clue.

  Chapter 13

  Calvin Ross was alone in his top-floor office at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., when he received a text message from his friend and former Senate colleague, the Honorable Karen Anderson of Texas. It was just 7:30 a.m. and most NASA workers were still in the middle of their morning commutes. Ross had arrived in the District early and worked out at his favorite gym just down the street. He was in top physical and mental condition, working out each and every morning for at least forty-five minutes before reporting to work.

  First running his hands through his full, though now graying, hair, Ross picked up his BlackBerry from between the picture of his wife (whom some called a trophy wife because she was fifteen years his junior and looked great in a tennis outfit) and the digital frame scrolling through twenty years of family pictures.

  The message was blunt: newsome to request nasa cut to pay for education budget increase. first moon flight to be last?

  “Ha!” Ross laughed out loud. “So, Newsome is going to pay back the teachers unions by killing the one thing that might inspire some of America’s kids to become interested in science and technology.” NASA’s eighteen-billion-dollar budget was very visible, though very, very small compared to the overall government budget of just over three and a half trillion dollars. But it was considered “discretionary,” meaning that it wasn’t part of Social Security, Medicare, or National Health. As such, the politicians were free to grandstand and make claims of saving the taxpayers money by cutting it. The reality was stark. If all of NASA were canceled, the money saved wouldn’t even pay for the annual growth in spending of the Medicare program, and the unemployment that would follow would create extreme recessions in many states across the country—at least ten of them. Unfortunately, though it made little difference in the overall federal-budget situation, NASA’s visibility made it a ripe, juicy target. Ross shifted in his seat, pondering which hotline to activate and which political favors to call due. After, of course, he got the full story from the NASA Legislative Affairs Office.

  Though he had no technical background, and certainly no lifelong interest in space or space exploration, Calvin Ross was nonetheless going to protect his budgetary turf. NASA was his to manage, and he was going to manage it, and its full budget, using every skill he possessed and every political maneuver he could manage. For Ross, it was a matter of personal pride to keep the agency under his care from being cut. He was playing “the game,” and the rules said that he would be a winner if he kept others from eating his pie. He liked this game and was considered to be good at it, even if his former constituents didn’t recognize and reward him for it with reelection.

  He had lots of friends in the Senate, and he was about to enlist their support—and that of the legion of Washington lobbyists who had an interest in keeping lucrative government contracts funded and pumping money into their sponsors’ coffers.

  Ross looked at the message again before responding. ok. if it is a fight he wants, then we’ll give him waterloo. Satisfied with his somewhat dramatic response, Ross sat back in his chair to once again run his hands through his hair.

  “He won’t kill us without a fight!”

  That night, instead of being alone in his office, Ross was in the company of ten others. Five were aides to senators with NASA facilities in their districts. The other five were the dreaded aerospace lobbyists, present to help preserve the pieces of the budgetary pie that they thought were rightfully theirs. All were discussing the proposed NASA budget cut.

  Ross had laid out the scenario to the group shortly after they arrived, some still sporting the remains of a hastily eaten dinner on their carefully pressed Oxford cloth shirts. One of the staffers looked like he’d just been awakened from a night’s sleep. Or perhaps he looked like he hadn’t slept at all.

  Another, a vivacious and piranhalike aide to the Honorable Senator from Texas, looked like she was ready for a night on the town. Dressed totally in black to match her jet-black hair, the neckline on her blouse dipping into dangerous territory due to too many buttons not fastened, she was the kind of staffer Ross had successfully avoided throughout his tenure in the Senate—though it had taken every ounce of willpower he possessed.

  The meeting was a classic Washington business meeting with t
he usual cast of characters. Calvin Ross was in his element, and, of course, he had a plan. He always had a plan. Sometimes the trick was in the implementation part of the plan.

  “Ahem!” Ross cleared his throat and raised his voice. “Now that we know what the son of a bitch wants to do with the NASA budget, we can stop him. We all know that head-to-head we will lose in any public fight over spending between NASA and Education. Our kids are failing, right? They were failing when I was in school, and they are still failing, despite billions of dollars and decades of patience. No, if the public has to choose between going to the Moon and their little Johnny learning to read—as ridiculous as the choice would be—we will lose.

  “No, we can’t win that way. But we can convince some of our colleagues that the aerospace jobs in their districts will evaporate if our budget is cut.” Nodding to the exhausted-looking staffer, Ross commanded, “Ned, pass out the data you collected earlier today.”

  Ned, far from being asleep, leapt to his feet, opened the backpack carelessly slung over the back of his chair, and began passing out a neatly stapled set of charts that clearly showed where each and every dollar of NASA’s budget was being spent. The first page was a map of the United States with each state highlighted. Typed within each state was a dollar figure—the amount of money in NASA contracts that flowed into that state in the last fiscal year—along with the names and thumbnail images of its two senators. On the next fifty pages were enlarged images of each state, broken down by congressional district; again, within each district, was a dollar figure. And beside each congressional district was a thumbnail image of its representative.

  No senator would come away without knowing how much money was at stake in their state. No congressman would remain ignorant of how much money poured directly into his or her district. This was the political game played with its most basic currency—cash.

  The last two pages of the handout contained a summary of NASA’s Constellation program, describing exactly how they were about take Americans back to the Moon for the first time in over fifty years.

  Ross, ever prepared, had read the history of Apollo. He knew very well that the decision to cancel Apollo had been made before Neil Armstrong ever set foot on the lunar surface. The politicians in 1968 decided to pull the rug out from under NASA at the height of its success, and a half century had passed before NASA was able to rebuild the capability it had before most of the people in the room were even born. Ross was not about to let history repeat itself on his watch.

  If Bill Stetson or any member of the technical leadership at NASA had been in the room, they would have been apoplectic. For them, seeing over a decade of technical work and planning, the product of thousands of highly trained engineers and scientists working overtime, reduced to less than two pages in a set of over fifty charts would have been simply too much of an insult. This was especially true since only one person in the room even bothered to take the time to look at them. All the rest were too busy looking over the dollar amounts on the various pages. Ross had briefly considered having the NASA Chief Engineer be part of this closed-door meeting, and as he watched the people in the room, he knew he had made the right choice in not inviting him. He would have had a seizure and/or bored the living hell out of the staffers with rocket-science talk while all they wanted to know about were how many votes they were buying.

  Ross, sensing that the assembled were now aware of exactly what was at stake, dug in deeper. “In the committee, we can count on at least thirteen of the sixteen votes we need to kill Newsome’s amendment to the budget. All thirteen in our column are either real supporters of space exploration, God bless ’em, have a NASA field center in their district, or at least have a major contractor working on the Moon program in there somewhere. It’s the other three we have to worry about.”

  Glancing up from his notes, seemingly unaware of the large ketchup stain adorning the collar of his designer shirt, the aide to the senator from Florida chimed in. “Senator Booker needs support for this year’s farm bill. His state has a lot to lose if the subsidies for making corn-based ethanol are cut. I’m sure a few senators could voice their support—after we let him know why he’s getting it.” Mr. Ketchup pulled his eyeglasses down to the tip of his nose, tilted his head forward and spoke directly to Ms. Piranha. “That would mean your boss would have to eat a little crow and ease off on her comments about pork spending in the farm states.”

  “I’ll see what we can do” was her only response.

  Ross watched and inwardly smiled. He knew that her boss would do what it would take to get support for NASA. Her state simply had too much to lose if the money for the Moon contracts stopped flowing. Losing thousands of jobs just before one’s six-year term in the Senate was about to be over didn’t do a lot for one’s reelection chances.

  In every group of lobbyists, there was always one who looked the part. In this case, it was Dr. T. Rathbone Smythe of the Aerospace and Aviation Advocacy Committee, or the AAAC, as it preferred to be called. Smythe could have been forty, fifty or even fifty-five years old—old enough to convey experience and authority but not too old as to appear out of touch. With carefully groomed salt-and-pepper hair, and only a hint of a receding hairline, a finely chiseled face and an ever-present tan, Smythe was the type of person who inspired confidence. Living up to his aristocratic-sounding name, Smythe was also a smooth talker and was comfortable making small talk with just about everyone. He was an equal with the elite and a paternalistic supporter of those with lesser social status. Smythe could play the game at all levels. He cleared his throat and entered his opinion into the conversation.

  “I can get the other two votes. Senator Lipman is running short on cash for his reelection campaign, and I think our members can step up to the plate to make sure his coffers get refilled.” Smythe looked at the handout showing the funds being spent in a certain Northeastern state—the one which the senator in question called home.

  “Good.” Ross nodded.

  “It would help if these numbers were a little higher.” Smyth aimed the comment directly at the NASA Administrator.

  “I guess it would.” Ross smiled, slightly bemused. “Mr. Smythe, there isn’t anything I can do about that. Believe it or not, the career civil servants who make these sorts of decisions are usually quite honest in their reviews, and I could go to jail if I were to try and influence the peer-review process.

  “In addition, as you are well aware, contracts are awarded in a competitive process that sometimes takes years from start to finish. Even if I could influence the process, there simply isn’t time.” Ross didn’t want the conversation to go in this direction, especially with so many potential witnesses in the room. He had to shut down that line of discussion before it went places that he didn’t care to go.

  “Calvin, I wouldn’t dream of asking you to do anything unethical. I’m just saying the tasks themselves need more money.” Smythe made a convincing response. He took Ross’s hint and moved on. “The other vote, well, let’s just say I think I can convince another member of the committee to oppose the amendment.” He took a long pause before continuing. “Let’s just say that a favor is owed.”

  Ross, again running his hands through his hair, looked around the room at the faces of the aids and lobbyists gathered there. Washington’s finest, he thought to himself before speaking out loud his final thoughts.

  “Let’s do it, then. The amendment will be offered sometime next week. Can we get the support to kill it in place by then?”

  One by one, heads in the room nodded—all of them. When compared to the overall federal budget, NASA’s budget was small. But when put on an individual or corporate level, its eighteen-billion-dollar annual appropriation was still enough to make many people rich, and it was simply too much to be ignored by anyone with half a brain. And these people, and the ones they represented, certainly had more than half a brain when it came to the dog-eat-dog of politics.

  One week later, the amendment offered by the C
hair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, an amendment to reduce wasteful spending on a boondoggle program to explore the Moon and to channel the money instead into Education for the nation’s vulnerable youth, went down to defeat. The Honorable Senator Newsome, the author of the amendment, was not pleased.

  Watching from the gallery, NASA Administrator Calvin Ross was. He had protected his turf and shown that he still had what it took to be a player in Washington.

  Chapter 14

  Stetson heard the news from his Houston office, as he was reviewing the latest landing-site recommendations from Dr. Morton’s team. Like most in his generation, Stetson was an expert at multitasking the inflow of information. Instant messages, e-mail, tweets, texts, and a customized space news feed scrolling across the lower portion of his computer screen and cell phone were simply part of his everyday life, and he didn’t seem fazed by the constant flood of often-irrelevant data. One headline scrolling across his computer’s news bar did catch his eye.

  space race heats up as chinese launch unmanned mission to the moon

  He glanced away from Morton’s charts and clicked on the headline.

  Following in America’s footsteps, the Chinese government today announced the successful launch of their own unmanned mission to the Moon. The spacecraft, said to be identical to the one that will carry Chinese taikonauts to the Moon in the future, will be controlled robotically. The Chinese Minister for Space said that the mission would test all of the systems required to send a crew to the lunar surface. “This mission will be the final dress rehearsal before China is the first country in over fifty years to have its citizens walk on another planet,” the minister said. There is not yet any official reaction from Washington, but independent experts widely believe America will win this new race to the Moon despite the recent technical difficulties with NASA’s lunar dress rehearsal and the rumors starting to circulate that the launch scheduled in two weeks may again slip.