“I don’t know, maybe forty or fifty. I haven’t kept count.” She held her arm out toward Gabe.
“Oh, that’s beautiful. Is it gold? It looks heavy.”
“Yes and, yeah, it’s getting quite heavy.”
Gabe peered closely at the bracelet. “That’s lovely. Is that a penguin?”
“Uh huh.”
“Where’d you get that?”
“Christchurch, New Zealand. When we went to Antarctica.”
“Oh my god. You’ve been to Antarctica?”
“Uh huh. It was very interesting.”
Gabe gently touched the bracelet. “Thank you. It’s beautiful.”
“Boss,” said Abby, “is Heidi coming up?”
Jeff nodded. “Yeah, she’ll arrive in Providence at ten in the morning.” He glanced at Chrissie. “Can you pick her up?”
“Sure.”
He turned to Brad and Diane. “Heidi, Dr. Heidi Christianson, is our engineer. She spends most of her time down in New Orleans at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, overseeing the construction of our Jupiter rockets.”
“Abby has told us so much about the mission,” said Brad, “but, as a sci-fi novelist, I am really excited about seeing what you have here.”
“Well, we’ll give you the full tour. The entire lower floor is dedicated to the operation. Oh, forgive me, I’m gonna talk shop for just a minute.” He glanced at Abby, and nodded. “Better take another swig of that drink.”
Abby frowned. “Huh? Why?”
“Just got off the phone with Heidi. They found a crack in a weld on one of the J-2 nozzles.”
“You’re shitting me?”
“I wish I was.”
“How bad is it?”
“Don’t know. Neither does Heidi. It’s not big, but it’s a crack.”
“Can it be repaired?”
“Don’t know that either. Rocketdyne will be there Monday to have a look and give us an assessment. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Abby took a big gulp of scotch. “Crap.”
“Uh, yeah.”
Diane gave Jeff a concerned look. “I’m sorry, I’m not much of a space expert. What’s a J-2 nozzle? And, what are the implications?”
Jeff shook his head. “Oh, no, my fault, I apologize. The J-2 is a big rocket engine. It’s the engine that was used on the Apollo-era Saturn V second and third stages, and was the engine that propelled the Apollo vehicles out of Earth orbit and sent them on their way to the moon. We’re using them for essentially the same purpose. They are the engine on our Earth Departure Stage, or EDS, and the ‘nozzle’ is the exhaust nozzle; the big bell down at the bottom. Implications? Well, delays. Um, prior to cancellation of the Constellation program a few years back, the plan was to fit the Ares V EDS with a new, upgraded version of the J-2, the J-2X. Development of the J-2X is still proceeding, but rather slowly owing to lack of demand… and funding. We have access to twelve original J-2s that have been in storage or on display for, well, about 50 years now.”
Diane gasped and glanced at Abby. “You’re using 50-year-old engines?”
Abby rolled her eyes. “Mom, it’s not as bad as it sounds, let him finish.”
Jeff grinned. “She’s right, it isn’t as bad as sounds. The J-2 is renowned for its performance and reliability, and they’ve been flown many, many times. These engines have never flown, they’re essentially new and unused. The J-2 isn’t quite as powerful or efficient as the J-2X, but for our purposes they’ll do quite nicely. However, because they’re so well flight tested, in discussions with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne early on, we didn’t feel there was a need to refurbish more than the four engines we’ll use. So, having a glitch develop in one of them at this point in time – with our next launch only five months off – is a bit of an inconvenience. We’ll get it fixed, one way or another. But, relax, the J-2 is a good engine, and the fact that these engines are as old I am, is entirely irrelevant. They’ll work.”
Diane glanced at Abby and frowned.
Abby shook her head. “Don’t look at me like that, Mom. We’ve been at this for more than three years. We know what we’re doing.”
Diane turned to Jeff, looking apologetic. “I’m sorry. A mother’s concern.”
Jeff smiled softly and nodded. “Please believe me, I understand. That’s why I’m so glad you’re here. Give us a chance. Let us show you what we’re going to do, and how we’re going to do it.”
Saturday, July 4, 2015 (T minus 262 days)
At the bottom of the stairs, Jeff turned left and left again. “This is Abby’s and Gabe’s office. Sue used to be in here, but since she spends most of her time in her lab at the other end of the floor, Abby and Gabe evicted her to make more room for them.”
Susan grinned. “I don’t mind. It’s not that far.”
“Having her office here is very convenient for Abby, as right down there,” Jeff pointed down the next flight of stairs, “is her favorite room in the house.”
Diane smiled. “Which is?”
“The wine cellar.”
Everyone laughed.
Abby grinned, sheepishly. “I’d live in there if it wasn’t so cold.”
Jeff shook his head. “And next door here, is the conference room. But down here,” he led them back down the hall, “is what is now the room of main interest, the Mission Control Center, or MCC. Originally, this was two rooms, the recreation room and theater. We initially used the rec room as an engineering lab, but when it came time to build the MCC, we tore out the wall.”
Brad gasped. “Oh my god, it looks like Mission Control at Houston.”
Jeff nodded. “That’s the idea. It’s modeled loosely on the White Flight Control Room at the Johnson Space Center. It’s not quite as big, but functionally about the same; all the same consoles and displays.”
“How big are those wall displays?”
“Twelve feet by six and three-quarters. Diagonally, 165-inch wide screen. They’re LED backlit LCDs made by Mitsubishi with a resolution of 1920 x 1080, and we can use them independently or couple them together for a panorama.”
Diane’s jaw dropped. “Good grief! So, you run everything from here?”
“That’s right. This is our operation, not NASA’s. Launches are handled by the Firing Rooms at Kennedy and Cape Canaveral, but once the vehicle clears the tower, we take over. Houston, if they’re interested, is just an observer. Our call sign is ‘Newport’, and there’s very little that Houston can do that we can’t do just as well, if not better, since all of this is specifically designed for this one mission.”
Glancing around the room, Diane shook her head. “I had no idea.”
Jeff smiled. “We’re pretty proud of this. We’ve used it now for four launches and two Mars landings and, so far at least, it’s worked very well. There’s not a whole lot going on right now, so it’s not manned. We don’t have anything in flight and the only activity to speak of is Amos, our rover, wandering around doing his thing. But, once we launch next March, this room will be manned seven by twenty-four until our return. Not fully staffed, but at least a Watch Officer sitting FLIGHT.”
“Who man’s it?” said Brad. “And who is going to man it when you’re gone?”
“Officially, Chrissie runs the MCC, and we have a staff of 15 doctoral and post-doctoral volunteers, not to mention Heidi, from all over the country that show up here for major evolutions, like launches and landings. If something happens and we need to man up in a hurry, this can also all be done online. All everybody has to do is find a computer with an Internet connection, and we’re up and running.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Yeah, I don’t think even NASA can do that.”
“What is Amos up to these days?”
Jeff glanced at Gabe. “Dog and pony show?”
“Sure.”
“Diane, Brad, why don’t you come over here and have a seat at the CAPCOM console, and we’ll show you where we are and bring you up to date.” Jeff sat beside the
m at the FLIGHT console and brought up images on the large screen displays on the front wall of the MCC.
“Okay,” said Gabe. She grabbed a laser pointer off the top of the FLIGHT console and stood behind them. “On the left is the USGS planetary map of Mars. The pink region on the left is the highlands, more or less centered on the Syria Planum, with the three volcanoes comprising the Tharsis Montes to the northwest, and beyond that, Olympus Mons, the tallest peak in the solar system.”
Jeff zoomed in.
“The blue-green valley running east-west is the Valles Marineris. Just east of where the Valles turns north and flows into the Chryse Planitia, is the Margaritifer Terra. And, approximately in the center of that is the Margaritifer Basin, bisected by the Morava Valles, and bordered on the north by the Margaritifer Chaos. The Basin is where we’re going.”
“It’s not really green, is it?” said Diane.
Gabe chuckled. “No. This is a topographical map, and the color scheme indicates elevation relative to the reference datum. That is, Mars’ mean elevation as determined by the MOLA, or Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, that was on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft that was launched in 1996 and died of natural causes ten years later. Green indicates the altitude is roughly two to three thousand meters below mean elevation – lowlands. Jeff, 400%?”
Jeff zoomed in.
“Now this is the Basin proper, with the Morava Valles on the left, and the southern edge of the Chaos to the north. Our site is just southwest of the three large craters on the right.”
“How big are those craters?” said Brad.
“The largest is about 60 kilometers across and around 1,800 meters deep.”
“Good grief!”
She grinned. “Yeah. Standing on the rim, you probably can’t see the other side, as it would be over the horizon.”
Jeff chuckled. “It’s funny, that crater is nearly the size of Rhode Island. Yet, as craters on Mars go, it’s so small it doesn’t even have a name.”
“Holy cow. Do you plan on visiting it?”
“No, not that one, but we do have a trip planned to the smaller of the three, the southwest one.”
“Jeff,” said Gabe, “THEMIS site map.”
“Okay.”
“Alright, this is a THEMIS image of our site. THEMIS is the thermal imaging camera on the Mars Odyssey Orbiter. The large crater to the northeast is the smaller of the three large craters on the USGS map. The red circle labeled ‘Site C’ was our initial target. The green dot below it is the location of Pathfinder, our navigational aid and ground communications relay. We missed by a little over twelve kilometers. But, as Jeff likes to remind me, we fired at a target 148 million miles away, moving at 53,860 miles per hour, and involving a 297 day flight time, so a twelve kilometer miss isn’t really too bad.”
Jeff chuckled. “And don’t you forget it.”
She smiled. “I won’t.”
“Brad, the southwest rim of that crater is about 30 miles from the prospective site of our base. Terrain permitting, it should only take us three or four hours to get there.”
“Do you have pictures from Mars?” said Diane.
“Yes,” said Gabe, “lots of them. Jeff, why don’t you put up Pathfinder’s initial panorama?”
“Okay.”
A view of the Martian landscape appeared across all three main screens.
Diane gasped. “Oh my god! And that’s where you’re going?”
“Um, not quite,” said Gabe. “Our tentative base site selection is about five kilometers west, on the other side of that ridge in the right-hand image. I’ll show you in a minute.”
“It looks like the Gobi desert.”
“That’s actually a pretty good analogy. Mars is essentially one giant desert, just a whole lot colder.”
“What’s the temperature like there?”
Gabe shrugged. “It varies. At night in the winter it may get down to minus 150 degrees or so. On a warm summer afternoon, it could get into the upper eighties, maybe ninety.”
“And you can live in that?”
“Sure. Diane, practically speaking, it’s not much different than an arctic expedition. You just have to have a well-insulated habitat and, if you go outside, be properly attired. It’s actually similar to a winter-over scientific expedition at the South Pole, just no snow or ice – well, where we will be – and the sky’s pink instead of blue. Now, as we only had nineteen days between the landings of Pathfinder and Columbus, we decided not to alter the target site, we simply offset Pathfinder’s navigational beacon by twelve kilometers and targeted Columbus at the original site. That worked a bit better.”
Jeff chuckled. “You think?”
Gabe grinned. “Yeah. Though the sixteen landings – there were supposed to be seventeen, but two of them failed to separate, and came down together – were spread over some seven kilometers, the center of the drop was only 1,100 meters from the target ellipse center. And with that, we believe we’ve made our case. With Columbus, we successfully landed more mass on Mars than all other previous Mars missions combined, and, excluding our own Pathfinder mission, we did it, in inflation adjusted dollars, for less cost than any other single mission to date.”
Brad chuckled. “I’d imagine you’re driving every space agency in the world nuts.”
Jeff smiled. “Um, up to a point. We’re still a very high-risk operation, and no official government space agency is going to want to take this kind of risk. Failure doesn’t sit well with the taxpayers. We’ve proven it can be done, but that doesn’t mean anyone else will be willing to try it.”
“How risky is it?” said Diane.
Jeff shrugged. “That’s impossible to quantify. A few statisticians have tried it, but they’re just guessing. It was just over six years between Kennedy’s, ‘We choose to go to the moon in this decade,’ speech, and the first manned Apollo launch, Apollo 7. We’ll have four years from concept to launch. On the other hand, practically speaking, we don’t have to invent anything, that’s already done. We also have a five-decade advantage in technology and global experience in manned space flight. Subjectively, we think our odds are at least as good as Apollo, if not better.”
“Yes, but they had NASA behind them.”
“True, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. NASA has had failures too, every space agency has. But, what we are essentially doing is taking NASA’s successes and repackaging them. The Apollo command and service modules worked very well, with the exception of Apollos 1 and 13, but we know what the problems were there. The space shuttle’s launch system has also worked very well, one failure in 135 launches. But again, we know what the problem was there. The MSL and MER Mars landing systems have likewise worked very well. In addition to NASA’s landings, we’ve already set down sixteen of them, nine MSL and eight MER. Well, seven MER, two failed to separate, as Gabe mentioned, but the payload still made it down intact. And our habitat? Well, it’s pretty straightforward, and is based on a lot of design and testing that has successfully taken place here on Earth. And, by the way, our Mars Ascent Vehicles, MAVs, are in fact being built by NASA, JPL and Grumman, the same folks that built the Apollo lunar module, and are based upon it. Our space suits are from ILC Dover, the same folks that have been making suits for NASA for fifty years. So all in all, we’re confident. Diane, believe me, this is not a suicide mission. We all want to come back, and have every intention of doing so.”
Diane nodded and sighed. “If you don’t bring my daughter back, I’ll be very angry.”
Jeff smiled. “I don’t think it’s so much a question of me bringing her back as her bringing us back. She’s flying.”
“Well, since you had the good sense to hire the best pilot in the world, I suppose I should trust you with the rest.”
He grinned. “Yes I did. The autobiography of the renowned NASA Flight Director, Gene Kranz, is titled, Failure is not an option. I’ll go along with that. We’re gonna go there, get this done, and come back. We won’t hear of it a
ny other way. Gabe?”
Gabe nodded. “Right. Okay, getting back to Brad’s question of what Amos is up to… right now, not a whole lot. Jeff, why don’t you put up the PowerPoint presentation of Amos’ images?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“This is a selection of images, mostly from Amos’ context camera, that encompass his operations since landing. Initially he performed a slow spiral outward from his landing site – Amos was the first of Columbus’ payload packages to land. Once he had a feel for the nature of his environment he set off down the drop-line to find everything else. One of our initial problems arose from Pathfinder’s location. Our ground communications are principally VHF, and Mars’ radio horizon is only about five kilometers, terrain notwithstanding. And since Amos landed about fifteen kilometers from Pathfinder, it’s well beyond ground range of Pathfinder’s VOR. Communications between the two aren’t an issue as they can relay through our Pathfinder orbiter, which is now in a geosynchronous orbit. But there is no VOR positional data available to Amos. However, Amos, along with the rest of Columbus’ packages, was in direct communication with Pathfinder all the way down to about 50 meters above ground. So our positional data on all the drops – including Amos’ initial location – is very close. And from that point, it was simply a matter of telling Amos where he was and activating his terrain following guidance system.”
“Amos has terrain following guidance?” said Brad.
“Yes. It’s similar to guidance on a cruise missile, and uses a combination of visual recognition, laser ranging, and a compact low-power radar. And it works quite well. Amos also has inertial guidance.”
“That’s amazing. What’s Amos’ range?”
“About 150 kilometers on a single tank of fuel. But he can refuel himself, and already has, once.” She motioned to the displays. “This is one of our habitat modules, affectionately called a ‘tuna can’. All the heavy and delicate loads were landed by means of an MSL-like descent stage, the sky crane. The lighter and more robust loads, like freeze-dried food, were landed with a MER descent stage and air bags. These are the two loads that failed to separate; the explosive bolts didn’t fire. We don’t know why. Fortunately, it landed in a sandy area and most of the air bags did deploy. One canister broke open, but the load appears to have remained intact, so we’re not particularly worried about it.”
Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) Page 50
