by T I WADE
The canisters were moved with a little help from the onboard 25-pound electromagnet. As Ryan had explained about the large electromagnets in his large space ship, each Astermine craft also had a smaller version placed under the skin in the lower belly area of the craft, in-between where its three one-foot legs would deploy for the spacecraft to land on the asteroid.
Made of neodymium, this magnet had two important reasons to be there other than to repel cosmic rays. The first reason was to aid the craft in landing on an asteroid covered, hopefully, with metal; the magnet would help bond the craft to the asteroid. The second reason was to give the crew aboard the craft 15-25 percent of earth’s gravity during their long journey into space. This artificial gravity would stop anything from floating about, and the pilots could sleep without restraints in the flight chairs—which were designed to extend into beds—and also allow them to use metal knives and forks on metal plates.
Since the magnet couldn’t be turned off, the craft’s hydrogen thrusters had to be more powerful than the pull of the magnet and any gravitational pull, to propel the craft off the asteroid for their return flight.
“So, where do we go from here, partner?” asked VIN as Ivan slowly floated away behind them.
“These ion thrusters, or drives, whatever Ryan wants to call them, sure wouldn’t win a drag race,” said Jonesy. Our speed has increased twenty miles an hour in the last thirty minutes. It’s going to take us two days to get up to speed. I still think liquid hydrogen is a far better bet at least for initial acceleration. This is plain boring. When is our first communication scheduled with earth?”
“Three hours,” replied VIN.
On board, all Ryan’s five spacecraft had the same Russian-designed communications system as was on Ivan, an old form of Morse code with which they could communicate secretly. Due to the long distance communications from DX2014, each message was expected to take four or more minutes for the signals to reach earth. No listening devices outside Ryan’s system could tell what the messages were, or where they came from; they would just sound like space static.
“Jonesy, we don’t need to drag race up here, liquid hydrogen usage is ten times more per hour than the Xenon fueled ion drives, and the liquid hydrogen is better for slowing down. So it doesn’t really matter how fast we are travelling, it looks all the same outside, and I think slowing down is far more important than accelerating. There is nothing to do, partner, so I’m going to catch some shut eye for a few hours. I wonder what it’s like on earth today; I seem to be forgetting what it was like living down there.”
Forty-eight hours later they passed the 240,000 mile mark; they were now further away from earth than the moon and, as Jonesy described to ground control, earth looked like a little blue and white volleyball.
All the men could do, apart from monitoring the readouts and their curve towards the incoming asteroid, was watch movies on their tablets, play chess, and watch the moon. Earth was behind them, now the size of a tennis ball, and just visible on their port side.
Astermine One was a slow, extremely low-powered craft, compared to the shuttle. The two small, forward motion ion thrusters—the first thruster Ryan’s team had made—used minimum amounts of xenon gas. Jonesy did not believe that the Xenon motors were strong enough to actually make a piece of paper flutter if placed behind the motors, but in space they continuously propelled the craft forward, its acceleration always increasing.
The computers closed down the two ion drives seventy-two hours later at 23,360 miles an hour, five days into their mission. There was no need to go any faster; the ion drives had done their job. In another seventy-two hours, the craft’s computers would ignite one of the liquid-hydrogen side thrusters for the first time to begin the long sweeping curve aligning them into their rendezvous path with DX2014.
Slowly, the days passed; they did not have the comforts of the much larger space inside Ivan. They did have one of the bag-type baths in a closet on the rear wall between the rear of the pilot’s chair and the round wall of half of the round docking port which took up room on the flight deck. The other half was in the cargo compartment. With a pint of water, the crew managed to bathe themselves before putting the lower half of their space suits back on. Usually one of the two employed the bath-bag while the other slept. VIN left his new legs on while bathing; they were now a permanent part of his body. The connections to the remains of his real legs would be checked by the doctor only on his return. Due to the small gravity from the magnetic battery, there were no vertical beds in Astermine.
The space craft’s cockpit was a little shorter and narrower than the shuttle’s flight deck. The exact same connecting or docking port was in the usual position projecting out of the rear wall of the flight deck, which made the cockpit a tight place to live. On one side of the rear wall was the aft hatch to the storage compartment, which had their supplies. It was full of canisters and there was no way to get further into the craft’s belly, into the third compartment, as the wall was a solid fuel tank.
They were getting closer to their destination and outer wall doors to the hydrogen thrusters opened on each side of the craft for the first time. These two hydrogen thruster motors, each the size of a ten-pound electric motor, were automatically positioned on arms which extended them outside the craft on two-foot long struts. Now they faced forward, and once every hour, both burned for ten seconds reducing the craft’s speed by a few hundred miles an hour at a time.
These two maneuverable motors would be the only thrusters Jonesy would use to land and to take off from the asteroid, apart from the rear ion drives, which could only thrust the craft in a forward direction. He could turn the thrusters to face any direction: to the side, up, down, forward, or back, to change the trajectory or angle of the shuttle. Instead of the usual ailerons on the wings and tail of any atmospheric aircraft, these two hydrogen motors did the same job, and could point in any direction independently. One could even face the side of the craft and push it in a reverse-thrust type maneuver.
By this time, life aboard Astermine One was getting monotonous. There were only so many computer games one could play, seven games of chess was Jonesy’s limit for one week, and the movies on board were films both had already watched down on earth. Earth was now the size of a dime, a small blue planet in space. VIN and Jonesy looked through the portal often to see it. The blue planet was now stationary on the left side of their craft as they swung in on their long curve to connect up with the incoming asteroid.
The space radar screen, as Jonesy called it, was surprisingly similar to an atmospheric radar screen on earth. On day ten, they were approaching the asteroid, now showing up on the radar screen, only a few hundred thousand miles ahead. Earth was now ninety degrees to them outside their port or left portals, and the moon, slightly larger than an average star could be seen close to earth. The sun never seemed to change in the distance; a small round distant light about the size of a quarter that often gave them slight gray shadows in the cockpit.
Twenty-four hours later, the forward thrusters brought their speed down to 7,000 miles an hour; the craft was still in a left banking curve with earth now at a 120 degree angle to them in the left side forward portal. It looked like they were heading towards earth at a tangent, pretty close to the way they had headed away.
The computers were right on target, preparing to get them alongside the asteroid, now only 60,000 miles away. They would only be able to see it at a distance of twenty miles.
DX2014 was a small, oblong, hot dog-shaped asteroid, three miles long and a mile wide. Even if it entered earth’s atmosphere, ninety percent of it would burn up, and the rock wouldn’t cause a major catastrophe. The only importance DX2014 had to earth’s space watchers was that she passed within a million miles of earth every few decades. The current path into the vicinity was picked up around 2001 by a team at Kitt Observatory in Tucson Arizona, plotting every potentially dangerous piece of rock larger than a small-sized car in the solar system.
&n
bsp; DX2014 had an elongated orbit around the sun, and several years earlier, had passed as close to Mars as it did earth. The asteroid was also slow moving, which made her less dangerous compared to others traveling a hundred times faster. Her speed was what interested Ryan; it would be slightly easier to land on a slow asteroid than one traveling at a 100,000 miles an hour, plus it spent more time close to earth, making it easier to connect with.
Over the next several hours the distance closed. Astermine One’s computers were curving her flight path towards the path of the asteroid, which was now moving at a slightly faster speed than the spacecraft. The asteroid would travel past the space craft’s right-hand side, about a mile away, and then Astermine One’s computers would blast its hydrogen thrusters to match its forward movement, and carefully position the craft within a mile of the rock for Jonesy to go into manual control. Then it would be Jonesy’s job to match her tumbling, and gently bring the craft down to where he thought was the best landing site.
Three hours later the asteroid was visible on the starboard bow, and Jonesy could study its rotating movements. Not only was it rotating slowly sideways at nearly two rotations an hour, it was very slowly rotating back over front, about once an hour.
“I’m going to feel sick on that thing for a whole month,” said VIN, once he had closed all compartments, cleaned up the cockpit and strapped himself down, fully suited. Jonesy wasn’t fully suited as Ryan and the scientists had ordered them to be. He needed total concentration and the experience of hundreds of hours in the simulator where he practiced landing on this small piece of rock. He didn’t want to be covered by the suit and, if something went wrong death would instantaneous. Nobody was coming out to rescue them anyway.
“VIN, get the signal off to Ryan that we are within three miles of the asteroid’s rear and we should be on the ground in a couple of hours. We will send the success signal once the “eagle has landed’.” VIN typed the message into the keyboard on the dash and, much like an email, the message was sent.
Jonesy had practiced this landing, certainly the hardest one he would ever attempt, with hundreds of landing simulations in the Astermine simulator. This time there was no opportunity for error. The artificial training certainly helped, but nothing was the same as the real thing. The asteroid was getting pretty large as Jonesy manually took them in closer.
“We must find a flat landing spot,” said Jonesy. “VIN, look through the side portals to see if you can find a rocky type outcrop we can land next to; maybe a flat piece of ground next to some sort of crater, cliff or incline. I’ll look forward. I don’t want just a flat piece of ground. The scientists said that there could be more chances of small rock accumulation in crevices, or by crater walls.”
Both men studied the slow turning rock for several minutes. With the hydrogen thrusters Jonesy could accelerate the craft forward or slow it down, and first he went forward from the rear of the rock to the front with the thrusters propelling them forward.
They reached the bow of the large asteroid, and he slowed them and the front of the rock began to move ahead of them. Jonesy also had to move the craft with the slow tumbling of the asteroid in two different directions and this was taking all his concentration. It also seemed that there were certain areas where something was gently pulling them in, and he had to change the angle of the thrusters slightly to stay at 500 feet.
“It seems to have some gravitational pull. I feel the craft wanting to go closer. Power still at 15 percent.”
“The back end is coming around behind us,” warned VIN, and Jonesy compensated by following the nose of the rock down.
“There!” stated VIN a few minutes later. “There is a crater just coming into sight below us!” He pointed to a large crater about 800 feet across with a crater wall on the forward side about a hundred feet or so high. “It looks like something ploughed into that hole. It looks like this asteroid was hit by another, and the area underneath the cliff doesn’t look shiny at all.”
“Looks as good a place as any,” and Jonesy pushed the switch to extend the legs. A light above the switch went green a few seconds later showing that the tripod legs were down and locked. “She certainly wants to get down there in a hurry,” said Jonesy, using the thrusters to rotate the craft over the wide crater. He floated the craft down to within 200 feet of the rough surface and slightly to the side of where he wanted to put her down. “Any rocks larger than a foot?” he asked.
“There seems to be a rough area about fifty or so feet from the wall,” VIN answered.
“I’m going to have to take her further away from the crater wall. It seems to be pulling us in at an angle. There is quite a pull on the craft. I have the thrusters at 20 percent power, and we are still being pulled down.” He moved a dozen more feet away from hovering over the cliff, lined up the craft at a ninety degree angle to the rock, always compensating for the roll. “Here we go, partner, 100 feet to touch down. I hope they made those legs strong. Crap! We are being pulled in. Thrust power to forty percent, forty five, altitude 50 feet…power 55 percent….60….70 percent” and they landed on the asteroid with enough force to bounce the craft’s legs and make VIN’s neck muscles feel the landing as the legs took the hit. “Power down to thirty percent….twenty…ten….power off.”
“That was pretty hard!” observed VIN. “Were you expecting that?”
“Nope,” replied the pilot. “The guys back home thought that I might need 20 percent to a maximum 30 percent due to the magnet in the craft, but I don’t think they expected this asteroid to have such a strong gravitational pull. VIN, Send your message that the eagle has landed, and also tell them I needed 70 percent thrust on both motors to bring her down. I’m pretty worried that we could be stuck here. Loaded with rocks and things, I don’t see us getting off that easily, even at 100 percent thrust, empty. VIN, see what they think.”
Four minutes later there was jubilation back in Nevada upon hearing that Jonesy landed Astermine One on the asteroid. It only lasted several seconds until the lead scientist read the second half of the report.
“They needed 70 percent thrust to stop from crashing into the asteroid,” he told Ryan, who looked at him, his face growing white.
“What do you mean?” he asked the scientist.
“Mr. Jones needed 70 percent thrust to land her hard. That means with any load of materials aboard, and using 100 percent thrust from the two hydrogen thrusters, the magnetic pull of the asteroid will not allow them to leave.”
“Oh, my God!” stated Ryan. “Why didn’t you guys compute that the asteroid could have a magnetic pull?”
“We did,” was the reply. “We expected that 10 percent thrust would be needed to equal the electromagnet and a maximum 20 percent magnetic pull from the asteroid. Even if the thrust needed to liftoff was three times as much as we predicted, there was still 10 percent thrust remaining. We never assumed that a 70 percent thrust would be needed to just land her.”
“How much could a load hamper her liftoff?” Ryan asked.
“The magnetic force from the asteroid is not so important,” replied the man in the white coat. It will be the dead weight cargo inside Astermine One which will cause her liftoff problems.”
“So what would a new thrust equation show, that we are short of power?” Ryan asked.
“It is impossible to say, but I think 100 percent thrust could be what Mr. Jones is going to need to lift off with minimum cargo, say one to two tons,” the scientist replied doing calculations on a pad.
“So, our choices are to get them off with a ton or two of rock, or take them off right now and head back empty?”
“There is a third scenario,” suggested the scientist and Ryan looked at him questioningly. “Mr. Noble could cut away the electromagnet and they could pull it out of the craft, and leave it on the asteroid for later pickup.”
“Is that possible?” Ryan asked.
“It would probably take him several hours after emptying the three center compartments; the
electromagnetic batteries are screwed into the floor of the craft. They could cut off parts of the metal with a mining torch and take it out piece by piece. The electromagnetic metal, neodymium, is probably a hundred times more magnetic than any precious metal cargo the same size. The electromagnetic is about the same size as ten car batteries in each of the three compartments. By cutting away pieces he could remove them, and each piece would help with lift off. If he took out the whole electromagnetic system he could reduce the magnetic pull by up to 30 to 35 percent.”
“So, Mr. Jones would still need 100 percent thrust to get off?” Ryan asked. The scientist nodded. “Let’s say nothing for now, but I want the new, more powerful hydrogen thrusters in the other two craft before they are sent into space. We need the teams to work hard and fast to finish Astermine Two. Can we exchange Astermine One’s thrusters in space?” The team around him stated that it would take months to refit the new motors in space. “How much time did it take to manufacture the magnet, and how much did it cost?”
“Six months and 3.25 million dollars,” was the reply.
“Get started on a new one that can be fitted and taken out easier. Oh God! I hope we can get them off that rock!” Ryan muttered. “Or we are going to have to use Astermine Two to go and get them.”
VIN looked around, still strapped into his seat. Outside the portals, the surroundings looked like they had landed on a rough and bumpy, broken up gray aircraft carrier deck. The cliff, or crater wall, on one side stood high above them, about sixty feet away, and the sun drew slight variations in color and shadow movement on the dull surface. The shadows moved eerily, like creeping snakes, as the rock rotated. VIN actually did feel a little seasick.
He got out of his seat and was surprised by how much gravity was holding him down. He metal legs felt heavy, as if he was being pulled down, and it felt nearly as strong as the pull on earth. They had no way of reading the gravity strength, but Jonesy was just sitting there, his head working out mathematical problems.
