by T I WADE
“Kid, I have this horrible feeling that somebody didn’t do their homework right, and that we are bloody well stuck here, like two mating magnets; stuck together.”
“We could always throw out all the equipment,” VIN suggested and Jonesy nodded at that idea.
“I’m sure that we might have to do that with the whole load if we are not careful.”
Since they were so connected to the rock, VIN didn’t have to get out and secure the craft to the surface. They had brought large steel pegs and a large headed wooden mallet to pound the half dozen pegs into the asteroid to tie them down.
The crew of Astermine One had already done a day’s work and decided to sleep before VIN would go out on his first discovery mission.
They wouldn’t experience such a thing as day and night, more like a dirty gray and black arctic night with months and months of semi-darkness. Their time clocks had changed with computer-controlled lighting turning lights on and off to replicate day and night. Now they would be scheduled to sleep twelve-hour nights and stay awake for twelve-hour days. With no alcohol aboard, Jonesy found that the extra hours of sleep made him more relaxed, and he always felt better after a couple of weeks of not drinking.
The next “morning” over breakfast, they viewed the outside of the craft through the six side portals and the larger two-foot wide by three-foot long by one-foot thick glass windshield. Nothing had changed.
“Looking for monsters out there?” asked Jonesy, watching VIN peer out of his side portals while breakfasting on a self-heating pouch of scrambled eggs and ham, and a cold pouch of orange juice, without the usual additive included.
“Do we have any weapons, just in case?” VIN asked. “You know we ex-soldiers never leave base without something.”
“Not that I know of, maybe take the mallet,” replied Jonesy looking serious. “It should pound in a few alien heads….or whatever they have on top of their necks….that is if they even have necks,” he tried to say, thinking about what could actually be out there. “Let’s assume they need to have teeth to eat you,” the older man continued, trying hard to keep his “I’m serious” look. “Or, they could suck you up like you eat that black fish egg crap!”
“Oh shut up. If you think you are so funny, Captain Jones, maybe you should go out first and scare them to death with your jokes,” replied VIN not finding his partner very funny at a time like this.
“Sorry, partner, not in my job description. Hey! You have the metal legs. If you see something, give them a karate kick to their whatevers, and then look for a head, and pound it in with the mallet. That should squash them into jelly….if they are not jelly already!”
By now he was smiling. They had discussed the chance of alien life several times during the boring trip out to the rock, and since Jonesy knew that it was his partner’s job to go out there, he had thought up weird and freighting ideas of what extraterrestrial life could look like. He looked over to his partner to see that VIN wasn’t listening anymore. He had his helmet on, and was telling Jonesy to secure it; and he wouldn’t hear anything through it.
It was time to get the docking port raised out of its shaft, so that VIN could get out, and then Jonesy realized that it was going to be hard for his partner to get out of the top with all this gravity. They had practiced this several times wearing full suits in Hangar Seven before they left. Luckily for them, the team designing and manufacturing the docking hatches had welded aluminum ladders into all the three-foot wide docking tubes so that they could do the necessary drills in a gravity situation, and tie cords to them in space.
Jonesy was already thinking about how much design had gone into this mission, and also how much had been omitted; the weak thrusters, and now the asteroid’s heavy gravity, had not been considered.
Lucky for VIN the designers also placed a folding ladder inside the top part of the hatch; when extended, it would help the astronaut float across the top of Astermine One, if need be. Now VIN would have to use it as a real ladder and not just for floating hand holds.
When he was on the surface, VIN would signal Jonesy to release the outer side doors on the three rear compartments.
Jonesy was already pondering how to load the craft. Now, with the canisters too heavy to just float in and out, the whole loading system would have to be rethought.
By this time VIN was in the hatch. Jonesy sealed it and checked that the intercom worked. “Outside temperature, minus 163. I’m going to raise the docking port only three feet, the same height we used to practice on earth. Did you copy, partner?”
“I checked it before I left, but thanks. How am I going to do this one giant leap of man thing Neil Armstrong did when he landed on the moon? I might lose my footing and fall over the side of the craft,” VIN worried.
“Maybe try the words ‘one giant screw-up for mankind’”? You can’t use the same words. Make up your own. I have the camera in here filming you. Just grab your American flag, the flagpole and sort of throw them out, so that you can use both hands on the ladder. And remember, partner, with your metal legs, you are pretty heavy, and you nearly broke the ladder the last time you climbed up it at the airfield. I reckon you could weigh the same out here.”
VIN did as suggested. When Jonesy sealed the inner hatch and released the outer hatch, he climbed up the internal rungs, opened the heavy hatch, and played out the fold up ladder across the cold, shiny frozen roof of Astermine One and down the side until it touched the ground. Then, he slowly reversed back into the docking port and grabbed the American flag and pole. “How the hell am I going to get this flag up? Maybe I should get a stick of dynamite and blow a hole in the darn surface to place the pole in.”
“I would say that your first foray out there, Mr. Noble, is to find loose platinum rocks to place around the base of the flag pole. I hope the flag doesn’t flutter. It’s not as pretty as the one Neil Armstrong left on the lunar surface.”
“At least he didn’t have to blow a darn hole in the surface!” replied VIN standing with his head outside the craft and for the first time looking around. “It sure is beautiful out here.”
“Yeah! I’m sure it is, and if I remember, the Apollo crew had to make a rock pile for their flagpole,” added Jonesy.
VIN threw the flag and pole as hard as he could and he was surprised to see the flag on its pole head out and then just as on earth hit the ground several feet from the craft. He was only fourteen feet above the ground and, even if he didn’t hear it hit the ground, he was sure that it would have made one hell of a noise if he were on earth. The flag actually bounced as it hit the surface of Asteroid DX 2014.
Carefully, rung by rung, he maneuvered backwards to the side of the craft and, he let his feet find the rungs going down to the ground; there were thirteen before he touched solid ground. Jonesy was filming him from one of the side portals and could only get the back of VIN’s space suit into the picture.
“One small step for a man, one giant leap for Asteroid Mining,” stated VIN and felt his feet touch the surface of the asteroid at the same time.
“What did ‘a man’ mean?” asked Jonesy.
“That’s what Neil really said,” VIN replied. “He said ‘One small step for a man’ but nobody seemed to hear the extra letter ‘a’, and I’m sure it sounded better without it. So I’m saying this for Neil, he was one of my heroes, and I just added the Asteroid Mining thing. Are you getting this on camera?”
“Yep! Even with your speech now that you have stepped away from the craft. Do you want to say anything else, like hello to Santa Claus, or are you going to check out a perimeter and grab some rocks for our flag? Did you take the mallet?”
“No I forgot, but it looks pretty quiet out here.”
“There is no atmosphere, so no noise. It better be pretty quiet out there, partner.”
“Except for your crap!” replied VIN.
Jonesy kept the camera on his partner as he took a few steps to the darker less shiny area below the rim of the crater. At the sam
e time he sent a message to earth stating that VIN was on the ground and that the gravity felt about seventy percent as strong as on earth.
VIN looked hard trying to see contrast on the ground. There was little difference between the grays on the surface, until his right foot connected with something. It was a loose round, roughly-shaped rock, about five inches across. He bent over and picked it up. It was heavy and he returned to the rear of the craft, forgetting the flag and telling Jonesy to open the cargo doors to the three rear compartments.
Jonesy did so, and VIN pushed hard to open the three-foot by three-foot aluminum door. It was pretty heavy.
Inside was the machine that would analyze the rock he was holding. The MMA, or Magnetic Metal Analyzer was on a table that slid out. The table was also aluminum, as was everything in this craft; it slid out of the door and VIN unfolded its two legs, placed them on the ground, locked them, and then let the three-foot high machine glide out on its small wheels. After he locked the machine into position, he asked Jonesy to turn it on from inside the cockpit. He could have done so himself, but the fingers of his suit were large and bulky, and it was easier for Jonesy to do it.
Every now and again, VIN checked behind him, expecting to see something creeping up on him, but nothing was there.
The machine began blinking at him. He couldn’t hear anything outside but slowly, one by one the twelve lights in a single row, the same lights he had practiced with in the Hangar, went from red, to orange, to green.
The rock was heavy and fit into the feeder-box mechanism; it worked much like a DVD player that closed when a disc was placed into it.
“This first rock is heavy, about the size of a baseball, and I have it in.”
“It seems to be reading it,” replied Jonesy. “It’s supposed to take thirty seconds.”
Exactly thirty seconds later the readout showed in the cockpit as well as on the front of the machine; first metal symbols and then the name and quantity of each metal. This piece of rock only had two metals.
“Hey, Jonesy, this rock looks like the rock Ryan wanted us to find more than any other.”
“Well, it states Pt78, native platinum, 92.1 percent; and Ir77, iridium, 6.8 percent. Partner, it looks like you just hit pay dirt with your landing, hitting a gold mine on the first try. Sorry, I mean platinum mine on your first try. Well done! I’m sure this whole asteroid could be a traveling platinum mine. I’ll send back the description to Ryan. See if there is more out there.”
For the next hour VIN walked around looking for rocks. Most were smaller than the first one, and he carried them back a couple at a time. Then he found one twice the size. It was heavy, he struggled to lift it and carry it to the detector. It just fit into the square slot and the readout seventy seconds later showed 89 percent platinum and 10.1 percent iridium. Again, no other metal showed up. VIN couldn’t figure out why there was a slight discrepancy in the amounts, but that wasn’t his job.
By the time three hours were up, his maximum allowance for spacewalking, he had collected and tested a couple of dozen rocks. As Jonesy had suggested correctly, this was native platinum; every test showed at least an 87 percent quantity of the noble metal, seconded by iridium. One smaller rock had shown a 3 percent amount of nickel ore with 8 percent of iridium, but the platinum was still in the 88 percent range.
VIN also had erected the flagpole; the lifeless flag just hung from the pole towards the asteroid’s surface and didn’t move. The recently collected rocks kept it from falling over.
Jonesy sealed the rear doors as a tired VIN climbed up the ladder, over the top of the space craft, entered the tube, closed the hatch and waited for Jonesy to pressurize him so that he could take a nap. Working on a piece of rock worth hundreds of trillions of dollars in heavy gravity was certainly darn hard work.
Chapter 23
New Hydrogen Thrusters
Thirteen days before VIN’s landing on the asteroid, Ryan was happy. He had just received the good news that Astermine One had left Ivan and was on her way to DX2014. He went to Hangar Two to see the first load of aluminum panels about to be transferred over to Hangar Six to be lifted and placed into the shuttle’s hold. The next shuttle’s liftoff was only twelve hours away.
Refueling was complete; the meticulous solid-fuel refueling system took twenty-four hours. The two hybrid rockets on each side of the cargo bay were opened by cutting the last graphite weld that had sealed the fuel in the combustion chamber for the previous flight. It took a day just to cut one side open. Then the top half of the tanks were lifted off, the combustion chamber opened up, and solid cakes of black rocket fuel, specially molded to fit exactly into the combustion chamber, were placed in one by one. These solid fuel cakes, about three and a half feet long and on average a little over three tons each, were placed in very slowly before being pushed hard against each other. Thirty of these cakes fit into each side and the combustion chambers before they were closed and sealed. Finally, the tops of the rocket engines were replaced and, again, it took three graphite welders on each side twelve hours to seal the motors. The liquid rocket fuel would only be added at the last moment. Ryan had already purchased 150 tons of this specially made solid fuel, at $90,000 a ton.
Now the shuttle’s cargo could be loaded as the liquid rocket fuel in the hybrid rocket system would be fed into the shuttle just before launch. Once the cargo was loaded, which took an hour, the liquid hydrogen pumps needed eleven hours to fill the liquid fuel tanks with 2,840 gallons in each of the two ten-ton pressure vessels (tanks) in the forward area of the rocket motor, a cost to Ryan of $650 per gallon to manufacture. This added another $4 million to the fuel bill. In all, each lift cost $17.5 million for the first and second stage rides. In total, it took twenty million dollars to launch to get eight million dollars’ worth of aluminum panels into space.
The timing was a big gamble and Ryan needed Astermine One to return with some treasure. His three billion dollar investment was 70 percent used up; he had enough fuel for twenty-four more shuttle flights after this one, and then he would be out of money.
Ryan watched as an extra piece of 40-foot double-thick hangar wall was placed on top of the pile of eight independently sealed panels to hide the cargo from eyes watching their every move; the same tractor that towed the C-5 Galaxy in and out of its hangar, towed the long flat 42-foot trailer across the apron in the hot desert sun from Hangar Two and into the coolness of Hangar Six on the opposite side.
The covering piece of hangar was then removed by the crane, and the hangar’s heavy crane was placed over the cargo; when it was connected, the whole load was lifted carefully into the shuttle’s hold an inch at a time. The hangar piece was then returned to Hangar two on the trailer. To the eyes watching in space, if there were any, the trailer looked exactly as it had on its initial journey across the apron an hour or two earlier.
Next, the three automatic robotic spiders were placed into the hold, each in a canister. They would be turned on, connected to the first panel and operated from Ivan by Michael Pitt when he and Maggie got up there. Once they were underway, a computer included in the cargo controlled their operations.
Jonesy, Michael and Suzi were now all fully-trained spacewalkers, and all had trained with VIN throughout the learning phase. Michael would spacewalk, carrying each spider one by one, and placing them onto the first flat aluminum panel after he had opened the thin seal with a small knife. He would then connect a small magnet which would bond each spider to the panel.
Then Michael would get a second panel ready and move it into place slowly next to the first panel, the panels were locked at each end with the same type of device used on a convertible’s soft car roof. Like the human welders below them at the airfield, the robotic spiders would begin welding an extremely hot graphite compound to join the two panels together. Welding was an extremely slow process, each robot completing about one foot an hour, but the graphite compound was actually far stronger than the panels themselves; thick, black and square, the
compound would be the actual frame of the completed cube. Seven of the panels on the first cube were slightly different. Two had outer hatches built into them where a complete docking port was to be added underneath, and five panels had sliding doors allowing foot traffic to pass through into the next cube, or to the corridors jutting out into space on three sides of the cube. These doors slid open sideways and were see-through. Each of the seven cubes would have two docking ports.
The first cube would need six sides, but each cube after that only needed five. The single wall between the cubes would be enough to protect the next cube if one was breached. The remaining panels, the six extra sides, would be the cubed Space Gas Station Ryan was planning to build.
Ryan’s mind came back to his watching the shuttle loading.
Finally, the last supplies for this shuttle flight, three canisters of food and one of water, and a couple of liquid hydrogen cylinders were loaded to make up an exact 4.1 ton load; when everything was tied down, the roof doors of the shuttle were closed and the inside sealed for the journey.
By the time Jonesy and VIN completed their first full travel day in Astermine One, Maggie was aiming the heavy shuttle into space with Kathy Pringle, her co-pilot, and two passengers, the Spider Technician, and Shuttle Pilot and Space Walker, Michael Pitt.
On time they met up with Penny Sullivan and co-pilot Suzi approaching them on their second orbit, one orbit before Penny would be low and slow enough to begin re-entry.
On the count of three one Cloaking Device was turned off and one was turned on. Nobody on earth knew or realized that there were two shuttles up there. Ryan’s plan was working well.
By the end of this flight a couple of days later, Ryan heard from NASA.
“Well done Ryan, your idea of lifting up radioactive waste material has been accepted by Washington. They are willing to sign a preliminary contract of ten flights at $21 million per 3-ton load.”
