Space For Sale

by Jeff Pollard

  “Don't fuck us on this,” Hammersmith warns Kingsley as he reached the conference room.

  Kingsley enters the conference room where the representatives from each company are waiting anxiously for the arrival of Tim Bloomington, the NASA official in charge of the COTS.

  “I didn't know they were inviting fireworks companies to this thing,” Aaron Granderson, one of the program managers at United Launch Alliance says as Kingsley enters.

  “Oh that's funny,” K says as the competitors share a laugh at his expense. “I didn't think they were inviting fascists, but here you are.”

  “Have a seat,” Tim Bloomington announces as he along with two NASA aides enter. Bloomington is a fat bureaucrat from Wisconsin and of Polish descent. The reps all find a seat at the long conference table. Water pitchers and glasses are spread across the table. K pulls a flask from his suit and fills a small glass with whiskey.

  “There were a lot of great proposals, but of course, there had to be some winners,” Bloomington says, as the aides open up several dossiers.

  “We got any ice?” K asks. Getting nothing but stares in return.

  “In just a moment, we'll be ready to tell you all who won,” Bloomington replies, ignoring K.

  “Cheers to that,” K says, raising his glass of whiskey in the air while a few other reps sip on their water.

  “What are you so cocky about Kingsley?” Granderson from ULA asks.

  “The end of your monopoly, fascist. What else would I be happy about?” K asks.

  “You know something we don't know?” Granderson asks.

  “Well, I'm the only one here that's made any progress at bringing down the cost of rockets. In a few years, I'll have rockets better than yours that cost a third as much. Say goodbye to your monopoly,” K clinks his whiskey against Granderson's empty glass.

  “I'm so scared of that fireworks show you call a rocket,” Granderson replies.

  “Alright alright, knock it off,” Bloomington interrupts. “Okay, we're ready to announce the winning proposals. Starting with Bigelow, we're awarding you forty million to further study the inflatable habitat concept. We felt the concept has many possible applications and deserves further study on the merit of the concept of-”

  “Are you gonna do the whole spiel for each one?” K interrupts.

  “-inflatable habitation modules,” Bloomington continues reading dryly from a paper. “This money is granted to advance this study with a series of design goals. First goal is the development of a prototype by 2011.”

  K reaches across the table and yanks the paper from in front of Bloomington. K looks at the sheet for ten seconds, then looks up at Bloomington with disdain.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” K asks. All the reps erupt, each wanting to see the results. Granderson tries to rip the paper away from Kingsley.

  “Hold on, I got this,” K says. “Forty mill for Bigelow for their space condom. Twenty million for Blue Origin. Forty million for Paragon to develop their service module, congrats Paragon. Forty million for Sierra Nevada for the Dream Journal. Forty million for SpacEx. Then one hundred twenty million for Boeing to study making their Orion midget thing, and one hundred million for United Launch Alliance to study man-rating their rockets. This is the biggest pile of horseshit I've ever seen in my life,” K says simply.

  “This is the decision the board came to,” Bloomington replies.

  “The whole god damn idea is to provide some kind of hope of an alternative to the cluster-fuck Space Launch System and the obese Orion. So you give the bulk of the money to the companies that are building the SLS and the Orion to study ruining their own monopolies? Spoiler alert, they'll study it and decide they like money too much. My company is the only one trying to make rockets actually cheaper, and you give us this token little nothing, meanwhile you give ULA a hundred million to study making their space capsule less obese, because yeah, they want there to be a viable alternative to the giant boondoggle cost-plus program they already have. I know that most Americans are fat, but surely we can find a few skinny people to be astronauts.”

  “This is the decision of the board,” Bloomington says. Nearly all the reps in the room are now pissed off. The smug ULA reps seem to have already known the outcome before it came, showing no excitement like the Paragon and Bigelow reps who are happy just to be selected.

  “This is corruption is what this is, they bought you off didn't they,” K says to Bloomington.

  “I'm not for sale,” Bloomington replies.

  “So what happens when the SLS and Orion are both behind schedule. Those boondoggles won't be operational in 2016 and you know it. So what then? You really comfortable with relying on the Soyuz for seven years?”

  “We're confident that we can meet our deadlines,” Bloomington replies.

  “Show of hands, who thinks the SLS won't be ready in 2016,” K asks, looking around.

  “What is this, elementary school?” Granderson from ULA asks.

  “Come on, show of hands,” Kingsley raises his hand coaxing nearly all the hands in the room not belonging to ULA or NASA into the air.

  “What's your point, Kingsley?” Bloomington asks.

  “You were supposed to at least give some smaller companies a shot to study and develop some possible alternatives. You've got a dozen companies right here, each of which, if you gave us the budget you give United Embezzle Alliance, we could be building Moon bases for the cost of their bloated ass rocket. So I want to know, what are you going to do when these clowns are years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.”

  “We're confident in our partners,” Bloomington says simply. K pulls a lighter from his pocket and sets the award letter on fire, dropping it on the table.

  “I'm out.”

  Kingsley exits, finding Hammersmith standing just outside the door. She sees flames coming from the desk as a rep douses the fire with a water pitcher, and Kingsley calmly putting his platinum Zippo casually into his breast pocket.

  “K. What did you do?” Hammersmith asks.

  The SpacEx contingent, Hammersmith, Hannah, Dexter, Travis, and Kingsley, sulked that night in Kingsley's Vegas penthouse. Kingsley is shown on TV, being ambush interviewed as he hastily left the convention center. “The piggies strike again. Tax payers, your government is funneling your tax dollars right to their rich friends who paid them off, and you know there won't be any investigation because half the guys in congress get paid by these guys too.”

  “Oh come on K!” Travis Clayton erupts. Everyone in the group has a few drinks in them. “You can't call them corrupt jagoffs on Monday and ask them for money on Tuesday.”

  “You do know that it's Sunday right?” K asks. Travis briefly considers throwing his beer at K. Travis Clayton left NASA because he saw the shuttle program winding down and a long gap until NASA would be launching again. While the Soyuz filled the gap, NASA was reduced to flying only one or two astronauts at a time, rather than the seven that could fit on the shuttle. Aside from the dwindling crew, they would be very preferential towards astronauts that spoke Russian, and Clayton was the kind of guy who'd learn just enough of a foreign language to tell someone to fuck off and that was about it. Kingsley recruited him with the promise of being on the prime flight crew for SpacEx. Travis and Dexter were the top guns at SpacEx. There were a handful more astronauts in the pipeline, but Travis and Dexter were the first two to sign on. They had helped design the Griffin's cockpit from the placement of the seats right down to the shape and location of the windows. Clayton felt like SpacEx was heading toward bankruptcy, and Kingsley's antics weren't helping.

  The crew watched the TV silently, nobody wanted to speak up. The Dateline interview with Kingsley from months earlier was finally airing tonight. Though they all claimed they didn't care about it, nobody was changing the channel. It wasn't good. A teaser video at the beginning of the promo included the quote: “The American university is nothing more than a glorified book club.”

  They wat
ched as the segment reduced K's rants to the most embarrassing moments. “No it didn't explode,” K laughs it off, “it may have experienced rapid unplanned disassembly.”

  “Well,” Hammersmith summed it up as the program ended, “good luck getting investors now.” What really ticked Kingsley off was the fact that program said the Eagle 1's third launch was a failure and didn't even mention the successful fourth launch that they sent up just this past week. In fact, Eagle 1-3 wasn't a failure. The first stage performed perfectly. The failure came during stage separation. Explosive bolts fired, separating the first and second stages, but did so just a little prematurely. The first stage still had residual thrust, causing the first stage to ram into the second stage. The turbopumps supplying the fuel don't shut off instantaneously, but rather take a moment to wind down, during which time the rocket will still produce some thrust. The collision of the bulkhead of the first stage with the bottom of the second stage broke the second stage engine and triggered the launch abort system which lifted the capsule right off the top of the rocket. The Arthur engine worked perfectly and the launch abort system, while not to full scale, worked even better than hoped, proving that a powered landing was possible.

  Eagle 1-4 launched perfectly, putting the miniature-Griffin into Earth orbit where it maneuvered, changed its inclination, simulated a rendezvous with a phantom target, then deorbited, re-entered, proving the heat shield worked, at least in miniature, and then parachuted to a splashdown just a hundred miles West of LA were it was picked up by a former Coast Guard Cutter purchased by SpacEx. The Griffin carried a cargo of Champagne which now stocked Kingsley's house in LA and he brought some with him to the Vegas penthouse.

  Since the successful test of Eagle 1-4, the engineers at SpacEx had been hard at work on the first Eagle 9. Kingsley agonized over the decision, finally deciding to skip the Eagle 5 and go straight to the 9. The Eagle 5 would have been a pretty capable rocket, but it couldn't have put people in orbit. In all four Eagle 1 tests, they used a total of four Arthur engines. The first Eagle 9 test would require nine, and thus there was going to be a gap while they ramped up production and testing of the Arthurs. They needed to skip the step, otherwise they would run out of funds before they could get close to putting people in space.

  “How did it go with Robert Downey Jr.?” Hammersmith asks Kingsley, breaking the silence.

  “I thought you were against the whole idea of free seats for celebrities,” Kingsley replies.

  “I was, but we haven't sold a single seat, and you know more about making something cool than I do,” Hammersmith replies. “How'd it go?”

  “Almost had him,” Kingsley replies. “I'm telling you, once the Eagle 9 flies, we'll have people knocking down our door trying to get a seat.”

  “We'll be broke by the time the first 9 flies,” Travis says ominously.

  “We need a game changer,” Dexter adds.

  “A game changer?” Hammersmith asks. “This isn't another one of those American football metaphors is it?”

  “It's fourth-and-inches, we don't punt,” Dexter replies. Hammersmith stares at him with disdain.

  “Well what is it?” Kingsley asks.

  “What's what?” Dexter asks.

  “The game changer?”

  “I don't know,” Dexter replies.

  “Well then. We've got work to do tomorrow,” Kingsley says, “You guys go ahead and fly home.”

  “What about you?” Dexter asks.

  “I've got the K-mobile here, I'll drive it back,” Kingsley replies. The crowd breaks up, heading out and for a taxi to the airport where K's Starship waits. As they leave the penthouse Dexter lingers inside, taking Kingsley aside.

  “I got the results back from the computer dorks,” Dexter says, “they say the fly-by-wire was working perfectly before the crash. They showed me the telemetry, it says you didn't make any inputs.”

  “I told you it wasn't responding, I was making inputs, it just wasn't listening,” Kingsley replies.

  “That's what I told them,” Dexter replies, “but they said that didn't make any sense. The inputs from the throttle, the pedals, the joystick, all went offline at the same time?”

  “I don't know Dexter, I had no control, I bailed out,” K replies.

  “So the control systems, all of them, quit working at the same time. They said that was very unlikely.”

  “Well it happened,” K replies.

  “But then, the moment you ejected, the joystick and throttle both registered inputs. The blast from the ejection rocket, or maybe the wind entering the cabin knocked the controls around, and the computer registered those inputs. The nerd told me that the most likely explanation was that you weren’t giving it any inputs, but were trying to make it seem like the fly-by-wire failed, when it didn't.”

  “What are you saying Dexter?” Kingsley asks suspiciously.

  “I'm not saying anything. I'm trying to get to the bottom of this. There are thousands of planes out there with the same equipment that your Talon had. If there's some glitch, then we need to figure it out. I'm trying, but if I'm barking up the wrong tree, then tell me to stop barking.”

  Kingsley eyes Dexter. “Quit barking.”

  “Are you sure?” Dexter asks.

  “It wasn't a malfunction,” K replies.

  “Then what happened,” Dexter asks.

  “It wasn't a malfunction,” K says again, giving no ground.

  “Alright,” Dexter says.

  “I'll see you at work tomorrow,” K says. “Don't mention this to anyone.” As they leave the penthouse and head for the airport, Dexter pulls Hannah aside and she heads back into the penthouse, finding Kingsley in the kitchen, looking through a cabinet.

  “Forget something?” K asks.

  “No,” Hannah replies.

  “Then what are you still doing here?”

  “Dexter told me not to let you be alone,” Hannah says.

  “For god's sake Dexter,” Kingsley sighs. “Did he tell you why?”

  “Just that you might need my help,” Hannah says quietly. “What are you looking for? I can help you find it.”

  “Nothing, don't worry about it,” K replies.

  “Come on, let me help,” Hannah says, opening another cabinet.

  “I'm looking for a bottle of aspirin,” K says.

  “I have some aspirin,” Hannah says, reaching into her purse.

  “I didn't say I wanted aspirin,” K replies coldly.

  “I don't....oh, I see,” Hannah says.

  “I always keep it in here,” K replies.

  “Weren't they shooting a movie in here today? Maybe somebody used it...”

  “Oh shit,” K says. He quickly walks through the bedroom to the master bath. Hannah follows him. He picks up a bottle of aspirin sitting on the marble counter-top. “Oops.” K says.

  “Why oops?” Hannah asks as K walks into the bedroom and plops down, laying on his back.

  “I think I gave some to Gwenyth Paltrow on accident,” K says.

  “And it's not really aspirin?” Hannah asks.

  “Nope,” K replies.

  “What is it?”

  “Ecstasy,” K replies.

  “So Gwenyth Paltrow is out there on ecstasy and she doesn't know it?” Hannah asks.

  “She probably knows it now,” K says.

  “Why?”

  “She took three or four,” K replies.

  “So she's not on ecstasy so much as she's-”

  “Tripping balls,” K admits.

  “So wait...it's Sunday night, you've got an early morning and a long drive ahead of you, and so you reach for some ecstasy?” Hannah asks, sitting down on the bed next to K.

  “It relaxes me.”

  “Ecstasy relaxes you? I thought people took it to go crazy.”

  “It relaxes me okay, I spend too much time in here,” K points to his head, “sometimes I need to get out of this echo chamber and stop worrying so much.”

  “It's even worse than I
thought,” Hannah says, choking up. K sits up.

  “You're not going to get all...emotional are you?” K asks with a sneer.

  “You were trying to kill yourself,” Hannah says, starting to tear up. “I didn't believe Dexter, but he's right, that crash, that was a suicide attempt.”

  “It wasn't a suicide attempt,” K says.

  “Then what? A cry for help?”

  “No. I was just...experimenting with mortality.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Hannah asks with tears starting to stream down her face.

  “I just felt like sky diving! How is this any of your business?” K gets up, walking quickly out of the bedroom to the balcony.

  Hannah comes up behind him, taking a deep breath. “You need help,” Hannah says.

  “There's one thing we need to do right now, and it ain't talk about my feelings,” K replies.

  “Then what?” Hannah asks.

  “We need to find Gwenyth Paltrow.”

  Kingsley and Hannah enter the K-Mobile, and speed off toward the Vegas strip, in search of Gwenyth Paltrow tripping balls on X.

  “How are you going to find her?” Hannah asks, sitting between K's legs in the snug K-mobile cockpit.

  “Here, call her,” K replies, handing Hannah his cell phone over her shoulder. Hannah searches through his contacts as K swerves through traffic, leaning the cockpit into turns.

  “Jesus, do you really know all these people?” Hannah asks.

  “I don't recall getting Jesus's number,” K replies. Hannah reaches the G's, finding Gwenyth Paltrow listed right beside Hannah ICE.

  “Who's Hannah Ice?” Hannah asks.

  “That's you stupid.”

  “Ice?”

  “In case of emergency,” K replies, turning hard to avoid a taxi.

  “I'm your in case of emergency?” Hannah asks.