Space For Sale

by Jeff Pollard

“Fine, K replies. Kingsley hits a button on his console, taking over as pilot. He grabs his pair of joysticks and thrusts toward the station. One view shows the perspective of the Griffin's docking port. Another screen shows the ISS docking camera's view of the Griffin as a spec five kilometers away.

  Kingsley thrusts forward, sending the Griffin toward the station at a slight closing speed of only five meters per second. At that speed it'll take more than fifteen minutes to reach the station.

  “Houston, Hawthorne.”

  “Go ahead Houston,” K replies.

  “We're reading the Griffin is on a dangerously fast approach vector...do you read the same.”

  “Check your instrumentation Houston, we don't read that,” K replies. He thrusts forward, increasing the closing rate. K turns to Dexter, “Dangerously fast approach vector. What a bunch of pussies.”

  “Kingsley,” Dexter says seriously. “Kingsley, what are you doing?”

  “I'm docking this thing.”

  “Are you trying to sabotage us? You're gonna shoot yourself in the foot.”

  “It's funny you should say that,” K says, staring at the console, using two hands on two joysticks to control the Griffin.

  “Why?”

  “Do you know where the word sabotage comes from?” K asks.

  “France?”

  “In the Netherlands, in the 1400s, they started using some new machines, automated looms, something like that. The workers thought that automation would replace them all, they would all lose their jobs to these new machines. So they threw their wooden shoes into the machinery to mess them up, cause, you might imagine, 15th century automation was finicky. So they threw their shoes into the machinery. And the word for shoe in French is sabot.”

  “Okay...”

  “Shoot myself in the foot, sabotage, get it?”

  “K. Seriously. What the fuck are you doing?”

  “I'm docking this thing.”

  Dexter storms off, angry. K ignores his exit, focusing even more on the console.

  The docking camera mounted on the Griffin provides a perfect vantage for docking. An overlay shows two sets of cross-hairs. So while K manages the physical position, bringing the Griffin down a narrow corridor, he must also keep it pointed directly at the collar, and he must manage the rates of movement. Maneuvering two spacecraft to an exact rendezvous is actually more difficult than you might think. You can move up, down, left, right, forward, and backward, but you can also turn or point the spacecraft up, down, left, and right, and the craft can rotate or roll. That's six different axes of movement, all of which have to be controlled. And that's just for one spacecraft. The other spacecraft also can move through all six of those axes. The Space Station is gyroscopically controlled to keep it stable and to keep the solar panels facing the sun, so in this circumstance, the docking target is staying pretty stable, but not stationary. To top it off, while the station and the capsule might seem to move slowly, since they are traveling in nearly the same orbit, they are both traveling over 17,000 mph. Any change in velocity will change the orbit.

  Bringing two spacecraft to a rendezvous is not a matter of pointing the ship and going in that direction as movies might make it seem. Say you get the capsule into the same orbit as the station, but you're ten miles behind it. If you don't do anything, the two spacecraft will both orbit the Earth, racing round and round, staying ten miles apart the whole time. So speed up your capsule, heading toward the station, right? Well, if you're behind the station, and you speed up toward it, what that will actually do is raise you into a higher orbit. A higher orbit has a longer distance to travel around the Earth, and thus, it takes longer to travel that farther distance. So speeding up toward your target will paradoxically make it farther away. What you need to do to catch up is to lower your orbit, which is done by slowing down.

  Once the spacecraft have gotten sufficiently close, you can start to ignore these effects of orbital mechanics and simply thrust toward your target, manage your relative velocities and guide it in for a docking.

  “Hawthorne, Houston.”

  “Go ahead Houston,” K says, a slight movement on a joystick thrusts the Griffin down as he keeps the alignment centered.

  “The Griffin is definitely closing on the station...are you...what's going on over there?”

  “Check your instrumentation Houston,” K replies.

  “God dammit, our instrumentation is fine. You're docking this thing aren't you?”

  “Docking? Of course not.”

  “Make sure you haven't turned on the computer for automatic docking.”

  “Oh, you know what, that might be. Hold on,” K says. The station grows larger in the eye of the docking camera.

  “Hawthorne, Houston.”

  “Go ahead Houston.”

  “Kingsley. Cut it out.”

  “I'm docking this baby, get used to it.”

  “Do not attempt docking, that is an order.”

  “You're not my boss, you can't order me. Get ready, cause my Griffin is coming in.”

  “God dammit Kingsley, what are you thinking!?”

  “That you guys are in collusion with United Embezzle Alliance to bankrupt me and thus eliminate a cheaper alternative, thus ensuring a politically-designed program will keep the money flowing.”

  “I...what?”

  “So I'm going to dock this thing, prove it's safe, and then you guys can try to argue with a straight face that it's not safe enough to dock. ”

  The Griffin closes in on the station, within 100 meters. Kingsley smiles, imagining the panic rushing through all of NASA, and if they're listening, ULA. They've been trying to starve SpacEx and put him out of business before they can prove they belong.

  The Griffin docking collar mates with the docking port on the station in a perfect docking.

  “Griffin is docked. The payload is delivered, turning control over to the customer, over.” K smiles, sitting back.

  The story hitting the news would simply say that for the first time in history, a private company has sent a spacecraft to the International Space Station, or any space station for that matter. It's one of those news stories that's not surprising, but is kind of shocking when you really think about it. A private company just delivered cargo to the International Space Station. We're officially living in the future.

  The news would neglect to report that the docking was unplanned. NASA, wanting to avoid any kind of scandal, chose not to tell that part of the story, instead claiming they had planned the docking all along. The powers that be at ULA could easily blow the whistle, tell the press about Kingsley's reckless behavior, but then again, any NASA scandal might cause political trouble, eating into NASA's budget, so they bite their tongues. Kingsley knew all of this ahead of time, knowing that neither NASA nor ULA would make a stink about the stunt. Of course, that wouldn't stop Hammersmith from castigating Kingsley.

  Chapter 6

  Spaceport America

  Las Cruces, New Mexico.

  Kingsley arrives at Spaceport America the morning of the first ever commercial flight of SpaceShipTwo, with one of the six tickets in hand. Passengers were supposed to arrive three days ahead of time to participate in a training program, but Kingsley, being Kingsley, is fashionably late.

  Kingsley arrives late to the final training session, joining the other passengers: Tom Hanks, Ron Howard, Richard Branson, a billionaire you've never heard of, and Caroline the Duchess of Monaco. The two pilots of SpaceShipTwo stop in their tracks as Kingsley enters.

  “You're not Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Richard Branson says.

  “Very observant, Dick,” K says, taking his seat.

  “Don't you think you're a little late?” Richard asks.

  “I'm like ten minutes late,” K says.

  “You're an hour and two days late,” Richard says, testily.

  “Well, first off, I don't do daylight savings time, cause what am I, a god damn farmer? And secondly, we're gonna be in space for about what five min
utes? Do you really need three days of prep time? Keep my hands inside the vehicle at all times, I got it.”

  Caroline looks over to K, looking at him the way a toddler looks at a bug while deciding whether or not to crush it.

  The six passengers and two pilots climb into the first of a planned line of SpaceShipTwos. This one is called Virgin Space Ship (VSS) Enterprise. Enterprise is hanging from her mothership, the four-engine WhiteKnightTwo called Virgin Mother Ship (VMS) Eve. WK2 looks like two planes with their wingtips fused. With a single wing-span about the size of the B-29. The two fuselages, or booms, each can carry passengers. Between the booms, the central wing includes a mounting point where SS2 hangs, prepared to rocket away once WhiteKnightTwo takes her up to their launch pad in the sky at 50,000 feet. One of the fuselages on WhiteKnightTwo is an exact replica of the interior of SpaceShipTwo, allowing passenger training prior to their spaceflight. The pilots go to work, powering up the rocket-plane, communicating with the pilots of their carrier plane as well as ground control.

  Kingsley, strapped in, looks up through the numerous circular windows on the roof of SpaceShipTwo. Soon they'll be able to see the Earth from space out those windows, but for now, they see the ceiling of the hangar.

  “Are you following me?” Caroline asks.

  “What?” K asks. Caroline glares at him. “I'm not following you.”

  “Taking a page from your stalkers' handbook?”

  “My stalkers have a handbook?” K asks.

  “Hey wait, where's Arnold?” Tom Hanks from the next row back.

  “You just now realized I'm not Mr. Universe?” K asks.

  “Jesus Hanks, don't you know who that is,” Ron Howard asks.

  “Well, I know he's not Arnold,” Hanks says.

  “That's Kingsley Pretorius,” Howard says.

  “Oh! Yeah, the guy from the uh, with the...The Blade Runner, from the Olympics. South African right?”

  “That's Oscar Pistorius,” Kingsley replies apathetically.

  “Yeah!” Hanks says.

  “Jesus, Gump,” Ron Howard chuckles.

  “I'm just messing with you, I'm a space nerd, of course I know who you are,” Hanks says. “I've walked on the Moon, you think I don't know about you?”

  “I keep telling you Hanks, that was a set, that wasn't the real Moon,” Ron Howard says.

  “Are you sure? I was like hopping around, it was definitely low-gravity,” Hanks says.

  “You were on wires!”

  “So you mean that bus I took to a warehouse with green walls wasn't really the surface of the Moon? My whole life is a lie!” Tom Hanks says.

  “You think you're funnier than you are,” Ron Howard says.

  “You guys are like a married couple,” Caroline says. Hanks and Howard snicker like teenage boys, so excited about going to space, they can't help but behave like children who just got in the van for a trip to Disney World.

  “So after this whole roller-coaster to the edge of space, how about you and I go up for a couple weeks, circle the Earth 280 times,” K says to Caroline. “That's a six million mile trip, for free, think about how much bang you get for that buck.”

  “Well, but if it's any distance, divided by zero, then it's infinite bang for zero buck,” Ron Howard says.

  “Thanks Opie,” K says.

  “Two weeks in a confined space...with you​?” Caroline asks.

  “Ouch, hey Kingsley, you looking for passengers for the first flight?” Ron Howard asks. “I'll go.”

  “Oh yeah, you can go, that'll be twenty million dollars,” K says.

  “But you were offering it to her for free,” Ron says.

  “Yeah, because she'll help me drum up more business because she's like famous and stuff.”

  “I'm kind of famous,” Ron says.

  “You are​!​?” Hanks asks, “ Do you know Tony Randall?”

  The ascent to 50,000 feet is long and slow. All palms aboard grow sweaty. The journey is like the ride to the top of the roller coaster, the passengers grow more nervous as the Earth gets farther away.

  “Everybody ready?” The pilot asks. “Just kidding, we're only at 45,000 feet.” Time seems to stand still as they put on the last bit of altitude. When the mother-aircraft finally levels out above 50,000 feet, it still wasn't time to go. Anticipation builds in the spaceship as the pilots double check all the systems again and talk to their mothership.

  Then suddenly, SpaceShipTwo drops away, sending stomachs into throats as the passengers experience near zero-g. The flutter is quashed as the rocket in the tail of SpaceShipTwo ignites. The hybrid rocket motor, called RocketMotorTwo, was built by the Sierra Nevada Corporation, the same company that is building the Dream Chaser space plane. The rocket produces 270 kilo-Newtons of thrust, pushing them back in their seats. The aircraft picks up speed and abruptly pitches up, heading for the black sky, pushing the historic cargo of space tourists into their seats at 3.5 Gs.

  They push through 90,000 feet in mere moments, going higher than spy planes like the U-2 or SR-71 could traverse, flying higher than any conventional aircraft could possibly go. The rocket burns for a total of 70 seconds, accelerating the rocket to 250,000 feet and a speed of 2,600 mph on a parabolic upward arc. Once the engine cuts, the crew feels the wonder of zero-gravity. The pilots roll the aircraft inverted, giving everyone a view of the Earth flying away from them through the circular windows in the ceiling.

  “This is your captain speaking, the fasten seat belt sign has been turned off and you are now free to move about the cabin,” the pilot announces. The passengers happily oblige the captain, undoing their safety harnesses and floating to the windows on the ceiling below them.

  Kingsley presses his face to the glass, able to see California and Texas at the same time. He glances over and sees Caroline doing the same thing, jaw hanging open, so moved by the view.

  “This is incredible,” Caroline says softly. She looks over and finds Kingsley looking at her. “Don't look at me! Look at that view!”

  K's eyes dart back to the Earth. It weirdly feels like Earth is above them and they are free from its gravity. Of course they aren't.

  The upward trajectory will carry them to a peak of around 360,000 feet, or 68 miles up. “We are passing through 325,000 feet, and that means we are all officially astronauts, congratulations.”

  The intense experience of being outside of the Earth, looking down, was a perspective reserved for the gods until only a lifetime ago.

  “Back in your seats, ASAP,” The pilot commands. From the peak of 360,000 feet, it takes less than two minutes for the passengers of the VSS Enterprise to feel the G-forces pushing them into their seats. The space-plane experienced 3.5 Gs of acceleration going up, but much of the speed was gained while out of the atmosphere. Coming back into the atmosphere is a more abrupt maneuver. The craft runs into thicker and thicker air at over 2000 mph, decelerating at around 6 Gs. The passengers feel like they weigh six times what they really weigh. Just imagine a 1200 pound Forrest Gump. Or if you're Kingsley, imagine how heavy the Duchess of Monaco's boobs feel right about now. The G's fall off as the plane returns to a more conventional flight envelope. The glide back to Spaceport America takes over twenty minutes.

  “Do you have anything to declare?” Richard Branson asks as he stamps each of the passengers passports with a Spaceport America stamp. The passengers receive their astronaut wings as the media looks on.

  “So, who wants to go again?” Richard Branson asks.

  “Oh me, me first!” Tom Hanks shouts.

  “I told you it was just a roller coaster,” Kingsley says to Caroline.

  “Yeah, but it's a hell of a roller coaster.”

  “Don't you want two weeks with that view?” K asks.

  “Not the first flight. I'm no test-pilot. Book me on the second flight,” Caroline replies.

  “Two week vacation in space,” K says.

  “It's not a date,” Caroline adds.

  “That's good because Ar
nold Schwarzenegger's gonna be there too.”

  “When will we be ready to put people in the Griffin?” K asks his assembled team in the conference room. “Well? Speak up!” The engineers seem reluctant to say anything.

  “K,” Dexter says. “We've only launched it twice.”

  “Two perfect missions,” K adds.

  “We've got Griffin 3 going to the ISS for the operational cargo mission,” Brittany says. “But that's all we're under contract for at the moment.”

  “Tell me why we can't put people on Griffin 4,” Kingsley says to his team.

  “Well, we had penciled in seven unmanned flights before we started thinking about putting people on it,” Dexter says. “To go earlier is to put lives at risk unnecessarily.”

  “We're not going to the Moon,” K replies. “If something goes wrong, we just have to come down. And don't tell me about risking lives unnecessarily. I'll be on the first flight.”

  “All due respect sir,” an engineer who looks like a 25 year old surfer says, “but if we go too early and lose a crew, that's the end of the company.”

  “That's the wrong way to talk me out of it,” K says with a laugh, “if I die on the mission, I won't be here to care about the aftermath.”

  “Why would we push to go this soon?” Dexter asks. “Why not stick to the plan, do a bunch of unmanned missions to get the kinks out.”

  “Griffin 3 is about ready to go to the ISS. We've got Griffin 4 and 5 on the lines right now, but they're in the cargo configuration. We haven't even started on producing the crewed config,” an engineer says.

  “But that's just whether we put seats and screens or storage racks,” K replies. “Every Griffin has a life support system. Theoretically we could have manned the first two flights. Maybe I should just stow away on Griffin 3 and give the astronauts on the ISS a bit of a surprise when they open up the hatch.”

  “You're not serious right?” Brittany asks.

  “Of course I'm not serious,” K replies. “But really guys, when can we be ready. Don't be afraid.”