by Jeff Pollard
“That's pretty condescending,” Caroline replies.
“Wait, you can't float by the Cupola,” Michael interjects.
“Why not?” K asks.
“That's not in the mission. The EVA suit test is to be in the airlock only, you're not to take them outside,” Michael replies.
“Oh come on, don't get your diapers in a bunch,” K replies.
“That's the deal. I can't let you take those outside the airlock, they're not tested, they're not safe yet. If something goes wrong and you go tumbling off into space, we can't chase you. And we can't risk you floating into a solar panel.”
“NASA,” K says derisively, “the bold risk takers that went to the Moon in the sixties. Look how brave they are.”
“It's not about bravery it's about due diligence,” Michael replies.
“I wonder,” K says, “if NASA of the '60s had to be as cautious as present-day NASA is, how long would it have taken to land on the Moon? Honestly, I mean, they sent Apollo 8 around the Moon on the first manned Saturn V launch, only the second flight of the Apollo spacecraft. If they had today's lack of balls back then, they wouldn't have landed on the Moon until Apollo 46. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it, huh?”
“Look, I'm not making this call, this is mission rules. You cannot take those suits out of the airlock. And if I can't trust you to follow orders, then I'll just leave them in your trunk,” Hopkins says sternly.
“Fine,” K says. “I'll think of something else.”
“Alright, I've got to get back to work,” Hopkins says, floating away to return to an experiment.
“So what should I say that's not condescending?” K asks.
“Well, where will you be?” Caroline asks.
“Floating by the cupola,” K says simply.
“Inside or outside?” Tim asks.
“Outside,” K replies.
“K,” Caroline says exasperatedly.
“I'm gonna do it anyway. Don't tell Mike.”
“Kingsley, you can't do that,” Commander Bowe says.
“I can do that and I will.”
“Kingsley, don't make me do this,” Tim says.
“Do what?”
“I'm in command of this mission. You're not going on a spacewalk,” Commander Bowe says.
“You're pulling rank on me? You know I can fire you right?”
“Yes, I am aware. However, while on a mission, I outrank you, and if you want to try a mutiny, I think you'll find yourself outnumbered. So fire me when we get back home, I don't care, but you will not be going on a spacewalk.”
“How about I fire you and just leave you up here,” K asks. Bowe doesn't back down, floating firm. “I never should have hired you. I told Dexter bachelors only.”
Everyone kept their distance from Kingsley for the rest of the day. By lights-out, Kingsley returned to the Cupola with his sleeping bag and his persistent foul mood. He set anchor and tried to go to sleep while looking down on Earth. He couldn't focus his gaze on anything, instead his mind going off on rant after rant, keeping him awake.
After an hour of staring and conducting imaginary debates, he was slightly startled by a noise behind him. K turns around and discovers Caroline floating into the Tranquility.
“You scared me,” K says.
“You scared me today,” Caroline replies, joining him in the Cupola. “I don't know what happened to the Kingsley I used to know. You need help.”
“If you're just going to lecture me, I don't want to hear it,” K says coldly.
“This is why you don't have friends K. Why did you fire Josh?”
“He disobeyed me, you don't think that's grounds for dismissal?”
“No. If you were in his shoes you would have done the exact same thing,” Caroline replies. “I thought you were friends, I've seen you two together. I also thought Tim was your friend, and Dexter. But apparently not.”
“I'm not running a space program so I can make friends,” K replies.
“Apparently.”
“You're acting like all of this is my fault.”
“Kingsley, you're making things harder than they need to be,” Caroline sighs.
“Yeah, because I made idiot politicians try to make my cars illegal. Or I made Josh disobey me. Or I made Tim try to pull rank on his own boss. I'm fighting a war on seven different fronts right now. I've got the New York goddamn Times running a review of the Tezla X that says the battery life was less than advertised. I've got the telemetry from the car they used, they took the thing and drove it in circles in a parking garage to kill the battery faster. You think the New York Times did that just out of boredom? They did that because too many people with too much power stand to lose too much if oil demand drops. The status-quo always has the power because they have the money. And they are using every trick in the book to stop me, from smear tactics, to buying off politicians,” Kingsley is nearly at a shouting level now, speaking faster and louder.
“In New Jersey, they just proposed a yearly tax on people who own electric cars. They claimed it was because gas taxes pay for maintaining highways and since electric car drivers aren't buying gas, they need to contribute somehow. That sounds fair, kind of, until you realize that the gas taxes were designed as an incentive to drive more efficient cars, because the more miles you drive, the less efficient your vehicle, the more tax you pay. Unless you buy an electric car, in which case you just pay a flat fee at the end of the year, and that flat fee has nothing to do with how many miles you drive. They're clearly trying to make electric cars a less affordable option because, unless you drive 45,000 miles a year, you'll end up paying more in taxes for the electric car than you would in gas taxes.
I've got half of congress bought off by ULA, or so invested in NASA pork that they'll do anything to stop me. They killed the Commercial Crew Program to instead spend more money in Russia. ULA is having me followed, and they're buying off my employees for corporate espionage. They're buying off NASA employees to make me jump through forty-seven hoops before they let me do anything, including this little stunt they just pulled today. Just last week the Japanese space agency contacted me about buying an Eagle 9 flight, and congress shut down the deal, saying that we can't deal with foreigners because they consider SpacEx an arms corporation. Apparently telling JAXA how they could mate their payload to our rocket amounts to selling top-secret weapons information to the enemy. Never mind that JAXA is a partner with NASA, and an Eagle 9 is not a god damn weapon-”
“-K, K!” Caroline interrupts him. “Just listen carefully for a moment, because I'm not going to shout over you. You listening?”
“Yes.”
“I know you have enemies,” Caroline says slowly. “I know you have opposition. But if you want to know who your biggest enemy is, look in the mirror. You want to retire on Mars, you want this company to succeed, the only person standing in the way of that is you.”
“Without me this company is nowhere,” K says.
“I agree, without you it wouldn't exist, but right now, the only person that can kill your dream is you. The only person with the power to destroy everything you've been working for, is you.”
“This is such bullshit,” K says, turning away.
“Then tell me, where were you yesterday morning when we were getting ready for launch? Where were you?” Caroline asks.
“Some yacht,” K replies.
“What happened the night before launch?”
“I don't remember,” K replies. “If this is just going to be a lecture about me drinking too much or partying too hard, you're not my mother.”
“I'm not your mother. But you are making us all watch in slow-motion as you tear your life apart, alienate all your friends, shatter your dreams, and it's not because of NASA, it's you! This is why you can't keep any friends. Nobody wants to see you ruin everything, and when it all goes to hell, they're afraid of what you'll do. Just look at how you treat people when things are going well.”
“That's nonsense.”
“Oh yeah? What happened with Stephanie. What the hell was that?”
Kingsley laughs. “You think I treated her unfairly?”
“She says she's pregnant and you fire her?”
“She wasn't pregnant. Or, well, if she is, it ain't mine.”
“How do you know?” Caroline asks.
“I had a vasectomy.”
“When?”
“Like nine years ago, why do you think I have a stockpile of my sperm?”
“Do you realize that we dated for almost two years and you never mentioned to me that you had a vasectomy?”
“Because it's a trust thing. That's why I couldn't help but laugh at Stephanie. It's a test. If a girl is a golddigger, the best way to get her claws in you is to get pregnant. And she fell for that trick faster than I thought possible. I mean, who declares to the world that they're pregnant at like three weeks? The way she did it, and just how fast she declared she was pregnant, just screamed, 'I'm a golddigger,' louder than I thought was possible. It was hilarious.”
“So why didn't you ever tell me you had a vasectomy?” Caroline asks, knowing the answer.
“It was a test.”
“To see if I was a golddigger?” Caroline asks, clearly upset. “I believe you'll find that I'm not exactly poor.
“You might have tried to pull the crazy-girl trick of the fake pregnancy to get your claws in me to get married. It doesn't have to be my money that you're after.”
“Do you see how fucking dishonest you are? We dated for years and you couldn't trust me with something so basic. You don't trust anyone, do you?”
“I trust Jarvis,” K replies simply.
“You use him, and his name isn't even Jarvis. You use everyone. You are so focused on reusable rockets, you see everything else in the world as expendable. Your life is full of expendable people you won't let get near the real you. You get what you give Kingsley. If you treat people like they're expendable, if you just use them for whatever you can get out of them, they'll know it, and they'll return the favor. So get used to it. This is your life from now on. Fake friends and golddiggers. On repeat, until you're an old fat businessman and all you have left is your precious bottom-line.”
Caroline lingers for a moment, watching Kingsley's face to see if her words have any effect, but they seem not to. She leaves without a word, floating away, back to her sleeping quarters. Kingsley lets her go, looking back out the Cupola, his breath fogging up the cold windows. K would struggle to fall asleep. Halfway through the night, he wakes up gasping for air, having been caught in a bubble of his own CO2. If it weren't for his reflexes, he would have suffocated in his own exhaust gases, killed by a lack of convection currents in the weightlessness of orbit.
Perhaps Caroline's words got to him, as Kingsley was quieter, more controlled the next day. Rather than throwing a fit or doing something rash, he got on the radio with ISS Mission Controllers on the ground and calmly arranged a deal to allow him to test the SpacEx EVA suits outside of the airlock, but with the stipulation that he could not test the suit's reaction control jets and would have to be constantly tethered to the CanadaArm. It wasn't the full test he had hoped for but it was something.
So it was on the third day of the Griffin 7 mission, Kingsley Pretorius performed the first ever private spacewalk. Before he could do that, Michael Hopkins retrieved the spacesuits with the CanadaArm from the Griffin Trunk's unpressurized cargo area and placed the suits in the airlock. Then Kingsley and Tim Bowe proceeded into the airlock and Tim helped Kingsley don his white space suit. The suit was one piece, and Kingsley entered through a large port on the back, much like the Russian Orlan space suit. NASA uses a more complicated and harder to don two-piece suit.
The SpacEx suits were based on NASA studied technology that had never been tested in space before. A spacesuit is like a balloon. In the vacuum of space, the inflated suit will try to expand, and thus it makes gripping with your hands or bending at your knees and elbows quite difficult as the air pressure fights to keep the structure as inflated and extended as possible. Many methods had been used to try to mitigate this problem, but none had eliminated it. The principle of the new design was that if you had a spacesuit that was tight enough to the body, then there wouldn't be a bubble of air between you and the suit, thus it wouldn't become an inflexible balloon. This was achieved through an ingenious method of essentially shrink-wrapping the astronaut into the suit. The suit was composed of several layers, and once Kingsley entered the suit, rather than pressurizing it, the first step was to lower the pressure. With the inner bladder shrunk down to the size and shape of the astronaut, the outer layers would constrict around the astronaut and be rather form fitting. However, don't think the outward appearance is like a spandex suit, it looks very much like a slimmer version of the ordinary NASA spacesuit. The benefits of this new design were that spacewalks could be performed with much less strain on the astronaut as they would not have to constantly fight against the pressure in the suit.
The idea wasn't a new one, but the materials needed to actually pull this off were new. The inner bladder needed to shrink down to the astronauts specifications smoothly without bunching-up, remaining flat and smooth without allowing air pockets to form. The material also had to be comfortable against the astronaut. Cool water was piped through tiny tubes lining the inner bladder, keeping the astronaut cool. The cooling system was essentially the same one used by Apollo astronauts on the Moon. The plumbing was connected to a water reservoir in the backpack, and the reservoir is attached by a membrane to a plate exposed to the vacuum of space. Some water would seep through the membrane, then freeze on the plate and create a layer of ice that sealed in the remaining water rather than letting it escape. This layer of ice would slowly sublimate off into space and as it did, cool all of the water in the system. And as ice disappeared, it was replaced by water from the reservoir. The passive-cooling-system could cool an astronaut for days without the need for electricity or any kind of control. There were small pumps to push the water through the piping, and when activated these pumps would deliver an almost instant cooling effect. The astronaut could regulate temperature by turning the pump on whenever he or she was starting to get hot. But even without using the pump, the system would still deliver a constant cooling effect.
Once in the suit, Kingsley was locked into the airlock and the chamber was evacuated. Kingsley hovered in the small airlock for thirty minutes, checking off a number of factors before he could go outside. First he had to make sure the suit was well sealed. The pressure held steady and he could detect no leaks. He made sure that his visor would not fog up. The inside of the visor was coated in special materials to prevent fogging, and the material was doing its job. K moved around, flexing and bending, checking to make sure the suit was comfortable, flexible, that the inner bladder was fitting against him well, and to make sure that the cooling system was doing its job. After thirty minutes, with no problems, no leaks, no fogging, and still cool and comfortable in the suit, he asked for clearance to step outside, and it was granted.
K holds on to a railing on the wall of the airlock as the airlock door slowly opens out into space. This airlock is on the bottom of the station, and through the open door, Kingsley can see blue ocean and white clouds. He has no idea what part of the Earth he is looking at, but he tries to keep those thoughts out of his mind as he concentrates on his task. The door locks into place, against the outer wall. Michael Hopkins, a couple of modules away, pilots the CanadaArm2, moving it deliberately into place. The end of the arm moves slowly into the airlock, then stops in place.
“Go ahead and attach,” Hopkins says on the radio. Kingsley grabs a meter long cord with carabiners on each end. He attaches one carabiner to a hook on the left side of his backpack, then snaps the other carabiner over a metal ring on the side of the arm's grappling mechanism. As he does this, he's very aware of the camera mounted inside the grappling mechanism as it seems to be lifelessly staring at him. With that line
in place, K does the same with a second cord, attaching to the right side of his backpack and another anchoring ring on the other side of the arm. It's an awkward and difficult job because he has to attach himself back-first to the arm.
“Alright, both cords are in place, go ahead for grapple,” K says. Floating with his back to the grappling arm and with the two cords floating nearby, it's time for Michael Hopkins to push the CanadaArm forward and have it take hold of the grappling point in the center of the backpack. K holds himself steady with a handrail as he waits for a giant robotic arm to grab him by the spacesuit. He's facing the door of the airlock, which has a small circular window. He can't hear them, but he can see Richard and Arnold looking back at him through the small windows.
“Good grapple,” Hopkins says. “How are your consumables?”
K looks to a small display on the inside of his left arm. “Seven hours of oxygen left, plenty of water, plenty of power, everything is good here.”
“You ready to go outside?” Hopkins asks.
“I've been ready my whole life,” K replies. Kingsley presses on the touch screen display, activating his helmet mounted camera and turning on his head-lights. K takes a deep breath and prepares to go on a spacewalk.
A spacewalk is literally out of this world. Technically speaking, an astronaut on a spacewalk is a spaceship with its own atmosphere, flying in close formation with the space station. You wouldn't get outside a plane going thousands of miles per hour, but if that plane flew high enough to get above the atmosphere, you could step outside and float alongside. Theoretically, you could go on a spacewalk from SpaceShipTwo or any other sub-orbital craft. With SpaceShipTwo there just wasn't much time, nor was there an airlock to let you try such a stunt. Then again, a human could sky-dive back from quite an altitude, as Felix Baumgartner had done a few years previously, jumping from a balloon at over 100,000 feet to break the free-fall record set by Joseph Kittenger back in the '50s.
