Moon For Sale

by Jeff Pollard

  “But how many times could we do that?” Bowe asks. “How many people are there with 200 million to spend?”

  “Last I checked,” K says, “there's 1500 of us. Us meaning billionaires.”

  “How much of your billion is liquid?” Brittany asks derisively.

  “I've got a fifty in my wallet,” K says.

  “But we can't even sell flights to a space hotel for what is it? 40 million?” Bowe asks.

  “It's just a lull because of Zero-G,” K says. “People will get over it. Cars kill 10,000 people a year in this country, I don't see deserted highways.”

  “What if it's not a phase?” Bowe asks.

  “I'm not saying this is our main plan, just that it's an option. If we can convince just 15 people that a moonwalk is worth 200 million, that gives us 3 billion dollars,” K says.

  “Three billion dollars which we would then have to turn into an Apollo program,” Weller says, amazed at how casually K treats that challenge.

  “It's not as crazy as you think,” K replies. “We've got the capsule, we've got the rockets, it's really just a matter of developing the upper stage, which you're already working on, and then coming up with a dedicated departure stage and creating a landing module. We could develop those. We've developed more complicated things.”

  “What about unmanned flights to test these things? Dry runs? You're talking about Apollo 11, but what about Apollo 7, 8, 9, and 10?” Weller asks.

  “Well, 7 was just a test of the command module, we've done that. Apollo 8 was a trip around the Moon, and we could get paying customers to fund that. Apollo 10 tested the lunar module in lunar orbit. Again, people would pay for that journey. So there's development costs and let's tack on some conservative estimates for testing, maybe it'll cost 250 or 300 million a seat. We can do that.”

  “Aren't you putting the cart before the horse?” Weller says. “If we can start reusing rockets, then we can bring prices down across the board and put everything on the table. If we start spending billions on developing a lunar lander now, we might go bankrupt before get the reusability up and running.”

  “We can do both,” K says. “To start we'd just need a kicker stage so we could do flights around the Moon, we don't need a lunar module for that. That way we could attract more customers and more money to help us pay for reusability, and then go to the Moon after that.”

  “How does spending a lot to develop something new pay for developing something else new?” Weller asks. “To me that sounds like trying to do too much and then getting caught with our pants around our ankles.”

  “I'm saying it's an option,” K says. “I might not be here in a year. But if I am, and if there's absolutely nothing coming our way from NASA, maybe that's our way into the future. Regardless, we've got just a few shots left at first stage return. Focus on that. We need to get that done this year folks. Let's go to work.”

  K breaks the meeting and is joined by Angela Fogel, head of legal, as she walks with him back towards his office.

  “I've got something you need to see,” Fogel says.

  “Your amicus briefs?” K asks.

  “You like sexually harassing lawyers?” Fogel asks.

  “I like to live dangerously,” K replies. “What is it?”

  “Remember the interview you did with Playboy?”

  “I remember talking to a playmate about burying my sword in her stone and fluid transfer, something like that,” K says.

  “Well, we've got an advance copy, and we want you to go over it and make sure it's all accurate,” Fogel replies.

  “Why?”

  “Because it'll help when we sue her,” Fogel replies.

  “You can't go to the ear-bud-white SpacEx HQ without hearing that Kingsley Pretorius is not only president but also designed the building, and even picked the furnishings right down to the rocket shaped trash cans,” Fogel begins reading the article, running a red pen across the double-spaced article, ready to make notes. Kingsley and Caroline sit behind K's desk, eating lunch Caroline brought in.

  “Ear-bud-white? Fucking Apple-worshiping little bitch. Jobs didn't invent white for fucks sake,” K says with his mouth full of salad.

  “We're looking for factual inaccuracies,” Fogel says.

  “What did she lie about?” Caroline asks.

  “We'll get there, but if we can show she lied about other things, it'll help us tremendously. So just point out whatever is inaccurate. Moving on,” Fogel continues reading the article to Kingsley as he eats lunch. “He sits at his desk in an obscene glass office that should really be lined with mirrors so Kingsley can see what he really wants to see, himself.”

  “Dammit, why didn't I think of that,” K says sarcastically. “I could look down and see a nice view of my taint instead of flowers and shit.”

  “He eats from a plate handed to him by an assistant, and works through the food like a detached astronaut carefully eating his rations while talking about Mars and the Penocracy.”

  “I never said 'Penocracy,'” K insists.

  “Are you sure?” Caroline asks.

  “No,” K admits before self-consciously taking another bite.

  “You can't sit behind the wheel of a Tezla without hearing that Kingsley designed the control system and even insisted on a volume control that 'goes to eleven.' He frequently makes nerdy references and then laughs at his own jokes.”

  “Okay, first off, you can sit behind the wheel of a Tezla without hearing that I designed it. I mean, that implies the car actually tells you I designed it.”

  “It's bad writing, but not really relevant,” Fogel replies.

  “Doesn't it discredit her as a journalist if we show she is a terrible writer?” K asks.

  “Your honor, the defendant's word choice here is incredibly sloppy, and she used the wrong there, thus you shouldn't trust anything she says,” Fogel replies sarcastically. “Moving on. Pretorius is forty-one, with the face of a schoolboy and the manners of a surgeon. He frequently runs his hands through his thinning brown hair to make it seem fuller than it really is, and his this reddish lips and hairless arms hint at another kind of vanity.”

  “Wait, what?” K asks. “First off, this is dirty blonde, not brown. And I'm not fluffing myself. And reddish lips? What is that? Hairless arms? She makes me sound like a mole or something.”

  “She's hinting that you're gay,” Caroline replies.

  “Really!? That means gay?” K asks.

  “Thin lips, hairless body, obsessing over your hair, she's hinting that you're gay,” Caroline adds.

  “I didn't get gay out of that at all. Can we sue for that?” K asks.

  “Hard to prove you're not gay,” Angela Fogel replies.

  “I'll show you just how easy it is to prove,” K replies. She is unmoved by the joke.

  “He is often referred to as a rock star, but seems more like an NFL quarterback to me, like a Peyton Manning, so focused on his job that he barely notices that massive wealth that comes with it.”

  “I think I'm more Tom Brady like,” K replies while tousling his hair.

  “If he is a rock star, he's more like one of the levelheaded rockers like Chris Martin of Coldplay,” Fogel continues reading.

  “Since when is Coldplay a rock band? She has zero credibility,” K replies.

  “It would not be shocking if he raised up his shirt to reveal that he had no bellybutton, he's just weird enough that anything seems to be possible.”

  “I feel like this was written by a high schooler,” K replies.

  “Kingsley was not born in America, yet he gave up everything he had to become American. Now he wants to lead Americans back to the frontier, where we used to rule. He says he wants to make us a country of explorers once more. He grew up in South Africa. The Pretoriuses are a special breed. Anyone in the extended family can tell the stories of their forefathers. There's dozens of South African firsts that are owned by Pretoriuses. First non-s
top flight from Africa to Australia, that was Kingsley's grandfather. First female South African doctor? She was a Pretorius. First South African to win a gold medal at the Olympics? You guessed it. The Pretorius family seems fictional, something out of Dickens or maybe the Corleones. Talented, gifted, brave, adventurous, but deeply flawed,” Fogel stops, looking up to K. “All accurate?”

  “It's pretty surreal to hear someone describe your weird cousins as some kind of literary dynastic family,” K replies.

  “His mother was a fashion model and his father an engineer described as a 'serial entrepreneur,'” Fogel pauses.

  “I didn't know your mother was a fashion model,” Caroline says.

  “She was a dietitian,” K says. “But what does serial entrepreneur mean?”

  “Philanderer,” Fogel says coldly.

  “Is that true?” Caroline asks K.

  “I don't know,” K replies, stunned. “I have no idea.”

  “Doesn't matter, she purposely used euphemistic language,” Fogel adds. “According to his cousin, Anders Pretorius, Kingsley had a tough childhood. 'Kingsley was the smallest kid in school,' Anders says, 'and he barely survived. He was bullied a lot. So he withdrew and just was always quiet and shied away from other kids, spent all his time reading.' It turned out his isolation led to something, the personal computer. He found salvation in a virtual world in which he wasn't harassed. He began writing video games and publishing them himself. Then there's the matter of his parents untimely death in a plane crash. But before you start feeling too sorry for this bullied orphan, you should spend some time with grown up Kingsley. He nonchalantly explained to me that he fired his previous assistant because she was 'a gold-digger,'” Fogel looks up to K, seeing if he has any objections.

  “I mean, she was a gold-digger,” K says.

  “And if you think the sexism stops there, you're wrong. He almost immediately began the interview by talking down to me and saying 'You're not writing a feminist article about the Penocracy and how bullets and rockets are all phallic shaped are you?' When I challenged him on his sexism he defended himself by saying that he listens to Amanda Palmer, and therefore that proves he can't possibly be sexist.”

  K sits silent as Caroline and Angela stare at him, waiting for him to defend himself. He says nothing.

  “Did you really say listening to Amanda Palmer makes you not sexist?” Caroline asks.

  “I said it makes me a feminist,” K thinks this is a good defense, but only makes Caroline more curious.

  “When he showed me around the payload mating facility, he couldn't help but make literally dozens of jokes about mating, docking, berthing, and so on. It was just one penis joke after another. Docking followed by fluid transfer followed by berthing, har dee har har.”

  “She was making dick jokes too,” K defends himself.

  “Kingsley took a discussion of active and passive docking mechanisms as an opportunity to point out that males can be submissive to dominant females in a feeble attempt at hitting on me. Some Playboy.”

  “Really busting out the moves, huh?” Caroline asks.

  “Then he told me if I sucked up to him, he would let me ride his rocket.”

  “No! I didn't say that! She's lying!”

  “Are you sure?” Fogel asks.

  “Yes. I remember, I specifically said that if she sucked up to me, she could ride my Griffin. I like Griffin as a cock euphemism. Let's mate my Griffin and your Eagle,” K says seductively to Caroline. “Get it?”

  “So you did say it?” Fogel asks.

  “No! She said rocket. The Griffin is a space capsule, not a rocket.”

  “Moving on,” Fogel replies coldly.

  “This is what happens when I talk to people with no sense of humor,” K says, exasperated.

  “This is more than just sexism. He calls his male assistant 'Hamster,' like a senior at a frat would treat a pledge. Talk about a boy's club. But it doesn't stop there. When asked about his competition, he has harsh words. 'Boeing puts the zero in being,' Kingsley says,” Fogel looks up to Kingsley.

  “That's kinda funny right?”

  “Hamster?” Caroline asks.

  “But then he spends half his time looking back, checking windows, absolutely paranoid that he is being followed by his competitors. 'It's not paranoia if it's true,' Kingsley says. 'As for his other competitors, he claims they're corrupt. 'United Launch Alliance only still exists because of all the bribes they've paid out,' he says.”

  “Alright, I see what this is about,” K interrupts, “I did not say that to her.”

  “You sure?” Fogel asks.

  “Absolutely,” K replies. Fogel writes in the margins of the article. “I did not say bribes, no way, I know not to say that to a reporter. I'd always say influence or lobbyists, not bribe. So this is about ULA suing me for saying that.”

  “It gets worse,” Fogel says, “It makes my blood boil, seeing all the corruption in America. I'm seriously considering taking my rockets and moving to Brazil. They have the largest budget surplus in the world, 90 billion dollars a year. They told me they'd give me 15 billion a year to come to Brazil and run their space program and do whatever I want with it. I'm seriously thinking about it.”

  K is stunned and sits back, suddenly realizing the gravity of the situation. “That's not what I said.”

  “I know, because it would be illegal for you to speak to any Brazilian official about taking what is considered proprietary American arms technology and giving it to them. Just discussing it would be conspiracy.”

  “Yeah,” K says simply.

  “What did you say?” Fogel asks.

  “I was talking about how the rocket business is not really a free market, that there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. Then I said something like, America's position at the top of the space industry is not because we're better, it's just because we spend more money on it than anyone else, and have for a long time. And then said that if another country decided to spend 15 billion a year on their space program, they could catch us, if not outright pass us because of how stuck we are in current contracts and old-thinking. And I brought up that Brazil could theoretically do that since they have the world's largest budget surplus, and that if they suddenly decided to spend 15 billion of their 90 billion in surplus on a space program, they could be the world leader in space in just a few years and I might think about moving to Brazil.”

  “They told me,” Fogel reads slowly and clearly, “they'd give me 15 billion a year to come to Brazil and run their space program and do whatever I want with it. I'm seriously thinking about it.”

  “I did not speak to anyone from Brazil. This was a hypothetical I drew up on the spot.”

  “Is that an option?” Caroline asks. “Why not do it? I know Dilma.”

  “Who's Dilma?” K asks.

  “President of Brazil,” Caroline replies like it's obvious. “She plays tennis with my mom sometimes. Why not do it? I could get you a meeting with her to pitch it.”

  “If I had a 15 billion dollar a year budget, we'd be the leader in space in a year. I'd be walking on the Moon in two, on Mars in fifteen tops.”

  “Let's do it,” Caroline says.

  “No, for a number of reasons,” K says. “A. It's illegal to take information with us to Brazil, International Traffic in Arms Regulations. B. Brazil wouldn't do it. C. The reason they have a budget surplus is because they have ridiculous laws that require them to balance their budgets, so they can't do stimulus spending. It makes for a budget surplus but is actually quite harmful. D. They also have extreme laws about technology and importing. For example, you can't buy a Playstation 4 in Brazil, because they require all electronics and cars and such to be produced inside Brazil. It helps local businesses but would be an absolute nightmare to try to build something complicated. We couldn't import anything. Then we would probably have a hell of a time with the red tape involved in launching a satellite for anyone outside Br
azil, and there's not enough satellite industry inside Brazil.

  Basically, it sounds good to say, hey, the country with the largest budget surplus could take some of it and start a kick-ass space program. But it's not that simple and I was not conspiring to actually do it, just mentioned it as a way of pointing out that if some other country decided they wanted to, they could pretty quickly rival or surpass the United States. I mean, China's going to the Moon, but even they aren't spending anywhere close to what NASA gets.”

  “Okay, so it was purely a hypothetical,” Fogel states.

  “Yes. Made it up. Absolutely not a conspiracy,” K says. Fogel writes notes for a long moment. “Is there more, or was that the main thing?”

  “She also quotes you as saying your car has a flamethrower on it, that's not true is it?” Fogel asks sarcastically.

  Chapter 15

  Super Bowl L

  Levi's Stadium

  Santa Clara, California

  “Why is it L? What kind of stupid name is that?” Justin Bieber pontificates from his luxury box overlooking the field prior to the start of the Super Bowl. “Like, how dumb are their marketing people?”

  Bieber is surrounded by sycophants, most of them over 40; suits that want something out of him. Right now those suits are four movie producers trying to keep on Bieber's good side. Bieber's entourage was down-right minimalist compared to his normal crew thanks to the price of tickets to these luxury boxes. He brought along porn actress Jaynen Jaymes, two security guards, and a shifty-eyed male friend who never spoke and was constantly nervous. Bieber's critique of the Super Bowl's name drew a battery of approving responses: “You're so right,” “they need a better marketing team,” etc.