Moon For Sale

by Jeff Pollard

  Day three begins with a quick drive north to the drill. They pack up the drill and the collection of core samples it extracted in the last 18 hours onto the rover and head south at just about the rover's top speed, having already traversed this area. It takes more than three hours from egress till they place the drill at the southern location just a hundred meters from the crater rim. K and Tim are busy placing the drill, setting up the solar panels, and getting the drill started. Meanwhile Caroline and Jim are free to hop around and begin surveying this site. They make their way south slowly, taking many pictures and describing what they are seeing. Tim and K catch up soon and the crew heads toward the crater rim which rises ahead of them.

  When they rise up on the crater rim, they experience what it probably felt like to discover the Grand Canyon. Just over the rise, the whole crater Tycho becomes visible. Until now, the crater had been totally obscured by the rim. But suddenly the rim gives way and the giant crater, easily visible with the naked eye from Earth comes into view, taking up their whole field of view.

  They can see very clearly to the opposite side of the crater over 90 kilometers away. The crater floor is a four kilometer drop beneath them. The Grand Canyon is only 1.8 kilometers at its deepest and never more than 30 kilometers wide. They can look left and see the east side of the crater over 65 kilometers away, and can look 45 degrees to their right and see the west side of the crater rim 70 kilometers away. The central peak is some 48 kilometers from them and it rises over 2.5 km above the crater floor, but still falls short of their altitude on the crater rim by about 1.5 kilometers, or about 4 Empire State Buildings. The Burj Khalifa, by far the tallest building on Earth, stands at 828 meters. The drop from their location on the crater rim to the floor is about four Burj Khalifas. Being able to see 90 kilometers across the crater is like seeing from the outskirts of London to the white cliffs of Dover.

  The size of the crater is quite literally breath taking. They can see over 6,000 square kilometers of crater floor laid out before them. That's like being able to see all of Delaware at once. Tim looks for the Boeing Lunar Lander Armstrong near the central peak and struggles to spot it despite having impeccable sight. He finally picks it out. The lander is 45 kilometers away and has the same apparent size as a golf ball 100 meters away or a baseball 700 feet away; visible but tiny. If any of the crew of Luna 100 are outside on a moonwalk, they would be basically invisible. A six-foot tall person at this distance would be the same apparent size as a football nearly five miles away.

  The four of them stand at the edge of the crater rim, jaws agape, totally still. HD cameras on their helmets broadcast the footage back to Earth via Wally's transmitter.

  “I hate to be that guy, but the view from the other side would be better,” K says.

  “Why?” Caroline asks. K simply points over his shoulder with his thumb. Caroline looks over her shoulder and sees the nearly full Earth hovering in the sky. From the south rim they would have roughly the same breathtaking view but the Earth would be floating above it all like a serene goddess.

  “Race you to the bottom,” K says to Tim. Tim shakes his head and laughs, but the moment of playfulness is interrupted by Jim Lovell. He falls to one knee and begins weeping, full on weeping. Tim puts a hand on Jim's shoulder. Lovell is lost in some kind of religious experience that can't be adequately turned into words.

  K and Caroline hold hands and look into the abyss. “Tycho,” K says quietly. “We should name him Tycho.”

  After the grand reveal, they resume their job of being geological prospectors. They spend nearly three hours finding samples and working their way along and down into the crater rim, separating to cover more territory. They meet back up, loaded down with rock samples, and take the rover back to Pegasus, their third EVA done, leaving only one remaining and yet feeling like they've barely put a dent in the amount of exploration that still remains to be done.

  “You could live at a base for two years and never go more than ten kilometers away and still never get bored or run out of things to look at,” K says on the drive back and everyone immediately agrees.

  When they re-enter the capsule, Hammersmith radioes up to Kingsley and requests a one-on-one. The rest of the crew gets to preparing dinner as K stands at the controls and video-conferences with Brittany Hammersmith.

  “Everything else is off, it's just us now,” Brittany says.

  “So what's this about?”

  “Hank struck back,” Hammersmith says. “You called him a liar, said there wasn't any hacking.”

  “I said there's no evidence of hacking actually causing a failure.”

  “Well he released a video with several SpacEx employees who said all kinds of things about hacking and specifically mentioned you had been re-writing Griffin code during the mission specifically to counter hacking,” Hammersmith says.

  “Who told him that?” K asks. “Who hears me deny that and then goes ahead and gives him interviews?”

  “He did the interviews before he published the first reports of hacking,” Hammersmith replies. “And they didn't know they were being recorded.”

  “So you walked right into his trap,” Caroline says. “He doesn't give away everything he knows, that way when you deny it and he produces evidence to prove your denial was a lie, suddenly you've got a scandal. Now instead of looking like victims of hacking, we look like we're covering things up.”

  “What's happening now?” K asks.

  “Parks is already on TV saying that you're in over your head,” Hammersmith says, “and that we've only gotten as far as we have because you're an adrenaline junky who doesn't care if there are risks or flaws and that we've been lucky so far to not kill anyone. Therefore NASA shouldn't be handing us any big contracts and instead should be giving all their money to ULA who can be trusted.”

  “Anything from NASA or Walken?” K asks.

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Did Project X turn up anything yet?” K asks.

  “Haven't checked in yet,” Hammersmith replies.

  “Okay, well keep me posted,” K sighs and ends the call.

  “So how bad are we screwed?” Tim asks.

  “Hard to say,” K replies. “I'm just imagining that the crowd of politicians and bureaucrats that have been bought off and were sweating how they were going to defend handing ULA the contract instead of us when we can do it cheaper, and they're all sighing in relief because now they have political cover, they'll point to this and wave their arms and say ULA has experience and then hand them a brand new monopoly.”

  “What was that Project X stuff?” Caroline asks.

  “I can't say,” K replies.

  “Didn't you just learn your lesson?” Caroline asks. “The cover-up is worse than the crime. Don't start covering up things from me.”

  “Fine,” K sighs. “Remember my private investigator friends. I have them working on Hank.”

  “Doing what to him exactly?” Caroline asks suspiciously.

  “Investigating him privately,” K says. Caroline is not satisfied with that answer. “I think ULA is paying this guy to make us look bad. If we can show that they're paying a so-called journalist to slander us then that makes the hacking story go away because you can't trust Hank anymore. At least that was the thought.”

  “And it completely ruins his career.”

  “If it's true, then he shouldn't have a career,” K replies. “I'm tired of treating the media like it's actually a world of integrity. I've tried arguing, I've tried rebutting everything, but money talks. The media doesn't need to lie or slander, they just need to steer the conversation. Remember how there was a giant news story every time a Tezla car anywhere had a fire or a crash. I saw national news stories about a Tezla catching fire a half-dozen times, as if electric car batteries are ticking time bombs. And I'd go on TV and point out that the occupants survived bad crashes and that lots of cars catch fire after a bad crash and we don't make the thousands of combustion-engi
ne car fires into a national story, but that doesn't matter, because the bad guys win because anyone tuning in is assimilating the information that Tezla is synonymous with 'car fire.' Meanwhile it comes out that GM knew their cars had defects and didn't recall anything for over a decade and caused probably dozens of deaths because they did the math and figured recalls were too expensive. And not just that, not only did they not do recalls, but they kept making cars with the flaws because they couldn't be bothered to redesign anything. People died because they fucked up. But that's not the story. Because if you've got enough money to buy political influence, you've definitely got enough money to buy media influence.

  So I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the media always trying to make a story out of me, looking for anything negative to report on, while they give other companies a giant pass. And the media would love if it became a bidding war, if the highest bidder got the best news coverage. That's what they really want. That's the future we're headed to, one where the media is just an extortion racket. But rather than playing that game, rather than buying good press, rather than buying political influence, I want to burn down the system. I want to show the media that if they come after me, they better have their house in order, otherwise their corruption and complete lack of anything resembling journalistic integrity will be the story. And they've got plenty of competitors that would love to run the story that their competitor can't be trusted.”

  “You've put quite a lot of thought into this,” Caroline says.

  “I'm a problem solver,” K replies.

  “What if you just show that ULA has had hacking problems too?” Caroline asks. “Then you can neutralize that knock against us. That might be easier to do than, you know, completely up-ending the entire journalistic world.”

  “That's Project Y,” K replies.

  “Do you have any idea what they're talking about?” Jim Lovell asks Tim Bowe.

  “Only like half the time,” Bowe replies.

  Chapter 32

  Over five billion years ago, a star was running out of fuel. The hydrogen converted into helium, the slowing of the fusion reactions causes the star to begin to collapse. The collapse increases the pressure at the core exponentially until helium atoms are being smashed together hard enough to fuse them. A helium flash occurs as helium atoms are combined to form still heavier elements. Helium atoms are combined to form carbon and oxygen. But this lasts only about 100,000 years before the star must move on. The carbon atoms are smashed together, fusing to form neon, sodium, magnesium, and aluminum. This lasts only about 100 years before the star must move on again, this time to fusin neon to make oxygen and still more magnesium. This lasts only about three years before it must again move on. Now the star collapses further until it is hot enough to fuse oxygen atoms and make silicon, sulfur, argon, and calcium, but this process lasts only a few months. Every evolutionary step, every desperate move to a new fuel, extends the star's life, but also sends it closer to its demise as each step releases less and less energy. The last days for this star are spent fusing silicon into nickel which decays into iron. The nuclear chain reaction ends as the star runs out of fuel, ending up with a core made of iron. Most of the elements heavier than nickel and iron cannot be made by this process of nuclear fusion in the cores of stars.

  With no more fusion occurring, the star can no longer support itself against its own gravity and a runaway collapse begins. The star's outer layers race towards the core, collapsing at a velocity more than 20% the speed of light, creating incredible pressures and temperatures as the massive star crashes down to just 30 kilometers across. At this point, the pressure of neutron degeneracy fights back as the material is compressed to a staggering degree. For a larger star, neutron degeneracy pressure is insufficient to halt the collapse and the collapse continues infinitely, crushing all of the star's material into a single point so small it no longer has measurable size in a our physical dimensions and instead becomes a point of infinite density. A singularity. But this particular star's mass is not high enough to overcome neutron degeneracy pressure and instead the collapse halts as the core reaches a temperature of 100 billion Kelvin, 6000 times hotter than the core of our sun. At this point, about 10% of the star's mass is converted directly into energy in the form of electron neutrinos. This release of energy causes the star to violently explode into a supernova that shines a billion times brighter than the sun.

  The explosion discharges a flood of neutrons at high velocities, bombarding the atoms within the supernova. Many of the atoms undergo rapid neutron capture, producing elements and isotopes that can only be created by this extreme process. Some 40 elements such as gold, platinum, lead, iodine, uranium, and radium exist only because they are formed during the explosions of these supernovas.

  A vein of iron-56, the end product of the stellar evolution, is bombarded with neutrons and turned into iron-60.

  A chunk of iron-60 escapes the dying star, condensing like a hail stone. This stellar shrapnel floats in the void of interstellar space along with countless other byproducts of other stellar deaths. Iron-60 has a half life of only 2.6 million years, turning first into cobalt-60, but cobalt-60 has a half life of only about 5 years before it too decays into nickel-60. After about 50 million years, only one atom in a million of the original iron-60 still remains. After another 50 million years, only one atom in a trillion remains. Nickel-60 is a ghost of iron-60 and a signature of the supernova that seeded interstellar space with heavy elements.

  This chunk that was once iron-60 spends millions of years in cold, dark, interstellar cloud of stellar debris. This interstellar cloud was then stirred, blasted by yet another exploding supernova.

  The stirring of the wind sends a shock-wave through the giant cloud that's perhaps twenty parsecs across. With this little kick, gravity goes to works to bring lonely particles together. Wherever mass accumulates, more gravity follows, resulting in more mass, more gravity, and a runaway reaction begins. Angular momentum causes these coalescing regions to form spinning disks. In fact, many of these proto-disks form, resulting in several stars that rise out of what has become a stellar nursery, made from the ashes of dead stars.

  Collisions beget more collisions, forming into concrescences. More than trillions, these grains combine to make larger and larger pieces. One of these collections grows larger enough, produces enough pressure at its core that it forces hydrogen molecules against each other with such force that they fuse, releasing energy. Becoming a new star.

  Other points of density and ordered chaos orbit this most massive concrescence that begins to shine. Thousands of spherical planetoids witness the star's birth, but the system is not finished. These thousands of planetoids continue to collect small particles and grow in size. Sometimes two of these planetoids collide and combine their gravitational power to become a much larger body. At present, there are about hundred bodies orbiting the Sun which grew large enough to mold themselves into spheres, far more than the eight planets that we recognize. Two moons, Ganymede and Titan, are larger than the planet Mercury. The Earth's Moon is the thirteenth largest object orbiting the Sun, after the eight planets and the moons Ganymede, Titan, Callisto, and Io. We know about the large bodies because they reflect plenty of light and are easy to spot. But they are few and far between. Smaller, harder-to-spot bodies litter the heavens but get little attention.

  This ball of nickel-60 the size of a golf ball watches silently for hundreds of millions of years. Then it suddenly finds itself caught in a gravity well of a proto-planet, a small body smaller then even the diminutive moons of Mars. The ball of nickel smacks against the rocky surface of this small body with very low gravity. The collision isn't very energetic, not shattering the rock or leaving even a dent, more like a golf ball being struck by a club. The rock comes to rest on the body, barely held to its surface by feeble gravity. Some millions of years later, the proto-planet crashes into another proto-planet, their masses combine in a fiery show, forming rings of glowing rock. But
our little ball of nickel was cast off in the collision with enough velocity to escape the gravity unlike many of its neighbors, the ball is not caught in a temporary ring that collapses back into the parent bodies. Instead, the ball floats freely once more around the sun.

  A few billion years later, that little ball's silent journey around the solar system comes to a crashing halt. It enters the Earth's atmosphere only a few years ago. Thousands of fragments like this hit the Earth every year, most falling into the sea, sinking to the sea floor. But not this rock. It happens to land on a sheet of ice in Antarctica, and is discovered within weeks by a living creature. The creature's entire life span will last just a thousandth of a thousandth of one percent of the time that this little rock has spent in orbit around the Sun.

  But the discoverer, this creature, is not some oblivious life-form that can't understand or appreciate this rock's journey. This creature has itself been in orbit and entered the Earth's atmosphere. They have some experiences in common. This creature understands the significance of this rock, and so it has the rock transformed, cut into a new ring, an orbit that is not the result of gravitational attraction but attraction of a different kind. Their atoms forged in the same star, accreted into the same long-lost planetoid, melted in an ancient forge, blasted away in a cosmic collision, the iron cooled in interplanetary space, like a hail stone hardening in a cloud. The molecules were locked in place, forming a rigid pattern that would not be disturbed for four and a half billion years, even as the iron slowly turned into nickel. Billions of years of weightlessness, slowly tumbling through space, the eons of predictability are suddenly washed away as the rock enters the Earth's atmosphere and the outermost atoms are heated and sublimated away before a soft impact with ice halts the rock in place. Then sliced in two, this rock has given birth to a pair of twins. Separated for the first time in billions of years, these twin orbits of nickel become a metaphor for the living creatures that appreciate the shared journey of the atoms in those rocks.