The Titicaca Effect

by Richard N. Tooker

  14 minutes before launch, a helicopter appeared on the horizon, headed for the island. Stout looked up from his test equipment and asked, “You expecting someone?”

  “Yep,” Freeman said. “Maldonado. He said there’s no way he was going to miss this.”

  “Well, I hope he dressed for it. His standard-issue dark suit is not the thing to wear during a downpour. He should have waited until the second test. After today, the launches will be dry.”

  “You know the president. He has a lot riding on this, and he’s a hands-on guy. Besides, he’s like a kid with a new toy. To keep him away, you’d need to tie him to his chair in the palace.”

  The chopper was headed for the landing pad top of the ridge, and Freeman went to meet it, yelling to the security guards who were converging on the area that it was all right and that they should return to their posts.

  The helicopter settled to the ground just as Freeman reached the landing pad, the door swung open, and Maldonado stepped out. For once, he was dressed for the occasion, wearing boots, jeans, an Alpaca sweater, and carrying a leather jacket.

  “Mr. President,” Freeman shouted over the noise of the rotors as they shook hands, “We’re ready for the launch. Let’s get you in the tent.”

  “Tyler, this is a great day for Bolivia. I couldn’t miss it.”

  The helicopter disgorged two more passengers, the president’s personal aide and an armed security guard, and the four of them walked down to the tent.

  Stout had finished what he was doing and was sitting on a camp stool on the open side of the tent facing the launch area. When the president and his entourage arrived, he stood and extended his hand.

  “President Maldonado, welcome. Glad to see you dressed for a rainstorm. It’s just few minutes to launch now. Why don’t you have a seat there?” He pointed to another one of the camp stools, one well in side the tent.

  “Good morning, Dr. Stout,” the president said. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stand here in the open so I can get a good look at the launch. I’ll duck inside when the rains come.”

  A horn sounded. “Two minutes ‘til launch, everyone,” Stout said. “Look sharp!”

  One of the computer screens in the bank of instruments to Stout’s right began flashing the seconds until launch in big yellow numerals as the countdown descended. Everyone was watching the screen, not saying anything and seemingly hypnotized, until it reached ten seconds. One of the engineers began counting down.

  “10 – 9 – 8 –7….”

  Freeman repositioned himself between Stout and President Maldonado to gain a better vantage point.

  “6 – 5…”

  “Launch the module now!” Stout shouted. The lead McDonnell-Douglas engineer pressed a red button on the console in front of him, the thrusters on the module fired and it leaped into the sky. The noise from the thrusters could barely be heard above the loud hissing sound created by the Titicaca Effect.

  “4 – 3 – 2…”

  The surface of the water enclosed by the dam bulged upward, carrying the launch platform with it. The module rose steadily, straight up, by now more than 200 yards in the air and gaining speed quickly. In another second or two it would be completely out of sight.

  “1 – Zero!”

  A snakelike stream of water thrashed wildly for less then two seconds, then snapped into a vertical column of water that began to grow wider very rapidly. The noise was deafening.

  “I’m tracking the module right in the center of the pipe, and about a third of a mile ahead of the water,” one of the engineers shouted. “Thrusters have powered down to station-keeping mode!”

  “What does that mean?” Maldonado shouted to Stout.

  “There’s no longer any reason to accelerate the module! It will stay ahead of the water, so the thrusters are just being used to keep it centered in the middle of the antigravity field!”

  “Altitude two miles!” the engineer shouted. “Right on plan! Telemetry is A-OK!”

  “Holy Jesus, look at that!” one of the assistants yelled, pointing to the surface of the water. The roaring column of water had now reached its maximum width, and the level of the water enclosed by the dam was dropping rapidly. The 200-yard-wide lake was losing water at a foot a second. At that rate, the 60-foot deep launch area would be bone-dry in less than a minute.

  Except for the engineers monitoring the data stream from the module, everyone in the launch area was transfixed by the sight of the water level falling. When it reached the bottom, the last of the water enclosed by the dam headed for the sky and the deafening roar created by the waterspout suddenly stopped. The silence was stunning. Except for the visible distortion at the edges of the effect, there was absolutely no indication that anything was happening.

  “Is something wrong?” Maldonado asked.

  Stout gave the engineer monitoring the flight of the module a questioning look. “We’re five by five,” the engineer said, nodding. “The pipe is in place and the module is still gaining speed. The water column broke up about a minute ago.”

  “Everybody in the tent!” Stout said. “Rainfall’s coming.”

  They all ducked back inside just in time to keep from getting drenched. As the rain began to pour and the fish and toads thumped to the ground, there was high-fiving and laughter all around. Maldonado looked delirious with joy, Freeman was grinning broadly, and Stout looked positively serene.

  “There was a very small chance that taking the water out of the equation would have some kind of impact on the pipe,” Freeman said to Maldonado. “But it didn’t.”

  “We’re less than five minutes into the launch,” Stout said, looking over the shoulder of the engineer monitoring the module’s transmissions, “and the module is more than 300 miles up. It’s right on target in the middle of the field, and still accelerating rapidly. I think it’s going to break free of the earth’s gravity well!”

  Freeman reached into an ice chest that was sitting on the ground near the entrance to the tent, extracted a large bottle of champagne and a set of wine glasses, and uncorked the bottle. He poured a drink for everyone who wasn’t busy monitoring the data stream, then handed one to Maldonado. He lifted a glass to offer a toast and said, “Mr. President, Bolivia is now officially a space-faring country. Congratulations!”

  Within a few minutes the rain stopped, and many of the people who had taken refuge in the tent, including Freeman and Maldonado, had gone outside to look at the launch area again. There was nothing to see except for the visual distortion at the edges of the antigravity field. Except for that, the powerful phenomenon that was pushing the test module into space was simply invisible.

  At 29 minutes into the launch, Stout emerged from the tent and walked over to Freeman and the president.

  “We’re almost 30 minutes into the launch,” He said, “And the module is still perfectly centered within the field. The acceleration is slowing, but it just went past 18,000 miles above the earth and it’s still rising.”

  “Do you think it will completely break free of the earth’s pull of gravity?” Freeman asked.

  “Too soon to tell for sure. I think so, but it’s obvious that it’s going to hit the altitude I was hoping for.” He looked at Maldonado. “Mr. President, I have incredibly good news. The Titicaca Effect is going to be far more valuable than we thought. It definitely reaches high enough to reach a geosynchronous orbit with no power assist necessary.”

  “Wait a second, Thad,” Freeman interrupted. “I understand that it reaches high enough, but without power, how will we establish the speed necessary to sustain an orbit?”

  “Well, right now the three of us are standing on the earth as it’s rotating, right?” “Right,” Freeman replied.

  “We know that the circumference of the earth is about 24,900 miles, and that the earth rotates on its axis once every 24 hours. Divide the circumference by 24 hours, and you get the lateral velocity; the speed at which our bodies are moving from west to east with the su
rface of the planet. A little over a thousand miles an hour. Are you with me so far?”

  “I’m with you.”

  “OK, let’s say you’re standing on a ladder that’s 50 miles high, but I’m still here on the ground. Assuming the ladder is vertical so that you stay directly above me, your lateral velocity would be faster than mine, because you’re covering a greater distance - the circumference of a larger circle - in the same 24 hours. Make sense?”

  “Got it.”

  “All right, then the taller the ladder, the faster you have to go in order to stay over a single spot.”

  “Sure.”

  “The Titicaca Effect is like that ladder. It always points directly away from the center of the earth, so it’s absolutely vertical when seen from the vantage point of the earth’s surface. So the further up that ladder an object goes, the greater its lateral velocity. You know about geosynchronous orbits?”

  “Sure, that’s an orbit that keeps a satellite directly above a specific place on the earth’s surface all the time. In order to stay in a geosynchronous orbit, a satellite has to be around 22,000 miles up.”

  “Okay, in other words, we’ve climbed that ladder to 22,000 miles. Remember, the higher we go on that ladder, the faster our lateral velocity. And because the Titicaca Effect stays in one place relative to the earth’s surface, at 22,236 miles, the lateral velocity will be exactly the speed we need to maintain the orbit. Just exit the field at that altitude, and we’ll already be going fast enough.”

  President Maldonado, who had been following the conversation with interest, said, “And how fast is that, Dr. Stout?”

  “There’s a simple calculation for it.” Stout took out a scratch pad he was carrying in his pocket and began to scribble numbers. “It’s the circumference of the circle divided by the length of time required to travel the entire distance around it. For example, a few seconds ago we talked about lateral velocity at the equator. The calculation would be 24,900 miles – the circumference of the earth – divided by 24 hours. If you actually do the math, our lateral velocity would be 1,037.51 miles per hour.”

  He continued scribbling. “To learn how fast we would be going at an altitude of 22,236 miles, we first have to calculate the circumference of the circle at that altitude. The formula for determining the circumference is two times pi, times the radius of the circle, which in this case is the radius of the earth - 3,963 miles - plus 22,236 miles, the precise distance required for a geosynchronous orbit. Then we divide that by 24 hours. That works out to an orbital velocity of roughly 6,860 miles per hour.”

  Freeman laughed. “Thad, you’re doing it again. Mr. President, if you ask Dr. Stout what time it is, he’ll tell you how to build a watch.”

  Stout had a sheepish look on his face. “I’m sorry, Mr. President. The important thing to know is, we can launch from here and put as much payload as we want into geosynchronous orbit right over Bolivia without the need for dangerous propulsion systems. All we need is a system for keeping the payload in the center of the pipe on the way up and enough thrust to nudge it out at 22,236 miles. It will stay right where we park it. That makes the whole system way more useful and efficient than it would be if the payloads had to have enough internal power to achieve orbital velocity. Safer, too.”

  “Aren’t most satellites in a lower orbit than that?” Maldonado asked.

  “Yes Sir, they are,” Freeman answered. “But from a geosynchronous orbit, the energy required to descend to a lower altitude and get to the right orbital speed is miniscule compared to the requirement for getting the payload into orbit to start with if you’re using rocket power. This spaceport changes everything. The economics of space travel are going to be altogether different.”

  “What about getting back down?” Maldonado asked.

  “Well, that’s should be somewhat simpler, too. Since a spacecraft won’t need to be powered to reach orbit, a relatively inexpensive non-powered glider can bring people back. Again, it just has to have thrusters that will allow it to adjust reentry trajectories and some way to handle the heat of reentering the atmosphere. A lifting body of some kind would do it.”

  The three men had been joined by one of the two McDonnell-Douglas engineers, who had been listening to the conversation. “I hate to sound like we’re the Home Depot of space hardware,” he said, “but we have three of those in stock.”

  “You’re kidding!” Freeman said.

  “No, Mr. Freeman, I’m not. We’ve been working on lifting body designs, and we have three prototypes ready to fly.”

  “Think NASA might let us have them?”

  “They don’t belong to NASA. They’re pure R&D projects. We were hoping to demonstrate their feasibility as emergency escape vehicles for the International Space Station. Except for maneuvering thrusters, they’re non-powered. They were designed to go into space in the cargo bay of a space shuttle.”

  “They sound small.”

  “Not as small as you might imagine. Getting rid of the engines buys you lots of room. They’ll seat six comfortably. But there’s no room for on-board experiments. They weren’t designed for that kind of mission.”

  “We need to talk,” Freeman said. “What you’ve got sounds like what we need.”

  “Actually, Dr. Stout, I came out here to tell you that we’re only about two minutes from the end of today’s eruption, and the damn thing is still climbing. There’s no doubt about it, it’s not coming back. The Titicaca Effect will launch deep space missions if that’s what you want to do!”

  “Hot damn!” Stout shouted. He grabbed Freeman’s hand and pumped it, then did the same to Maldonado. “We’re in business, big time!”

  Chapter 17: The Astronaut

  Francisco Segurola scrambled up the cockpit ladder and inserted himself into the cramped contours of the pilot’s seat in the NASA F-18 Hornet chase plane. The combination of the California desert sun, his form-fitting flight suit and the mirror-like reflection off the wings of the supersonic fighter quickly combined to make him very uncomfortable. Sweat beaded his forehead, then formed small rivulets that drained into the crinkles at the edge of his eyes, stinging them. He snapped open the faceplate on his helmet, removed his glove, and attempted to wipe his eyes with his fingertips, a tactic that only made it worse.

  “Mierde!” he swore, blinking back the sting. “Man, I hate this part.”

  The radio crackled, “Segurola, you’re scrubbed. The C.O. wants to see you.”

  The pilot exhaled loudly to express his exasperation. “Now what?” he muttered. Extracting his short but stocky 5’9” frame from the cockpit was almost as hard as getting in. He climbed down the ladder, handed his helmet to the airman in charge of the pre-flight check and trotted across the tarmac to the command center. Mercifully, it was air conditioned and the cold air immediately began to refresh him. He was met at the door by an administrative liaison who motioned him into Colonel John Simpson’s office.

  He didn’t salute when he entered, nor did he stand at attention. A native of Potosi, Bolivia, he was one of only two foreign nationals among the civilian pilots in the NASA support group that escorted research flights out of the Dryden Flight Research Center. Although he always referred to the colonel as “Sir,” neither man expected him to observe military protocol.

  Simpson looked up from the folder he had been reading. Using the pilot’s nickname, he said, “Pancho, sorry to cancel your flight. Have a seat.” He d pointed to one of the two uncomfortable government-issue wooden chairs.

  “What’s up, Sir?” Segurola asked in lightly-accented English as he took a seat.

  The colonel grinned broadly, then said, “Pancho, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

  Eyeing Simpson warily, the pilot replied, “Well, Sir, I guess we should get the bad news out of the way. What is it?”

  The colonel looked like he was about to explode trying to keep the grin on his face from erupting into a full-fledged laugh. “Okay, pilot, here’s the bad news,
” he said. “You’re fired!” He was obviously enjoying the exchange.

  “Fired? What do you mean fired?” Segurola looked alarmed.

  The colonel stood, walked around his desk and stood in front of the pilot. “You heard me,” he said, grinning even more broadly. “You’re no longer a NASA pilot.”