Orbital Maneuvers

by R Davison

Soon he heard nothing in the cabin, but gazed down on the entire continent of Australia as he continued to climb higher. Ivan stopped looking downward and cast his gaze at the horizon, a sharply defined curve of sapphire blue and infinite black, looking for the space station and inside, Susan. Ivan let his mind carry him to the station, and then he searched it, module by module looking for Susan. He found her in the cupola, sleeping peacefully. Ivan smiled.

  XXVII

  Five hundred miles above Earth and almost half a world away from the muddy rocket range in Australia, the International Space Station Alpha silently continued its endless journey around the wounded planet. The massive structure sparkled with the reflected starlight as it majestically floated above the night side of Earth. Flashes of light radiated from the upper atmosphere as if a crowd of enthusiasts were taking pictures of the station as it passed by. The reality of this surrealistic scene was much darker though; the flashes were just the final gasp given up by the fragments of Mother Earth returning to her bosom after being so violently torn away. The people on the planet could not see this spectacular light show because of the dense cloud cover. But, at that time, most people on Earth probably would not have appreciated the natural beauty of this event, for it would only remind them of the catastrophe that had just befallen them. The only human who could witness and possibly appreciate this natural light show floated in a catatonic state, totally oblivious of the fiery reunions taking place below her, totally oblivious to everything.

  Even the artificial intelligence that kept the station running paid no attention to the awesome spectacle on display below; its only concern was that the station’s parameters matched the parameters, within a tolerable error, that were imbedded in its programming. It had no poetic self-being, no soul that could admire the wonders that lie before it and weave fanciful, illustrative tales to pass on to future generations. For the time being, only the stars could watch the show in their ancient, silent, regal manner: never speaking, never diverting their gaze, always attentive to the slightest detail, but still mute witnesses to the cataclysmic evolution of this insignificant planet, in an insignificant part of the universe.

  The sun slowly moved across Susan’s sleeping form, gently caressing her awake. As the first beams of sunlight flowed over her closed eyelids, Susan stirred and stretched delicately in her bed. Slowly, she opened her eyes to accept the new day. She peered out her window at the blue sky and white puffy clouds that floated across the windowpane, urged on by a gentle breeze that she could hear rustling outside her open window.

  With a start, she suddenly realized that today was the day of the launch. Throwing off her covers, she scurried over to the window and gazed at Endeavour, glistening in the new morning sun. She could not believe that this day had finally arrived after so many years of hard work and training; she would now be put to the ultimate test of commanding her first shuttle mission.

  Slowly, Susan scanned the distant shuttle with its sleek white form contrasting against the bulbous, rusty-red fuel tank, as the sunbeams illuminated more and more of the ship. The sun glinted off one of the shuttle’s windows and Susan squinted as she tried to finish her survey of the craft. The reflected sunlight grew more intense. Susan raised her hand to shield her eyes but to no avail, the sun was too bright, blindingly bright and she blinked her eyes and turned away.

  Susan blinked her eyes again trying to clear her vision to focus on the window frame. What she saw was not the faded white, painted wood frame of her room, but a riveted metal framework that surrounded the cupola’s observation window on the space station. She focused on the scratched metal and blinked her eyes as if the white wood frame and blue sky would reappear. Reality, and her dream world, slowly assumed their correct places and Susan’s gaze moved beyond the window frame to the clouded planet spinning below her.

  “No…” the word softly escaped her dry lips, as reality firmly planted itself in her world, crushing the frail framework of her dream. She pushed herself over to one side of the cupola to avoid the bright sunlight that was streaming in and took a few moments to gather her thoughts.

  Susan forced herself to review the past events in hopes that it would give her a clearer idea of what she needed to do now. As she began to construct her list of tasks, Ivan’s image formed in her mind, immediately distracting her. Her eyes began to well up with tears and her heart ached with savage passion as she allowed herself to focus on Ivan’s image. She permitted herself the painful pleasure of remembering how he felt in her arms, how soft his kisses were.

  Susan wiped the tears from her eyes and tried to push these thoughts out of her mind. They would not help her now. She began to wonder why he would have left without her. Nothing she could come up with made sense. She knew that their window was closing to deorbit, but there was still time to leave safely.

  “Why, Ivan? Why did you leave me?” Susan cried out. Hearing her voice echo off the walls of the cupola, she fought to gain control of herself. “You can’t afford this now!” she shouted. “You got what you wanted, now deal with it!” Susan turned to look out at the planet below. “Oh, Ivan…I miss you…I wish you well, my love.”

  Earth turned below her for a few more moments and grew blurry, Susan dabbed the tears from her eyes again. Taking a long, deep breath, she pushed herself to consider just what might have happened in the CRV. Maybe the computer program initiated the separation, she thought. She wasn’t convinced that this was the case. It would be too dangerous to have the CRV separate under its own command. It required that someone hit the launch button after the hatch was secured: Jerry!

  “Damn him to hell!” Susan shouted out as she realized, deep in her bones, that Jerry was behind her being stranded. She pounded the bulkhead with her fist, and the pain brought her back to the moment at hand. Rubbing her bruised fingers, she closed her eyes and let her breath out very slowly and deliberately.

  Thoughts and visions of the crew floated across her mind’s eye. When Jerry’s face appeared, Susan said to him, “I will survive, Jerry. There is no way you will win this one.” Pushing Jerry out of her view, she allowed herself one more moment with Ivan. “Until later, my love.” Susan said, forcing Ivan from her mind and focusing on the list she had started to create…

  “Power,” she said aloud, hoping that talking out loud would help her keep her mind focused. “I have to conserve power and resources.” Slowly, she floated back into the sunlight and accepted the warmth it gave her. Gazing down upon the Earth, she continued to construct her mental list of things that needed to be done. She found herself wondering just what was happening beneath the blanket of clouds that hid her view of her home planet’s surface. She forced her gaze away and turned to the computer monitor to see what it might be telling her, hoping for a distraction.

  The screen blinked at her with the message that the communications system was off and questioned her if she wanted it online again. Staring at the words for a moment, she spoke softly to the machine. “Not yet my friend…but soon…first I have a garden to start.”

  Author’s Notes

  Asteroids, Impacts and Our Future

  The multiple impact events as depicted in this story have not happened in recorded history (I sincerely hope they never happen!), but there is evidence that our tiny planet may have experienced such cataclysmic impacts in the past.

  As we have ventured out into our solar system, we have seen more evidence of such impacts on the rocky inner planets, and the many moons of the gaseous outer planets. In fact, in 1994, from July 16th through the 22nd we had a ringside seat as comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 fractured into more than twenty fragments and collided with the planet Jupiter. The largest fragment was estimated to be about 1.2 miles across (2 km), and it impacted at a velocity of approximately 37 miles per second (59 km/sec). That’s about 133,200 miles per hour (213,120 km/hr). The energy released was equivalent to 6 million Megatons of TNT! This is about 600 times the estimated destructive energy of the world’s nuclear arsenal. The fireball from this
fragment reached about 1800 miles (3000 km) above the Jovian cloud tops, leaving a scar in Jupiter’s atmosphere that was almost 25,000 miles (40,000 km) across—approximately three times the diameter of Earth.

  The damage resulting from the impacts in the story was not depicted as severely as it would probably be in reality. Debris thrown into orbit about the Earth would most likely damage satellites orbiting lower than several thousand miles. The space station would not have escaped severe damage, even at an orbit of five hundred miles.

  The tsunami that struck Indonesia on December 26, 2004 gave us a taste of what such a disaster can do. Waves from that event were recorded as far away as Nova Scotia and Peru. The waves generated, and the degree and scope of the damage by that event would pale in comparison to the destruction caused by an ocean impact of an asteroid.

  The probabilities of an impact of the proportions depicted in the story are far from zero. However, they are much smaller than the chances of an impact from a smaller extraterrestrial body, only because the smaller ones are more numerous. To witness the destructive force of a smaller asteroid, all one needs to do is visit Meteor Crater in Arizona. Fifty thousand years ago a meteor about 150 feet (46 meters) in diameter impacted the Earth and released an amount of energy equivalent to 2.5 million tons (2.5 Megatons) of TNT. Compare that to the destruction caused by the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945, which was equivalent to 18 thousand tons (18 Kilotons) of TNT. The results of this impact produced a crater that is almost a mile wide (1.6 km) and about 500 feet (151 meters) deep.

  “If one combines the direct and indirect effects of the blast wave, it seems likely that the vegetation would have been almost completely destroyed over an area of 800 to 1500 km2 [309 – 579 mi2] around the Meteor Crater impact site and damaged over an addition area of 200 to 600 km2 [77 – 232 mi2]. Likewise, the megafauna within 3 to 4 km [1.8 – 2.5 miles] of the impact site (or an area of ~30 to 50 km2 [12 – 19 mi2]) would have probably been killed.”

  Reference:Kring, David A., 1997, Air blast produced by the Meteor Crater impact event and a reconstruction of the affected environment , Meteoritics and Planetary Science, v. 32, pp. 517-530. http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1997M%26PS...32..517K/0000528.000.html

  Note that in Kring’s paper from 1997 he used an estimate of 20 – 40 Megatons of TNT for the energy of the impact. However, as the science has advanced, along with our understanding of the effects of an impact, that number has been revised downward to approximately 2.5 Megatons. The numbers in the quote above are therefore most likely higher than we would calculate today. In either case, one would not want to be nearby such an impact or have it hit a populated area.

  The dust produced by the Meteor Crater impact most likely did not affect Earth’s climate to any great degree and the damage from the impact was localized. This is contrary to the event that occurred some 65 million years ago, when a large asteroid (5-9 miles / 9-14 km across) collided with Earth in the region that is now known as the Yucatan Peninsula. The residual crater was over one hundred miles (160 km) in diameter. This cataclysm is believed by many to be the cause of the dinosaur extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period; although there is currently an on-going debate (proposed by Dr. Gerta Keller from Princeton University) that the extinction occurred about 300,000 years after the impact.

  A more recent event occurred over Siberia in June of 1908. This 10 Megaton air-explosion leveled trees over an area almost 1000 square miles (2500 sq km). There have been other recent high-altitude explosions over the Amazon in the 1930’s, Central Asia in the 1940’s, Greenland in 1996, and a significant event over the Mediterranean in 2002. The last event occurred during a period of extremely high tension between India and Pakistan. If this had happened over one of these nuclear-armed countries, it could have been the trigger to an all out nuclear exchange. So we not only have to fear what Mother Nature can throw at us, but our immediate response to such an event!

  Since the initial publication of ORBITAL MANEUVERS we have experienced, first hand, this power of Mother Nature. On February 15, 2013 an asteroid about 62 ft (19 m) in diameter streaked through the sky over Chelyabinsk, Russia. The object was moving at a speed of about 12 miles per second (19 km/s) when it hit the atmosphere and exploded at an altitude of about 18 miles (29 km) with a force of over 500 Kilotons of TNT. The resulting shockwave shattered windows and damaged buildings across the entire area, extending 50 miles (90 km) on either side of its flight path. There were over 1200 people injured from the event. The damage would have been a lot worse if it had exploded at a lower altitude or impacted in the city.

  It is interesting to note that on the very same day of the Chelyabinsk asteroid, the world was watching the close approach of asteroid 2012 DA14, which missed the Earth by 17,400 miles (28,000 km).

  This was a small asteroid, a size that is more prevalent in the solar system, as opposed to the giant “planet killers” of the dinosaur extinction class, which are far less numerous. They are much more difficult to see and track and they can deliver a devastating blow if we cross their path. Current research indicates that we should expect a similarly sized event every 25 years or so. We may not have noticed previous events because 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered with water and there was no one around to witness them.

  In 2014, the U.S. government released data gathered by surveillance satellites from 1994 -2013 on fireballs resulting from asteroids plunging into the atmosphere. These data indicate that we have underestimated the number of larger asteroids hitting Earth’s atmosphere by 3 to 10 times. The risks are even higher than we had anticipated. A map of these events can be seen at the following link: (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4380).

  An impact calculator is available that allows one to select various impact parameters, such as asteroid diameter, density, impact velocity and angle of entry, as well as the nature of the impact site—water or rock—and then calculate what the damage is at a specified distance from the impact. The results can be very chilling in the least! (Impact Earth: https://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/. A text-only version can be found here: http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/)

  Today we are aware of the potential lethal effects of such impacts and have been casting a wary eye towards the heavens trying to identify these marauding interlopers before they appear unannounced. There are several programs that have been undertaken by different countries, groups and agencies:

  NASA’s Near Earth Object Program (http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html)

  NEOWISE (http://neowise.ipac.caltech.edu/); Spaceguard survey – report done in 1992 on impacts from near Earth asteroids (https://archive.org/details/nasa_techdoc_19920025001)

  Space Guard Center (UK) (http://spaceguardcentre.com/)

  LINEAR (LIncoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research) – a survey of asteroids larger than one kilometer (http://www.ll.mit.edu/mission/space/linear/)

  Catalina Sky Survey -(http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/css/)

  Sentinel Mission (http://sentinelmission.org/) from the B612 Foundation, an independent organization searching for potentially hazardous asteroids (PHA) and developing technologies to deflect threats.

  Pan-Starrs (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) (http://pan-starrs.ifa.hawaii.edu/public/)

  Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) (http://www.lsst.org/lsst/), which is slated to begin full operation in 2022.

  NEOShield (http://www.neoshield.net/en/index.htm) is a European-lead effort to develop methods to deflect asteroids that are a threat.

  NEODyS-2 Near-Earth Objects (http://newton.dm.unipi.it/neodys/index.php?pc=0) Italy's contribution to the search for NEO.

  The older programs were focused on locating objects that crossed Earth’s path and were 1 kilometer (.6 miles) or larger in size. The newer projects, Pan-Starrs and LSST, have telescopes with very large CCDs with higher sensitivities that cover a much larger area of the sky. This will allow astronomers to scan the entire sky several times a month
down to the 25th magnitude. (In measuring the magnitude or brightness of a celestial object, the more positive the number is, the dimmer the object is, and the more negative the number is, the brighter the object.) This increased sensitivity will allow cataloging of asteroids of the size of 100 to 140 meters in diameter. Note that current surveys (as of June, 2009) can’t detect objects smaller than 300 meters in diameter.

  We may eventually map all of the NEOs, but the fact that several relatively close passes (less than the distance from Earth to the Moon) were discovered only after the objects had passed by our planet should make one realize that this threat needs to be taken seriously.

  This is a problem that affects the entire planet, and as such, the responsibilities to detect, and possibly deflect these objects should be an international effort. Identifying a threat, and incorporating measures to eliminate it are within the capability of our technology today, but we must have ample warning for our response to be effective. We are spending enormous amounts of money on defense programs to protect ourselves from each other, when the real enemy, the one that will change the course of history for all mankind is patiently waiting out there in the blackness of space.

  Please visit the website - http://www.orbitalmaneuvers.com for links to the sites mentioned, and for more information about asteroid impacts. At the website you will also find information about the Space Shuttle, International Space Station, MIR, and the Crew Return Vehicle (CRV), as well as blog posts on the latest developments in space technology and astronomy.

  -RC Davison

  4/14/2015