‘’I would tend to agree with you, Mister Wang,’’ cut in Maria Cardona, ‘’but I believe that it would be prudent to start studying designs for lightweight rotating carrousels, which would eventually be shipped to Mars.’’
‘’I would have no objections to that, Administrator Cardona, as long as such studies don’t impact negatively on the financing of the rest of the project.’’
‘’I believe that the costs associated with this problem are quite modest, actually.’’ Added Lithgow. ‘’It shouldn’t be a problem for our project. If you are all…’’
A buzz from his personal cell phone then interrupted Lithgow, who excused himself after seeing who was calling him under an ‘urgent’ heading.
‘’Yes, Francine?’’
Francine Dubois, the head of the human resources department of the project, looked and sounded a bit embarrassed as she spoke up on the line.
‘’Robert, I am sorry to disturb you in the middle of such an important meeting, but something came up that could actually need the members of the High Council to discuss that new problem and take a decision on it, and quickly.’’
‘’And what is exactly that new problem, Francine?’’
‘’Our crew size requirement estimates for the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP: they were incorrect.’’
‘’What do you mean, incorrect?’’ Replied Lithgow in a suddenly raised volume of voice, making the others around the table look sharply at him.
‘’Basically, our actual roster for our spaceship is too low, mostly thanks to incorrect assumptions about the number of hours of work per day to be demanded of our astronauts. The man who had been in charge of that roster count still believed in the old NASA tradition of working our astronauts to death while they are in orbit, with only six hours of sleep per day allotted. While this could pass on a short duration mission, it would be grossly abusive to ask our astronauts to live on such a demanding work schedule for two years. When I found this out while doing an ultimate review of our mission crew profile, I spoke about that with Greg Stransberg, the one who had calculated our needs. Unfortunately, Stransberg refused to change his point of view and I finally fired him out of frustration. I immediately put his assistants to work on a revised work schedule and crew requirements estimates.’’
‘’And how many extra crewmembers would we need now on the FRIENDSHIP, according to them, Francine?’’
‘’Well, the biggest discrepancy concerned the number of positions allotted to the onboard specialists charged with analyzing the data collected by the ship’s sensors while mapping Mars from orbit. Just for that, we will need an extra twelve specialist at a minimum in order for them not to drop out like flies from exhaustion. Our review is still going on, but I already foresee the need for at least an additional 24 specialists and scientists, on top of the twelve needed for sensors data analysis.’’
‘’YOU’RE SAYING THAT WE NEED TO ADD A MINIMUM OF 36 EXTRA CREWMEMBERS ON THE FRIENDSHIP?!’’ nearly shouted a shocked Lithgow, making the other participants to the meeting snap their heads around. Seeing their concerned expressions, the systems engineer briefly excused himself with Francine, time to tell the members of the project’s High Council about the new problem. He then returned his attention to the French psychologist.
‘’But, our planned crew already counted 98 members, while we have a grand total of one hundred individual cabins aboard the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP. Where are we going to lodge all those extra crewmembers?’’
‘’I think that this will actually be easy to take care of, Robert: we simply need to add a supplementary, elevated bunk bed per cabin, making them double bunk cabins. In view of their very generous present space allocation per member, this should not impact much on the crew morale. However, we will have to revise the amount of food, clothing and other supplies that we will need to bring aboard our spaceship. By the way, these estimates for extra crewmembers can still go further up. I will have firmer numbers for you by Saturday.’’
‘’Great! Talk about a rock thrown into the pond! However, this is not your fault, Francine, so don’t feel too bad about it.’’
‘’Thanks for your comprehension, Robert. I will contact you the minute that I have definite numbers for you.’’
‘’I will be awaiting your call with trepidation, Francine. Thanks for calling!’’
Lithgow then closed the line and looked at the other members of the High Council, feeling a bit of discouragement.
‘’Well, it seems that our discussion about sexual relations and possible pregnancies aboard our spaceship is now even more relevant than before, lady and gentlemen. We are talking here about having to accommodate a minimum of 36 extra crewmembers on our spaceship. The only way we could accommodate them is to install double bunk beds in each cabin, along with extra clothes lockers. We will also need to store more food, clothing and other supplies aboard our spaceship in order to provide for these extra crewmembers.’’
‘’Well, better that than finding too late that our crew is insufficient in numbers to analyze in reasonable time the data we will be collecting on Mars while orbiting it.’’ said Misha Borisovich. ‘’An overworked crew often leads to higher stress and more interpersonal tensions, something we found out the hard way while operating our old MIR space station.’’
The other members of the High Council nodded their heads at that, as they mentally recollected some of the past incidents on old space missions.
Two days later, as promised by Francine Dubois, Robert Lithgow got a visit from the French psychologist, who had an amused smile on her lips as she put a printed document on Robert’s desk.
‘’The new, improved crew list for the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP! You will see that many positions are still not filled at this time, but I don’t expect any extra position over this new list to be added aboard our spaceship.’’
Robert quickly looked through the list before looking up at Dubois.
‘’We will now have a total of 145 persons aboard our spaceship for its trip to Mars? It will look like a cruise ship to Mars, Francine.’’
‘’More than you think, if the suggestion I got from someone is accepted, Robert.’’
‘’What do you mean?’’
‘’That one of the already designated crewmembers has asked me to allow his wife to apply for one of the still unfilled positions aboard. A few other crewmembers who are married but have no children heard about it and have also put up similar requests. The funny thing is that those spouses are all well qualified in terms of pertinent professional skills, are physically fit and will only need basic astronaut training and a psychological profile exam to fully qualify for a ship position, something that they should be able to easily complete in the two years left before the launch. Before you say no, think that this would be one nifty way to fill one of the new goals of the mission: that is, to study the prospects and problems associated with eventual pregnancies in space.’’
Robert was about to object to this but stopped himself. The truth was that Francine’s proposal was both valid and interesting. For one thing, having married couples aboard could only improve morale, at least in the case of the married persons involved.
‘’Damn! You keep pulling surprises out of your hat, Francine. Very well: add the names of those willing spouses to the list of people to be tested as prospective crewmembers. Just out of curiosity, what are the professional trades of both the selected and prospective member of that couple?’’
‘’The already selected crewmember, a U.S. Air Force sergeant, is one of the three assistant cooks of the FRIENDSHIP, while his wife presently works as a barmaid in a club near the base and is postulating for the job of bar attendant and stewardess on our ship. Both are in their mid twenties and the husband swore to me that his wife is very fit and healthy. To top the cake, the wife speaks Chinese fluently, along with a fair Spanish, on top of English. The husband also speaks Chinese, thanks to his wife.’’
‘’Double da
mn! Could you show me the personnel files of the couples who will pass the qualifications tests, once you will have completed the primary selection phase? I am really curious to see what kind of complementary skills this business of bringing couples into space will give us on this mission. Thinking about it, why don’t you discreetly pass the word around our selected married members without children that their spouses could apply to ship’s positions relevant to their skills, as long as they are both professionally qualified and medically fit?’’
‘’I will be more than happy to do that, Robert. Thanks for your comprehension.’’
Robert sat back in his captain’s chair as Francine walked out of his office. As a systems engineer, he never would have believed until now how complicated and delicate, yet crucial, selecting the right personnel for a job could be.
CHAPTER 4 – COMING ABOARD
16:51 (GMT)
Monday, October 19, 2043
Heavy cargo shuttle CALYPSO
Docking Station Number One, H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP
Low Earth orbit
‘’Your attention, please! Our shuttle is now safely docked to the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP. You may now leave your seats and proceed with your luggage towards the nose transfer airlock.’’
Xiulan Sommers pressed her gloved left hand around the gloved right hand fingers of her husband, Jack Sommers, as the overhead announcement triggered a wave of emotions in her. Jack, a tall and solidly built United States Air Force cook seconded to the Mars Home Project, smiled in return to his beautiful, delicate young wife.
‘’We are about to start living a great adventure together, Xiulan. I am so happy that they took you for this mission.’’
‘’And I am happy that we could stay together, Jack.’’
The shuffling forward of the other 36 passengers of their shuttle then made them get up from their heavily padded seats and grab their individual kit bags from the overhead bins. Since they were in zero gravity conditions, they had to move cautiously in their spacesuits, but the magnets integrated into the soles of their boots helped them stay attached to the floor of the aisle running by their seats. They were among the last to leave the shuttle by its nose transfer airlock and to enter the arrival compartment of Docking Station Number One, where two men and one woman wearing ship internal uniforms were waiting for them. The woman, who was in her early fifties, was the spitting image of what a Viking woman would have looked like, with pale blue eyes and platinum blond hair mixed with a few gray strands. She was also tall for a woman and looked very fit despite her age. She waited until all the 38 passengers from the shuttle were inside the arrival compartment to start speaking in a firm voice.
‘’Welcome to the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP, ladies and gentlemen! I am Janet Larsson, commander of this spaceship. You are actually the last contingent of crewmembers we were expecting for this ship, so we will now be able to leave Earth orbit in a month, after you will have had time to accustom yourself to your new environment and jobs. Since you just completed a five hour transit from the surface, I will now hand you over to misters Pedro Alvarez and Xu Ling Wei, who will guide you to your cabins. Once there, you will be given some time to unpack and make yourselves at home before going to the crew lounge for 17:45 hour, ship time, where you will get a preliminary safety briefing prior to having supper. If you want to adjust your watches now, it will be exactly 17:03, ship time, in twelve seconds…five, four, three, two, one, top! I will see you all again in the crew lounge. Mister Alvarez, Mister Xu, they are now all yours!’’
A Latino man and an Oriental man standing behind Larsson stepped forward as the ship’s commander left the compartment, with the Latino man speaking up after looking around at the faces in the crowd in front of him.
‘’Good day and welcome, everybody! I am Pedro Alvarez and I am a hydroponics technician, like my friend Wei. If you will look at the cabin number given to each of you before departure, you will find that it starts with either the letter ‘A’ or the letter ‘F’. ‘A’ stands for ‘Aft’, meaning that cabins lettered as such are located in the aft carrousel ring of the ship. The cabins lettered with ‘F’ are located in the forward carrousel ring. I will be guiding those whose cabins are in the forward carrousel ring, while Wei will guide those whose cabins are in the aft carrousel ring. If those lodged in the forward carrousel ring may now follow me…’’
Jack and Xiulan ended up following Alvarez, as their cabin number was F-39. Imitating the Latino man, who was walking at a sedate pace in order to let his magnetic boot soles stick lightly to the floor and thus avoid simply floating down the tubular passageway, the young couple followed him down a tube leading to the core section of the ship. However, they turned off into another, separate tube after only twenty meters, then entered a compartment closed off by airtight doors. Alvarez stopped there for a moment, time to point to his followers the floor hatch near him, which was closed.
‘’First capital rule about safety on this spaceship: always close behind you any airtight hatch or door that you go through. This simple rule could save lives in case of an accidental decompression. Once down in the compartment below us, you will see two widely separated airtight doors: one marked ‘F’ for forward ring and one marked ‘A’ for aft ring.’’
Alvarez then opened the hatch, which looked quite solid, and slid down the ladder fixed under it. With the twenty persons of his group following him, he patiently waited for all of them to be down and pointed yet another airtight door marked with a red letter ‘F’.
‘’Beyond this door is an airlock meant to prevent both carrousel rings from decompressing because of a single door damaged or left opened. Once you will step out of that airlock, you will be standing on a fixed strip of floor one meter wide, which serves as a stepping platform from which you will then be able to set foot on the adjacent rotating floor of the Promenade Deck of the forward ring. The ring carrousels each turn in opposite direction at a rate of 3.7 rotations per minute, thus creating a felt gravity of close to one G via centrifugal effect. Please look both ways down the rotating floor before stepping off the fixed platform if you don’t want to collide with someone else.’’
Following scrupulously the instructions of the Latino man, the Sommers soon stood on the rotating floor of the forward ring, their feet firmly staying on the carpeted surface. Xiulan grinned to her husband as she experienced that moment.
‘’This is incredible! You could think that we are on Earth. And I don’t feel any disorientation.’’
‘’This ship is certainly way ahead of anything I have seen before in terms of facilities. But let’s follow Mister Alvarez: I am anxious to get to our cabin, so that I could take off this bulky spacesuit.’’
Less than five minutes later, the Sommers were dropped off by Alvarez in front of their assigned cabin. They had already seen pictures and mockups of the typical cabin on the spaceship while training in Vandenberg, so knew what to expect inside. They still were impressed when they entered a small lounge measuring three meters by four meters and furnished with a sofa, a work desk with chair and a video entertainment unit. Xiulan then entered the adjacent tiny bedroom, finding that a larger mattress and support frame had replaced the usual single bed. Space was thus even tighter, but she couldn’t care less: to be able to sleep beside her husband rather than in some double bunk bed arrangement was what was important for her. Going to one extremity of the bedroom, she opened the airtight door of the emergency decompression shelter cum spacesuit locker and saw that a second spacesuit resting stand had been added, taking the place of the closet normally found inside but which had been moved to the lounge. Helped by Jack, Xiulan gratefully got out of her spacesuit and fixed it to its stand, then connected it to a maintenance terminal that would recharge its battery and also refill its oxygen tank if needed. She then returned the favor to Jack, helping him out of his own suit. Once both in their internal ship uniforms, they hugged each other, with Xiulan resting her head on Jack’s chest.
‘’It is so good to be here with you, instead of having to wait two years for your return from space.’’
‘’Believe me, baby: those two years away from you would have felt like eternity to me.’’
They then exchanged a long kiss, which Jack interrupted with regret.
‘’Well, we better hurry to undo our bags now: that meeting in the crew lounge is due in less than fifteen minutes.’’
‘’Right!’’
After another six minutes, the couple left its cabin and made its way to the crew lounge, situated on the top floor of the same carrousel ring they were in already. They found that most of their companions who had traveled with them on the CALYPSO were already sitting around the small, round tables of the lounge. Taking place at an empty table, which sat under a lemon tree, Jack and Xiulan patiently waited the start of the announced briefing. Two minutes prior to the fixed time, Janet Larsson showed up with a laptop computer, plugging it to the large flat display screen fixed to one wall. Taking the time to make her first presentation slide appear on the screen, Larsson then eyed quickly the 38 persons facing her, smiling to them.
‘’Hello again! First, I would like to remind you that this is an international spaceship with an international crew under civilian control. Thus, no military style discipline is required or expected of you, even if you are an ex-service person. What is required and expected though are two things: team spirit and respect for others. If everyone aboard go by those two things, then we will have a great trip and a fantastic adventure that we will be proud to tell to our grandchildren. Now, while this ship would rightly appear to you to be quite extraordinary, it is by no means unbreakable, while space has plenty of dangers to offer, starting with cosmic radiations, meteorites and solar flares. That is why we have to work and live as a team through this mission. My sincere vow is that, by the end of this mission, we will feel more like a family than like a team. Let us now review the safety rules pertinent on this ship.’’
A Mars Odyssey Page 6
