by Dan Eaton
Dr. Martin had mentioned that we would be receiving our medical implants today. Dr. Hall now had an injector in his hand and said, “Bryce, Today I’m going to inject a medical chip into your hand. There may be a little discomfort at first, but most people can’t even tell the chip is there after the first day. It sits below the skin in the area between your thumb and your index finger.”
I had heard about these chips, but never seen one and said, “Dr. Hall, can you show me the chip?”
He said, “I can’t show you your chip since that would make it not sterile any more, but here’s a sample chip so you can see what it looks like.” He held out a small dish that contained what looked like a fat grain of rice.
Dr. Hall continued. “It’s a pretty amazing device when you think about it. It has a tiny battery that will power the device for two years. Your personal identity code for the Northern Lunar Habitat is stored on the chip which will be used for Habitat access and service billing at the Habitat. Access to the chip is only allowed with the correct encryption codes which are periodically updated to ensure they can’t be easily hacked. In addition to your ID code the chip tracks your health data like heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen content, and several others in addition to data on the chip itself like error rates and battery life.”
He gave that a moment to sink in and then said, “If you are ready I can chip you and then I’ll show you how the chip works.”
The fat grain of rice didn’t look that big, but when he pulled out the injector and I saw the size of the needle my eyes must have gotten huge because Dr. Hall gave a little laugh and said, “It looks enormous doesn’t it? I promise it’s not as bad as it looks. There’ll be a little sting that goes away quickly and then you’ll probably forget all about it. Let me see your right hand and then look away for a second while I put the chip in.” I gave him my hand and looked away. I heard a “pfff” sound from the injector and felt a small jab, but then it was all over. Dr. Hall pulled out a small wand and waved it over the injection site. He said congratulations, “You are now NLH327.”
I asked him what the number meant and he said, “NLH327 means you are the three hundred twenty seventh resident of the Northern Lunar Habitat. Some of the numbers have been retired as people have left, but right now the Habitat has around two hundred ninety eight residents and you guys will push it up to three hundred and sixteen.”
He then had me put my hand near another sensor and the screen filled with all the data he had told me about. It looked like the chip was working fine, so he told me that he would check in on me tomorrow to make sure everything was okay and gave me a sheet with numbers for my parents to call if I had problems overnight.
I went back and joined my parents and we were ushered off to training. During the remaining part of Monday and all day Tuesday we got to learn how to use a zero-g toilet. We learned all about safe movement in zero-g and about our pressure suits. We learned the safety procedures for the Dragon III spacecraft we’d use to reach low Earth orbit or LEO as everyone called it around here. Then we spent time learning about the transfer station in LEO that we’d be traveling to, and finally, the lunar shuttle. There was also a short refresher course on the metric system. Despite Congress passing the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, most people in the United States still used the Imperial system over sixty years later. In outer space however, everything was in metric so once we lifted off we’d better be used to it. Fortunately for me, my dad was an engineer and he had insisted I be fluent in both Imperial and Metric measurements.
After the zero-g toilet training session, which was nowhere near as fun as it sounded, Dad was joking with me and said, “We must be lunatics to be going through this voluntarily.”
I said, “Yep, that’s me, I’m Luni327.”
Dad groaned at that and I decided that maybe I wouldn’t be sharing that with my classmates back in Saint Charles anytime soon.
CHAPTER SIX
Leaving Earth
The days on the calendar slowly ticked down and then it was almost July. Mom and Dad closed on the sale of the house the Monday before the 4th and we went to stay with Grandma and Grandpa. Saturday was the 4th and Grandma and Grandpa invited everyone over. It was a big 4th of July party, but it was also a going away party for us. Saying goodbye to family and close friends you wouldn’t see again for at least two years was hard. Sunday we just hung around the house resting up and gathering our strength for our journey. Monday morning Grandma and Grandpa packed us in their van and drove us to Lambert for our flight. It was the beginning of our journey to the Moon. We had to be at the Kennedy Space Center eight days before the launch. There was a seven day quarantine and they wanted you there a day ahead of that just to make sure you arrived. When you had a ticket on a rocket they really, really want to make sure you were on time.
Being at Kennedy Space Center wasn’t that exciting. We got there and then were immediately checked into quarantine. I thought we’d get to do a tour of the launch facility or at least hang out with the other family traveling to LEO with us but each family was in a separate quarantine section. Mom and Dad spent the time talking to friends and family on the phone. I’d already said goodbye to everyone I cared about and going through talking to them again before I even left Earth just didn’t sit right with me.
I asked Dad, why we had to go through a quarantine and he said, “Bryce, NASA found out a long time ago that when people are exposed to a micro gravity environment their immune systems weaken slightly. With most structures in orbit and even the Moon base being small it’s way too easy to transmit a cold to other people. So, they make us all go through the quarantine to make sure new arrivals don’t bring along any colds to help keep everyone healthy.”
Then, just to make everything even better the night before the launch we got to go on a liquid diet and drink a special liquid to flush us out. I guess the idea was we were going to be traveling in space for the next three or so days, so having a bowel movement wasn’t really a good idea. Dad said that basically we were on the same routine they had you on when you got a colonoscopy. Sitting on the pot for what were to be my last hours on Earth for a long time really wasn’t my idea of fun. Between saying goodbye to everybody, the let down when we got to KSC, and this final indignity of getting my bowels flushed out I was feeling pretty low.
At 7:00am Monday, July the 13th, the NASA launch team had us up and eating a light liquid breakfast. Next we moved on to getting our pressure suits on. They had been custom made for each of us from 3D scans that had been taken months ago. They were then assembled by a special machine that combined the functionality of a 3D printer and a computer controlled cutter/sewing machine. NASA had cut the costs associated with custom space suits by using the machine to build, the less demanding suits needed for passengers versus the higher end suits the crews needed that were assembled by more traditional means. The low cost suits would provide protection should a decompression event occur on the way to orbit. They lacked the flexibility of a full blown crew suit, but you could move around in them and they were very comfortable. I thought we all looked pretty cool in the suits and especially liked that we had been given our own mission patch. It consisted of a small blue oval with a bold yellow six woven in the center and the word Families in red script across the top. The patch represented the six families who had been selected.
At 9:05am they piled us and the Patel family onto a fancy bus and took us out to launch complex 39 pad A. Waiting for us on the pad was a Dragon III spacecraft sitting on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 had been flying for 20 years now, had an excellent safety record and had been revised three times to make it one of the safest and affordable launch vehicles available. The Dragon III was a follow on to the proven Dragon II capsule. The Dragon III had more powerful engines and carried a crew of two along with six passengers. The Patel family would be would be joining the Burns family on our journey to low Earth orbit. NASA wanted to get everyone to the Moon at the same time which meant t
hey needed to get all of us to LEO around the same time. To get the six families to LEO required three launches and three launches in a day was a little much for NASA so the day before the Schubeler and Stephenson families had left from SpaceX’s Boca Chica Launch site near Brownsville, Texas. The traveling order for the families had been chosen at random and going a day early meant they got to spend a day in LEO playing space tourist. I was pretty envious of them, although going a day earlier would have meant being on the road the day after the 4th of July party and I thought we had really needed the downtime. Getting to leave from launch complex 39 pad A was a pretty good consolation prize in my book. All of the manned Apollo-Saturn V launches except for Apollo 10 had used Pad 39A. History had been made here and now we were lifting off from the same place. The Cherneski and Dumas families were leaving a little later today, but they were launching from the Boca Chica Launch site.
They had a special team of guys called the ingress crew that got us snuggled into the Dragon III. It was a tight fit with the eight of us in the capsule. Capitalizing on the potential for space tourism the Dragon III had slightly bigger windows which allowed for better outside views than were possible with the predecessor Dragon II capsule. I lucked out and got a seat with both a great view out one of the four windows and a good view of the Mission Commander’s control screen. At least I thought I lucked out, but then I noticed that Ananyu Patel had the mirror image seat so she had the outside view and the co-pilot’s display. I thought the seating was luck of the draw, but maybe it was planned that way all along to give us kids a very memorable flight. Then came the moment when everyone was on board, strapped in and the capsule door was closed up for good by the ingress crew. At that point we got to sit there for an hour while all of the pre-launch checks were completed. I thought the hour would last forever as excited as I was and then all of a sudden I fell asleep.
10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1, launch…
I woke up when a distant rumbling started. Checking the Mission Commander’s control screen I found the countdown was at 2 seconds and the sound I was hearing was the rocket engines coming up to speed. At T-0 the Falcon 9 our Dragon III capsule sat atop left the launch pad. I thought it would be a rougher ride but the Falcon 9 smoothly accelerated us. Looking out the window I could see the launch complex disappearing and then the blue of the Atlantic Ocean stretching out in the distance to the East of us. As the seconds ticked by I was pushed further and further back into my seat as the G’s built up. We were on a flight profile that only briefly touched 3 G’s in acceleration so it didn’t get too bad and I was able to keep an eye out the window as we rose higher and higher into the sky. As the time went by, the view showed the rocket was curving away from going straight up and soon we were far out over the Atlantic and high above it. Eight minutes after the launch the view out the window showed us to be in low Earth orbit. I turned and looked at Mom and Dad and it was clear they were as excited by the ride as I was. “Mom, Dad, we’re in orbit already”, I said. “I read the mission time line, but I guess it just didn’t sink in that one moment we’d be sitting still on Earth and then only eight minutes later we’d be zooming around the Earth in orbit. It just seems so unreal.”
Once we reached LEO we got a chance to play space tourist as there was nothing for us to do except look out the windows and enjoy the view while the capsule commander oversaw our orbit adjustments that would eventually put us in line to dock at our destination. I had watched videos showing the view of Earth from LEO before, but looking out the capsule’s windows was the real thing. The Earth looked so incredible that for a long time, we all just stared out the windows in silence. Eventually, even the spectacular view lost its grip on us and we were all interested in the answer when Mr. Patel asked the capsule commander how long it was until we docked. The commander was a very competent looking fella named Jim Engersole that sounded like he was from Texas or out West some place where men were men and bad guys were scared. I looked him up later and found out he was from Connecticut.
He answered Mr. Patel by saying, “We should be docking at the depot in about three hours fifty seven minutes. Our stewardess will be serving a full meal shortly if you would be so good as to bring your seat fully upright and fold down your meal tray.” He gave a quick laugh at his joke and then said, “I do have snacks for anyone who feels the need,” as he held up some stubby tubes of food paste. He added, “Today we have a selection of orange, artificial peanut, and banana.”
I was getting a little hungry, so I grabbed a banana tube. I get why they called the peanut tube artificial peanut so people with nut allergies wouldn’t freak, but the stuff coming out of banana tube didn’t taste very much like real banana to me.
We were heading for a LEO Transport Depot put in orbit by SpaceX to function as a transfer station and fueling depot for traffic heading to the Moon. The Transport Depot consisted of two Bigelow Aerospace B330 pods attached End to end via a cross shaped connector piece. The outer ends of the B330 pods were decorated with solar panels to power the depot. Spouting from each end of the central connector piece were additional modules that eventually led to docking adapters that allowed multiple capsules similar to the Dragon III to be docked at a time or one of the larger Lunar Shuttles. Robotic arms took care of the refueling of the Lunar Shuttles and handling the changing out the cargo modules if needed. In our case the shuttle we would be traveling on was dedicated to passenger hauling so there was no need for the habitat module to be loaded into the shuttle.
As we approached the Depot I could see the B330 pods were surrounded by white tubes that functioned as radiation shields. The tubes were filled with spoils which was another way of saying whatever rock was left over after everything useful was extracted from where ever the rock had come from. There was a company called Trans Astronautica that made quite good money mining small asteroids near Earth. The process Trans Astronautica had pioneered took small asteroids around 10 meters in diameter and reduced them to rubble via a robotic miner. The robotic miner was a small autonomous ship that rendezvoused with the asteroid and then encapsulated it in a bag. After that the robot ship used a solar powered optical mining rig to systematically reduce the asteroid to rubble. During the process the ship recovered volatiles which were stored as ice and the ship eventually returned to Trans Astronautica orbital processing facility. The ice was stored as feedstock to produce fuel and oxygen for sale, any metals that could were recovered from the rocky rubble, and anything that was left over was then used to fill the tubes stations like the Transport Depot used as shielding. The shielding business was a small part of Trans Astronautica portfolio and most of their money came from the volatiles and metals they recovered from breaking down the asteroids. They obtained enough volatiles to produce the majority of the fuel and oxygen needed to support the growing space economy in low Earth orbit. Their production and storage facility was in a higher orbit than the Transport Depot, but they delivered tanks with fuel or oxygen to any orbital in near Earth orbit that was willing to pay the price. Given how expensive it was to lift fuel out of Earth’s gravity well Trans Astronautica had no shortage of customers.
While looking at the amazing view out the windows was entertaining I think we were all grateful when the view out the forward window changed. At first there was just a white dot in the distance, but as we got closer the white dot resolved into the dumbbell shape of the depot and its supporting structures. Our capsule smoothly aligned with an empty docking adapter and shortly thereafter we all heard the soft clunks and bangs signaling the capsule was firmly docked with the depot. We were at one end of the central arm extending both directions from the module that connected to the B330 pods. Looking out the capsule windows we could see our next ride hanging off the opposite end of the central arm. It was the Lunar Shuttle we had come to meet and I wished I could get a better look at it, but between the bulk of the central module and the cargo bay doors of the shuttle hanging open all we could see was a somewhat cigar shaped vehicle. By then the crew had fi
nished their arrival checklist and were ready to open the hatch into the airlock section at the end of the central arm.
Commander Engersole eased himself out of his acceleration couch and addressed all of us while floating next to the couch. He spoke in no uncertain terms and said, “The smart thing for you to do would be to lay there until Henry and I can come get you and gently maneuver you out of the capsule and into airlock where we would stick you safely to the wall until we had the capsule unloaded.”
Mine wasn’t the only face where the smile had so quickly disappeared. I had been looking forward to this first moment where I could experience weightlessness unencumbered by being strapped in and the commander was telling us he wanted to handle us like so many bags of potatoes.
Before any of us could get a word out he continued, “But, that wouldn’t be any fun and I don’t want to have to handle the first mutiny by passengers in space. So here’s what we are going to do. Please don’t unstrap yourselves until I call your name. Once I do, unstrap yourself and then as gently as possible move yourself over to the hatch and then down into the airlock. Once there, grab a strap on the wall and stay there until I give you your next task. You all had the training lecture about moving in zero-g, but I will remind you of some key points. Take your time, move slowly, and remember that even though you are weightless you still have mass and it takes as much effort to slow that mass down as it does to get it moving. We haven’t had many injuries from people forgetting those rules, but we have had some and I would greatly appreciate it if you didn’t add to the count of accidents today. You wouldn’t believe the amount of paperwork it will generate for me if you do. If you are uncomfortable maneuvering in zero-g just let either Henry or myself know and we’ll be glad to assist you. Are there any questions?”
