America One: War of the Worlds (32 page)

The blue shields were well used, and never seemed to get old. Pete had told Jonesy before launch that new progress on their own production of the blue shields was happening each month.

“Expected orbital forward speed at mile 119 altitude, young Mikey Noble?”
Jonesy asked his own grandson, who was a year older than James Richmond Price.

“Exactly 21,970 knots, sir,” replied the youngster looking at the readouts. “Your speed is seven knots over, Commander Jones,” the small boy replied.

“Always remember, more speed the better at the beginning of a long flight. It will slowly bleed off in time without too much side-thruster fuel usage. Young Noble, why do I have my speed higher than expected?”

“To get ahead of the space shark, Commander Jones?” interrupted young Titan, only seven and in his second year of astronaut lessons. Jonesy smiled.

“Yes, and to get ahead of the space shark, young Titan Richmond Darwin, but Mikey Noble, an answer to my question please?”

“Always stay ahead of the plan. You tell us all the time,” replied the young future astronaut.

“Remember pilots, it is always easier to slow than to speed up. Less fuel and less time, but as my co-pilot would say, it is maybe better to be on time. That is the tiny difference between my flying and Captain Maggie Jones’ flying. Both ways are as good as each other in my book, and you only fail flight test if you’re behind the time, understand?”
lectured Jonesy to the class of eight, 120 miles below him.

Life aboard
America Two
was comfortable, roomy and the perfect setup to keep the astronauts used to Earth’s gravity conditions.

On each shift, of which there were three a day, the crew ran around the corridor of the wheel. Since the centrifugal force of the rotation was 80 percent of Earth’s gravity, it was a good run. At any time, any member of the crew could head out of their apartment and see a group running.

For the newbies, it took a few rounds to get used to it. Everybody ran on the corridor floor, which was the roof, upside down and their heads faced the Bridge and engine room in the middle of the ship.

Jonesy and Maggie were running 5 miles a day. Each astronaut had to run at least 3 miles per day and complete an hour of bicycle riding and an hour workout in the gym.

For the OldGeners keeping fit was becoming harder and harder. To keep up with the NextGeners was near to impossible, and every day Saturn and Mars swept by their parents at least twice per run.

Even Ryan was slowing up, and the OldGeners knew that their time of space travel in command of vessels was coming to an end. They were just getting too old.

The mechanics fitted the new thrusters to the mother ship, and then the testing began. At the same time,
Asterspace Three
, the smaller mining vessel, and now a student flight trainer in its blue shield was heading up and down with liquid hydrogen for the mother ship.

This was what the two oldest students, Little Mikey Noble and James Richmond Price were getting their first real flights into space in under the Captaincy of Shelley Saunders and the Burgos sisters.

Martin Brusk, although a busy man wasn’t letting up on his first space flight, and was piloted up into orbit by a proud ten-year old under training. While the pregnant teachers taught down in the classroom, the astronauts had a student as a co-pilot, and once a week, launched up with 2 tons of fuel.

Martin Brusk, Little Mikey and James were aghast at seeing for the first time the size of the mother ship floating around in space. Both young astronauts would go on to become very famous astronauts one day, in entirely different careers.

Even while the fuel savings of liquid hydrogen by using the cold fusion plants was incredible, the ten plasma thrusters at 50 Megawatts apiece were thirsty beasts.

Hydrogen fuel, with an oxidizer usually oxygen, was the old form of thrust. The speed of the ignited hydrogen exiting the thrusters was the force that moved the ship forward.

An electric rocket used electrical power from 10 of the 23 onboard cold fusion power plants to accelerate the hydrogen, the propellant, out of the back of the engine. The exhaust speed of the hydrogen propellant was far greater in electric rockets, making them much more efficient, but the level of thrust was much lower and restricted their operation for use only in space.

By using the hydrogen with a far greater exhaust speed, the use of the hydrogen fuel was, comparing electric engine size to non-electric engine size: 85 percent more efficient. With more than twice the engines needed for space travel, the use of liquid hydrogen was reduced by only 55 percent, due to far higher and quicker travel speeds obtained with double the needed power.

That meant that
America Two
still needed its fuel tanks full, and the large tanks were also meant to refuel the five shuttles, which still used the old-type engines.

All the shuttles had brought up their cargo bays filled with bladders of fuel or supplies on each launch, and life aboard the mother ship was becoming as routine as it had been during the decade long Odyssey in
America One
.

“So when can we leave,” Jonesy asked to Ryan in the bridge a week after his last arrival. As usual, Lunar, the ship’s Commander, Ryan, Martin Brusk learning space flight, Igor and Boris were on the Bridge working out all the travel scenarios possible. Jonesy entered early and to grab a freshly made pouch of coffee. As it often happened, the astronauts drank so much coffee that the pouches usually ran out and more pouches had to be filled in the cafeteria rotating on the wheel above.

“Distance to Mars is now shortening daily,” Ryan stated to Jonesy. “The two planets are getting closer, but we are on the opposite side of the sun to Mars.”

“As usual Earth is chasing Mars down since we are closer to the sun, and have a shorter circuit,” added Igor “but we must first catch up and get on the same side of the sun as Mars is.”

“We have a possible scenario that we could activate in 8 weeks’ time,” stated Boris. “Once we get to a certain distance behind Mars, we could head out and angle between the two planets instead of going directly across space to Mars during the time of the Opposition’s open window and that would mean leaving in five months’ time.”

“What are the travel times?” Jonesy asked as the rest of the astronauts entered for the morning’s briefing.

Ryan did cover that, and explained the two opportunities to the crew once they had tied themselves into the conference chairs on the Bridge.

“With the extra thrust and speed of these new plasma thrusters,” Ryan added “we have two scenarios. Scenario One: we can extend the Opposition travel window by one month either side and have an eight month window every 26 months. What is important with this increase in time is that with the expected reduced fuel usage due to the new thrusters, we can travel to Mars, and return within the same window with a realistic amount of fuel. Before we needed to wait it out for the next Opposition. This also gives us a 109-day journey as the new window opens, or a 47-day journey at the most opportune time. Both time frames will use the same tonnage of fuel. Scenario Two: If we extend the window a further month either side, we will then have a ten-month window out of 26 months between Oppositions. Again, with the second expansion of travel, our travel time increases, and we will double our fuel usage for a 139 day journey either way.” Ryan paused for a mouthful of coffee.

“Better than what Captain Pete and Dr. Nancy, and Mags and I did,” commented Chief Astronaut Jones, and VIN Noble rolled his yes. VIN Noble was wondering how long Jonesy could stay quiet.

“Thank you Mr. Jones,” replied Ryan still happy to have Jonesy, and his mouth back. “These two scenarios give us a 20-day period to offload and on-load cargo. This means that once
America Three
is operational, a ship could leave each planet cross on their journeys to the other planet, drop off and load up cargo for the return flight, and return to its base every Opposition. This was my dream when I was a kid—to have an annual spaceflight to and from each planet. Now, going back to Vitalily’s, and Max’s ideas about stopping these attacks. Since the
Matts
had attacked the Retreat three times, and still we haven’t received any loss of life, we all believe we have some time to get there. Vitalily believes that since no movement or retaliation from us has been seen by the
Matts
from our base as yet, they don’t even know if we are inside, and will back off until they do see movement. As from yesterday, I have given Vitalily the OK to set a trap for the
Matts
by using Mars Noble’s armed robots. Their non-vacuum spacesuits do not give them the chance to enter and invade our base, even if they do see movement on the plateau and want to actually attack. Our crew are totally safe.

“So our idea is to use Scenario Two: the ten month window around the next Opposition, and sort out our problem. We will have 20 days to sort out the
Matts
before the mother ship needs to return to Earth. Now going back to our test flight. We will complete our test flight around the moon, return to orbit around earth, and then use all our smaller craft to refuel the mother ship. If our plasma rockets test flight is a success, we could leave for the red planet at the beginning of Scenario Two: in 8 weeks’ time, or to be more precise: 57.5 days from now.”

“Once we are up to cruise speed in the mother ship, we can continue fight training in the shuttles on the way,” stated Jonesy.

“Yes, once our cruise speed is attained by the mother ship, in about two weeks of acceleration to an estimated 130,000 knots, it was still seem that we are not moving, and our shuttles can fly around like bees in a hive,” Ryan smiled.

“Unfortunately, since we are turning the mother ship around, and using full reverse thrust to brake for ten days before meeting the red planet” added Igor “the shuttles will need to be re-connected to
America Two
for the complete braking period.”

“My astronauts are ready, but we must train just to keep our reactions as fast as possible,” stated Jonesy.

As usual, any flights back to Earth were for fuel, and with liquid hydrogen now in abundance on Earth, the price had dropped considerably, and the gold reserves from the last mission were paying for what fuel they needed.

The new thrusters were ready to be tested, and under full power, and with two of the five shuttles connected to the mother ships’ docking ports, Lunar Richmond, Commander of
America Two
accelerated towards the moon 170,000 miles away.

It was far too short a distance to get the ship up to any cruise speed
America One
had achieved, but from the acceleration graphs, the distances to all the planets in the solar system could be easily computed.

As usual there was no sense of movement inside the ship as it accelerated from 27,000 knots to 41,000 knots before the ship was turned around to begin braking for three orbits around the moon.

Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin would have appreciated the speed and comfort Ryan’s crew achieved during their ship’s maiden flight to the Moon and back, Ryan Richmond and Martin Brusk reckoned.

Martin Brusk was commended by Ryan once the ship re-entered a LSO around Earth 20 hours later. For the first time ever, humans had flown to the moon and back within one day.

The fuel burn was analyzed and they had enough aboard for the return trip to Mars and back, as well as each of the five shuttles having 20 hours of flight time at full burn.

Max Von Braun had given Ryan the excellent news that fuel production in Mattville was running according to plan, and which added to any extra fuel needs Chief Astronaut Jones and crew would need to fight the
Matts
, and even bring aboard some gold if there was time. He and several others had begun to clear the crater from Michael Pitt’s accurate attack on the base decades earlier.

The daily radio broadcast began with good news from Vitalily. The
Matts
had taken the bait and attacked the plateau, several hundred feet from the base, for the fourth time a few hours earlier. He had set a trap for them by activating the robotic soldiers and placing them at each side of the plateau. Even to a pilot flying his ship pretty close, could he see that these were robots, and not humans wearing spacesuits.

As Vitalily explained to everyone listening, the
Matts
flying past had seen the movement, and three of them had swooped in for a closer look. Vitalily had the robots just walking around aimlessly and separated from each other.

Then the
Matt
ships had returned for a third time, and had decided to rid the planet of whatever was walking down there. All seven ships came in on a hover, and within several hundred feet of the robots. Vitalily sent a message for the robots to walk faster, to be less of a target and ordered one of the robots to point at the lead
Matt
ship. The pilot opened fire, and all eleven soldiers shocked the
Matts
by immediately firing back.

Even though they destroyed three of Mars’ robotic soldiers, four of their space craft exploded and two more left the crater flying erratically. It seemed only one of the Matt ships got away unscathed and Mars Noble was proud of his men.

Vitalily, and Max in Mattville agreed with Ryan on the radio call that any attack in the future will be a long distance attack, if they attacked again at all. The
Matts,
everyone knew wouldn’t give up.

Vitalily ended his message that one of the Matt ships had fired a different type of weapon at the outer glass veranda of the base, seconds before the fight, and now everything outside was now demolished.

Max continued the conversation and told the crew over the radio broadcasts from his base on a daily basis, how they were about to clear the rubble to make a temporary landing platform for the shuttles to come in and land only 70 feet from the door they had entered through deep in the tunnel.