Journey Into Space (3 page)

“I don’t get you, Jet. Why don’t you come to the point?”

“Very well. Within a year from now, a serious attempt will be made to reach the Moon--in one hop.”

Had Jet told me he intended to run for President of the United States, I could not have been more surprised. I said nothing for a few moments; instead I gazed at the ground slowly unrolling below us. Ahead was the Flinders Range, a group of hills which, in Australia, pass as mountains. Stretching from below us to the foothills were the sand ridges topped by the inevitable grey-green mulga which is to this sparse country what sagebrush is to the American desert.

“In one hop?” That was all I could say.

Jet laughed. “It’s difficult to believe, isn’t it, Doc? At first I couldn’t myself.”

“You do now?”

“Not only that. I’m going. I’m one of the crew.”

For the first time I realized he was dead serious. “But to build a rocket that will reach the Moon in one jump is an engineering impossibility. The fuel tanks alone would have to be as tall as skyscrapers.”

“With conventional rockets, that’s true. But I thought I made it clear, Doc, this is something new--revolutionary.”

“It’s little short of a miracle.”

“It might be at that, but all it comes down to in the end is an atomic motor.”

“Atomic?”

“You’ve heard of Stephen Mitchell?”

“Wasn’t he the engineer who designed the first atomic marine motor for the British Navy?”

“Yes. His latest creation is a
rocket
motor.”

“How does it work?”

“That I can’t tell you, not at the moment. All I can say is that it’s small enough and powerful enough to do the job.”

I now began to fire enthusiastic questions. Apparently Mitchell’s rocket motor, in spite of its compactness, built up sufficient thrust to carry a ship almost to the Moon direct from the Earth’s surface. Almost, but not quite. It needed a little assistance.

The free orbit rocket launched from Poker Flats had, as I have said, been a three-stage affair. When it took off from the Earth it was more than 300 ft tall and left its launching platform under the power of its first and largest stage. In less than two minutes its load of more than 5000 tons of fuel had been burnt and the ship had reached a height of just over 23 miles and was travelling at more than 5000 mph.

The first stage then dropped away and the second came into action to carry the lightened ship even higher and faster. Two minutes later the 2000 tons of fuel carried by the second booster had burnt itself out and the ship had reached a height of 40 miles and a speed of nearly 15,000 mph.

Finally the third stage, the smallest of all, carrying the telemetering equipment in its nose, automatically cut in its motor. The second stage, having been discarded, parachuted down to Earth while the ship (now less than a third of its original size) reached a final speed of some 19,000 mph and a height of 750 miles, sufficient to allow it to reach free orbit and enter an ever encircling course round the earth.

19,000 mph was the highest speed ever reached by a man-made vehicle of any kind, but it was still 6000 mph less than the speed required to escape entirely from the Earth’s gravitational pull.

According to Jet, Mitchell’s ship was only of two-stage construction. The first stage worked on exactly the same principle as I have just described but, once its fuel had been used up and the booster had been disconnected, the motor of the second stage, the long-sought, small atomic motor, had the power to increase the speed to more than 27,000 miles an hour, giving the ship sufficient velocity to reach the Moon and a little to spare.

I must have questioned Jet for more than an hour and would have kept up the barrage had we not landed just north of Lake Eyre to refuel. The ‘airport’ consisted of one small, two-roomed building, an underground fuel storage tank and two mechanics. They ran out to meet us as we taxied in and greeted Jet with a hearty, if coarse, Australian greeting. We climbed out of the cockpit, glad to stretch our legs, and, as stepping outside was rather like stepping into an oven, immediately sought the shade of the white wooden building.

“Make yourself at home,” said Jet as he helped himself to a drink from a bottle on the table.

“Is this a private airport?”

“Airport is a fancy name for it, Doc. But we have to refuel somewhere. We’re hardly halfway to Luna City yet.”

“Luna City?”

“That’s what the boys call the launching ground. We have a regular little town there. We’re almost completely self-supporting. Fuelling squads come down here on a rota to refill the helicopters that fly between Luna City and Adelaide. When their week is up, they go back to base and their place is taken by somebody else.”

We stayed and chatted with the mechanics for a while. Half an hour later we were on our way again and continuing our discussion at the point where landing had compelled us to postpone it.

I finally learned Jet’s real reason for inviting me out to Australia. It was to offer me a post, not only as director of the space medicine department of Luna City but also as a member of the crew. He made the offer quite casually some thirty minutes after we had left Lake Eyre and were rapidly approaching the border of Northern Territory and South Australia. .

I accepted in the same tone. How I did it so calmly I don’t know. I had been offered an active part in one of the greatest and most important experiments in the history of scientific man, and yet all I could say was: “Thank you, Jet. I’d like to very much.”

“That’s fine,” Jet replied, and then the talk turned to something else.

I began to understand now that the virtual closing of Poker Flats had more behind it than the mere shortage of money.

I also realised why it was that the British had not made any attempt to launch a free-orbit rocket of their own; they had preferred to wait until a more powerful, more economical method of propulsion had been found, and, apparently, they had found it.

Little more than three hours after leaving Adelaide, we reached Luna City. We came upon the site very suddenly for, until we were almost directly overhead, it was hidden from our view. The launching ground was set in the centre of a mountain range high up on the plateau of the Central Desert. The Horseshoes, as those mountains are called, are part of the Macdonnell Range and are some 250 miles east of Alice Springs.

‘Horseshoe’ was a perfect description of them; from the air that was just what they looked like. The open end of the shoe faced towards the west. The highest point in the range was exactly opposite the entrance to the enclosed plain and rose about 3O00 ft above it, the plain itself, part of the great, central continental plateau, being some 2000 ft above sea level. From its highest point the range sloped down on both sides in a curve until, the circle about two-thirds completed, it ran itself into the ground. Inside the shoe the sides of the hills were cliff-like and precipitous, but the outer slopes were fairly gentle.

What struck me at once about this peculiar formation was its similarity to the ringed plains on the Moon. It had the same crumbly, eroded look and, had any telescope-equipped Selenite been able to regard this freakish, terrestrial feature, he would have declared it the one thing on Earth that most nearly resembled his own barren world.

But the most remarkable feature of this semi-enclosed plain was a man-made one: the launching ground. It was, as Jet had said, a miniature city. From above it looked like a giant cartwheel, the hub being the launching platform itself, with the half-completed rocket, enclosed in steel scaffolding, standing on it. The ‘spokes’ of this giant wheel, which was some four miles in diameter, were roads, every one of which led out from the rocket platform, other minor roads joining the ‘spokes’ in concentric circles. Arc-shaped buildings filled in the areas outlined by the roads, most of them concentrated towards the outer rim of the wheel.

Jet pointed out a few of the principal blocks to me; living quarters, workshops, centrifuge, cinema, swimming-pool, air strip, sports field, hospital, research centre, crew’s quarters, stores and so on. Just outside the city, and standing apart from it, was a railroad station from which a single track ran twisting and turning through the low sandhills westwards towards Alice Springs.

“Well, what do you think of her?” asked Jet.

“Why build a launching ground so far away from civilization? This place is outback of the Outback.”

“Only place they would give us. If there had been a remoter spot, we’d have got it. They won’t run any unnecessary risks. Want to keep us as far away from cities as they possibly can.”

We began to descend. As we approached the ground and dropped below the levels of the highest mountain peaks, we lost sight of the great plain beyond. I felt as though I were already landing on another planet. The pinky sand, the red-streaked, precipitous cliffs which, in the clear air, seemed within short walking distance, and the snow-white, man-built concrete structures looked for all the world like a Martian landscape with the first Earth colony already established and flourishing.

We touched down. Jet switched off the engine and the rotor blades slowed to a standstill. He slid back the cabin door and we climbed down to the sun-baked ground. A jeep was already on its way out to meet us, hurtling along the concrete road in a cloud of dust. Within a few minutes my baggage had been unloaded from the aircraft and we were speeding across the airstrip towards the crew’s living quarters.

“Good morning, gentlemen. The time is 0600 hours. The weather is warm. Temperature at the airstrip is 82°.   We can expect it to reach at least 95° by noon.”

I awoke with a start, half expecting to see somebody standing in the corner of my room. Instead I saw a panel, some four feet square, placed diagonally across it. At the top was a television screen and underneath three gauze-covered circles marking the positions of intercommunication loudspeakers. Below them were four coloured-glass buttons which, as I was to discover later, were indicator lights. Slowly I realised where I was. I glanced around at the unfamiliar surroundings now flooded with the sunlight which came streaming through the window. The voice was coming from the intercom panel.

“Breakfast will be at 0700 hours as usual. That is all--and thank you.”

There was a click and then silence. The ‘phone at my bedside rang. It was Jet.

“Morning, Doc,” he said, “have a good night?”

“Very good, thanks, until the talking alarm clock came on.”

“Sorry about that. I should have warned you. It happens every day, I’m afraid. See you at breakfast, huh?”

I need not fill in every detail of my first week in Luna City. Jet had invited me out there to be director of space medicine and, far more important to me, a member of the ship’s crew. But, before being finally accepted, I had to undergo vigorous and, at times, highly unpleasant medical tests. Most of them I had carried out myself on other guinea-pigs in the course of my work at Poker Flats.

You cannot send a man up into space, even for a short period, unless he is fighting fit, and the only way to discover whether he can stand up to space flight conditions is to put him through, as far as possible, simulated conditions down on Earth. It is no exaggeration to say that the series of tests designed for this purpose might well serve to discourage all but the most ardent would-be space traveller. General fitness having been ascertained, the ‘patient’ is subjected to centrifuge and pressure-chamber tests, both separately and together. He is then called upon to perform certain acts like pressing buttons, repeating memorised passages of prose and arithmetical formulae, and working out fairly complicated problems while under simulated space conditions. If his reactions are good and he does not suffer either physically or mentally from the gruelling tests, he is considered OK.

My tests were spread over the week. I joined the crew at the end of it and our long, concentrated training and preparation for the lunar trip began. And while we were undergoing training, the construction of the rocket went ahead. We and the ship were expected to be ready for each other at approximately the same time.

Rocketship Luna was designed to carry a crew of four; Stephen Mitchell, Jet Morgan, Lemmy Barnet and myself. Lemmy I already knew from the days he had spent with Jet and me when space travel was no more to us than an absorbing hobby and a distant dream. (There have been many occasions over the last few weeks when I am sure Lemmy, at least, wished it had remained so.) Mitch I met at dinner during my first night in Luna City.

I think I would have recognised him as an Australian anywhere. He was tall and slim and looked older than his thirty-six years. He had that casual, nonchalant, patient air, so typical of many Australians, particularly those who have spent most of their lives away from the cities.

Mitch was born in the outback, his father being a cattle rancher and a very successful and prosperous one, too. Steve Mitchell senior had served as flight mechanic in the second world war and flying was an obsession with him. Small aircraft, including helicopters, were as common on his cattle station, said to be the largest in Queensland, as jeeps were on others.

Young Mitchell had inherited his father’s love of everything to do with aircraft and aircraft engines. From the ranch he went to an engineering college in Sydney where he took his degree and afterwards joined the research department of a jet aircraft-manufacturer.

He did not remain with them long for he had developed a keen interest in atomic power and was soon offered a remunerative post with the Royal Australian Navy for whom he helped perfect the first atomic motor for use in warships. Three years later a smaller type for submarines was given its trials with most encouraging results. And then came a big change in Mitch’s life. His father died. Mitch put the cattle station into the hands of a manager and took a long vacation to take stock of the future.

He decided he had had enough of ships and felt a strong desire to work in aeronautics again or, better still, astronautics. Astronautics was the new science. The aircraft company for whom he had first worked built many of the research rockets fired at the proving ground at Woomera. Mitch had modified the motors of a number of the liquid-fuel rockets then in use, rendering them more economical in fuel consumption and, in consequence, more efficient in performance.