Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (21 page)

“Hear, hear.”

By the time the sun had settled
behind the western hill, they had all eaten and drank their fill. Jeff looked
around the room, Gabe was playing Billy Joel’s,
Root Beer Rag
on the
Bösendorfer, while Susan watched with astonishment, and Chrissie was carrying
dishes to the kitchen. “Chrissie, where’s Abby?”

“She decided to go for a swim.”

“Oh great. She’s drunk, she’ll
drown.”

“Sorry boss, I’m not brave enough
to stand in her way.”

Jeff smiled knowingly, “Okay, I’ll
go check on her.” He strolled out onto the patio. Abby was in the pool, slowly
breaststroking from end to end. “You better not drown, I won’t have anyone to
fly the damn plane.”

“Me? Drown? I swim like a fish.”

“Yeah, you also drink like a fish.”

“Hey, I’m looking at two and a half
years in space as a teetotaler, I need to fill up while I can.”

Jeff laughed, “Good point,” and
dropped into one of the lounge chairs by the pool. He gazed out over the cove;
“I’ll bet they don’t have sunsets like this on Mars.”

Abby continued slowly stroking back
and forth, “Do they
have
sunsets on Mars?”

“Sure, when they’re not blotted out by the dust
storms.”

“You paint such beautiful images.”

Gabe’s playing stopped and a short
while later she, Susan and Chrissie joined him beside the pool.

Chrissie called out to Abby, “Hey,
aquatic person, I brought you a towel.”

“Thanks.” She breaststroked to the
side of the pool near them. “Five hundred and five days, huh? That’s not much
time.”

“No it’s not,” said Jeff.

“Are we gonna be ready?”

“One way or another we’re going to
launch something. Have to; it’s our proof of concept. If we can’t pull off the
cargo launch and subsequent landings, we’re dead in the water.”

“Now that I’m here, where do you
want me to start?” Susan said.

“Get licensed here in Rhode Island
and board certified. That comes first. We need a fully licensed and certified
M.D. And in your spare time take a look at the ILC Dover habitat modules
they’re proposing and make sure they’ll do the job for us for a year and a
half. Also, figure out what we’re going to eat while we’re there. Most of that
will be going up with the first cargo launch. I want us to take this weekend
off and rest up a bit. Monday morning we’ll have our first full status update
session and figure out which pots are boiling over and need the most immediate
attention.”

Susan nodded in understanding.

Abby climbed out of the pool,
quickly gathering all eyes to her – she was naked.

Jeff averted his eyes, sort of, and
Gabe sighed, “Uh, didn’t you forget something?”

“What?” Said Abby, nonplussed.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe… a swim
suit?”

“Why? We’re gonna be joined at the
hip for two and a half years, now hardly seems the time to get modest. Besides,
one of us is gonna conceive his child. Won’t be many secrets after that.”

With that reminder, there came a
lengthy silence. Abby grabbed the towel, dried off, wrapped it around her and
dropped into a chair. “Anybody seen my drink?”

Chrissie handed it to her and after
a moment asked, “What are you talking about?”

Abby took a sip of champagne, “Huh?
What do you mean?”

“When you said, ‘one of us is gonna
conceive his child,’ what did you mean?”

“Well, not you, you’re not going.”
She paused for a moment. “Oops. Uh, boss, did I just…”

Jeff shook his head, “No. I guess
it just never came up. No reason for her not to know.”

Abby sighed with relief, “Whew.
Okay.”

Chrissie frowned and glanced back
and forth between them. “Know what?”

Abby shrugged. “One of us is going
to bear a child on Mars.”

Chrissie gasped, “My god! Wow.
Which one?”

Abby shrugged. “Don’t know yet.
We’ll figure it out later. Draw straws or something.”

“But… why?”

Jeff turned to her, “Why not? Think
of all the old questions that will be answered, and all the new ones that will
be asked.”

Chrissie stared silently at her lap
for a while. Then slowly drew up a smile. “Jeez, a child born on another world.
That’ll be incredible.”

Gabe sat up and stretched. “Yeah,
it’ll be a hell of dinner conversation topic. It’ll drive the tabloid press
absolutely out of their minds.”

Jeff rubbed his neck; he’d had too
much to drink. “Well, for now it’s just another item in the mission plan. We’ve
got a long way to go before we need to concern ourselves with that. But Susan,
when you’re planning consumables, don’t forget diapers.”

They all laughed.

“Oh, and Chrissie,” he continued,
“that particular item is
not
for publication. That’s just between us.”

Chrissie nodded, “Understood.”

Jeff looked out over the bay, and
then laughed. “Well, at least we do know one thing for certain now.”

“What’s that?” said Gabe.

“Abby really is a carrot top.”

Monday, July 30, 2012
(T minus 1331 days)

Jeff’s now complete team assembled
around the conference room table.

“Alright, time to get busy. As John
Wayne said, ‘We’re burnin’ daylight.’ As I see it, we have two major
priorities. First, determining what we’re going to send up in the cargo launch
that, I shouldn’t have to remind you, is a mere fifteen months away. We need to
make certain we have the necessary launch vehicles and services reserved, and
we’re already borderline on that. Second, we need to identify any long
lead-time items and get moving on them right away. There’s a lot of stuff we’ll
be able to buy off the shelf, but a lot of other things we’ll have to have
made. And that can take years. Command module, service modules, Mars landers,
descent stages, the list goes on and on and these are big ticket items that
will take time. So here’s what I’ve got in mind – and everybody feel free to
jump in at any time. This a team, not a dictatorship – Gabe, I’d like you to
take the lead on the cargo launch.”

“Okay.”

“Look over my notes, look over the
literature, and come up with a launch plan. The key here is that this launch is
our proof of concept. This fails, the mission fails… probably. Look at what
best serves us to send up, minimize the mass and come up with the most cost
effective plan to get it there.”

“Got it.”

“Abby, since many, if not most, of
the long lead-time items will fall under the heading of ‘command &
control,’ that’s yours.”

“Alright.”

“This is a huge job.” Jeff shook
his head, “Maybe too big, I don’t know. But let’s give it our best shot.”

“I’m ready.”

“I think the transit vessel, the
‘Crew Exploration Vehicle,’ or CEV, is going to be the biggest issue. Most of
the stuff we’ll set down on the planet is fairly straight forward. Yeah,
there’s a lot to it, but it’s not all that complicated. But the CEV? That’s a
spaceship, and it will be big and complicated and have a lot of moving parts…
and the only ones around are either 50 years old, or way too big. So, we’ll
probably have to build one. There are maybe a dozen CEV plans around left over
from NASA looking into it a while back. We need to pick one. No point in
reinventing the wheel here. A lot of folks have done a lot of research on this,
let’s use it and pick one. I like the Spacehab CEV ‘cause it’s light and based
on Apollo, but go over them all again and see what you think. And then we’ll
have to find somebody that’s actually willing to build the damn thing, and
build it fast. So start there.”

“Right.”

“Susan, your major challenge – in
case you haven’t figured it out – is life support.”

She smiled, “You don’t say?”

“Remember, nobody’s done this
before. We’re going to be on artificial life support for two and a half years.
Now, the International Space Station has been up for a lot longer than that,
but it’s only 185 miles away and can be re-supplied on pretty short notice.
When we’re 250 million miles from Earth on the other side of the sun, there
will be no re-supply; we’ll be on our own. We will need to have systems that
work. And if they stop working, we’ll need to be able to fix them. This is
probably not the best of places to cut corners. Food is probably not a real big
deal. Oxygen, water, CO
₂
scrubbing, those are big deals. Look at
what they’ve done on the ISS, and everywhere else. Go through the literature,
find out what’s available or could be made. Come up with a plan for the trips
over and back and our stay on the surface. There probably won’t be a lot of
long lead-time items, but system integration could take a while. Work with
Abby.”

“Okay.”

Jeff grinned, “Don’t put your pen
down, I’m not through with you yet.”

Susan grimaced, then smiled, “Uh
oh.”

“You need to come up with a
physical fitness program for us. Actually, several.” He nodded toward Abby,
“Even for her joggingness there.”

Abby frowned.

“We’ll need a plan to get us in
shape here, prior to the launch, another one for the trips over and back to
keep us from withering away, and a third for Mars. Look at NASA programs and
what they’re doing on the ISS. Oh, and speaking of the ISS, Gabe, Abby and I
have spent a lot of time over the past two months going over both the ISS and
the Apollo Program in nauseating detail. We’ve assembled a list of everything –
every system, program, test, feature, nut and bolt – in both programs, and
Chrissie is in the process of organizing it all into a searchable database.
That’s the foundation of our checklist. Chrissie can show you where it is on
the computer. You’ll need to wade through all of it. The idea is that each of
the four of us will independently make up our own list from that, then we’ll
sit down and negotiate a final preliminary list to which we will then add Mars
necessities that don’t appear in either Apollo or the ISS.”

“Oooo, that has to be quite a
list.”

“It is, it’s huge. We also went
through the complete list of launches to the ISS and tabulated everything
that’s been sent up there, everything. And where we could, we also noted who
made it; source information. It’s likely that whatever they have on the ISS is
too big, too heavy and too expensive for us. Maybe we can do a lot of business
with Hamilton Sundstrand, maybe not. But it’s a starting point. You can
cross-reference that against crew size for any period and obtain a rough cut at
consumable usage, though ours will no doubt be different; we’ll need to do a
much better job on recycling, for example, particularly in space. Diet of
course will be a major issue. Frankly, I’d like to see our Mars consumables go
up with the first cargo launch. I don’t know about you, but I’d feel a lot more
comfortable about going there if I knew our food, water and oxygen was already
there. Would sure beat us landing there only to find the catering truck is
nothing more than an impact crater.”

Gabe groaned. “Thank you for that
happy thought,”

“The bottom line is: we just need
to make damn sure we don’t forget anything. There’s no 7-Eleven on Mars.”

Abby laughed.

“What?”

“Oh, I was just thinking, we need
to make up a sign to hang on the Hab for when we broadcast images back to
Earth, ‘Mars Post Office, gas, ice cold beer.’”

They all laughed.

Jeff nodded, “Definitely! We have
to do that. ‘Next gas, 200 million miles.’” He turned back to Susan. “That
enough to keep you busy for a while?”

“Uh, yeah. I think so.”

“Oh, forgot, we’ll also need to get
you started on flight training. I’ve got a lesson at Cindtronix this afternoon,
you can go with me and we’ll get you started.”

“Okay.”

“Chrissie, I’m not leaving you out
of the flight training, I’m just postponing it a bit since we’re pushing
Cindtronix’ facilities to the limit right now. Once the three of us are past
the basics and at least instrument rated, we’ll start you in the program as
well. And when we get to training on the simulators, you’ll be right there with
us. Once we launch, it will be invaluable to have someone here on the ground
that’s trained exactly as we are and thoroughly understands our capabilities
and limitations.”

Chrissie grimaced, “Are you sure
you’ve got the right person for this? Wouldn’t somebody like Abby be better
suited?”

“I have confidence in you. Until
two months ago I’d never flown an airplane, and I’m the mission commander.
You’ll do fine, and you’ll have plenty of help. But there will be no substitute
for having someone who knows what we know, has the same experience we do and
thinks like us. We will need to be of one mind – all of us.”

“Okay, you’re the boss.”

“Look, I could probably find some
ex-Air Force test pilot/astronaut with a couple hundred hours in space to do
the job. But he or she would not think, act, or react like one of us. You will,
because you
are
one of us.”

Chrissie nodded. “Gotcha.”

“But for now your job is to keep
all this organized. I want everyone to make copious notes and everyday provide
Chrissie with a complete copy thereof. If they’re digital, email it too her. If
on paper, scan it and email it. I’ve bought several all-in-one
scanner-printer-copiers – use them. Chrissie, organize it, keep track of it.
All of this work will eventually end up in Mission Plans, Flight Plans, Launch
Plans, Instruction Manuals, Timelines, Schedules, whatever. Let’s keep track of
it, not lose it, not have to reinvent it, and not waste time duplicating one
another’s work. Get it on the computer in an organized fashion so we’re not
flailing around in the dark.”

Chrissie nodded, “Got it.”

Jeff looked around the table, “Any
questions?”

“What are you going to do?” Abby
asked.

“Whatever I have to, to see that
this gets off the ground. Three principal issues for me will be coordination,
particularly with regard launch services, funding, and cooperation. We’re going
to be launching a lot of stuff. In the absence of any heavy lift vehicles I’d
imagine we’re going to be putting substantial strain on the commercial rocket
industry. I’ll need to coordinate with SpaceX and ULA, and probably the
European, and even Japanese, Russian and Chinese space agencies. If we can’t
come up with enough launch vehicles, it’s all over. With regards funding, I
have a lot of money, but not nearly enough. We’ll need partners, supporters,
contributors, and, groan, the government, particularly for launch services,
which will likely fall under the heading of cooperation. I’m convinced we’ll
face a lot of opposition, and from a lot of people in high places. There will
be many that will be adamantly opposed to this. And government, and not just
our government, is going to throw every regulatory blockade they can think of
in front of us. So we’re going to need some allies.”