Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (39 page)

“Honestly, I was
hoping you’d say that, Jeff. Marshall and Fairchild’s play is about power,
nothing else. You know it, I know it, they know it. They have a lot of
aerospace – organized labor aerospace – in their states and that’s all that
matters.”

“But Senator, isn’t
that the insanity of the whole argument? We are supporting the aerospace
industry, not trying to kill it.”

“Jeff, you’re
supporting a tiny portion of aerospace and making the rest – including NASA –
look like fools, and therein lies the problem.”

“We just want to get
off the ground, Senator. We’re not trying to gore anyone’s ox.”

“Of course you’re
not. But this is Washington and the issue is money and political power, reality
has nothing to do with it. Look Jeff, I told you once before and it’s still
true, if you want to defeat Marshall and Fairchild you’ll have to do it on the
stage of public opinion. Can you get on TV?”

“I dunno, maybe.
Truth be told, I’m beginning to feel like a political pawn.”

“And here I thought
you were a bright boy.”

“Huh?”

“Jeff, you are a political pawn. In
fact, this year you may be
the
political pawn. In case you haven’t
figured it out, you represent the quintessential difference between the
conservative right and the liberal left. You represent the difference between
independence and dependence, and you’re in the news. And if you don’t think we
politicians aren’t going to make hay of that, you best think again.”

“Oh shit.”

“You never really
thought this would be easy, did you?”

“No I didn’t,
Senator. But I thought the problem would be launch mass and cost and how to
survive for a year and a half on an utterly hostile planet. I never figured my
biggest obstacle would be the United States government.”

“As I told you
before, Jeff, welcome to America. The government is everybody’s biggest
problem. Jeff, get yourself some major publicity. Get in front of the people.
They’ll see it your way and Marshall and Fairchild will be forced to back
down.”

“Alright, I’ll see
what I can do. Thanks for the call.” Jeff hung up the phone and rested his head
in his hands. He had long calculated that government regulatory agencies would
present their fair share of obstacles, but he had never counted on pure
election year politics. “Chrissie!”

Friday, October 25,
2013 (T-879 days)

On cue, Jeff led the
team through the curtain and out onto Universal Studios’ Stage 1. The five of
them held hands and bowed to the audience, then one by one shook hands with Jay
Leno and took seats on the set of the
Tonight Show
.

“Alright now, tell me
truthfully,” Jay said to Jeff, “is going to Mars really that hard?”

Jeff smiled. “Well,
given traffic conditions, it’s not a lot more difficult than going to Burbank.
And probably doesn’t take much longer.”

Leno turned to the
studio audience, “And there you have it. Mars, Burbank… same thing.” He turned
back to Jeff. “Okay, you’ve been in the news a lot lately, but there are
probably a lot of folks out there that don’t know you and your team. So, how
about introducing yourselves.”

“Sure. I’m Jeff Grey,
owner of Grey Aerospace, and mission commander. On down the line here are Dr.
Gabriel Frederick, flight engineer and navigator; Lieutenant Commander Abigail
Nolan, pilot; Dr. Susan Lú, flight surgeon; and Christine Mallory, ground
control and, uh, well… everything else.”

The studio audience
gave them an enthusiastic round of applause.

“Okay,” Jay said, “Gabe, is it?”

Gabe nodded

“You’re a doctor
of…?”

Gabe smiled. “I have
a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Applied Physics.”

There was a chorus of
“oohs” and “ahs” from the audience. Jay asked, “From?”

“Caltech.”

“I understand you
also went to MIT?”

“Yes, I received my Master’s
degree there.”

“In…?”

“
Nuclear
Science and Engineering, emphasis in applied plasma physics.”

Leno again turned to
the audience. “Okay, the rest of us can feel stupid now.”

The audience laughed
and Gabe grinned sheepishly.

“Alright now, Gabe,
why are you going to Mars?”

Gabe smiled and
pointed to Jeff. “Because that’s what he’s paying me for.”

“Well, I hope he’s
paying you a lot.”

“It’s enough.”

“Now, how long will
you be gone?”

“934 days, give or take
a day or two.”

“934 days? For those
of us that are mathematically challenged, what’s that in years?”

Gabe grinned. “Oh, a
little over two and a half years.”

“Has anyone spent
that much time in space before?”

“No. The Russian
cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev, has spent a total of 803 days in space on six
separate missions. He currently holds the record. On the other hand, we won’t
be spending that entire period in space. We’ll be on Mars for a year and a
half. I’m not sure that counts.”

Leno turned to the
audience. “Everyone that thinks Mars counts as ‘space’ applaud.” There was a
loud round of applause. “Okay Gabe, I think you’re good to go. Abby? You’re the
pilot, right?”

“Yes. Actually, we’re
all pilots, but for the log book I’ll be pilot-in-command.”

“You all fly?” Jay
turned to Jeff. “What do you fly?”

Jeff nodded. “Well,
Abby’s type rated to fly just about everything from a Piper Cub to a 747,
including our Cessna Citation, a bizjet. The rest of us are putting an awful
lot of hours on a Beech King Air, a twin turboprop, in preparation for our
eventual Citation type ratings. By the time we launch everyone on the mission
will be fully qualified to fly the command module, lander, and MAV.”

“MAV?”

“Sorry, Mars Ascent
Vehicle; kind of like the Apollo lunar lander, but a bit bigger.”

“Abby, now you’re a
Navy pilot?”

“Uh huh.”

“What do you fly in
the Navy?”

“F/A-18E, Super
Hornet.”

“That’s a fighter?”

“Yes, multi-purpose
fighter and ground attack aircraft.”

“Forgive me for
pointing out the obvious but, uh, you’re a woman.”

Abby laughed. “Thanks
for noting that.”

Leno turned to the
side and made a motion like sticking his foot in his mouth. “That didn’t come
out quite the way I meant it. What I meant was, I didn’t think the military
allowed women in combat roles.”

“No, there are a few
of us. It took the Navy a while, but they finally realized that a woman with
PMS in the cockpit of a jet fighter was something not to be messed with.”

Leno and the audience
howled with laughter. Finally calming down, Jay asked, “And you’ve flown in
combat?”

“Yes, two tours in
Iraq, primarily flying close air support.”

“Off an aircraft
carrier?”

Abby nodded. “Yes.”

“Have you ever actually engaged in
combat?”

“Yes. Not air combat, the Iraqis had
no air left by the time I got there. But I’ve been shot at from the ground, and
returned the compliment. I won.”

The audience laughed.

Jay again turned to
the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, Tom Cruise is my very good friend and has
been on this show many times,” he pointed to Abby, “but there sits the real
deal.”

The audience exploded
in applause. Abby stood and took a bow. “Thank you.”

“Speaking of Tom
Cruise, I’m sure many of our viewers remember the film,
Top Gun
, and the
rather novel callsigns of the pilots. Do you have one?”

“Sure.”

“What is it?”

“Bitch.”

The audience howled.

Abby smiled. “It
makes a good first impression. Tends to quickly put folks in the proper frame
of mind.”

Leno laughed and
pounded his fist on the desk. “Yeah, I can imagine. Susan, you’re the medical
doctor?”

Susan nodded. “Yes.”

“I presume a doctor
is needed on this, uh, venture, because it’s dangerous?”

Susan smiled. “Yes,
dangerous would be an appropriate description.”

“How dangerous?”

Susan laughed.
“Numerically? I don’t know. I’d say our odds of returning alive are, maybe,
fifty-fifty.”

There was an audible
gasp from the audience. Leno sat silent for a moment, then nervously joked,
“That sounds worse than rush hour on the Hollywood freeway.”

Jeff laughed, “Which
is kind of the whole point. Sue’s right, it is dangerous. There is a lot than
can go wrong. Indeed, we may not make it back. But, as you say, the same
applies to commuting on the freeway. Honestly though, if any of us believed for
a moment that we wouldn’t be coming back, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be
going.” He shook his head. “Contrary to what some in the news media – and
Congress – are suggesting, this is not a suicide mission; we do want to come
back.”

Leno turned to the
camera, “We’ll be back in a minute.”

Following the
commercial break, Jay turned back to Jeff. “Now, I have to ask, um, your crew
is, uh, all women.”

Jeff smiled and
glanced at the other four. “Uh, yep. They are indeed.”

Leno laughed. “Well,
I suppose if I were going to Mars, three good looking women wouldn’t be my last
choice for crew members. Something to do on those cold Martian nights?”

The audience laughed.

Jeff smiled again.
“It’s a fair question. But honestly, it’s simply luck of the draw. As you may
imagine, there was a long list of requirements for crew selection; not the
least of which was compatibility. We’re going to be gone for two and half years
and, during that time, we’re going to have to get along – all of us. And in the
final analysis, aside from their not inconsequential intelligence, education,
and talent, Gabe, Abby, Sue, and myself, just seem to have a very good
personality fit. We get along. And the fact that they’re all women is, well, irrelevant.
That’s just the way it is and there’s really nothing else to be read into it.”

The audience
applauded.

“Okay,” Jay
continued. “Now, you have a launch coming up pretty soon, right?”

“Yes, very soon. Six
weeks from tomorrow, we hope.”

“You must be pretty
excited about that.”

“Oh, indeed we are.
This will be the first of four launches that week in which we’ll be sending up
a fair portion of the items we’ll need to live on the planet.”

“Such as?”

“Well the first
launch will be a navigational aid and communications platform that we call
Pathfinder
.
And its initial purpose will be to provide landing guidance on Mars for all our
remaining loads, as well as us when we get there, rather like a navigational
beacon, or VOR, at an airport. There is no GPS on Mars, so this is our
alternative. We’d prefer not to have all our supplies scattered over a 1,000
square miles of Martian landscape, and the best way to avoid that is to give
everything an electronic target to aim for. Once we’re on the planet
Pathfinder
will serve as a communications relay, both for us on the surface and for
communications with Earth. The following three launches later that week will be
the first of our cargo. I’ll let Gabe detail that.” He turned to Gabe. “You
want to go over the manifest. The short version will do.”

Gabe nodded and
smiled. “Yes, what we’ll be sending up with those three launches will include
the first three of our nine planned habitat modules, an airlock, a Sabatier
reactor – a chemical plant that will convert Mars’ atmospheric carbon dioxide
into methane and water, which we can further convert into oxygen and hydrogen –
a large field of solar cells for energy, a remote control rover, a mobile
habitat that we’ll use for exploration, and a year and a half’s supply of food.
Also with this launch we’ll be testing a previously untried means of landing
materials on the planet; a bent biconic lifting body.”

Jay looked at her
with raised eyebrows. “A bent what?”

“A bent biconic
lifting body. It’s a little hard to explain. It’s an atmospheric entry
aeroshell that provides lift in Mars’ thin atmosphere and can be steered… sort
of.”

“I’ll take your word
for it. Habitat module? Sounds like a dorm room.” Leno grinned.

Gabe smiled. “A very
small dorm room. The habs, which are affectionately referred to in the industry
as tuna cans, are round, about twelve and a half feet in diameter, and seven
feet high. They’re made of a carbon-fiber and Kevlar laminate inner pressure
shell and a thin aluminum outer shell with an inch and a half of aerogel
insulation in between. Our complex in the Margaritifer Basin will ultimately
consist of nine interconnected modules; four bedrooms, kitchen, a combination
bathroom and laundry, a common room which will also hold all our communications
equipment, a lab, and a suitroom with airlock, where we’ll change into and out
of our space suits for activity on the surface. Additionally, we’ll have a mobile
habitat – sort of a small Airstream trailer – that we can tow behind one of the
rovers for surface exploration, and a Plexiglas greenhouse in which we’ll
attempt to grow some fresh vegetables.”