Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (60 page)

“Well,
yes and no. You can practice some weightless activities in water because, well,
you’re floating. But, you’re not actually weightless. Even though you are
floating, you’re still doing so within gravity. I mean, there’s still an up and
down. In true weightlessness, or microgravity, there is no up or down. So doing
things in a pool is a useful experience in terms of handling large loads and
trying to do things like, I dunno, turn a wrench, but it’s not the same as
actual weightlessness.”

Diane
nodded. “I see.”

“I don’t
mean to change the subject,” said Gabe, “but, Diane, you’re bracelet is
gorgeous. What is it?”

Diane
held up her right wrist and twirled it around. “Oh, thank you. It’s a charm
bracelet.” She leaned her head on Brad’s shoulder. “Brad bought it for me in
Florence about five years ago. We’ve been adding charms to it from everyplace
we’ve visited since then.”

“How many
have you got?”

“I don’t
know, maybe forty or fifty. I haven’t kept count.” She held her arm out toward
Gabe.

“Oh,
that’s beautiful. Is it gold? It looks heavy.”

“Yes and,
yeah, it’s getting quite heavy.”

Gabe
peered closely at the bracelet. “That’s lovely. Is that a penguin?”

“Uh huh.”

“Where’d
you get that?”

“Christchurch,
New Zealand. When we went to Antarctica.”

“Oh my
god. You’ve been to Antarctica?”

“Uh huh.
It was very interesting.”

Gabe
gently touched the bracelet. “Thank you. It’s beautiful.”

“Boss,”
said Abby, “is Heidi coming up?”

Jeff
nodded. “Yeah, she’ll arrive in Providence at ten in the morning.” He glanced
at Chrissie. “Can you pick her up?”

“Sure.”

He turned
to Brad and Diane. “Heidi, Dr. Heidi Christianson, is our engineer. She spends
most of her time down in New Orleans at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility,
overseeing the construction of our Jupiter rockets.”

“Abby has
told us so much about the mission,” said Brad, “but, as a sci-fi novelist, I am
really excited about seeing what you have here.”

“Well,
we’ll give you the full tour. The entire lower floor is dedicated to the
operation. Oh, forgive me, I’m gonna talk shop for just a minute.” He glanced
at Abby, and nodded. “Better take another swig of that drink.”

Abby
frowned. “Huh? Why?”

“Just got
off the phone with Heidi. They found a crack in a weld on one of the J-2
nozzles.”

“You’re
shitting me?”

“I wish I
was.”

“How bad
is it?”

“Don’t
know. Neither does Heidi. It’s not big, but it’s a crack.”

“Can it
be repaired?”

“Don’t
know that either. Rocketdyne will be there Monday to have a look and give us an
assessment. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Abby took
a big gulp of scotch. “Crap.”

“Uh,
yeah.”

Diane
gave Jeff a concerned look. “I’m sorry, I’m not much of a space expert. What’s
a J-2 nozzle? And, what are the implications?”

Jeff
shook his head. “Oh, no, my fault, I apologize. The J-2 is a big rocket engine.
It’s the engine that was used on the Apollo-era Saturn V second and third
stages, and was the engine that propelled the Apollo vehicles out of Earth
orbit and sent them on their way to the moon. We’re using them for essentially
the same purpose. They are the engine on our Earth Departure Stage, or EDS, and
the ‘nozzle’ is the exhaust nozzle; the big bell down at the bottom.
Implications? Well, delays. Um, prior to cancellation of the Constellation
program a few years back, the plan was to fit the Ares V EDS with a new,
upgraded version of the J-2, the J-2X. Development of the J-2X is still
proceeding, but rather slowly owing to lack of demand… and funding. We have
access to twelve original J-2s that have been in storage or on display for,
well, about 50 years now.”

Diane
gasped and glanced at Abby. “You’re using 50-year-old engines?”

Abby
rolled her eyes. “Mom, it’s not as bad as it sounds, let him finish.”

Jeff
grinned. “She’s right, it isn’t as bad as sounds. The J-2 is renowned for its
performance and reliability, and they’ve been flown many, many times. These
engines have never flown, they’re essentially new and unused. The J-2 isn’t
quite as powerful or efficient as the J-2X, but for our purposes they’ll do
quite nicely. However, because they’re so well flight tested, in discussions
with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne early on, we didn’t feel there was a need
to refurbish more than the four engines we’ll use. So, having a glitch develop in
one of them at this point in time – with our next launch only five months off –
is a bit of an inconvenience. We’ll get it fixed, one way or another. But,
relax, the J-2 is a good engine, and the fact that these engines are as old I
am, is entirely irrelevant. They’ll work.”

Diane
glanced at Abby and frowned.

Abby
shook her head. “Don’t look at me like that, Mom. We’ve been at this for more
than three years. We know what we’re doing.”

Diane
turned to Jeff, looking apologetic. “I’m sorry. A mother’s concern.”

Jeff
smiled softly and nodded. “Please believe me, I understand. That’s why I’m so
glad you’re here. Give us a chance. Let us show you what we’re going to do, and
how we’re going to do it.”

Saturday, July 4,
2015 (T minus 262 days)

At the bottom of the stairs, Jeff
turned left and left again. “This is Abby’s and Gabe’s office. Sue used to be
in here, but since she spends most of her time in her lab at the other end of
the floor, Abby and Gabe evicted her to make more room for them.”

Susan grinned. “I don’t mind. It’s
not that far.”

“Having her office here is very
convenient for Abby, as right down there,” Jeff pointed down the next flight of
stairs, “is her favorite room in the house.”

Diane smiled. “Which is?”

“The wine cellar.”

Everyone laughed.

Abby grinned, sheepishly. “I’d live
in there if it wasn’t so cold.”

Jeff shook his head. “And next door
here, is the conference room. But down here,” he led them back down the hall,
“is what is now the room of main interest, the Mission Control Center, or MCC.
Originally, this was two rooms, the recreation room and theater. We initially
used the rec room as an engineering lab, but when it came time to build the
MCC, we tore out the wall.”

Brad gasped. “Oh my god, it looks
like Mission Control at Houston.”

Jeff nodded. “That’s the idea. It’s
modeled loosely on the White Flight Control Room at the Johnson Space Center.
It’s not quite as big, but functionally about the same; all the same consoles
and displays.”

“How big are those wall displays?”

“Twelve feet by six and
three-quarters. Diagonally, 165-inch wide screen. They’re LED backlit LCDs made
by Mitsubishi with a resolution of 1920 x 1080, and we can use them
independently or couple them together for a panorama.”

Diane’s jaw dropped. “Good grief!
So, you run everything from here?”

“That’s right. This is our
operation, not NASA’s. Launches are handled by the Firing Rooms at Kennedy and
Cape Canaveral, but once the vehicle clears the tower, we take over. Houston,
if they’re interested, is just an observer. Our call sign is ‘Newport’, and
there’s very little that Houston can do that we can’t do just as well, if not
better, since all of this is specifically designed for this one mission.”

Glancing around the room, Diane
shook her head. “I had no idea.”

Jeff smiled. “We’re pretty proud of
this. We’ve used it now for four launches and two Mars landings and, so far at
least, it’s worked very well. There’s not a whole lot going on right now, so
it’s not manned. We don’t have anything in flight and the only activity to
speak of is
Amos
, our rover, wandering around doing his thing. But, once
we launch next March, this room will be manned seven by twenty-four until our
return. Not fully staffed, but at least a Watch Officer sitting FLIGHT.”

“Who man’s it?” said Brad. “And who
is going to man it when you’re gone?”

“Officially,
Chrissie runs the MCC, and we have a staff of 15 doctoral
and post-doctoral volunteers, not to mention Heidi, from all over the country
that show up here for major evolutions, like launches and landings. If something
happens and we need to man up in a hurry, this can also all be done online. All
everybody has to do is find a computer with an Internet connection, and we’re
up and running.”

“That’s
amazing.”

“Yeah, I
don’t think even NASA can do that.”

“What is
Amos
up to these
days?”

Jeff glanced at Gabe. “Dog and pony
show?”

“Sure.”

“Diane, Brad, why don’t you come
over here and have a seat at the CAPCOM console, and we’ll show you where we
are and bring you up to date.” Jeff sat beside them at the FLIGHT console and
brought up images on the large screen displays on the front wall of the MCC.

“Okay,” said Gabe. She grabbed a
laser pointer off the top of the FLIGHT console and stood behind them. “On the
left is the USGS planetary map of Mars. The pink region on the left is the
highlands, more or less centered on the Syria Planum, with the three volcanoes
comprising the Tharsis Montes to the northwest, and beyond that, Olympus Mons,
the tallest peak in the solar system.”

Jeff zoomed in.

“The blue-green valley running
east-west is the Valles Marineris. Just east of where the Valles turns north
and flows into the Chryse Planitia, is the Margaritifer Terra. And,
approximately in the center of that is the Margaritifer Basin, bisected by the
Morava Valles, and bordered on the north by the Margaritifer Chaos. The Basin
is where we’re going.”

“It’s not really green, is it?”
said Diane.

Gabe chuckled. “No. This is a
topographical map, and the color scheme indicates elevation relative to the
reference datum. That is, Mars’ mean elevation as determined by the MOLA, or
Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, that was on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft
that was launched in 1996 and died of natural causes ten years later. Green
indicates the altitude is roughly two to three thousand meters below mean
elevation – lowlands. Jeff, 400%?”

Jeff zoomed in.

“Now this is the Basin proper, with
the Morava Valles on the left, and the southern edge of the Chaos to the north.
Our site is just southwest of the three large craters on the right.”

“How big are those craters?” said
Brad.

“The largest is about 60 kilometers
across and around 1,800 meters deep.”

“Good grief!”

She grinned. “Yeah. Standing on the
rim, you probably can’t see the other side, as it would be over the horizon.”

Jeff chuckled. “It’s funny, that
crater is nearly the size of Rhode Island. Yet, as craters on Mars go, it’s so
small it doesn’t even have a name.”

“Holy cow. Do you plan on visiting
it?”

“No, not that one, but we do have a
trip planned to the smaller of the three, the southwest one.”

“Jeff,” said Gabe, “THEMIS site
map.”

“Okay.”

“Alright, this is a THEMIS image of
our site. THEMIS is the thermal imaging camera on the Mars Odyssey Orbiter. The
large crater to the northeast is the smaller of the three large craters on the
USGS map. The red circle labeled ‘Site C’ was our initial target. The green dot
below it is the location of
Pathfinder
, our navigational aid and ground
communications relay. We missed by a little over twelve kilometers. But, as
Jeff likes to remind me, we fired at a target 148 million miles away, moving at
53,860 miles per hour, and involving a 297 day flight time, so a twelve
kilometer miss isn’t really too bad.”

Jeff chuckled. “And don’t you
forget it.”

She smiled. “I won’t.”

“Brad, the southwest rim of that crater
is about 30 miles from the prospective site of our base. Terrain permitting, it
should only take us three or four hours to get there.”

“Do you have pictures from Mars?” said Diane.

“Yes,” said Gabe, “lots of them.
Jeff, why don’t you put up
Pathfinder
’s initial panorama?”

“Okay.”

A view of the Martian landscape
appeared across all three main screens.

Diane gasped. “Oh my god! And
that’s where you’re going?”

“Um, not quite,” said Gabe. “Our
tentative base site selection is about five kilometers west, on the other side
of that ridge in the right-hand image. I’ll show you in a minute.”

“It looks like the Gobi desert.”

“That’s actually a pretty good
analogy. Mars is essentially one giant desert, just a whole lot colder.”

“What’s the temperature like there?”

Gabe shrugged. “It varies. At night
in the winter it may get down to minus 150 degrees or so. On a warm summer
afternoon, it could get into the upper eighties, maybe ninety.”

“And you can live in that?”

“Sure. Diane, practically speaking,
it’s not much different than an arctic expedition. You just have to have a
well-insulated habitat and, if you go outside, be properly attired. It’s
actually similar to a winter-over scientific expedition at the South Pole, just
no snow or ice – well, where we will be – and the sky’s pink instead of blue.
Now, as we only had nineteen days between the landings of
Pathfinder
and
Columbus
, we decided not to alter the target site, we simply offset
Pathfinder
’s
navigational beacon by twelve kilometers and targeted
Columbus
at the
original site. That worked a bit better.”