Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (61 page)

Jeff chuckled. “You think?”

Gabe grinned. “Yeah. Though the
sixteen landings – there were supposed to be seventeen, but two of them failed
to separate, and came down together – were spread over some seven kilometers,
the center of the drop was only 1,100 meters from the target ellipse center.
And with that, we believe we’ve made our case. With
Columbus
, we
successfully landed more mass on Mars than all other previous Mars missions
combined, and, excluding our own
Pathfinder
mission, we did it, in
inflation adjusted dollars, for less cost than any other single mission to
date.”

Brad chuckled. “I’d imagine you’re
driving every space agency in the world nuts.”

Jeff smiled. “Um, up to a point.
We’re still a very high-risk operation, and no official government space agency
is going to want to take this kind of risk. Failure doesn’t sit well with the
taxpayers. We’ve proven it can be done, but that doesn’t mean anyone else will
be willing to try it.”

“How risky is it?” said Diane.

Jeff shrugged. “That’s impossible
to quantify. A few statisticians have tried it, but they’re just guessing. It
was just over six years between Kennedy’s, ‘We choose to go to the moon in this
decade,’ speech, and the first manned Apollo launch, Apollo 7. We’ll have four
years from concept to launch. On the other hand, practically speaking, we don’t
have to invent anything, that’s already done. We also have a five-decade
advantage in technology and global experience in manned space flight. Subjectively,
we think our odds are at least as good as Apollo, if not better.”

“Yes, but they had NASA behind
them.”

“True, but that doesn’t necessarily
guarantee success. NASA has had failures too, every space agency has. But, what
we are essentially doing is taking NASA’s successes and repackaging them. The
Apollo command and service modules worked very well, with the exception of
Apollos 1 and 13, but we know what the problems were there. The space shuttle’s
launch system has also worked very well, one failure in 135 launches. But
again, we know what the problem was there. The MSL and MER Mars landing systems
have likewise worked very well. In addition to NASA’s landings, we’ve already
set down sixteen of them, nine MSL and eight MER. Well, seven MER, two failed
to separate, as Gabe mentioned, but the payload still made it down intact. And
our habitat? Well, it’s pretty straightforward, and is based on a lot of design
and testing that has successfully taken place here on Earth. And, by the way,
our Mars Ascent Vehicles, MAVs, are in fact being built by NASA, JPL and
Grumman, the same folks that built the Apollo lunar module, and are based upon
it. Our space suits are from ILC Dover, the same folks that have been making
suits for NASA for fifty years. So all in all, we’re confident. Diane, believe
me, this is not a suicide mission. We all want to come back, and have every
intention of doing so.”

Diane nodded and sighed. “If you
don’t bring my daughter back, I’ll be very angry.”

Jeff smiled. “I don’t think it’s so
much a question of me bringing her back as her bringing us back. She’s flying.”

“Well, since you had the good sense
to hire the best pilot in the world, I suppose I should trust you with the
rest.”

He grinned. “Yes I did. The
autobiography of the renowned NASA Flight Director, Gene Kranz, is titled,
Failure
is not an option
. I’ll go along with that. We’re gonna go there, get this
done, and come back. We won’t hear of it any other way. Gabe?”

Gabe nodded. “Right. Okay, getting
back to Brad’s question of what
Amos
is up to… right now, not a whole
lot. Jeff, why don’t you put up the PowerPoint presentation of
Amos
’
images?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“This is a selection of images,
mostly from
Amos
’ context camera, that encompass his operations since
landing. Initially he performed a slow spiral outward from his landing site –
Amos
was the first of
Columbus
’ payload packages to land. Once he had a feel
for the nature of his environment he set off down the drop-line to find
everything else. One of our initial problems arose from
Pathfinder
’s
location. Our ground communications are principally VHF, and Mars’ radio
horizon is only about five kilometers, terrain notwithstanding. And since
Amos
landed about fifteen kilometers from
Pathfinder
, it’s well beyond ground
range of
Pathfinder
’s VOR. Communications between the two aren’t an
issue as they can relay through our
Pathfinder
orbiter, which is now in
a geosynchronous orbit. But there is no VOR positional data available to
Amos
.
However,
Amos
, along with the rest of
Columbus’
packages, was in
direct communication with
Pathfinder
all the way down to about 50 meters
above ground. So our positional data on all the drops – including
Amos
’
initial location – is very close. And from that point, it was simply a matter
of telling
Amos
where he was and activating his terrain following
guidance system.”

“
Amos
has terrain following
guidance?” said Brad.

“Yes. It’s similar to guidance on a cruise missile,
and uses a combination of visual recognition, laser ranging, and a compact
low-power radar. And it works quite well.
Amos
also has inertial
guidance.”

“That’s amazing. What’s
Amos
’
range?”

“About 150 kilometers on a single
tank of fuel. But he can refuel himself, and already has, once.” She motioned
to the displays. “This is one of our habitat modules, affectionately called a
‘tuna can’. All the heavy and delicate loads were landed by means of an
MSL-like descent stage, the sky crane. The lighter and more robust loads, like
freeze-dried food, were landed with a MER descent stage and air bags. These are
the two loads that failed to separate; the explosive bolts didn’t fire. We
don’t know why. Fortunately, it landed in a sandy area and most of the air bags
did deploy. One canister broke open, but the load appears to have remained
intact, so we’re not particularly worried about it.”

“How are you going to move all
that?” said Diane.

Gabe smiled. “That’s a job for
Amos
and
Andy
. As you can see in the images of the hab modules and the
Sabatier, they’re on wheels, and they have trailer hitches. The rovers can
remotely hitch up to the loads and tow them to our final site.”

“What’s a… Sabatier?”

“That’s the chemical process plant
to produce oxygen, fuel and water utilizing a catalytic process involving
hydrogen, which we’ll bring with us as there’s very little on Mars, and carbon
dioxide from Mars’ atmosphere, of which there is an abundance.”

Diane nodded. “I see.”

“But first, we had to pick a
location for our base. After locating all our… stuff,
Amos
set about
reconnoitering. We finally settled on a location about 20 kilometers
south-southwest of the original target landing site, and about five kilometers
west of
Pathfinder
’s location.”

Jeff brought up the site map and a
panorama of the site.

“This site is a bit distant, but
still well within range for the rovers. And the site is ideal. It appears very
much like the MER rover sites,
Spirit
and
Opportunity
, in Gusev
crater and on the Meridiani Planum. It’s very flat, level, generally sandy with
small scattered rocks, some bedrock here and there, and a few sand dunes. The
main difference is that this area is much more heavily cratered as this is,
geologically speaking, a very old region, likely dating back to the late
Noachian or early Hesperian periods, around 3.5 billion years ago. However,
owing to their age, most of the craters show signs of significant erosion and
shouldn’t pose a problem for us.

“Now, as you can see,
Amos
has already moved most of the large items to the site. One of the habs didn’t
make it, broke a wheel.”

Diane gasped. “What are you going
to do?”

“When we get there we’ll just
replace the wheel and move it on down. It’s a small matter. The wheels are very
light weight and not very strong, as their sole purpose is just transporting
the load to the site. This appears to have dropped into a hole, hit a rock and
fractured the wheel rim. But, these are like mobile homes; once we get them in
place we’ll remove the wheels and set them on the ground. We’ll get better
floor insulation that way. So, we’ll have plenty of spare wheels. Replacing
them is simple; jack it up, remove the entire wheel assembly, bolt on another
one, and away we go.

“The three habs that are there now
are the kitchen, bathroom/laundry, and suit room, to which the airlock will be
attached. If something catastrophic were to occur to our second cargo ship,
Magellan
,
we could survive with just these and the mobile hab, which can dock on one side
of the airlock. It wouldn’t be real comfortable, but survivable. There’s also
already enough food on the surface to last us. We’d probably lose a few pounds,
but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

Diane shook her head. “This is
amazing.”

Gabe grinned. “We think so too.
Anyway, Brad,
Amos
’ work is pretty much done for the time being. It’s
now just a couple weeks past the Autumnal Equinox in the southern hemisphere,
so the days are getting shorter and it’s cooling down. Pretty soon,
Amos
will connect to a large array of solar panels to keep warm, and take a long
winter’s nap – unless we come up with something else for him to do.”

Brad nodded. “Gotcha. Gabe, what’s
your living environment like on Mars? I mean, the whole thing.”

“Ah, good question. Jeff, can you
bring up the hab schematic?”

“Yeah, sure. Here you go.”

“Thank you. Brad, our habitat
consists of nine living modules, tuna cans, each about twelve and a half feet
in diameter and seven feet tall. As you can see, they’re arranged in a three by
three square with cross-connects. The north row, from east to west, consists of
our suit room and airlock, Jeff’s room, and Sue’s room. The center row has the
utility room, which includes the bathroom and laundry, the commons, sort of our
family room, and the kitchen. Also attached to the kitchen will be our
greenhouse. And the south row contains the lab, my room, and Abby’s room.

“Now, each of the module
cross-connects function as an airlock, as there are airtight hatches on both
sides. In the event of an air leak in any module, this allows us to isolate the
affected module from the rest of the habitat.”

Diane gasped. “What if there’s
someone in it?”

Gabe smiled. “Well, that all
depends, it’s a bit complicated. The hab will be pressurized to 14.6 psi, about
the same as sea level atmospheric pressure here on Earth, and our air will
consist of 80% nitrogen and 20% oxygen, also similar to that on Earth, less the
rare gases, like argon, and our exhaled carbon dioxide. Each module is
self-contained. If the air pressure in a module drops below 14 psi, a small
computer will initiate a sequence of events. A very annoying alarm will sound;
the lights will come on, if they’re not already on; the hatch, or a specific
hatch, depending on which module is affected, will open, if it’s not already
open; the adjoining hatch will close, if it’s not already closed, thus
isolating the module; and the cross-connect will start flooding with oxygen
from our emergency purge system, that in turn will flow into the module. If
there is someone inside and they do not manually close the hatch in 30 seconds,
it will close automatically via a pneumatic system, which will function even in
the event of a power failure.

“In the case of a catastrophic
depressurization, someone inside would have about 15 seconds to get out. After
that, they would lose consciousness, and be dead in two minutes. But the system
is designed such that, anyone inside should be able to get into the
cross-connect, slap the emergency hatch close button, and sit tight while the
cross-connect continues to fill with oxygen until it reaches 14.6 psi. Then
they open the other hatch, and we all sit down and figure out what happened.
And we do have materials to patch leaks, both inside and out.

“Obviously, if the leak is a result
of something like a large meteorite strike, we’ll probably all be dead. But the
odds of that happening are about the same as a large meteorite striking your
house. So we’re not terribly concerned about that.”

Jeff reached over and took Diane’s
hand. “We don’t want to die up there. We have thought this through very
thoroughly, and have every intention of coming back alive.”

“I know. It’s just all so overwhelming.”

Brad patted her shoulder. “Relax,
honey. Gabe, what if you’re isolated from your suit room? How would you repair
a leak?”

“In addition to our four Mark III
suits, and two spares, we also have four lightweight high-altitude suits,
similar to the Navy Mark IV suits worn by the Mercury astronauts. They’re not
suitable for lengthy surface operations because of their very limited thermal
control, but they are adequate for a few minutes. Those suits are kept in our
bedrooms and each module has a small emergency hatch. So in that case, one or
more of us would suit up, depressurize a module, exit through the emergency
hatch, walk around to the airlock, enter the suit room, change into Mark IIIs,
exit and make repairs. If there was a problem with the suit room itself, we’d
don the high-altitude suits, enter the suit room and effect temporary repairs
from the inside.”

“Huh. Nice redundancy.”

“Uh huh.”

“How does you ventilation work?
This sounds like living in a submarine.”

Gabe smiled and nodded. “That’s a pretty
good analogy. We have an atmospheric processor plant that consists of a
Sabatier reactor, a regenerative CO
₂
removal system, or RCRS, gas
and electric heaters, and storage tanks. Fresh air is ducted into each module
independently and exhausted from each of the cross-connects. All the ducting is
outside and is insulated. If a hatch is closed and pressure in the module
exceeds 14.6 psi, a spring-loaded valve in the hatch opens and vents into the
cross-connect. CO
₂
is removed either directly by the Sabatier or, if
it’s busy doing something else, the RCRS.