The Great Martian Egg Drop
1 May 1995
La Cañada Flintridge, California
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
34° 12′ 6.1″ N 118° 10′ 18″ W
“Okay, everyone, let’s get settled,” Sharon said. The group’s collective attention came to her. She took a moment to see if everyone had a coffee cup or a water bottle near to hand. They’d need it. For the next four months, everything would require maximum concentration. She bit the inside of her lip and checked her watch.
“Last week, Director Krantz called Maggie Winslow over in the admin building and asked her who was the best flight team JPL had for handling uncrewed ships. I’m told she didn’t hesitate before saying it was all of you.”
She’d seen enough sports movies to know when to take a beat.
“Houston, as I’m sure you’ve all seen, is in shambles. We lost more than three-hundred people. Eighteen were astronauts, a bunch more were flight controllers. We also lost several hundred years of experience. The sick bastards who did this to us want to send everyone back to the fifties and they want to put people like us on the unemployment line.”
“Now, this team has put two rovers on Mars. You’ve proven yourselves as tough and competent, which, as you might know, are Gene Krantz’s two favorite words. And so, it is with every bit of confidence in the world that I’m giving you this assignment.”
Over the next two hours, Sharon laid out the mission for her team. They were joined after lunch by the engineers from Columbia Aerospace. The afternoon was spent in teams, paired off with JPL engineers firing questions at their Columbia counterparts.
Around six-thirty that evening they brought in pizza. Everyone who had worn a tie this morning had loosened it by now. Binders and computer monitors competed for table space with slices of pepperoni and cans of soda. Around eight-thirty, discussions began to relocate to the local watering holes.
James came by her office as the last of his group headed out to their cars.
“Did you come by to be the voice of doom?” Sharon said.
“Command hierarchies are better with only one optimist,” James said.
“You didn’t seem all that pessimistic after Prometheus One,” Sharon said.
“Because that wasn’t a publicity stunt,” James said.
“You think this is?” she asked.
“I think it’s a Hail Mary,” he said.
“That’s what you call after you’ve been sacked and the game clock is running out,” she said.
“It’s a little rushed,” he said.
“Twenty-five years ago, we test flew the LEM in March and landed in November. Yeah, it’s a little rushed,” she said.
James shrugged as he leaned against her doorframe. “I’m just wondering, what’s the harm in saying, hey, maybe we postpone to the next window because… you know…”
“Half the controllers we had on this are dead?” she said.
“It was a good speech this morning,” he said.
“No, it wasn’t,” Sharon said.
27 May 1995
The Astrodome
Houston, Texas
29° 41′ 6″ N 95° 24′ 28″ W
One of the local charities had gotten the concessions paid for, so everyone had a box of popcorn and a drink. It was a nice touch. The Astros were in Philadelphia for the weekend. They’d set up a huge screen on the third base line.
Ryan had dispatched an assistant to the main entrance to make sure Hanks was taken care of. His flight from California had been delayed, but he would be here for questions and autographs at the end. Ryan sat in the third-base dugout while the various VIPs blathered on. He’d asked them to forgo a moment of silence. There had been enough silence at the funerals.
Ron Howard was the last to speak, introducing the film that had brought them all here. He still had that easy-going charisma. You could feel the inherent tranquility wafting off of him. He seemed to carry around him a five-foot circle that transported you back to Mayberry. It was comforting. That sort of innocence had been sorely needed by everyone in the bleachers tonight.
They’d had to set up the projector right in the middle of the aisle. It was a little awkward to work with, and the two projectionists had taken a bit to get it set up. Ryan looked up and saw Howard walking into the dugout. They met at the railing. Behind them, the crowd murmured for a bit as they got everything together.
“Thank you for this,” Ryan said.
Howard held out a hand, “I’m so sorry, I met like twenty people in the last hour…”
“Ryan Grimm. I’m the head of public relations…
acting head of…”
“Of course, Ryan. I’m sorry. We spoke on the phone the other day,” the director said.
“Yes, we did,” Ryan confirmed. He gestured to the screen before them and the crowd behind them. “This was awfully nice of you.”
“Not at all. Without all of you, this wouldn’t be nearly as good a picture. What you did for us… what happened… this was the least we could do,” Howard said.
“I hope we don’t cut into your ticket sales with this many people getting an early look,” Ryan said.
Howard waved a hand, “I’m not worried about that. ‘First feature film shot on the Moon’ is doing wonders as a tagline.”
“My boss was so proud to work with you on this,” Ryan said.
Howard took a moment and nodded, “Tom Wheaton,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
Ryan nodded.
“I’m so sorry,” Howard said.
Before Ryan could reply, the screen lit up with the globe of Earth. The Universal Studios logo came into focus. For the next two hours and twenty minutes, the survivors of Johnson Space Center, and their families, got a first look at the film Apollo 13.
About an hour in, just as the
Aquarius was setting down at Fra Mauro, Ryan heard footsteps coming up the tunnel. He turned to see Tom Hanks waving him back and pointing at the screen. He was glad he turned back. The IMAX cameras were showing an incredible vista. A gorgeous lunar landscape resplendent in its infinite variety of grey. As the camera tilted up and caught the blue ball of Earth, you could hear the collective awe ripple through the crowd.
“IMAX, baby,” Hanks whispered as he stepped to the edge of the dugout and joined Ryan and Ron. Ron clapped a hand on his back and rubbed him across the shoulders.
“You’re late,” he whispered to his star, grinning at the screen the whole way.
Over the next few minutes, Ryan watched, ensorcelled, as Jim Lovell and Fred Haise explored the lunar highlands. It took a moment for Ryan to remember that this was actually video of astronauts Wade Caudle and Lewis Ballard and it was filmed last year at Moonbase. The part of
Aquarius was being played by the
Henson, which had been left behind by the crew of Apollo 21. The shots had been filmed by Mae Jemison. No one had been able to put an IMAX camera into vacuum, so these shots weren’t quite so crisp, but it still made you feel as though you were there.
Not able to take his eyes from the screen, he asked quietly, “How did you get the suits to look…”
“Computers,” Howard said.
Nothing more was said until the end credits came up. As Hanks and Bill Paxton and Gary Sinise waved from the flightdeck of the
Iwo Jima the screen came to black. The white letters declared:
“Dedicated to all the men and women of NASA”
Then came the names of the fallen.
If there was anyone left in the audience who wasn’t crying they were either too young to understand, or they simply had no more tears left to give. For two minutes the names flashed on the screen, a handful at a time. Ryan had managed to keep a stiff upper lip until the last set. Tom Wheaton’s name was on the last slide. Ryan thought he would have been honored to share a screen with John Young.
With abiding respect to the Best Boys and Key Grips of the world, Hanks and Howard stepped out during the middle of the end credits, to an enthusiastic applause. They took up chairs at a table under the screen while microphones were set up.
Ryan sat on the bench in the dugout and tried to collect himself as Ron Howard talked about shooting inside the Vomit Comet and his extraordinary thanks to the astronauts of Moonbase for accommodating the requests he had radioed up from the ground.
As the evening wrapped up, Ryan was able to forget the horrors of sifting through rubble and blood. He oversaw a few press photos for the event. He got to shake Kevin Bacon’s hand and pass along his eternal thanks for Footloose. As things were wrapping up, he stood like a deer in headlights as Tom Hanks approached him from twenty feet away.
Hanks reached into the pocket of his suitcoat and pushed a business card into Ryan’s hand.
“Bob asked me to give that to you. He’s expecting your call,” Hanks said.
Ryan looked down at the card and his eyes went wide. He barely managed to get his next sentence out.
“I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”
“You guys have a rocket test coming up, right? Disney wants to produce it for you,” Hanks said.
Despite his training, Ryan found himself stammering.
“Yeah, he was telling me all about it last night. Disney just bought ABC and they’ve got all these big plans. You should give him a call. They want to do a tie in with Tim and Drew and me. Sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun.”
Ryan found himself nodding and robotically thanking America’s favorite actor for passing along the message.
28 July 1995
Moonbase Outpost
Expedition 26
Day 94
Commander Scott MacDonald welcomed the arrival of the Russian invaders with open arms.
“Sasha! Alexei! Come in, everyone! Happy Friday!”
Four Russians entered United States territory, armed with a bottle of vodka and a tray of blini. They were greeted as welcome guests.
The frosty relations that had been thawing for so long had been hit with a fiery blast in April. After a twenty-four-hour period of silent isolation, the Russians had opened their hatches and offered condolences to the Americans, along with food and any other means of support they could provide, most of which was purely ceremonial.
Communities are formed by geography, but they’re strengthened by tragedy. No decent person could see such violence done to a neighbor and resist the urge to act.
In the weeks that followed, pro forma cooperation had become genuine, and it was now common to share time as much as resources, advice as much as water. While Moonbase lacked a table that could sit the entire crew, every Friday evening all personnel, of every space program, came together for a meal and a few hours of recreation.
It had been advantageous to use a common workweek schedule for Moonbase activities. Weekends and evenings were respected. To a long-duration spaceflight, overworked astronauts could be as detrimental as overworked gaskets. The Friday night fellowship marked the beginning of forty-eight hours of downtime. As worthy of celebration in Shackleton as it was in Sacramento.
A typical meal at Moonbase was not much more luxurious than a typical frozen dinner found in half the iceboxes of America, but for Friday nights, both nations tried to impress each other.
A malfunctioning Soviet-era muffle furnace had been retasked by Alexei and now served as a semi-reliable oven. Oleg had been trying new recipes weekly with mixed results, but tonight Base Commander Scott MacDonald was quite taken with what he regarded as a small pancake topped by a single frozen strawberry.
The cylindrical module that had served as the American galley used to be unable to provide anything more advanced than hot water. Now it boasted a microwave, toaster, and a coffee maker. Granted, with the internal pressure of the base and temperatures controlled by safety systems, the coffee would have been sent back if it had ever appeared in an Earthbound diner. Still, progress was progress.
The
Excalibur had brought down another module this week. They were still sorting through the contents. Typically, inbound supply runs featured one disposable tank packed to the gills with boxes of whatever was needed, and a proper module that could be used as a workspace, a hallway, or a cramped sleeping space, depending on the base needs. The new modules also came packed with supplies, so it was often a days-long process of redistributing the contents before they could be used as any kind of effective space.
Connecting new cylinders to the old ones was relatively routine these days. The base already had more than a dozen cylinder modules and three domes. Connie and her rover team were even looking at ways to convert one of the extra water tanks into some kind of livable space. Give bright people limited resources and they’ll find ways to push through those limits.
Ten Americans, four Russians, three folks from IASA who were working with the biomedical team. For Scott MacDonald, it warmed his heart to see that this was truly a place of international cooperation, just as had been intended.
After dinner, everyone had a shot of vodka, which was all Scott would allow. He needed to talk to Leonid about maintenance schedules for the Russian reactor, but that could wait. While the crews were still gathered, he called for everyone’s attention.
“Hey, anyone who wants to, we’re going to be showing our Friday night movie over in Base Command in Dome One. Tonight’s feature, courtesy of our latest shipment up from Earth, is Batman: Dead End.”
A few groans and a couple of cheers. Hank Richards from geology put a hand up, “Is this the one where he fights Predator?”
“This
is the one where he fights Predator. It’s playing to big crowds back home right now.”
“But they had to make it PG-13, right?” Connie Garrett said.
“What do you want from me, Connie?” he asked.
“More blood and guts, clearly,” said Adam Young from the biology team.
People laughed. Scott waved his hands to calm them down.
“All right, all right. If it’s not exciting enough for you, Connie, you and me, we’ll take the new bikes outside and joust, okay?” He paused to let them laugh a bit, then turned to Leonid, who could always be counted on as a great straight man for his routines, “Leo, you’ll let us borrow a couple of control rods, won’t ya?”
More laughs.
“Anyways. The big screen is playing Batman. Next week it’ll be… uh… what else did they send up, Mark?”
“That thing where Connery plays King Arthur, and Apollo 13.”
“There you go. Always feel free to raid the library and get a tape out of there. Please be kind, rewind. And don’t forget, tomorrow night is Captain’s choice, so we’re watching Unforgiven. For those of you who volunteered for Science Saturday work, Gina has your assignments so get those from her. Leo, anything for your folks?”
“Nyet,” said the affable Russian commander.
“Dismissed,” MacDonald said.
The crews began to dispurse like atomic gases: randomly, and occasionally in covalently bonded pairs. He made a point not to take notice of any pairings that might be romantic rather than professional.
He followed Gina through into Dome One and headed down the corridor towards Base Command. Leonid tapped him on the shoulder outside the hatch.
“What’s up, Leo?”
Leonid’s voice was quiet, almost surreptitious, “Have you heard anything more about the terrorist?”
Scott wasn’t sure why his fellow commander felt the need for privacy, “Nothing new this week. They’re still gathering evidence. On the news, they make it sound like they’re looking into who else was involved.”
“They think it was more than this man McVeigh?”
Scott nodded, “We know he had help. Just not sure who and how much.”
“That compound in Oklahoma?” Leonid asked.
“It’s a mess. Half a dozen killed before the rest surrendered. I figure most of the men had some knowledge at least, but they’re still trying to sort out what to do about the women and children.”
Leonid winced slightly, “When they convict these men, they kill them yes?”
Scott smirked, “These folks killed people in Texas.
Texas. In Texas, you can be executed for overcooking someone’s steak.”
Leonid didn’t laugh. The Russian paused, “In the old days, men who conspired against the state and killed. They ended up dead too. Just not so much with the trials and the publicity and the Hard Copy.”
“Take ‘em out in an alley and shoot ‘em?” Scott said.
“For something like this, you wouldn’t even get an alley. They shoot you right in the living room and ruin the carpet,” Leonid said.
Scott shrugged, “More efficient, at the least.”
“Your new facility?” Leonid asked.
“They’re still in the talking stages. Some people are saying we ought to put it underground. Some people think that’s
more dangerous. It’ll be a while.”
“You’re still taking orders from NORAD?”
Scott nodded, “For the most part. Goddard has taken over some of the science stuff.”
Together they entered Base Command. The room was two long rows of computer consoles, facing a large screen. A MOCR in miniature, it was the hub for all communications and control on the lunar surface. Just as Houston had monitored flight operations, Base Command monitored all rover activity, all power infrastructure, and all logistics needs with near constant vigil. The cold, windowless interior at the center of Dome One provided maximum shelter and quick access to the three main branches of the base.
Standing in front of his chair at the rear of the room, Scott saw the standard map of the base projected on the main screen. Radiating out from the “left” of Dome One was the old section. Five little modules arranged like train cars. The galley, geology lab, a bunk room, and the life support module separated Dome One from the old airlock. The old emergency evacuation hatch sat near the midpoint of the chain. Those five modules had been the core of Moonbase in its early years.
Off to the “right” one would find another bunk room, the IASA (formerly ESA) lab, and the Russian bunks. The hatch between the IASA lab and Russian bunk module marked the line of demarcation to the Russian section. The Russians confined their experiments and equipment to Dome Three, which was identical to the others, with the exception that about a quarter of its panels had been made from lunar material, rather than shipped up from Earth.
Ninety degrees away and “up” from Dome One were two modules. The closer was used for storage, farther along was a machine shop. They led into Dome Two, which sported the largest livable open space off of planet Earth.
Inside Dome Two, the rovers were stored, maintained, loaded, and unloaded as the need arose. The base’s small fleet of vehicles now numbered seven with the two experimental bikes that had been sent up recently. The large, sliding bay doors allowed half of the dome’s interior to function as an airlock. The other half, by request of the astronauts, had been left largely open for general use. A basketball hoop was attached to one wall and with an eighteen-foot ceiling height, the room had become a place for exploring the joys of lunar gravity without the head bumps that usually followed. Eventually, as had happened with Dome One, they’d put in a second floor and a third, and the recreation room would become a just another workspace or laboratory, but, for now, it was a great place to spend some free time.
Dome two sprouted a branch of its own. Three modules that contained the water recyclers, another bunk area, and the aqua farm. Eventually, those would connect to dome four, if and when it was ever completed.
As he pondered base construction and the long-term plans for humanity’s first offworld colony, he was ripped from his contemplations by the angry buzz-squeal of the dot matrix printer, spitting out a message from Earth.
***INCREASED SOLAR ACTIVITY EXPECTED – STOP ALL SURFACE OPERATIONS FOR 48 HOURS***
He tore off the paper, folded the little holed strips on each side and cast them into the garbage. Frowning, he showed the news to Leonid, who nodded. When his Russian counterpart had finished reading, he handed the paper to his second-in-command and tapped on the top of his console to get Mike’s attention.
“Mr. Donaldson, give me 1MC please.”
Mike hit a button which activated all the base intercom speakers. Scott took the handset from the side of the console and depressed the button. Near the door, the intercom speaker gave a small pop as it came on.
“All hands, this is your Captain speaking. We’re expecting increased solar activity over the next forty-eight hours. Our friends back on Earthside are telling us to stay indoors this weekend. No EVA’s will be authorized until Monday morning. That is all.”
A smattering of groans resonated in the command center.
“Scott, that’s gonna eat up a lot of my schedule tomorrow,” Gina said. “We’re supposed to send Bobby and Alexei to the ridgeline.”
Scott nodded, “You think I wasn’t planning another ‘test’ of the dirt bikes? It’ll have to wait. Orders.”
Gina sighed and sat, turning her chair to watch the big screen up front.
The musical score filled the room and he hit the switch to turn out the lights. It was movie night on the Moon.
23 September 1995
Launch Complex 39C
Kennedy Space Center
28° 36′ 36″ N 80° 36′ 19″W
The trio of rockets formed a conga line of bridled power. Fully assembled, the completed stack rivalled the height and power of a Saturn V.
Held back by the restraints of the ground supports was the so-called SuperPegasus. The wily trio of F-1C engines sat encased in an aerodynamic shell, augmented with connections to the massive tanks that formed the first stage of the rocket. More powerful than the standard Pegasus that pushed Clippers into orbit, the SuperPeg represented an important, if incremental, upgrade to NASA’s current heavy-lifting capabilities. The second ever built and the first to launch a real payload, this SuperPeg would prove that the Pegasus program could be scaled up and still remain reusable… or it would make an expensive, swampy crater in the wetlands of Kennedy Space Center.
Like a stereotypical middle child, the Centaur booster sat between two more interesting rocket specimens. Centaur was a workhorse and had served the needs of the Clipper fleet for almost twenty years, transiting the famous fleet of orbiters to the heavens, then dying a lonely death over the Indian Ocean. Her single engine was strong, reliable, and economical. Her service record was a monument of unthanked banality.
And with gleaming white skin and a shiny uncrewed capsule atop its frame sat the pièce de résistance of today’s exhibition. The Mars Ascent Vehicle, or MAV, was the most critical piece of hardware in the entire Athena program. Only the second vessel in the history of the human race that could reach the surface of another planet and escape back into orbit. The majority of its length housed the hydrogen that could be converted to methane and water after synthesis with Martian air. That would be the fate of other hydrogen molecules though, as the ones inside
this MAV were destined for a fuel truck in Nevada.
Many of the engineers had argued against doing the test at all. The computer analyses were getting better with every new microprocessor. Computational Fluid Dynamics was now out of the cradle and making headwinds. Testing a system designed for Mars in the thick atmosphere and high gravity of Earth seemed like a publicity stunt to seasoned engineers.
But morale was not a variable that any computer could process. Pride was not part of the calculations of Reynolds and Bernoulli.
This was not the first launch since the bombing, but it was the most significant. Flinging Cargo Clippers with racks of communications satellites hardly inspired the public. At least this launch could have theoretically carried a crew.
Intrepid,
Kitty Hawk, and
Discovery sat idle in the Clipper Processing Facility a few miles away. On the other side of the country,
Adventure was being readied for a military mission at Vandenburg that would not be in the public light.
Every NASA facility had spent the last five months adjusting to the new realities of security. The decorative, friendly guards at the gate had been replaced with camouflaged soldiers who woke up daily expecting an attack. No amount of keycards or bomb-sniffing dogs would keep an exposed population safe, but no one would say that an effort was spared in defense.
Far from the pad, overlooking the Launch Control Room, Ryan Grimm’s eyes moved back and forth between the cameras, the celebrities, and the Air Force man with the M-16. How had he ever gone from a college internship to this?
“Did you throw up?” Angela asked.
“Twice,” Ryan said. “What are they saying?”
“Ten more minutes in the hold,” Angela said.
“How are they handling it?” Ryan asked, nodding towards Tom Hanks and Peter Jennings who were sitting behind a well-lit desk, speaking with Mike Dexter about what it’s like to wait on a launch pad.
“They’re pros. We prepared for this. It’s fine,” she said.
“If that thing craters, you think they’ll fire me? I’m the one who put this all on TV,” he said.
“You’re a government employee. It’ll take more than that,” Angela said.
“I’m not cut out for this,” he said, swallowing from a bottle of Pepto-Bismol that he kept, like a flask, in his coat pocket.
“Focus on the cartoon characters,” she said.
Beyond the anchor desk, a pair of Disney employees were dressed in costumes that would soon be seen at the park in Orlando. One was a cowboy-sheriff of sorts. The other two were a pair of very high-tech astronauts with flashy white and blue space suits. All three had oversized heads and one could make a game of wondering how long it would be before one of them knocked over the cowboy with his large, winged, jetpack.
Forty-five minutes later, the SuperPegasus roared off NASA’s newest launch pad, sending the MAV racing into a clear blue Florida morning.
23 September 1995
La Cañada Flintridge, California
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
34° 12′ 6.1″ N 118° 10′ 18″ W
Barrymore’s smile lit up the screen as the feed came in from the White House. “Thanks Tom and good morning, everyone, especially all you boys and girls out there who are gonna be astronauts one day! My name is Drew Barrymore. I play Sally Nova in Disney’s Toy Story. I’m here with Sally’s namesake, the great astronaut and first American woman in space, Dr. Sally Ride!”
Ride took over, a model of the MAV sitting on the table between them, “Good morning! Before the MAV lands, we wanted to show you around a little here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
“Behind us you can see the flight controllers at their stations. They are monitoring the progress of the ship as it orbits the Earth. We’ll get to meet some of them later.
For effect, Barrymore looked over her shoulder, glancing at the clock counting down on the display board behind them. “We’ve got about another hour until the MAV lands so I thought we could take a look at some of the other equipment NASA is testing for the Athena missions. My friend Tim is outside and, as usual, he’s found a big toy to play with.”
The feed cut to Allen, standing in a sandy field in front of a pair of rounded white vehicles.
“Hey there! I’m Tim Allen and I play Buzz Lightyear. I’m here with the man himself, the moonwalker, commander of Apollo 12 and third man on the Moon: Buzz Aldrin. Buzz and I are gonna look over these beautiful machines that will be driving on Mars in a few years.”
Aldrin stood proudly before the larger vehicle. The overall shape was a smoothed cylinder sandwiched between a wheeled chassis and a large array of flat solar panels. “Thanks Tim. This is the excursion rover. It’s like a mobile home for Mars. This is what the Athena astronauts will use for long trips away from their home base. NASA is sending this up in the first cargo ship that will land a few months after the astronauts get to Mars,” he stepped into the rounded rectangular hatch on the side and the feed shifted to a camera already on board.
“You can see, it’s big enough to fit several astronauts inside,” the camera panned to show the four seats and the cramped space at the rear that housed storage compartments and a kitchenette. “Our astronauts will be taking several trips during their time on Mars. They’ll use this rover to explore areas that have never been reached. Then they’ll bring rocks and other samples back to their base for testing. The most interesting rocks will come home with them on the MAV.”
The feed cut back to Allen outside. He stood in front of a smaller, sleek vehicle. This one had an egg-shaped capsule in front of a flatbed. As though a race of sleek aliens had sat down and designed a pickup truck.
“Buzz’s big rover is really something isn’t it? This is my favorite though. Looks like a hot rod for outer space, doesn’t it? The engineers call this the Red Runner. This baby is a runabout. It’s designed to help haul heavy stuff around and to move fast in case of an emergency. The two robot arms up front allow the driver to pick things up without going outside. The cockpit can carry two people in case someone has to be rescued, and it’s fitted with an engine that has just a big heap of torque.”
Allen shifted into his trademark “man-grunting” for a moment and gave a thumbs up to the man sitting at the controls. The technician started the truck, and it leapt out onto the sand. The camera panned to track it. Allen’s narration continued.
“Because emergencies can happen, the runner can get up to twenty-five miles per hour. That’s a lot faster than most space rovers go. If everyone is safe, it’ll never need to go that fast, but isn’t it cool to see it booking across the sand there?”
The driver climbed a small mound of sand, turned, and came down the embankment without leaving the camera’s view. A moment later, the truck returned to its parking spot and Allen gave the hull a friendly couple of slaps.
“Beautiful machines we got here, Drew. Good enough for a space ranger team like ours!”
23 September 1995
Grissom Proving Grounds
Jackass Flats, NV
36° 48’ N 116° 18’ W
Jonathon Fisk was unimpressed with the TV setup. The operation had been thrown together in haste.
Grissom Proving Grounds, a motley collection of buildings, test stands, old railroad carts, and a runway, had been a bad assignment from the beginning. Carved out of a bad patch of worthless Nevada desert, the center, such as it was, seemed primarily to be built to rope off the areas that had been affected by radioactivity from the NERVA tests a generation ago. Not many residual rads were left over from those fledgling nuclear rockets, but there was the occasional half acre or so that was a bit above the Department of Energy’s recommended levels. It was enough to keep the general public from getting too curious about the site.
Now he had Disney camera crews here, standing next to men in fireproof suits. He was dressed for an inferno; they were dressed for a night in Vegas.
He stood at the end of the range and scanned the skies for the eighty-ninth time. His fire hood was up so he could breathe. The silver suit would hopefully not have to endure anything worse than a Nevada noonday sun, but NASA took no chances when it came to methane and hydrogen.
Behind him, the team stood around the fuel trucks, prepared and a little bored. There was no fancy countdown clock out here. And no one was completely sure that there would be anything to see, let alone to do.
The college kid on a work-study, the 20-year-old simply known as “the intern” came running out of the block house and was yelling. He was fifty yards away and Fisk could not make out what he was saying. The kid pointed at the sky and Fisk followed his finger.
“There she is,” he said to the team. His fuel squad stood a little straighter and followed where he pointed.
In the western sky, she was a black dot that was slowly gaining a shape. The white upper sections began to glint in the sun and with every second, she became a little more clearly defined.
The Disney camera crews began tracking the MAV descent immediately.
Fisk watched the descent, and his legs got a bit warmer. He was prepared to give the “run” command if needed, but that was more instinct than precaution. Grissom was a big facility, and the targeted landing site was more than three miles west of here. If the MAV did as it was supposed to, his team wouldn’t be in danger until they went over to swap out the fuel.
The roar of the engines was the biggest shock. Even from here, they were loud. As the MAV came down through one thousand feet, he understood why they’d wanted to put this on TV. Watching a rocket land vertically was quite a show. Three legs popped out simultaneously.
One of his guys was counting down, a bit off, but it was idle chatter. Half the point of this test was to see if the computers could find the site, and land the hardware safely. No one at Grissom was in control of the rocket itself. The white-shirts in the air conditioning at JPL were in charge. The job of Grissom’s staff was to tank up and clean up.
The spacecraft came down safe, in the middle of a sandy plain. Apart from the clear blue sky and a few cacti, it looked a lot like Mars. Throw a red filter on the camera lens and you’d be halfway to Capricorn One for the year 2000.
His team burst into applause as the engines died and the ship rocked on its legs. The dampers cleared the motion quickly and she was down. He keyed his walkie-talkie.
“TC, Fuel Squad Actual. MAV has landed. We’re into the ten-minute hold.”
Through binoculars, he could see the SFC package at the base was intact and had survived reentry, shield separation and landing. When he saw the solar panels unfolding, he reported it through the radio. It took about 5 minutes for the three panels to extend out and away from the base of the MAV.
“TC, this is Fuel Squad Actual. Can you give us the current pressurization numbers for the CH3 and H2 tanks, over?”
On a notepad he wrote down the numbers as they came in. When working with highly explosive fuels, it helped to know exactly how much you were dealing with.
Thirty minutes after touchdown, he peeled his eyes away from the ship long enough to look at his team.
“What do you say, boys? You ready to go be astronauts?”
They gave a collective cheer.
“Mount up. We’re going to Mars!” he said.
Gleefully they boarded the fuel and fire trucks. A respectable convoy made its way through the scrub brush and dirt out to the landing site. Standing at the base, the MAV had transformed from toy to titan. She was a respectable sized rocket when you stood next to her 20 foot tall landing leg.
The engineers began to take measurements and readings as soon as the trucks stopped. As for his team, they now had to do everything the astronauts would do on Mars. And in their shiny silver suits it added a bit of authenticity.
Over the next hour, the team detached the Sabatier Fuel Converter and loaded it onto a truck so the tech guys could tear it apart later and make sure it had held up okay. They did the same for the solar arrays that had been so neatly unfurled after landing. By the time astronauts landed, a MAV’s SFC should have finished its work and its solar panels could be put to better use elsewhere.
The next step was reconfiguring a few valves to allow for the MAV to be drained of her hydrogen payload. This wasn’t a step that would take place on Mars, but it was critical for the day’s work. A MAV had to bring in a load of hydrogen to mix with the Martian air. By delivering this batch from Florida to Nevada, it would hopefully show that the MAV could put a similar amount down eighty-three million miles away.
On Mars, that hydrogen would be ran through the SFC and made into methane and water. That process would take several weeks. NASA didn’t have that kind of time, hence the fuel team.
The hydrogen was transferred to three trucks that immediately returned to the block house for processing. Once it was safely away, other trucks loaded the MAV’s tanks with methane. Enough for the next phase of this test.
Jonathon Fisk watched from a relay as the fuel gauges slowly ticked up to full. His team worked precisely and efficiently. No useless chatter. No games or jokes. These were deadly serious maneuvers, and they were treated as such.
Forty-five minutes later, all the valves were in their proper configuration. The MAV tanks were full of methane, the fuel trucks were empty and, like every pad technician in Florida, the fuel team boarded their vehicles and hauled ass to safe ground to watch the rocket launch.
When they were back at the blockhouse, the team dismounted and a few began to shuck the heavy fire suits. Fisk put a hand out to stop them.
“The suits stay on guys. This thing could still go bad and we’ll have to deal with it,” he said.
A few groans filled the air but died away quickly. They stood in a long row, watching the MAV in the distance.
23 September 1995
La Cañada Flintridge, California
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
34° 12′ 6.1″ N 118° 10′ 18″ W
Sally Ride fell right back into that camera-ready tone of voice that she had learned more than a decade ago. NASA had made dozens of women into Moonwalkers, herself included, but she was the first woman NASA had made a celebrity.
“Okay, Drew. For the next portion of this test, we’re going to simulate two different parts of the Athena flight back-to-back. First, we’re going to launch the MAV so that we can study how well its engines have held up so far. Then, when the fuel is all gone, the Aurora capsule on top will separate and we’ll see how well it does as it lands back in the desert.”
“So, on the real Athena missions, these two parts don’t happen quite like this, right?” Barrymore asked.
Ride nodded, “On the real Athena missions, the crew will descend from
Orion in an Aurora capsule just like the one on top of our MAV today. That little capsule won’t have the big MAV rocket underneath. It’ll come to Mars with the
Orion, and it’ll stay on the surface once it lands. When the time comes to go home, the Athena astronauts will board the MAV which will carry a
completely different Aurora capsule and fly back to meet up with
Orion in orbit.”
“Okay, so, the Aurora that’s on top of the MAV right now is the kind that comes down, not the kind that goes up?”
“That’s right, but the two kinds are very similar. From the outside, you can’t really tell them apart. The real differences are in what’s on board. The landing version has big springy legs that you’ll see in today’s test. These legs will cushion the landing and keep the astronauts safe inside. The launch version won’t need those legs, so, in that version, we’ll use the space they took up to store our rock samples.”
“Very neat! How long will the astronauts spend in the Auroras on the flight?”
“Well, when they’re coming down, it will be about three or four hours. The plan is to leave
Orion orbiting up high, then bring the Aurora to a lower orbit while we make sure everything is okay at the landing site, then, when everything is ready, it’ll come down and land.”
“And for the launch?”
“The astronauts will climb in when its time to go home. The launch itself will only last about ten minutes. Then the Aurora will fire its little rockets to meet up with
Orion. That might take a few hours, depending on where each ship is at the time.”
“Then back to
Orion and back to Earth?”
“That’s the plan,” Ride said.
Barrymore turned back to the camera, “Okay, we’re almost ready for launch out in Nevada. We’re going to take you back out to Grissom Proving Grounds for the last phase of this test…”
23 September 1995
Grissom Proving Grounds
Jackass Flats, NV
36° 48’ N 116° 18’ W
Without a countdown clock, all the warning they got was the test conductor’s call through the walkie-talkie. The delay getting the signal from a California control room, through the block house and across the complex to his radio meant that the count was slow by about a second and a half. It didn’t matter though. The flash of light and heat was unmistakable. The landing legs fell away in a puff of air and the next phase of the test began.
“There she goes,” someone said.
It was not a triumphant launch. It wasn’t supposed to be. The MAV wasn’t designed for this atmosphere, wasn’t designed for this gravity. Onboard sensors were recording engine performance and later computers would apply the numbers on a virtual Mars and see how she fared. Just that she launched at all was enough. It proved that the systems were rugged enough to survive a rougher ride than was required.
Straining against almost three times her operational weight, she struggled to bear her conical cargo to a testing altitude. When the fuel was spent, the six-seater capsule popped off, right on cue.
“TC, Fuel Team Actual. Confirming CapSep,” Fisk said into his radio.
Now the Aurora began its descent. With such a thick, humid, roiling atmosphere that was alien to her design, she would have a rougher go of it over Nevada than the Eberswalde Delta.
The paltry red and white parachute deployed overhead. On Mars, parachutes were a cruel aeronautical joke, so the one used today was much smaller than that which would slow the astronauts during their descent to the red sands.
Fisk had no clue about the altitude of the ship, but it did seem to be speeding up in its descent. He saw the three landing legs deploy and called in his observation. His legs tensed. This one might not be very elegant.
Around four hundred feet, the trio of retro rockets fired down the angled sides of the cone. He lost sight of the ship as it came down behind a low ridge. The sounds of impact came almost with the loss of the sound of the rockets. He couldn’t be sure about the order of events. But the plume of brown dust and sand told him that Aurora had returned to Earth.
Fisk turned to his team, “Mount up. Let’s go see how we did.”
23 September 1995
La Cañada Flintridge, California
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
34° 12′ 6.1″ N 118° 10′ 18″ W
“Okay, looks like a bit of a rough landing there, but the Aurora has made it. Was that about what you expected, Doctor Ride?”
“More or less. Mars’s weaker gravity means a rough landing here will be much softer there. We’ll know a lot more once we analyze all the sensor data.”
“Well, there you have it. You can see it on your screens there. That’s the Aurora lander on its landing legs, safe on the ground. And you see our special edition toys of Sally and Buzz have survived their trip to space just fine. Remember kids, if you want a chance to win the first space rangers in space, all you have to do is send a ticket stub from Toy Story and a box top from specially marked boxes of Frosted Flakes or Cheerios to the address on the bottom of your screen.”
The camera light went out and Sally Ride saw the young starlet pivot to face another camera across the desk.
“That’s all we have today for the Great Martian Egg Drop. On behalf of myself, Dr. Ride, Dr. Aldrin, and my castmates, Tom and Tim, we want to thank you all for joining us today. Just like NASA we encourage you all to reach for the stars and… as we say in the Space Rangers… ‘To Infinity and Beyond!’”
The lights dimmed and one of the production assistants spoke a quiet “We’re out.”
Sally Ride could practically see the filter of jade descend on the young actress as the cameras were turned off.
“Ugh, how the hell did I get roped in to doing a cereal commercial? I can’t believe I’m giving those idiots ten percent for this kind of scheduling.”
“Uh, sorry,” Ride said, picking up one of the toys from the desk.
“Oh, no. You were great. It’s an honor to meet you. I was cheering you on when you went up on
Constellation.”
“Thanks,” Ride said, looking around for something to say.
“I just don’t like it when they get so commercial. Especially when it’s coming out of my mouth,” Barrymore said.
“I can understand that,” Ride replied.
“Are you heading back to Houston now?” Barrymore asked.
“Actually no. I’m in town for the weekend. I’ve got an old friend that lives here.”
“Cool. If you want, the two of you should come out for a drink tonight. I’m meeting some people at a club in the Hills,” Drew said.
“Yeah, we’re not really young enough for clubs anymore… and are you even old enough to drink?” Ride asked.
Barrymore gave a sweet smile as she gathered a handbag, “Aww, that’s adorable,” she pressed a card into Ride’s hand. “If you change your mind… it’s a two-way street. It’s cool to hang out with an astronaut. There’ll be a lot of Hollywood people there. And your friend, she’ll have fun.”
“Who said it’s a ‘she’?” Ride asked.
“I did,” Barrymore said. They shared a look, then Drew continued, “It’s the nineties. Nothing to worry about. Girl Power.”
Ride looked at the card in her hand with a skeptical eye.
“Either way, it was great meeting you,” the actress said, walking out.
Ride gave a shrugging laugh as she departed. Then she tilted her head slightly. Then she went down the hall and found an empty office with a phone.
It took three rings before the call connected. “Hey you. You’re not gonna believe this…”
24 September 1995
Los Angeles, California
Private Residence
34° 4′ 10″N 118° 26′ 43″W
Sally Ride woke up slowly and checked her watch. The ripple of sunlight had been kind enough to avoid her face until just after nine-thirty. She looked over at Tam and thought about how long it would take to get to LAX today.
Her clothes hung over a chair by the door. Tam’s clothes were intermixed with her own. She grabbed a white t-shirt and pulled it on.
Her head was foggy. It was a standard issue hangover, nothing exotic, but it was the first she’d had in years. She padded to the kitchen for a glass of water. Then another. As she pondered a third, Tam walked in.
“Why did I let you talk me into that?” Ride asked.
“It was fun. How often do you get to go to a club with real celebrities?” Tam said, taking the glass that Sally offered her.
“I can still hear that house beat, or whatever it was, in my skull,” Sally said.
“Big baby,” Tam admonished. “We were there for two hours. And I told you not to try that vodka.”
“I thought they made it strong in Russia. Who knew the good stuff was at a nightclub in Beverly Hills?” Ride asked. “Ugh, that’s the last time I try to recapture my youth.”
Tam smiled, “One fun night. Not gonna kill you.”
She walked to the window. Grabbing one of the curtains, she pulled it wide, letting the morning light flood in.
The dawn broke over the ridge in the distance, but she didn’t notice it. There was a forest of cameras pointed at the window. A phalanx of photographers who were suddenly very interested in the glass between her and them.
She reached quickly to shut the curtains again.
“Holy…”
