The planetary scientists at JPL would have to wait another hour to see what was now streaming live across her screens. “You will,” he said with an amiable smile. “We’re going to see the data before anyone else and we’ve still got the two atmo probes. That’ll be a real sight.”
“Perhaps,” she sighed. “The pictures will be pretty, but I have doubts about their scientific value.” She was far less interested in atmospheric chemistry than in planetary biology. If something lived out here, Europa was the obvious—perhaps the only—choice.
“Have to give the taxpayers what they want,” Jack argued diplomatically as he fiddled over his controls. “Besides, I’d like to see it myself. That probe Galileo dropped here back in the nineties took all kinds of soundings but nobody thought to put a camera on the stupid thing.”
This is Mission Control.
After their dramatic encounter with Jupiter, the Magellan crew is now speeding away from the gas giant above the plane of the ecliptic. As they continue adding velocity, they could arrive at the Kuiper Belt in under six months if Magellan did not have to also turn around and slow itself down to arrive in orbit at Pluto. Otherwise, the dwarf planet’s weak gravity would not be able to stop them from speeding past it and ultimately out of the solar system.
Late next year, NASA’s first emissaries will arrive at Pluto. But this time will not be idle as there is a full schedule of scientific activities to complete during their extraordinary journey. After a well-earned rest, they have begun receiving the first sets of data from the probes left behind at Jupiter.
♦ ♦ ♦
Owen folded his printed press release into a paper airplane and sent it sailing toward the Public Affairs desk at the opposite end of Manager’s Row. “Nice job. You almost made me forget we could’ve lost the mission.”
Noticing he had the rest of the room’s attention, PAO took a melodramatic bow. “We make the mundane exciting and the exciting mundane,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll let me know if they’re actually going to be able to make it all the way to Pluto.”
Owen jerked a thumb at the flight director who was just coming off shift with his team. “That’s up to these guys.” He got up, following Flight’s lead into a conference room off the main floor. The last controller in shut the door behind them.
Owen leaned over a chair at the far end. “You all earned your pay this week, so I won’t keep you long. Just give me the important stuff,” he said, then realized they’d think all of it was important. “Okay, just the stuff that could blow up in our faces in the next twelve hours.”
Flight motioned to his propulsion engineer. “Prop?”
A gangly young man leaned forward and cleared his throat. “So far the best we’ve able to piece together is an insulation failure at the injector manifold. This triggered the control software into a worst-case failure mode before anyone could isolate the problem.”
“Insulation?” Owen said, dumbfounded. “There’s a story that the JPL guys used supermarket aluminum foil to shield the electrical cables on Voyager. Maybe next time we’ll skip the whole procurement process and just go to Walmart.” If one of the remaining engines failed then they’d be well and truly screwed, so it had behooved them to get to work making sure that would never happen. They’d wasted no time backtracking through every trace file, building a fault tree of probable failure points. If they could figure out what had broken, then they could figure out how to keep it from happening again. Maybe even fix it.
“On the other hand, we do know the control logic worked exactly as designed,” the Data Processing System controller interrupted, anticipating that the next question would be directed at him. The software guys were always a little defensive.
Owen likewise anticipated his not-so-subtle implication. “You mean working in isolation without the AI acting as super-user.”
Being older than most of the others, DIPS was also less reticent. “Yes. If Roy Hoover wasn’t so hardheaded about giving up control, we might have avoided this mess in the first place. Somebody needs to make him put away the white scarf and goggles.”
Owen arched an eyebrow in return. “Somebody” in this context meant him. “His concerns aren’t entirely unwarranted, but let’s hold that thought. You may just get your wish.” He looked back to Flight: Next.
Flight pointed to a young woman Owen didn’t recognize. She pushed a pair of wire-rimmed glasses up over her forehead and rubbed at her eyes. “I’m from the EECOM backroom, sir. We’ve been working on their consumables.”
Now they were getting to the part that had him most worried. While cutting Magellan’s specific impulse by a third would be causing migraines among the flight dynamics team at the other end of the room, it wasn’t as if they’d lost propellant. The velocity budget hadn’t changed; they just had fewer ways to spend it.
No, the real brain-buster would be making certain their consumption rates weren’t going to exceed the available oxygen, water, or calories. Had they planned enough margin to extend the mission by several months and still return with four live astronauts? There was now a real danger that the spacecraft had more fuel for itself than the crew would have for their own bodies.
“The good news is we do believe they have enough calories available to make it through Phase Two. It eats into their contingency margin, though.”
Owen had figured they’d have to use every last scrap of prepackaged meals and assume nothing spoiled. “Your statement implies there’s bad news. Let’s have it.”
She brought her glasses back to the end of her nose. “That includes the survival rations aboard the Dragon.”
That brought groans from around the room. Not far behind starvation in the hierarchy of “things that could kill astronauts” was an emergency high-speed return to Earth. They had a limited window called the Point of No Return, a moving target that grew closer with each day spent adding to their velocity. After PNR, if someone fell seriously ill or the ship suffered a catastrophic failure they could expect people to die during the long trip home.
Barring that, the absolute worst-case, hell-in-a-handbasket contingency was one where they needed to shed so much mass that everyone would pile into the Dragon Lander and use Magellan as a giant nuclear-powered slingshot. When mated to a logistics module, the combined vehicle could hold six months’ worth of protein bars and vitamin supplements along with an air and water recycler that would simply have to work.
“So what are we doing about that?” Owen demanded. “How do we guarantee them enough calories and still keep our PNR options open? Because I’m not willing to let them go much farther if we can’t make sure they have a ride home.”
Flight placed a protective hand on the young woman’s arm. “You should know the crew’s figures don’t agree with ours. Their estimates include the hydroponic garden. We’re not comfortable using that assumption.”
“Should we be?” Owen challenged them. “To you guys, the garden’s a variable out of your control so you don’t want to count on it. I get that. But to them? It’s real, and they’re prepared to use it. I think we need to trust them.”
“They’ve been outbound for all of five weeks,” Flight argued. “They’ve just recently harvested the first crop. Half of that will spoil if they don’t eat it soon.”
Owen drummed his fingers on the conference table. “I see your point.” But still . . . “If they’re going to lose that much to spoilage, then doesn’t that tell us their crops are growing well? Has anyone considered how they might store up a surplus?”
He was answered with a round of puzzled stares. “Think about it, people. We freeze-dry and irradiate every scrap of food we send up there. What are the only things they have an ample supply of in deep space? Anyone?”
The environmental engineer looked embarrassed at her own lack of imagination. “Ionizing radiation,” she said. “Access to vacuum, cold temperatures . . . yeah, I think we can make this work.”
“Now you’re talking!” Owen smacked the table. “Sa
me emergency protocol as always: You guys were on duty when this blew up, so I’m pulling you off the rotation until further notice. Bring in whoever you need to from outside.” It would be the most unlikely Tiger Team NASA had ever assembled: farmers.
♦ ♦ ♦
After hours of sorting through reams of data, they’d assembled enough highlights to send Earthward. Part of the crew’s purpose was to curate information, identifying those images and information that the public might find most interesting. It would take months for the probe’s comparatively weak radios to transmit their full dataset, so it made sense that the only humans in the neighborhood should pick out the juiciest bits for public consumption.
And as Jack predicted, a few pictures would command the world’s attention: from Europa, seas of ice floes with Jupiter looming in the background. From the planet itself were revealed towering, continent-sized cloud formations in rich pastels with crystalline wisps of cirrus above. As the camera panned down the clouds vanished into an abyss that was thousands of miles deep, illuminated by random bursts of lightning.
Houston replied as quickly as light speed allowed: “Magellan, Houston: PAO just about wet themselves. Your pictures are dominating the news. By the way, the science backroom confirmed your assessment of liquid water beneath the ice. They’ll be taking a hard look at the potential biomarkers, but we had to tear ’em away from the video first.”
Noelle collapsed in slow motion onto a nearby bench. “Okay, Jack. You win.”
“See? Even scientists like pretty pictures. Now will you guys get some sleep?”
Roy was way ahead of him even though he still had to practically drag Noelle to bed. When they showed up for their next watch, they’d at least be somewhat less tired than Jack and Traci were now.
After settling back in at his station on the control deck, Jack got on with the rest of his shift. There was still work to do with their new velocity profile; it seemed like every hour the Trench came back with new figures. It was good that they were working on it, but it would’ve been better if they’d just waited until they were ready to send a final answer instead of constant iterations.
He was surprised they’d not heard anything from the environmental and life support team. Then again, meal planning had never been Houston’s specialty.
15
Mission Day 39
Velocity 578,100 m/s (1,293,173 mph)
Acceleration 0.98 m/s2 (0.1g)
Roy was the last to find his way to the table for their shift-turnover meal. As he slid behind his plate of precooked bacon and reconstituted eggs, his nose turned up in disgust. Looking across the table, it didn’t take him long to find the offending scent. The rearrangement of their meal plans had an immediate, unexpected effect. “Templeton,” he grumbled, “are you eating bratwurst?”
“Kielbasa and sauerkraut. Can’t you tell the difference?”
“All I can tell is you eat stuff that would choke a goat.”
Noelle sympathetically patted her husband’s arm. “He spent more time in France than Germany, which I’m afraid his culinary tastes reflect.”
“I need to spend more time with this coffee,” Roy said. He gave Jack’s dish a sidelong glare and wrinkled his nose. “It’s breakfast, for crying out loud.”
“Maybe for you guys,” Jack said, pointing at the disposable tray. “It’s supper for us. Says so right here: flight day thirty-nine, meal three.”
“All the same, I expect all of us to respect each other’s sensitivities.” Roy stabbed his fork at Jack’s plate. “Which means that garbage can wait for midrats, or you’ll be cleaning the waste recyclers for a month.”
“Aye, skipper,” Jack said, and shoved his plate into a nearby fridge.
“Got a tightbeam packet from Houston a couple hours ago,” Traci said, changing the subject. “Personal mail’s been routed to your inboxes. Latest plan-of-the-day changes from Flight are waiting for your approval in the schedule timeline.”
“Any correction vectors yet?”
“Negative. They want to give it time for enough errors to propagate that it makes a difference.”
Roy grunted his agreement around a mouthful of eggs. He dropped his knife, letting it fall to the table in slow motion. “The sooner the better. Continuous thrust does make this thing steer more like an airplane. I’m happy to tweak our heading whenever they think we need it. Beats waiting for one big burn that you have to get just right.”
“Any news from home?” Noelle asked.
Traci frowned. “The usual generalized hate and discontent. People are getting real agitated back home. Half the time I don’t think even they know about what.”
Roy cocked an eyebrow, barely looking up from his plate. “Any directed at us?”
“Sort of,” Traci said. “I think people are more upset about the lack of work in general. When a big expensive spaceship gets so much of the news, it’s like you can see the inflection point approaching in real time: More and more jobs are getting edged out by AI,” she said, stealing a glance at Jack, who in turn pretended to not be looking over at Daisy’s interface.
“It’s a whole industrial revolution compressed into a few years’ time,” Roy agreed. “If PAO allowed that little bit into the news dump, then it’s worse than it looks.”
Traci nodded, picking aimlessly at her plate. “I had time to read some emails. Daddy says they’re losing more production contracts this year. He’s sitting on more seed than he knows what to do with.”
Being a man who appreciated a good whiskey, Roy understood the implication. “The one stock that always holds steady is booze: People get down, they go drinking. When they get happy again, they go drinking. But when distilleries aren’t buying grain from growers like your pop? That ain’t good.”
“Nobody can afford to do anything anymore. It’s kind of frightening.”
Roy pushed away from his plate after inhaling his breakfast. “I’ll be the first to volunteer for a pay freeze if it comes to it. We won’t be spending it out here anyway.”
Public fascination with the discoveries from Europa’s newfound ocean had outweighed any questions as to whether the Magellan expedition should be continuing ahead at all. As long as NASA didn’t make too big a deal about it, the press didn’t seem to think it was worth looking into either. They were too busy concerning themselves with whatever the latest political scandal or market turmoil might do to spike their ratings.
Owen Harriman was just fine letting his team be lost in the background noise. As far as the outside world was concerned, whatever trouble may have happened at Jupiter was just some glitch the whiz kids in Mission Control had been able to find a way around: recalculating critical event points, correction burns, consumable schedules, crew activity plans . . . years’ worth of carefully orchestrated events had just been tossed into the proverbial “file thirteen.” And if the crew could get engine three working again, all of it would have to be re-recalculated.
The public was oblivious to all of that. Good thing nobody was likewise interested in seeing the produce forecasts he was looking at, updating in real time as their newest consultants analyzed data and educated the engineers on the peculiarities of agriculture.
He tossed his tablet onto a stack of printouts on his desk. “In all my years in crewed spaceflight, is it safe to say that the last thing I ever imagined us doing was worrying about crop yields?” Back in his office and away from the FCR, Owen wasn’t enjoying his renewed isolation from the flight control teams.
Grady Morrell was even less sanguine. “We shouldn’t be,” he said, looking across the table. “I don’t want this turning into a survival mission, Ronnie.”
Center Director Ronnie Bledsoe sat across from him, studying the same reports with eyes only a shade darker than his skin. “Semper Gumby,” he said. “A phrase I learned here a long time ago.”
Owen’s eyes darted between the two, trusting there was a joke hidden in there somewhere.
“It means ‘always flexible.’
Pretty sure it’s the original Latin.” Ron Bledsoe had cut his teeth here during the Shuttle and Station years, managing to keep a step ahead of a parade of impressive-sounding but ultimately futile spaceflight projects since then. As often happens, his big break had come after almost getting fired while helping out a troubled private venture which had gone on to become a major player in the highly competitive launch market. He put his copy of the reports down and pushed them away. “Gentlemen, if we’re going to keep sending human beings this far out into the black then it behooves us to be ready for anything. Your people still think like engineers, and that’s fine when we’re operating close to home. Anybody can make it for a few days on protein bars and rationed water.”
“Exactly,” Grady chimed in. “And that’s what we’re trained for.”
Bledsoe wasn’t finished. “What we used to think of as ‘worst case’ has changed. We should’ve brought some agricultural science types in here as soon as we started thinking beyond lunar orbit. I’m comfortable sacrificing a couple of pilot billets if it improves mission flexibility.”
And just like that, space center hiring policy had changed. “You’re right,” Owen admitted while Grady studied the pointed toes of his cowboy boots.
“I’m the boss. I’m supposed to be right. When this is done, give me the names of the consultants you’ve been most impressed with. We’ll see if they can’t be persuaded to come work here full-time.” Bledsoe paused, shifting gears. “Do we have any bright ideas for them besides growing potatoes? Because carb-loading your way back to Earth only works in the movies.”
Owen hesitated to broach the idea he’d been toying with. “Hydroponics are a specialized discipline, and there’s a small subset of . . . enthusiasts, let’s say, who are very good at it.”
“Potheads?” Grady howled. “Are you kidding me, Harriman?”
“No. In fact I’m trying to help our crew by whatever means available,” Owen shot back. “It’s not like somebody smuggled a bag of weed up there and started planting. I’m suggesting we start asking for advice among the legal growers.”
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