Lightship

by Stephan Besik

  Another aspect of the orbital problems was the interaction of the strong gravity of the Earth with the gravity of the Moon. Earth’s gravity was strong enough that circular lunar orbits higher than twelve hundred kilometers were not stable. That had a number of implications for navigation planning. In particular, there was no height above the Moon where a satellite could maintain position over the same location, like the geostationary altitude of about twenty-two thousand miles above the Earth. Since Edison had power to change course, she could stay in LLOs to complete her exploratory mission and there was no immediate need for stay above a specific location on the Moon’s surface. When there was such a need, Edison could handle the problem by using its drive for station keeping. That was something no unpowered satellite could do. For an extended stay around the Moon, a vehicle had to be powered to keep from crashing.

  The team reviewed Alvin’s orbital plans every other Earth day, using the data collected by Edison and prior explorations.

  “Great work, Alvin,” commented Suzette. “We’ve gotten a lot of new data, especially the fine-grained spectrographic, magnetic and electrostatic data that we need.”

  “That’s right,” added Lucy. “The habitat planners have been really happy with the stuff you’ve been sending back. We will be in great shape for the probe deployment on the next trip.”

  “Is that a go for the next run?” asked Alvin. “I don’t have an account on the construction computers so it’s hard for me to monitor the progress. Same goes for construction of the new ships.”

  “Well, from what I can tell the probes will be coming up to the space dock in a container in about three weeks,” the drone manager replied. “That should give you time to get back here, and then give us time to go over Edison to look for issues arising from this first trip. Once you’re certified ready by the QA team we’ll be loading the drone container into the cargo frame, and you’ll be going back to the Moon.”

  “How will the drone deployment work?” asked the ship.

  “The container is the launch platform for the exploration units,” explained Robbie, who was managing much of the movement of assets in orbit. “There are going to be three stationary systems deployed, plus a construction drone to do some preliminary surface grading and testing, and three mobile drones that will be doing a fair amount of roving near the surface. The actual deployment will be pretty simple. The drones will be connected to control and they will be fastened to a rail on the inside the pod. Once we’re ready to launch, the pod door will open, the drones will be pushed out of the pod, and they’ll begin to maneuver toward the spots on the visible side of the Moon that we want to explore. The biggest problem in the drop will probably be the change in mass of Edison as the drones are ejected. They will be a significant part of your original weight, so dropping them will increase your speed and raise your orbit. You’ll have to recalculate and probably do a little maneuvering to get back to your original orbit.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem. Well, it all sounds good. When do I start for Earth orbit?”

  Suzette pulled up a display of the Moon and Edison’s position. “I think you can start for home as soon as you check the thrust plan I’m sending you. It’s based on the assumption that you stay in your current polar orbit until you are in the sun to start acceleration. You’ll deploy sails and begin to modify your orbits with declining angles of inclination to the lunar equator. You will also execute a spiral out of lunar orbit that’s a little above the plane of the ecliptic to keep the sails in sunlight. The plan is to use point one gees of acceleration to get you out of lunar orbit in full sunlight for the trip back. You’ll start decelerating as soon as you clear the Moon’s gravity to get back into Earth orbit. Your trajectory will tilt toward the ecliptic, putting you back toward the equator as you approach. Once in orbit you will make adjustments to match speed and location of the Smith dock. When Edison is docked, the drones will climb aboard and start gathering data on her condition. We’ll begin preparation for your second trip as soon as the condition check is completed. Assuming there is nothing significant found, of course.”

  “Okay. So, when I dock, is that when the party will start?”

  Suzette could swear there was a hopeful tone in Alvin’s voice. She grinned. In a long-suffering voice she responded, “Yes, Alvin, that’s when the party will start.”

  The Competition

  In Europe, America, Russia, Japan, India and China there was consternation at the space agencies. Some crazy billionaire had made a cheap, fast flight to the Moon and was announcing plans to build human habitats for research, etc. The space agencies were feeling embarrassed.

  What made it worse, Danny Smith’s solar ship wasn’t a particularly startling advance in spaceflight. The achievement left others behind because no one else had applied the most recent advances in materials to already existing technologies. That made catching up fairly easy, assuming the will to do so; expensive and time-consuming R&D would not be necessary. The potential competitors still didn’t seem to have the will, however. Governments didn’t want to spend the money to get to the Moon because everyone thought there still wasn’t a very good reason to go there. Exploration for the sake of exploring was not a good reason.

  The newly reformed and independent U.S. Planetary Space Force was presently composed of two men. The first U.S. Space Force, which had spent its time fighting for independence from the Air Force, had been quietly disassembled a few years earlier. It had cost money in a time of budgetary oddities in the Federal government. People liked the name; they just didn’t want to pay for a real Space Force. Of course, there were the usual interservice rivalries that had begun to be a problem, too.

  Head of the new Force was Brigadier Arthur “Smiley” Campbell, recently transferred from the Air Force Office of Advanced Technology. His nickname was ironic; his fellow officers in the USAF knew that he rarely smiled, and major contractors knew him as a big pain in the ass. He had been transferred to the Office of Advanced Technology to get him off the backs of some of the biggest Air Force contractors, people who were making scads of money on slower-than-molasses and quite expensive procurement and production processes. When the Space Farce position, as it was known in Congress, had opened up, the contractors pressed the Air Force to move him completely out of the way. (He actually thought the Air Force should have cost-effective and efficient policies and procedures.) Quickly the deed was done.

  His current one-man staff was Colonel Trenton Samuels, a man who thought a lot like Campbell and was therefore a prime candidate for the go-nowhere position of Smiley’s second in command.

  The Air Force was only slightly embarrassed when Campbell was given a ten billion dollar budget and orders from the President’s National Security Advisor to get on the stick and get some solar lightships built. The USAF was pretty firmly convinced that the Planetary Space Force would find itself with little to do because there was nothing of interest on the Moon and probably the near planets as well. The man who was known in the Air Force as the boondoggle killer had become the head of a first-rate boondoggle in the minds of his fellow officers. Government always loved irony.

  Smiley (who hated the nickname for the misnomer that it was) sat with Trent Samuels in his little office at Vandenburg AFB.

  “So what’s our situation?”

  Trent gave his boss a big smile. “We’ve got a boatload of money and no idea how to spend it.”

  Campbell smiled one of his rare, small smiles. “Sounds like a top priority government snafu.”

  “Yes, Sir. This guy Smith has created a new space race all by himself. He’s got robot drones looking for places to set up shop on the Moon and a ship that makes everything everyone else has look like baby buggies. It’s supposed to be self-maintaining, and it can maneuver just like a science fiction spaceship. It also looks like a lot of the problems that have kept man off the Moon for the last sixty years are solvable. He’s got people who solved a bunch of them and are working on the rest. No on
e else is even tooled up.”

  “Who’s our competition, apart from this guy Smith? Can we buy or steal what he’s got?”

  Trent blew out a deep breath. “I think the second question is the easiest. From what I’ve heard he’s gone out of his way to avoid working with the major national space agencies. And I’m not sure it makes sense to try to steal anything from him. Everything they’re doing uses stuff that’s off the shelf or easily constructed using current technology. There’s no reward for the risk. By the way, he’s got one ship in operation and two more nearing completion. If the national agencies don’t come up with money and motivation soon he’s going to leave everyone in the dust. That goes for us, too.

  “As for the competition, there’s a good chance the biggest competitor is China. They’ve got the solar and electronic technology to get close to Smith’s ships. I’m not sure they could build the plasma engines but Smith’s people are using a modified version of a prototype that his group licensed. There is no reason to think that the Chinese couldn’t do the same. Defense Intelligence thinks they’re getting nervous about Smith but they have nothing going in the way of a real program. So they’re about like us.

  “The EU and probably Japan and the U.K. are all likely to be in a close race for next if we make the dubious assumption that we’re going to be second. They’ve all got the technology or access to technology to give it a good try. I think the real question for them all is the same as ours- is it worth it?

  “I’d like to say that Russia is last, but they’re there only if you leave out their spacecraft experience. They aren’t close on solar technology or electronics, and maybe not in the ability to put together a large, truly sophisticated spacecraft. The one big advantage they have is in earth-to-orbit lifting technology and capacity. That includes infrastructure to move people as well as parts.

  “Bottom line is it’s hard to decide who is close. It might even be that Russia is right behind Smith because they can get stuff and people into orbit in proven vehicles.

  “But you know, I don’t think capability is the issue. I think it’s the will to spend the money and do the job. That’s why Smith is where he is now. The real question is what do we get if we follow him? Does he have a dollars-and-sense reason for doing all this, or is he just a rich guy playing with a fancy, really expensive yacht?”

  Campbell smiled another of his rare smiles. “At this point does it really matter? When the President says spend, we spend.” The smile disappeared. “What about colonization? Assuming there’s a need to stay on the Moon, is there some sort of legal framework in place to keep people from shooting each other over a piece of airless rock?”

  Trent shook his head. “Not really. There was a treaty circulated that was supposed to keep nukes off the Moon. People signed it, but it’s pretty narrow. It doesn’t really cover anything except nuclear weapons, and most of our competitors can build weapons that are technically not WMDs but are powerful enough to make small nukes unnecessary. We could also build some interesting stuff on the Moon that could look pretty commercial until we needed it.

  “Basically, if it was on paper it wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on. Apparently Smith circulated his own idea, a thing they call the Lunar Compact, but I haven’t seen a copy yet. Presumably his document addresses some of the issues that the treaty didn’t. And he actually has signatories, although none of them are really space capable except for Smith’s project. From what I can figure out, that was his selling point. Sort of ‘Buy a piece of the Moon.”

  “Jesus. You mean there isn’t even something in place to keep dangerous weapons off the Moon? Did anyone even think about ways to keep people from fighting over valuable property up there?”

  Trent smiled grimly. “I don’t think anyone thought there was any property up there that would ever be valuable. Maybe it’s sort of a bigger version of Antarctica. As usual with we humans though, we can figure out a way to convince ourselves there is land worth fighting over pretty much anywhere we go. That was pretty easy on the Moon. The two poles have some important characteristics that make them more suitable for habitation than other parts of the Moon. Everyone will be looking to set up camp at the poles, and there isn’t really all that much choice real estate. If we’re not careful, we could have exactly what you said- a bunch of people shooting at each other over chunks of an airless rock.”

  “That’s not great. I guess we will have to look into militarization of the Moon, along with everything else. If it turns out that we have to actually do this, I’ll arrange a meeting with someone from the State Department to figure out how to proceed. I’d much rather have a treaty in place than have to start planning for skirmishes up there. Man, I hate working with State. Everything over there takes forever. This is going to be a real hornet’s nest if we have to put people up there.”

  Campbell sighed. “This all hinges on whether we’ve actually got to go to the Moon. I think that means we’ve got two short term goals, aside from write specs and a Request for Proposal to send to those aerospace bandits we have to do business with. We have to find out how this guy Smith thinks he’s going to make money off a Moon colony. If it’s just a scam of some sort, we have to take steps to keep the government from spending more money on this thing. We also have to read this Lunar Compact he’s cooked up to see if it makes any sense, particularly about ownership of property up there. If he’s got a way to make money and his Compact has political support of some sort that gives him ownership of whatever property his people stake out, we need to know as much about his setup as we can find out.”

  “I’ll take on the Compact and you start on goals. See if Smith has made any public statements about his reasons for going to the Moon. Do we have any people available to start looking at their ship design and sketch out an RFP? Would it make sense to recruit any of the current and former astronauts? Do we have anyone we can recruit who can give us a feel for the politics of this mess?”

  Trent shook his head. “I can do the research on motivation, but we have to get started on recruitment. Astronauts are a good starting point but we will need more people from Defense and the branches who are able and willing to contribute ASAP. Do we have to stay in channels on personnel requests or can we snatch and grab?”

  Campbell smiled an evil little smile. “The President wants this. I think we take what we can and call the Secretary if anyone gives us trouble. Our chain of command won’t like that, but they don’t like us anyhow. Let them explain to the Commander in Chief why they can’t help with a few bodies.”

  Trent put up a finger. “One more thing we have to do somehow in our free time. We have to keep tabs on our competition. Can we get some people from Defense Intelligence to help with that?”

  “I’ll handle that. I know a few people over there. I don’t think we can grab any personnel, but my guess is the man in charge would be happy to get a piece of this action. I’ll ask if he can set up a team to keep track of our competitors, even Smith’s people. My guess is he’d rather do that than have us try to freelance the intelligence issues.”

  Campbell stared into space again and then looked at his exec. “Anything else we’ve got to take on?”

  Trent laughed. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Yeah. So we’re good. Let’s plan on meeting once a week, with a bit of communications every day through email if we can find the time.” Then he shook his head ruefully. “Oh, and about that. I’ll talk to my buddy at Defense Intelligence about getting this deal a top-secret classification. I know it’s a pain, but we have to be ready if we have to roll on this. Apart from the project itself, the technological advances in something this exotic could be huge. Even off-the-shelf stuff can be important if they’ve thought of new ways to do important things. We can’t have potentially defense-related stuff talked about on the streets. Besides, we don’t want our erstwhile friends in the Air Force or our competitors to know any more about what we’re doing than we absolutely have to.”

  He sto
od up and offered his hand to Trent. “Sorry you got roped in to this. Let’s hope it’s a big scam. Oh, and welcome aboard.”

  Characters

  Kevin Lee- inventor, builder, entrepreneur

  Danny Smith- entrepreneur, funding and political backer

  Chaz Delsun- Executive Director of the Smith Foundation; Danny’s second in command for the Moon projects

  Charity Thompson- Chaz Delsun’s executive assistant

  Arturo Sanchez- chief engineer

  Klaus Erheim- Lightship project manager

  Suzette Girard- chief mathematician; orbital mechanics and trajectory specialist. Responsible for flight management software.

  Robbie Kay- pilot, systems programmer and AI liaison

  Lucy Lee- Kevin’s cousin, a programmer and drone operator. Works closely with Suzette and Arturo on software integration issues and drone operations.

  Secretary General of the U.N. (a woman)

  Arthur “Smiley” Campbell- Brigadier General in the U.S. Air Force, chief of the U.S. Space Force

  Trenton Samuels- Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, second in command of the U.S. Space Force

  Kelly and Aman- Drone handlers (run manipulators on a drone)

  The Construction Drones (4)- Alley, Baybee, Ceecee and Deedee

  Alvin- ship’s navigational and engineering Artificial Intelligence

  The Explorer Drones (4)- Caramel, Maple, Toffee and Sugar

  The Ship (Lightship I, christened Edison)

  1.2 megawatt solar sails

  60 percent energy conversion, including regeneration cooling vanes embedded in “sails” and engine cooling/regeneration

  50 percent energy conversion in solar fabric panels

  46 metric tons gross weight

  3 tons in control pods