by Hall, Gerald
“That sounds very ambitious. I like it.” Beatrice noted.
“Yes, it is ambitious. But the Sea Dragon drops the cost to launch a kilogram into orbit and beyond by a significant amount over that offered by anyone else in the foreseeable future. We still cannot build the very small satellites that were possible in our father’s future timeline. But we can build a much larger satellite that can do the tasks that we require of it with the technology that we can release at this point. With Sea Dragon, we can launch multiple large satellites that can do everything that we ask of them.” James noted.
“You know that we are going to still have to get all of this spending past our accountants. We have to ensure that we have enough money to pay for all of this, of course.” Judith said.
“Remember that our father didn’t exploit all of the mines that he laid claim to. We own the land already. We also know for certain that the assets are there. We have the means. All we have to do send some of our people out there to one or two of the sites to begin mining.” James replied.
“I guess that you are right. But I really wanted to keep those assets in our hip pocket in the event that we had an emergency.”
“If we don’t get this moving now, we might find the emergency on our doorstep. We should also consider reaching out and exploring the overseas mineral deposits that Father’s laptop has the locations for. There are many of them that have not been mined at all. Their exploitation would bring us additional resources and help the local populations at the same time.
You know how important this was for our father. You also know how important this could be for our grandchildren. We can’t just stop with preventing nuclear weapons from being developed and built in massive numbers. We also can’t just stop with keeping Marxism in all of its forms dead and buried either. There are just too many other evil powers and movements out there who will eventually rise and possibly even find a way of developing their own weapons of mass destruction.
We have to ensure humanity’s survival by spreading it far beyond this one world. Once we get a permanent foothold in space, then we can exploit the wealth that we know is out there and expand human settlements to the moon, Mars and beyond. We may even be able to use that wealth to help others here on Earth to stop those potential threats dead in their tracks before they can threaten humanity’s survival and freedom on this world too.”
“Our mining reserves are not our only money-making asset that we have though. Our representatives in the UK, Israel and elsewhere have indicated that there is a strong market for our twin-engine AeroPacket medium transport aircraft. We could expand production of that aircraft by transitioning some of our military aircraft production lines over to assembling it. Our production order for the Dragonfly-J for the Royal Australian Navy is almost complete. As far as I know, we don’t have any customers waiting to purchase more of those aircraft at this time.” Judith explained.
“That will be a little speculative. But I do see your point. The AeroPacket with its twin boom design, relatively large cargo capacity and easy loading configuration could be our next large seller. It certainly has both military and civilian applications throughout the world. The closest competitor would be the German Gotha 244. But the AeroPacket is faster, longer ranged and can carry more than twice the payload of the Gotha design. That will matter a lot for potential customers.”
“But what about all of our other aircraft designs? We have to develop a market for them also if we are going to continue to thrive in the aircraft design and assembly business.” Beatrice interjected.
She had a particular interest in the new aircraft designs, especially with her love of aircraft and flying. In that way, Beatrice was very much like her late mother.
“We will have to see which designs gain enough customer interest to justify investing into the necessary production tooling first.” Judith replied.
“Did that stop our father from building Cavalier flying boats, even before he had a single customer? They were a massive gamble for him, even with all of the knowledge of future history and superior technology that was available to him.” Beatrice retorted.
“The Cavalier was a unique aircraft that could do things that no other nation had built an equivalent to. We have to be able to do the same thing in a completely different marketplace without compromising the security for the technological edge from the future that our father left us with.”
“We certainly have several new aircraft designs that could potentially be the new ‘Cavalier’ for us, especially in the areas of large cargo transports and vertical takeoff and landing designs. The only question is whether or not we commit to bringing them to market. The Cavill name still holds a lot of influence in the aviation industry worldwide.”
Chapter Fifteen:
Cavill Industries Launch Site
Timor Sea, Northwest of Melville Island
October 14, 1956
The small flotilla of Cavill Industry support ships, protected by a combination of Derby naval militia small craft and a pair of Australian Navy destroyers, sat at anchor awaiting another Sea Dragon. This was beginning to be a very familiar site in the Timor Sea.
After the success of the first launch, Cavill Industries rapidly began a series of additional launches of the new heavy launch vehicle. The second launch was only six months after the first one. But the launches that followed were even closer together, with the most recent pair of launches being separated by less than three months.
Werner von Braun himself was watching from the Shinshū Maru for this, the ninth launch of the Sea Dragon. The payload aboard this particular rocket was very unique compared to those of the previous launches. The core rocket was now topped by a nearly one hundred and fifty meter long cylindrical unit. With a diameter of six and a half meters, the payload section was still substantially narrower than the Sea Dragon’s twelve meter diameter. Additional ballast below the first stage engine bell was used to keep this combination stable for launch.
Doctor von Braun had been busy also during the same period of time. His group had launched twice as many rockets. They had mostly launched satellites, but several of the flights carried a new spaceplane for the transfer of personnel into orbit and back. However, all of those launch vehicles were far smaller than the Sea Dragon.
“I can’t believe that I am actually going to see my space station going into space. It is like a dream of mine coming true.” The German-born rocket pioneer said while watching in awe in anticipation of the launch.
“It is coming true though. We wanted you to be here to see it too, Doctor.” Judith Cavill proudly replied.
Even though Doctor von Braun was in charge of his rocket design team, he actually had very little to do with the rest of the Cavills’ overall space program. The Cavills had carefully constructed a firewall between the two programs to prevent any of the relatively advanced technology that they were incorporating into the Sea Dragon and satellite programs from bleeding over into Doctor von Braun’s program. Maintaining tight control through the compartmentalization of information was very important protecting the source of much of the Cavills’ technology. Werner never even saw the ‘black boxes’ that were being incorporated in the satellites that his rockets launched into orbit.
But for Werner von Braun, being even peripherally connected to the space station program was extraordinarily exciting to him. He only wished that he knew more about how the Cavills managed to create such an advanced parallel program. As far as he knew, Werner was the world’s leading expert on rocketry. But yet, he was seeing a massive rocket that appeared to be far more advanced than anything he even had on the drawing boards.
“It is hard to believe that you have been actually launching rockets that are so massive in scale. I’ve known of your other rocket program. But this is entirely different to see such a vehicle being launched.” Werner noted.
“Our other engineers were simply employing a brute force approach with the design of the Sea Dragon. The main engine is incredi
bly simple with pressurized nitrogen gas pushing the fuel into the combustion chamber instead of using turbopumps like your designs employ. Since we have built such a large rocket, it doesn’t need to be quite so efficient in order to achieve our payload and reliability goals, Doctor.” Judith explained without mentioning the design suggestions that she and her siblings had made to their engineers in the first place to opt for these particular design features.
“It certainly makes good use of your shipbuilding yards, I suppose.”
“Indeed, it does. We have had quite a bit of excess capacity with the current slow market for new commercial and military ships. We are now keeping our skilled workers gainfully employed with the construction of the Sea Dragon rockets.”
“What you have done there is still extraordinary
“Well, Doctor. This is actually only the first major habitat component for the space station. It will also be linking up with other smaller elements that we launched previously. But we will be able to send people up to the station very shortly afterwards to begin manning the station. After that, we will be adding more components to expand the station using the Sea Dragon and our other rockets. The next Sea Dragon launch will be sending up a second central core module and supporting spokes in a few months. Then we will be able to expand the space station even further.
Ultimately, we would like to have two permanently manned space stations orbiting Earth, each performing a variety of functions.”
“It seems that perhaps I am becoming the student once again when I am around your family, Fraulein Cavill. How long before your gigantic new rocket launches?” A clearly excited von Braun asked.
“It is less than five minutes before ignition. You can see our support vessel already leaving the vicinity of the rocket to get to a safe distance.”
Shortly after that, the launch clock reached zero. Everyone aboard the Maru began to feel the previously calm ocean rumble under their feet. The tall payload section of the rocket then began to rise even further upward in the distance. Next appeared the upper portion of the booster along with the four auxiliary rocket motors that were also already firing.
A couple of seconds later, there was a bright light in the distance as the main engine of the Sea Dragon finally broke the surface of the ocean. That brilliant flame continued to accelerate skyward, even as the exhaust extended behind the rocket for nearly a mile. The sound of the Sea Dragon’s main engine was so loud once it breached the ocean’s surface that it was difficult for the people on Maru to communicate with each other without screaming even with the ship being at a distance of nearly ten kilometers away from the launch site.
Over four hundred tons of space station was now being hurled into low Earth orbit by the giant rocket. On the Maru, over a hundred people watched from the ship’s flight deck and applauded at the successful achievement of the launch.
“How are you building a toroid ring in space from a single module? I have been so busy with my program that I have not been able to closely study your Sea Dragon or your toroid ring space station design. It appeared that your payload section was one long, continuous module though. That would be very difficult to separate and then reconnect into a toroid ring, it would seem.” Werner asked.
Judith smiled before responding. She was very pleased that the compartmentalization of the Sea Dragon and space station programs from Doctor von Braun’s rocket program was still working very well. She and her siblings had all been concerned about unwanted bleed-over of technologies that were still a few years more advanced than they wanted the world at large to be aware of.
“It’s actually not a true toroid ring, Doctor. The segments are actually a series of six straight, cylindrical modules that are linked together by angled interfaces that articulate on an integral three ring bearing. But each of the modules will eventually be linked to a central core module that they all rotate around. The key feature is that the rotation of the ring is sufficient to generate a centrifugal gravity at least equivalent to that of Mars. We believe that this will be very important to the health of the people living onboard the station. The central core will still stay at roughly zero- G though.
That central core module was put into orbit by an earlier Sea Dragon launch that also carried more than a dozen communications satellites for us. It is long enough to support at least three ring sections. Additional cores can be added to extend the space station for even more rings as necessary. We are also considering attaching inflatable modules to the central core for lightweight, inexpensive expansions to the space station as well.”
“I had hoped to build a larger station that would have a diameter of 75 meters so that the centrifugal gravity generated by its rotation would be very close to that of Earth.” Von Braun commented.
“I know. We wanted to launch the smaller ring first so that we could get it operational and prove its basic concept to the world. The beauty of what we have designed though is that the three-bearing joints are not necessarily limited to one angle when configured. By launching two or more of these space station segments, but with slightly modified interfaces between submodules, we can easily assemble much larger diameter rings. They would be attached to a central core module whose spokes are ninety percent common with the core that we will attach to this ring. The core modules can then be connected in series to increase the overall volume of the space station while all of the rings still rotate at a common velocity. The smaller rings will, of course, be generating lighter gravity than the larger rings. But there are certainly needs for different gravity levels for habitation, laboratory work spaces and other necessary functions.”
“I am extremely impressed with what you and your engineers have created. I am very proud of my work here, but I continue to be astounded by what I see here, Fraulein Cavill.”
“Of course, we still need your ideas to continue to build the future for manned and unmanned space flight. Our Sea Dragon rocket has sufficient payload that we can easily establish the manned base on the Moon and eventually on Mars that you dreamed of, Doctor. Your rockets are an important element to this still because we cannot use Sea Dragon for all of our requirements. It is simply too large for many of our tasks such as launching individual satellites or putting space planes into orbit for the transfer of personnel and materiel back and forth to the space station.”
Werner had no idea just how advanced the space station design really was. It had actually been designed by one of James Michaelson’s space division in the late 2020’s. James had planned on launching it himself at one point. But a series of catastrophes within several major space launch organizations around the world, including one within James’ own corporation. This utterly devastated the world’s space industry. Some people said that the launch failures, some of which cost the lives of more than a dozen astronauts, were sheer bad luck. But others felt that these tragic incidents were the result of terrorists or foreign intelligence agents bent on eliminating any semblance of a space program by any nation.
When James Michaelson traveled back in time and assumed the identity of a dead prospector named Harold Cavill, he brought with in the plans to construct the station along with design data on many other pieces of technology from the mid-21st century. His children had picked up their father’s mantle and committed themselves to building that space station and so much more. Of course, they could not use the advanced technology of the 21st century. But the space station could still be built with technology from only a few years ahead of the current timeline with only a small amount of changes.
Judith and her siblings poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the project. The telecommunications and weather satellite program earned millions, paying for the space station program with room to spare. The weather satellites with their orbiting cameras also gave the Cavills an unparalleled view of the world from above. On several of the satellites, the resolution of their optics was far greater than it was necessary to simply view the weather. These cameras can be turned towards Earth to observe an
y areas of interest or it can be focused out towards the stars instead.
“When you get this space station operational, I would like to fly up to it very much if you can arrange it.” Werner said.
“For all of the work that you have done to make this all possible, I’m sure that we can arrange something for you, Doctor.”
“Danke.” Werner simply replied, tears welling up in his eyes at the thought of finally being able to achieve one of his boyhood dreams.
Chapter Sixteen:
Adlai Stevenson Presidential Campaign Headquarters.
Bloomington, Illinois
November 7, 1956
It was just after midnight after the election. The presidential campaign between Democrat Adlai Stevenson and Republican Robert Taft had been very close for the past four months after the conventions of the two main parties. No one sure who the winner would be until the final votes had been counted in the states of Illinois and California. Adlai had managed to eke out an Electoral College victory by taking most of the most populous states in both coasts. President Taft gave his concession address shortly after daybreak the following morning after it was clear that Stevenson had finally won enough states to win the Electoral College.
“Congratulations, President-elect Stevenson. You ran a very effective campaign against President Taft.” Alan Porter, Adlai Stevenson’s chief political adviser joyfully said after the final polling results came in.
“It helped very much that the American people had become very tired of the austerity programs that the Republicans had maintained, combined with the excessive defense expenditures after the end of the war. They decided that twelve years of Republican-led government was long enough.”