On to the Asteroid

by Travis S. Taylor

  “I’m glad we’re going to be part of the mission. I just wish Bill or I were on the crew.”

  “Paul, the work you’re doing will open up space travel to far more people than NASA ever will. Yes, they’ll get the glory for being the first to ‘explore strange new worlds,’ but it’ll be us that bring those to follow.”

  “Speaking of which, have you thought about how busy space will be in half a year? We’ll have two hotels in orbit and one on the Moon, all full of paying customers. NASA will be launching a crew to Mars and Asteroid Ores will have their rock halfway back. Not to mention the new Chinese and Russian lunar base,” Gesling said with his characteristic zeal as he spoke.

  “Yeah, I’ve thought about that. And I think…” Childers was interrupted by Gesling’s phone vibrating and playing a tune he didn’t recognize.

  “It must be family or something about Carolyn. I have the phone set to send everyone else to messaging,” Gesling said as he looked at the incoming message on his phone. He began to read the message and frowned.

  “Damn! Someone just tried to kill Bill and his wife!”

  “What? Are they okay?” asked Childers, nearly spilling his drink onto his plate as he heard the news.

  “Yeah, well, no, not really. Bill’s okay but his wife was nearly killed by some sort of bomb in his mailbox. She’s lost her left hand and suffered some burns. They’re at the Clear Lake Medical Center. He said he’d call with an update as soon as he knew more.”

  “Text him back. Tell him that we’ll pay for whatever they need. I’ll get my personal physician on a plane to Texas to advise and see if there any specialists we need to hire. And we need security there, now!” Gary slammed his fist against the table rattling the dishes and silverware.

  “What is going on? Why would someone put a bomb in Bill’s mailbox? It’s got to be related to your shooting. It is too coincidental to be anything other than related.” Gesling had gone from his stunned and emotional reaction at hearing the news to a more analytical mode.

  “I fear you’re correct. We have to assume that whoever tried to kill me also tried to kill Bill. Or at least harm him by killing his wife. They’re still out there and until we know otherwise, no one working for me can be safe.” Gary tapped away at his phone sending messages to his personal security teams.

  “Has there been some sort of recent business deal that went bad? Do you have any enemies out there that might have gone over the edge like this?” Paul searched his memories for anything that might offer insight on what was happening.

  “Not that I know of. But for someone to go after me and Bill, it’s got to somehow be related to Space Excursions. I think there is no doubt about that now.”

  “I agree. But who?”

  Childers pondered the question and replied, “And why? What could we possibly have done to cause someone to try and kill us?”

  “Both attempts have resulted in innocent people being injured; first Carolyn and now Rebecca.” Paul rubbed at his chin feeling the days’ growth of whiskers there. “This person is sloppy or doesn’t care who he hurts or how he hurts Space Excursions.”

  “We can’t let that happen again. From now on, you, Bill, your families and all of my personal staff are going to have twenty-four-hour protection.”

  No longer hungry, both Childers and Gesling moved from the dining room table into the living room. Noticing the massive glass window on the front wall of the room, they silently stopped before crossing in front of it, wondering who might be on the other side looking in. Childers walked to the right side and pulled the curtains closed.

  Time until Asteroid 2018HM5 “Sutter’s Mill” reaches near Earth: 338 days.

  CHAPTER 9

  The electric propulsion system’s small but relentless push on asteroid Sutter’s Mill was slowly altering its trajectory. Had the high-voltage power supply that fed the thrusters not shorted out, there is no doubt they would have placed the rock on a path that would take it safely into a lunar orbit, making it accessible for Earth’s resource-hungry population to mine. But the power supply did fail, and the beautiful blue glow of the thrusters winked out, stopping before the asteroid was placed in the desired orbit, leaving it on a path that no one had planned or even yet knew. But soon the smart people back on Earth would know where it was heading—and they would be terrified.

  * * *

  “Monsieur Rosalez, we have a problem,” said Maurice Aubuchon with his characteristic frown.

  “What is the problem, Maurice?”

  “The thrusters have shut down prematurely on the asteroid and we don’t know why. They shut down late yesterday and we’ve been running diagnostics to try and find the cause. So far, we have not been successful.”

  “Well, keep troubleshooting and let me know when you figure something out.”

  “Yes, Monsieur, but there is another problem that you should know about.”

  “Another problem? What’s that?”

  “The astrodynamicists have been looking at the new trajectory of the asteroid. The one it was on when the thrusters failed. It doesn’t look good.”

  “It doesn’t look good? I would imagine not. Those thrusters were supposed to run another few months to put it on a trajectory that would make it accessible for us to mine. Other than costing me hundreds of millions of Euros to build and perhaps costing me billions of Euros in lost revenue, what else could be ‘not good?’” Rosalez asked, now sounding more irritated.

  “They think the asteroid is now on a collision course with the Earth…” Maurice let the final words of the sentence trail off, as if he were hoping they would not be true if he didn’t say them loudly.

  “What? Are they sure? How can that be? I thought we’d shown that the new trajectory would pose no risk of an impact.”

  “We did show that; if the system had remained on and functional, we are certain the new trajectory posed no risk to the planet. But they shut down prematurely and, well, now it looks like we have a big problem.”

  “Oh. My. God. Don’t tell anyone about this until we’re sure about the analysis. Let me talk to the people who made the calculation and get them someone to double check their results.”

  “Yes, sir. Right away. We’ll have them ready to speak to you about their calculations within the hour,” Maurice stammered as he hurried off.

  “Great. Just great. Not only will I lose billions, but I might be responsible for killing millions of people if this thing hits…” Had anyone been looking at the dark-skinned Rosalez, they would have seen him turn distinctly pale.

  Time until Asteroid 2018HM5 “Sutter’s Mill” reaches Earth: 271 days.

  CHAPTER 10

  The ninth-floor conference room at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC was filling up fast. The main event, Vice-President Alexa Faulkner, hadn’t yet arrived, but even without her, the room was filled with enough “important people” to make even the most jaded of the Washington cocktail party scene take notice.

  Gary Childers was used to being around the wealthy and connected, but this, he thought, was ridiculous. He saw at least five senators, the presidents of Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed-Martin, as well as several other major aerospace companies. Settling in at the head table were a group of nervous-looking men and women with touchpads who looked totally out of place compared to the others assembled in the room. Must be scientists or engineers, he thought.

  Childers had received an invitation to the meeting only three days before, in the form of a personal call from the NASA administrator, no less. All she would say was that there was a “situation” that required his expertise and that there would be a meeting in Washington during which she would explain. He was even promised reimbursement for his travel expenses, as if he cared. He was clueless about the topic, but he could tell it was important by looking around at his peers. That, and the fact that everyone in the room except the scientists at the table had been asked to leave their electronics at the door.

  Vice President Faulkner
walked briskly into the room, accompanied by NASA Administrator Tara Reese-Walker. The women were engaged in lively conversation as they approached the podium, with Reese-Walker only briefly introducing Vice President Faulkner and taking a seat on the front row.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for adjusting your very busy schedules to join us here today. This meeting was called at the request of the president and he’s asked me to personally lead the effort I’m about describe. I realize many of you, though not all, have security clearances of various levels. Today you are going to be briefed on a national security situation and my handlers have asked me to ask if anyone in the room objects to being bound by national security regulations, under penalty of fine and jail, for revealing what is about to be discussed. If so, then you are free to leave. All who remain are implicitly accepting these conditions.” She paused for effect and scanned the room to see if anyone would get up and leave. None did.

  “Very good. What we have is a national, dare I say, global emergency. As you may be aware, several months ago the company Asteroid Ores launched a spacecraft to rendezvous with an asteroid now called Sutter’s Mill with the intent of diverting its course through space so as to bring it back to the Earth for mining purposes. According to the company, the mission was all going according to plan until their propulsion system stopped functioning late last week. It was supposed to continue operating for another several months in order to place the asteroid in a safe lunar orbit. When the propulsion system stopped working, the Asteroid Ores team did all they could do to get it working again—without success. When their analysts looked at how much they’d already altered the asteroid’s path before the system failed, they discovered that the two-billion-ton asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. It will impact in just under eight months.”

  The room was so quiet that Childers could hear the person next to him breathing.

  “Administrator Reese-Walker, can you inform the group what the effects of the impact are likely to be?”

  “Yes, Madame Vice President. Ladies and Gentlemen, the experts tell me that the Sutter’s Mill asteroid will enter the atmosphere at seventeen kilometers per second, roughly fifty times the speed of sound. It should begin to break up in the atmosphere at an altitude of about fifty-four kilometers, assuring that it will reach the ground in multiple pieces, each still traveling at about sixteen kilometers per second. The combined energy at impact of the fragments will total about fifty thousand megatons. That’s about one thousand times more energy than the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever tested. If it hits land, then, at a minimum, it will make a crater fourteen kilometers across and half a kilometer deep. Those five hundred kilometers away will feel an earthquake of magnitude seven point eight on the Richter Scale and be pelted with ejecta from the impact. Those that are within one hundred kilometers will momentarily see a fireball twenty-five times larger than the Sun—before their clothing ignites and they die. If it strikes water, the resultant tsunami will be between twenty and two hundred meters in height. High enough to wipe out complete cities along the coastlines of whatever body of water it strikes. And the experts in this field tend to argue about what the longer-lasting impact on humanity will be. Needless to say, things will be bad on the scale of apocalyptic.”

  The stunned silence in the room quickly gave way to chatter as participants talked to themselves and each other about what they’d just heard. Childers remained silent.

  “Now, let’s dispense with the Hollywood theatrics. We don’t have Bruce Willis waiting in the wings with a super-shuttle and a hydrogen bomb ready to go and blast this rock to smithereens. Though using nuclear weapons to divert it is an option that remains on the table. We also need to let everyone know this is not, I repeat, is not an Extinction Level Event. If it hits, then millions of people will die. Millions. There will be long-term implications to mankind. But it won’t wreck the entire planet and people will survive,” Reese-Walker continued.

  “The next thing I need to dispel is the belief that someone in the government has the responsibility for this sort of thing. No one does. No organization wanted the job of protecting the planet because they knew that no new money would come with the added responsibility. NASA’s Office of Planetary Protection is only chartered to consider biological cross contamination, not diverting asteroids. No one in DoD or at DARPA has the job either. All we’ve been funded to do over the last few years is to identify and track new asteroids. Period. Now, there are some bright people here and across the world who have done some thinking about the problem on their own time and they’ve already come up with what we believe is a workable solution. One that has a chance of avoiding catastrophe.”

  Reese-Walker looked around the room, making eye contact with some key people she apparently recognized, including Childers.

  So why are we here? Childers thought to himself.

  As if reading his mind, she continued, “You’re here because you or your organization has critical hardware or skills that will be needed to divert the asteroid and prevent it from hitting in the first place. We have a plan and today we’re asking you to help make it happen.” She stopped and pointed to one of the men, a scientist type—with the requisite mustache and chin-only beard—sitting at the table. He arose and moved to the podium.

  “Good morning, I’m Colin Dachwald. I’m a small-body scientist from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and it looks like I’m the one elected to fill you in on the plan that we think will keep the beast from hitting the Earth. This has come together rather fast, and I am sure there are holes, so please make notes and be ready to put us on the right track if need be.”

  “The key to diverting Sutter’s Mill is to subtly change its trajectory. Most people incorrectly think that the rock is going to hit the Earth because it is aimed at us. They’re wrong. It’s going to hit the Earth because two bodies are going to occupy the same volume of space at the same time. That volume of space is currently empty. It’s where the Earth will be in a few months as we travel around the Sun. It’s also where Sutter’s Mill will be at the exact same time, and that’s the problem. To prevent the strike, we need to make sure Sutter’s Mill passes through a slightly different volume of space than the Earth at that time so that we won’t run into each other. Either that, or cause it to pass that point before or after we get there, which is much harder to do.”

  “Why not just blow it up?” asked one of the men seated near the front. Childers didn’t know the man.

  “A good question. First of all, Sutter’s Mill is about two kilometers long and has a mass of over four billion metric tons. We don’t have a bomb big enough to vaporize or even completely shatter something that big. If we were to try, we might just break the big rock into a few smaller rocks, all still headed on a collision course with Earth. So instead of the planet getting hit with a bullet, it would get his with a shotgun blast, which might be just as bad or worse. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t use a nuclear weapon to divert it, however.”

  “I don’t understand,” said the man who asked the question.

  “When a hydrogen bomb detonates on the Earth or in the atmosphere, most of the effects are caused by all that energy being deposited in the atmosphere. In space, the bomb would release neutrons and x-rays among other things, which would dramatically heat up the surface of the asteroid, causing some of the surface to boil off. The material that boils off would act like a rocket, with the ejecta going in one direction, pushing the rock in the other direction. It should work, but I would call it a last resort choice because of the possibility that it would shatter the rock into pieces.”

  “We don’t have much time. The longer we delay in diverting the asteroid, the smaller our chances of success. A small change in course while it is still far away will result in a much larger miss distance later on. If we wait too long, then we won’t be able to give it enough of a push to put it on a course that will avoid hitting us. Given that we don’t have time to build and test new hardware to deflect it, we’re
opting to take existing hardware and use it. We’re going to go to Sutter’s Mill and repair or replace the electric propulsion system that failed and caused the problem to begin with. We estimate that the system Asteroid Ores put on the rock could still give it enough of a shove to miss the Earth if we get there while it is still several months out.”

  “Why don’t they go out there and fix the damned thing? Are they going to pay for it?” asked the CEO of Lockheed-Martin.

  “They simply don’t have the resources to pay for sending a crew to the asteroid to affect the repair, which is what we believe is the best approach to solve the problem. I really don’t want to comment any further on Asteroid Ores’ legal liability. Believe me when I say that the attorneys are all over this as we speak,” Reese-Walker chimed in from her seat near the speaker’s podium.

  Dachwald signaled for the first slide to be projected on the screen at the front of the room. It showed a cartoon of a space vehicle departing Earth orbit. Childers immediately recognize the parts shown in the figure and smiled. These guys have been busy, he thought.

  “We propose to use NASA’s heavy lift rocket to take the recently tested nuclear thermal propulsion stage, the one planned for the upcoming Mars mission, to an assembly orbit around the Earth where it will mate with Space Excursions’ inflatable, the one they are building for the Mars mission, which will serve as the crew’s deep space habitat. The crew will then launch on one of the commercial space planes, rendezvous with the assembled ship, and be on their way to the asteroid.” He then advanced to the next slide.

  “When they arrive, they’ll rendezvous with Sutter’s Mill near the location of the malfunctioning electric propulsion system, go EVA and repair or replace the electric propulsion engines that failed. Once they restart the engines, the crew will remain for a week or so and then depart for home. The timing of their return will depend on too many factors to know it exactly now—the date they arrive, the length of time it takes to repair the existing system, the alignment of the asteroid with Earth to minimize the fuel requirements, etc.”