On to the Asteroid

by Travis S. Taylor

  “…But Gary assures me that the engineers have gone over and over the ship and tested it out. I know I’d like to have a test flight before we put passengers on board again. By the way, I’ve looked over the numbers and data you sent us along with about a thousand million other engineers and orbital mechanics down here. There is just no way to know if that rock is gonna miss the Earth or not. It’s gonna be close and that is for dang certain. If only there was a way to give it just a few more meters per second of delta-vee. The current track of probable impact is a zone stretching from Texas westward all the way across the Pacific to Japan and into southern Siberia and northern China. We really needed a ‘plan C’ I guess. Well buddy, hang in there and don’t give up hope. We’ll figure something out.”

  “Figure something out, indeed,” Paul muttered shaking his head back and forth. He wasn’t very confident that “they” would figure anything out. They just needed a way to impart a meter per second or two to the rock. The main engines were out of fuel. With the reactor there was plenty of power. There was just no way to convert the heat or electrical energy into thrust without a propellant.

  Paul had done countless calculations. In order to impart enough energy to move the asteroid just a few hundred kilometers more, which just might be enough, would require a small nuclear explosion at about three times ten to the twelve Joules of output energy. That would be just enough to push the rock. The problem was that they didn’t have a nuclear weapon. Although they had a nuclear power plant that was pumping out damned near a megawatt continuously for the next hundred and fifty years, he couldn’t think of any way to use it.

  “If only we had a railgun or a giant magnet or something…” Paul stopped talking to himself in midsentence. They did have a very large magnet. In fact, they had six of them, and each one of them could produce more than three teslas of magnetic field strength each. They had up to eighteen teslas available to them.

  “Holy shit! Why haven’t we thought of this before?” He chastised himself quietly. Paul hurriedly started checking the designs of the magnetic shield system and the six superconducting electromagnet systems. They were modular and they didn’t have to work together. But that didn’t matter. They looked like they could be reconfigured if they needed to be.

  “Let me think…F equals m a, uh, m dv divided by dt.” He scribbled with his finger on the touchscreen notepad app. “Okay, separate the derivative and do some algebra…F over m times dt equals dv.” Paul scribbled some more.

  “Okay, integrate that and I use t naught and v naught for initial conditions and I get delta-tee times F over m equals delta-vee.” He thought about the math he’d just completed. “There’s some integration constants in here somewhere but with the initial conditions they are zero, I think. So this tells me that if we can create a force from the magnets about equal to the mass of the rock, for every second it works we gain a meter per second of delta-vee.” Paul started flipping through the resource materials to find a formula for calculating the force between two magnets.

  “I have to get the team up,” he said excitedly.

  CHAPTER 48

  There had to have been hundreds of “walking wounded” flooding into the emergency room for almost two full days. There were more serious injuries being ambulanced in, but most of those had been taken care of at hospitals closer to ground zero of the impact zone or had been flown to special care locations. The hospitals twenty and thirty miles radius out from the impact of the asteroid fragment were the overflow for people who managed to drive, walk, or through whatever other means, get themselves to a hospital.

  “As you can see, Mr. Chang, your left foot has three broken bones, here, here, and here,” the young ER doctor told him. She had done her best to smile but it was clear that she was being pushed beyond her physical endurance limit. “The nurse will be along in just a minute to take you down for a cast.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Zhi Feng smiled. “The pain medication is working well. I am in little pain right now.”

  “Good. If you don’t have any other questions, I’ll be on my way to my next patient.”

  “No ma’am. Thank you again.” Zhi Feng did his best to smile at her.

  “Great. Wait here for the nurse.”

  Zhi wasn’t in any hurry. And, as far as the FBI was concerned, they probably figured he was dead in the aftermath of the impact. If they had figured out that he’d gotten away they still would have no means of knowing in which direction he had headed afterward. He was just another wounded face in the sea of walking wounded that was marching in every direction to hospitals surrounding the Los Angeles area.

  He was safe from prying eyes at the moment. And if he was lucky, it would take days or maybe even weeks before they figured out that he was even still alive and at large.

  “…and since the Russian missile has failed, the NASA Administrator Dr. Tara Reese-Walker has ordered the Crew of the ISS be evacuated. With no time to implement a Soyuz or commercial launch for the standard vendors, NASA has contracted with Space Excursions to rendezvous with the International Space Station and extract the crew. Word is that Space Excursions CEO Gary Childers himself will be onboard the evacuation flight.”

  Feng listened carefully to the television playing in the background. He stretched and leaned to his right to see around a quite hefty woman holding a blood-soaked bandage to her forehead standing in between him and the television. The woman was moaning in pain. Feng paid her little attention. The fat Americans were simply getting what they deserved, as far as he was concerned.

  “…the flight will be piloted by former NASA astronaut Bill Stetson since the company’s usual pilot, Paul Gesling, is still on the Sutter’s Mill asteroid. It is expected that an undisclosed number of multi-billionaires have also bought seats on the space flight to witness the asteroid as it comes closer to Earth…In other news NASA officials will still make no comment on the status of the asteroid other than that it is still possible for it to impact Earth in a region of the northern hemisphere stretching from Texas to Russia. The president is expected to address the nation today…”

  “Mr. Chang? Mr. Chang?” A nurse in green scrubs with an empty wheelchair approached Feng. “Are you Mr. Chang?”

  “Uh, yes ma’am. I’m Mr. Chang,” Feng told her.

  “Come with me, sir, and we’ll get your cast taken care of,” the nurse told him. She was much too happy so Feng just assumed she hadn’t been at the hospital long. It made sense that at some point the workers would have to change shifts. His doctor looked like she’d been there way too long.

  “Good. And then I can get out of here?”

  “Yes sir. This shouldn’t take but another twenty minutes or so,” the nurse assured him.

  “Good. I really have some place else I need to be right now.” Feng’s foot was not first and foremost on his mind. Although, having it taken care of would make what he had to do come somewhat easier, his sole purpose in life had become finding ways to get his vengeance against Space Excursions. And he had an idea of just how to do that in a very poetic manner. As soon as he got his cast taken care of, he needed to head north to Nevada. Childers and Stetson were going to pay.

  CHAPTER 49

  “No, no, that’s not it at all, comrade. The force from two opposing magnets is found by the square of the field strength times the surface area facing each other divided by two times the magnetic permeability!” Rykov corrected Paul. “You forgot to square the B-field! This is plenty strong enough!”

  “Right, I knew that, but somehow I dropped the exponent in my model,” Paul agreed. “I see. Hold on.”

  Paul tapped at the touch screen and fixed his math error. The graph of force versus area plotted across the screen in front of them. All three of the astronauts gasped with excitement. The function of force vs. area of the permanent magnet plotted on a logarithmic scale. As the surface area of the magnets approached ten thousand square meters the magnitude of the force went above a teranewton or ten to the twelfth new
tons!

  “Is this right?” Hui asked, astounded.

  “Yes. We have a total of eighteen tesla field strength. The ground-penetrating radar shows that the iron ore veins spread out across this thing in every direction across the fracture and on both sides of the asteroid. There is well over twenty thousand square meters of surface area of magnetic ores spread about that are facing each other. This baby can be magnetic,” Paul explained. “The key is, there is nothing to push against but the asteroid itself.”

  “I say we see if we can push it apart,” Mikhail said, motioning with his two fists separating. “We push the smaller piece off the larger piece. At least then we can keep the bigger chunk from hitting the Earth.”

  “That is what I was thinking,” Paul agreed. “But I was hoping we could come up with a way to keep either from hitting. Maybe keep bouncing them into each other?”

  “That’ll never work,” Rykov shot it down. “Once that thing is separated we’re never getting it back together. Besides I’m not so sure how long we can drive the superconductors at full power.”

  “I looked at that. We should be able to run them for several minutes before we overheat the coils and they shut down,” Paul replied. “But if we can’t play billiards with the pieces, then what do we do? We don’t have time to cut up smaller chunks and make a mass driver propulsion system.”

  “We’d need more explosives or bulldozers or something like that,” Rykov agreed. “No time.”

  “Paul, could we split them now and have the two pieces go on either side of the Earth?” Hui asked skeptically.

  “I don’t know? I hadn’t thought of that.” Paul quickly tapped at the screen and adjusted his dynamics model. He ran the algorithm and had the computer plot the simulated trajectories.

  “It might work.” Rykov pulled his floating body in over Paul’s shoulder to get a closer look at his touchpad.

  The model showed the rock splitting apart and the smaller piece accelerated faster—almost three times faster. As the Earth got closer, the two pieces of asteroid continued to separate and then pass by—with the Earth in the middle and no worse for wear. The numbers were tight, but they worked out. The smaller chunk would still pass dangerously close within the calculation and implementation error bars, but it was a better situation than doing nothing at all.

  “We have to call NASA,” Paul said.

  CHAPTER 50

  “…as it stands right now we have no other action alternatives. Anything that you can do up there is the only thing that can be done other than civil defense preparations here on Earth.” Paul, Hui, and Mikhail floated about the viewscreen listening to the NASA administrator. “Our team here has verified your idea. It will at a minimum, assuming it works, push the larger two thirds of the asteroid clear of Earth. The smaller third is still within the error bars of clearing the planet or impacting it. The longer you can maintain the magnetic field, the better your chances are of successfully missing Earth. Also note that our simulations show that the force must be imparted to the asteroid before you are eight days out. The magic number is eighteen point five meters per second of relative delta-vee between the pieces of the asteroid no later than the eight-day mark. You have less than four days to get this done. We will be continuously sending updated information and specifications. If you need any technical analysis or details that we haven’t thought of and supplied then just ask. Three days and seventeen hours and ticking according to the countdown clock running here. Telemetry has time-lag corrected the clock and are uploading the countdown to you now. So get with it.”

  Administrator Reese-Walker paused for a second and looked up from the script she was reading. She removed her reading glasses and massaged her nose a bit and then sighed.

  “The three of you deserve more than this. I’m hesitant to tell you, but you deserve to know. We honestly have no idea how to get you home. I’m truly sorry. Every scientist and engineer in the world is thinking about this problem but nobody has even a wild idea that is feasible.”

  “You must know that I’ve spoken with the president, I’ve spoken with leaders of Russia and China, and I’ve spoken with several philanthropists who have been involved with this effort. I assure you that your families will be well provided for. Hopefully, there will be time in the last day or two to have near real-time video communications with your families and friends. If you have any particular requests, then please do not hesitate.”

  “Again, I can only thank each of you for your sacrifice. God speed. Good luck. And God be with you.”

  Neither of them spoke for several moments. The three astronauts even hesitated to trade glances. In essence, NASA had just told them that they were going to die at some point in the next week or so.

  “So that’s that then, comrades.” Mikhail broke the silence. “We’re going to die. So be it. But we’ve got work to do first.”

  “Right.” Hui nodded. “Our lives will have had purpose. Great purpose.”

  “We’re not dead yet. And, until I’m dead, I’m not dead,” Paul said. “But you’re right comrade! First things first. Suit up. I want you two to take the CTV and go and retrieve the tethers from the fracture. While you two are on EVA. I’m gonna see if the big side of the asteroid can hold its magnetization.”

  “What will we do with the tethers, Paul?” Hui asked.

  “We’re going to tie down the ship to the smaller chunk of rock.” Paul looked at the countdown timer that had started on all the screens in the ship and on his touchpad. “I’ll explain as we move. We have three days seventeen hours forty-four minutes and thirty-seven seconds and we just lost another second.”

  “Roger that,” Hui nodded and pushed herself backwards toward the command capsule hatch. “Let us go, comrade. We must suit up.”

  CHAPTER 51

  It had taken Paul the better part of a day directing the superconducting electromagnets at the surface of the large part of the asteroid to magnetize the metal ores, but it was working. After a while he realized that if he traced the iron dense regions from the ground penetrating radar maps that he had the most success. He also figured out that the magnetization was stronger on the sunlight side. He suspected it had to do with the hotter side being closer to the Curie temperature, near which the magnetic domains would more easily align.

  Hui and Rykov had done their jobs. They retrieved all of the tether materials that they could manage and brought them back in tow behind the CTV. All in all, it had been a hard day of work for all of them. But they still had more to go.

  Paul needed to continue to magnetize the large portion of the asteroid in order to create as large a permanent magnet as they could manage. His current approach was to place the north pole of the magnet on the fracture side. Then, at the last moment, he would align all the field coils on the ship such that the nose of the Tamaroa would be the north pole. Then they would tether themselves to the smaller part of Sutter’s Mill, with the north pole facing the fracture as well. When they flipped on the strong magnets of the shield system, the two large magnets would be pushing north poles against each other with a force of nearly a teranewton.

  Paul sat in the crew quarters seat-belted into a chair drinking a cup of coffee through a straw. Hui was free-floating and so was Rykov. The two of them were jabbering about the work and eating various meals.

  Paul thought about their resources for a brief instant and realized they had enough food, air, and water to last them for another couple months if they had to last that long. Paul didn’t want to think about that because if they were still on this rock in a month it would mean they were headed into deep space and there wasn’t a spacecraft on the world that could get to them before they ran out of something vital to life.

  The sheer morbid reality of it all was setting in on him. While they had to do all they could to save the Earth—to save his wife. All of humanity’s brightest could find no scenario within which the crew of the Tamaroa would survive. Paul didn’t like that. He wanted to see Carolyn again. He w
anted to hold her in his arms and feel her next to him as they told each other everything was going to be okay.

  “I want each of us to record a letter to our families,” he blurted out, interrupting Hui and Rykov’s conversation.

  “Sure thing, comrade,” Rykov said nonplussed.

  “No, I’m serious.” Paul said it more as an order this time. “We may get too busy in the next few days to do so. I want each of you to do this tonight before the sleep cycle.”

  “Are you alright, Paul?” Hui asked him.

  “I just want everyone to record their farewell videos tonight,” he told them.

  “Okay, Paul,” Rykov replied. This time he was more placating than serious.

  “Good, then.” Paul unbuckled from the seat and pushed himself toward his quarters in the habitat section.

  * * *

  “…I don’t know what to say. I just want you to know that the last couple of years have been the most exciting of my life and it isn’t because of going into space or to the Moon or out here. It, well, it has been because of you. I’ve never felt so in love and so helpless and so…” Paul broke down and started crying. He did his best to cover the sound but the privacy curtain was just that, a curtain. He stopped the recording.

  “I can’t do this,” he told himself. “I just can’t.”

  His touchpad dinged at him telling him he had an incoming message. Paul tapped the icon and opened the download. Carolyn’s face popped onto his touchpad screen.

  “…am I on?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. Just say what you want to say.”

  “Paul, it’s me. I hope you get this.” Her voice sounded a bit scratchy and horse.

  “I’ve got it, baby.” He wiped tears from his face. “I’m here.”

  “I’m getting better. I can breathe on my own. I’m walking around now. I’m alive and well. And I miss you.” Carolyn paused for a moment. It was clear this was hard for her too. Paul hated himself for putting her through this.