by Ben Bova
He pulled out his government smartphone and swiped at the screen. He tapped in a list of orders to Heather’s personal staff. “Your ‘go’ bag”—the ubiquitous suitcase containing a week’s worth of clothes that high-level political appointees always kept close—“is in the trunk. We can be wheels up at Andrews in an hour, and land you just after lunch, local time. It’s an overnight trip at the worst, or I can get you home by two a.m. tonight—which would beat some nights you’ve gotten home from work since starting this job.”
“Four hours to get where? Even my G-650 can’t get us to the West Coast in four hours. Five minimum with headwinds. I don’t know what aerospace contractors you want to visit in California, but there’s no need to travel. They’ve all got offices in DC.”
“You’re right, but we’re not going to LA. I need to get you to Nevada, before the political machinery cranks up, and starts telling you what you ought to think.”
“Nevada? What’s in Nevada that can help us get to Mars—Area 51?”
“The Nevada Test Site, where the last US nuclear explosion took place in 1992. You visited the site after you were first confirmed … and it might just be where you find a solution to saving your husband’s life.”
Heather blinked, uncharacteristically at a loss for words. “What?”
“Thunderwell,” Mitchell said. “I’ll explain once we get there. Then you can decide.”
Two more weeks until they reach Mars.
The manned part of the journey was going like clockwork, exactly as planned. It was the supply vessels that drove them to take drastic measures. They were mere hours into the emergency, but he’d cut the oxygen back to twenty percent, right next to the bare minimum of the 19.5 percent they’d need to survive. Mountain guides and cold-weather scientific expeditions lived on that amount of O2 for weeks at a time. They couldn’t do it forever, but it was a stopgap measure to give them time to consider options.
They laid out their failsafe alternatives, dubbed plans A, B, and C. Just as the manual prescribed. And like all professionals, they didn’t dwell on failure, but only on what it took to ensure success.
Heather and General Mitchell landed at Creech Air Force Base, an hour’s drive north of Las Vegas, but only minutes from the entrance to the Nevada Test Site, or NTS as the sprawling desert testing facility was known. Established January 11, 1951 by the Atomic Energy Commission, the NTS was pocketed with radioactive craters, produced from over nine hundred atomic bomb experiments conducted from 1951 to 1992.
Since nuclear testing stopped in 1992, the NTS was mostly vacant, void of the activity that once permeated the site. Aside from infrequent, non-nuclear underground experiments that peppered the NTS, the NTS resembled more of a ghost town than the once glamorous center for nuclear weaponeers.
General Mitchell moved quickly around the car and opened the door of the government SUV for his boss. With her hair pinned back and sunglasses, Dr. Heather Lewis looked more like the Harvard-trained political science professor she was, rather than a high-ranking political appointee who ran the US’s nuclear weapons enterprise.
Heather stepped unsteadily down into the dirt. Mitchell led her by the elbow up a small rise. Their shoes kicked dust into the air as they walked around scrub brush. Stopping at the crest, they gazed across a brown, desert valley onto a sparse collection of aluminum buildings that dotted the landscape. A large drill bit, some thirty feet across lay on its side next to one of the buildings. Two yellow cranes were fastened to safety hooks on a concrete pad.
Mitchell pointed at the massive drill bit. “We drill shafts twice a year, ten meters in diameter down to a depth of about half a mile. It keeps a small cadre of techs current on their skills.”
“To house non-nuclear underground experiments,” Heather said. “Like you said, I haven’t been out here since I was confirmed. Four years and it doesn’t look any different.” She turned to the one-star general. “I hope you didn’t bring me all the way out here to sell me some idea cooked up by the nuclear labs to keep this place alive.”
“No, ma’am. But you did need to come out here to see the scale of what you need to do—if you’re going to not allow your husband to die.”
Heather reddened. “As if I have any say in the matter. You said yourself we couldn’t resurrect the nuclear engine option in time to save the crew.”
“You’re right. It would take at least five years to resurrect the thermal nuclear reactor program, not to mention build another supply ship. But there’s another option, a quicker, non-reactor nuclear option. And it involves this place.”
“What do you mean?”
“It sounds crazy, but this idea was cooked up by Dr. Edward Teller, so-called father of the H-bomb.”
Heather frowned. “Wasn’t he responsible for Plowshare?”
“He was. But he was responsible for a lot of other ideas as well. This was an idea to use the power of a nuclear explosion in a peaceful way, exotic and unconventional, but in a manner that could benefit space travel on a massive scale.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Actually, I am. He had this idea to rocket tons of material into space—and it just might work.”
Heather looked skeptical. “Tons.”
“The idea is to load an enormous amount of supplies—thousands of tons—onto a slab of high-strength metal, sitting on one of those ten-meter diameter mine shafts you see out in the NTS valley. Dr. Teller wanted to place a nuclear bomb at the bottom of the shaft, a mile or so below the surface, and fill the shaft with water.”
“Water?” Heather looked as if she’d been following his explanation, but her eyes began to wander.
“Stay with me, ma’am. Once the nuclear bomb is detonated, most of the energy—fifty percent of it—would be absorbed by the water, which would be instantly converted into superheated steam. And voila, an incredibly energetic steam piston would push against the plate at the top of the mine shaft and accelerate it up … so fast that the plate and supplies not only leave Earth’s gravitational pull, but if launched at the right instant, could impact Mars,” he lowered his voice, “and provide enough food, water, and supplies for a crew to survive, until either a conventional rescue mission could be mounted, or until they generate enough in situ fuel to make it back home.”
Heather stared down at the brown valley of dust. General Mitchell couldn’t read any emotion in his boss’s expression, as her features were taut, unmoving. She spoke without turning. “You’re saying this Thunderwell is a nuclear-driven golf-shot that could impact Mars. A golf ball of water, food, and fuel. That we can shoot to my husband.”
“Yes, ma’am—that’s the gist of it.”
A moment passed, then she turned to face him. “You have got to be kidding.”
“No, ma’am. I’m dead serious.”
“That’s crazy. How can anything get from one planet to another without a rocket? And just by shooting it into space. Didn’t Jules Verne write about that?”
“Yes, he did—and he was on the right track. With enough initial velocity, it’s possible to shoot nearly anything to the Moon—or Mars, or anywhere else for that matter. The problem is that initial kick. Compressible objects, such as humans, would instantly turn to jelly after such an enormous acceleration. Living things just can’t withstand accelerations greater than eight or nine g’s, not to mention the nearly one hundred thousand g’s created by a nuclear-driven steam piston.”
“It sounds crazy.”
“It does. But we know this can work. We have proof.”
“How?” Heather said. “I would have heard of this Thunderwell if it had worked.”
Mitchel continued patiently. “Scientists have discovered meteorites in Antarctica originating from Mars. They were originally chunks of Martian rock, blown into space by the collision of a huge meteor. Those craters on Mars were created by huge masses, maybe asteroid-size rocks, hitting the surface and ejecting surface material into space. And some of that ejecta left with enough velocit
y to make it all the way to Earth. Accelerated into space just as Thunderwell could accelerate supplies to Mars.”
Heather stared at the massive drill bits. Rust pockmarked their silver-tinged faces. They looked like giant toys left abandoned in the desert. She spoke slowly. “So this nuclear steam piston, Thunderwell, kicks the supplies into space. All the way to Mars.”
“That’s right. The metal platform on top of the vertical shaft is accelerated up into the atmosphere tens of kilometers a second, with enough velocity—and if it’s correctly aimed—to reach Mars and hit the surface.”
She shook her head. “Won’t the supplies be squashed?”
“Any food would have to be freeze-dried, but water and whatever fuel you might want to include wouldn’t be affected by the large acceleration; those are largely incompressible. For electronics and other equipment we’d use technology from the Defense Department’s penetrator program, bombs designed to withstand that type of acceleration can burrow through tens of meters of granite to destroy deeply buried targets. But anything we send would have to be able to withstand both the initial acceleration, as well as the impact on the Martian surface.
“We could have done this years ago. And it would have been far easier to hit the lunar surface, saturate it with supplies before establishing the first permanent human presence on the Moon. We could have saved billions on the space program.”
“If it was so easy, why didn’t we do it?”
Mitchell looked incredulous. “Ma’am, it does mean setting off a nuclear explosion—a thermonuclear bomb that vents into the atmosphere.” He set his mouth. “I suppose we could have done that in the fifties without any consequence. But today?” He shook his head. “It’s just not a career killer, it would create an international incident. It would mean breaking the international Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty—the one that the Senate is just about to ratify. And worse, it might result in possibly dismantling the nuclear nonproliferation regime.” He hesitated, then spoke softly, “The plank that got your party elected and got you confirmed for this job…”
Heather brought her head up quickly. “Then why did you bring me here? Why did you shove this in my face? You could have just as well trotted in one of your national lab lackeys and given me a PowerPoint presentation on the options. Why did you do this?”
Mitchell slowly nodded to himself. “You needed to see this place. You needed to experience for yourself the history, what people did when faced with a seemingly insurmountable foe during the Cold War, when they weighed consequences for themselves of what might happen if they didn’t do what they were doing.
“Those folks weren’t dumb. They knew what they were doing to the environment wasn’t benign.” He took her elbow and turned her around to the north, looking over another vista. A giant hole created by a nuclear blast in the 1950s dominated the landscape, but he ignored the geological feature and instead pointed to a row of stadium bleachers. Faded by the sun, the wood was splintered. Green paint cracked off the seats onto the ground.
Mitchell nodded at the sight. “They brought in crowds by the hundreds to witness the atomic blasts. It seems horrific now, but they knew that there was little radiological danger to the observers. They wouldn’t put congressmen and starlets in danger.
“It might have been decades ago, but they were just as smart as us, and they knew the significance of what they were doing—but they also knew there were long-term consequences. And it all came down to what was most important to them at the time. They had a choice: winning the Cold War—in their minds, preventing extinction—or saving the environment. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe it wasn’t an either/or situation. And maybe they could have done things differently. But the point is that they were absolutely convinced that their priorities were right, no matter what we think of their decisions today.”
“So what’s your point, General?”
“The point is, that was then, and this is now. And you, Madam Administrator, have got to make the same decision for yourself: what are your priorities with all the risks involved?”
Mitchell let go of her arm.
Heather was quiet for a long time. Wind whipped around them, blowing sand into their eyes. Her hair swirled around, but she paid it no attention. Sweeping her hair away as she turned, she whispered, “So you really think Thunderwell can get supplies to Mars?”
“With a well-designed nuclear device, a reinforced shaft, a robust plug, and by strapping the right amount of supplies on top of the plug in the correct places to ensure they don’t induce any unintended torques, waiting until the correct moment to launch, and of course covering it all by an ablative aeroshell—”
Heather sharply held up a hand. “I trust you on the details. Will it work?”
A long moment passed. “Yes, ma’am. I’d stake my life on it.”
Small attitude thrusters on the vessel’s port side sputtered in a sharp staccato. Neutral gas shot from the nozzles at a frequency so high it sounded like bacon sizzling.
Suddenly it stopped. Flexing metal creaked as the spacecraft began to rotate. Stars wheeled around the exterior view screens excruciatingly slowly, mere milliradians at a time as the massive ship rotated sluggishly about its center of mass.
Moments passed, and the thrusters sputtered again, this time on the starboard side. As the craft slowed rotating, a red sliver appeared on the side of the exterior view screen. The sliver increased in size to a crescent, slowly filling the screen. Within minutes, Mars dominated the view as the craft sighed to a stop.
It appeared as if the ship were pointed at the surface, destined to graze the planet on the side; but if their calculations were correct, they were precisely positioned to barely miss and instead delve deep into the Martian atmosphere. And once slowed by aerobraking, their craft would be flung into a highly elliptical orbit around Mars.
Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. Without her husband, Mark, she didn’t have anything to lose.
And Heather was glad she didn’t ask permission ahead of time.
Otherwise, the last-ditch rescue mission never would have been mounted. No matter how great the chance.
As an undersecretary of a major cabinet in the second term of the President’s administration, Heather had immense powers. And as long as she didn’t commit the nation to war, her verbal orders were quickly accomplished.
She slapped a “Sigma 80” Q SAR—special-access-required—program code on the secret Thunderwell project, swearing people to silence and threatening years of jail time if they broke the strict security measures. And with trillions of dollars being tossed around lowering the national debt, funding nondiscretionary spending, and supporting the conflict-de-jour, the percentage of Heather’s $12 billion nuclear enterprise budget that was diverted toward Thunderwell didn’t raise an eyebrow. After all, she was the one who had overseen the drawdown of the nuclear enterprise, and she was the Administration’s golden child.
The national weapon labs wheeled into action. Old geezers who hadn’t thought about underground nuclear tests since the last nuclear device popped off in 1991, before the Test Ban Treaty was put into effect, were wheeled into their emeritus offices to give advice to young bomb-designing whippersnappers—whose only experience setting off a nuclear device had been limited to massive 3-D computer simulations on the world’s fastest-supercomputer of the day. Even then, they were limited to only calculating what size nuclear device and what other technical requirements would be needed to successfully pull off Thunderwell.
Three one-mile-deep shafts, each over ten meters in diameter and each at varying, precise angles to the surface, were simultaneously bored by the reserve crews who had been standing by at Mercury Site for years, the jump-off point in the Nevada Test Site. The elderly crews had been waiting for decades to swing into action in case the Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty had been lifted.
Two Los Alamos, and a third Lawrence Livermore candidate nuclear warhead were rocketed though the nuclear complex validation process, eac
h undergoing a rigorous peer-review process to determine which device would create the precise nuclear conditions that would best enable a successful shot. They all knew they’d only have one chance.
Hydraulic and fluid experts, material scientists, and foundry executives converged on the Nevada Test Site to pound out the exact specifications for the massive plate that would serve as a platform for the supplies. After sleepless hours and with input from the labs’ nuclear experts, they finally settled on a hybrid design of using a massive one-meter thick, thirty-meter-diameter stainless steel plate that would hold the supplies, buttressed by a titanium carbide plug inserted into the hole. There was simply not enough titanium available to build the plate, and a compromise of using steel from the sides of mothballed battleships satisfied the nuclear designers.
Sworn to secrecy, senior management from Safeway, King Soopers, Piggly Wiggly, and a half-dozen other national supermarket chains teamed with Defense Department commissary executives. They met with NASA representatives to determine which dehydrated food stock would best survive the incredible accelerations, exposure to vacuum, and long-term exposure to radiation for the total estimated flight time.
Armed convoys rolled day and night, transporting the three selected warheads from their military storage sites to the safety of the DAF—the Device Assembly Facility—at the Nevada Test Site, minutes from where the shafts were being dug beneath the surface.
Heather herself signed off on the final requirements for ensuring a 50 percent chance of getting eleven kilotons of supplies to Mars: accelerating the plate and supplies to an escape velocity of over twelve kilometers per second drove the nuclear device to be over a half-megaton in energy—560 kilotons—or nearly thirty times larger than the weapon that devastated Hiroshima.
With her preparing an unsanctioned, half-megaton nuclear explosion, orders of magnitude greater than anything known in the last sixty years, she knew that the end of her career was the very last thing she had to worry about.