Regolith

by Brent Reilly

  Those who succeed in becoming president believe that no price is too high. Those who fail, not so much. Winners believe it’s better to win ugly than lose pretty. Cooper was going to become president even if it killed him.

  Cooper worked very hard at perfecting his campaigning because he was against the best in the business: Clinton, Obama, and Palin. This was crucial because voters don’t elect the best candidate for president – they elect the best campaigner.

  The better campaigner always wins.

  Take Bush: his 2000 campaign essentially said, “Things have never been better – vote for change”, and his 2004 said, “Things have never been worse – stay the course.” And won both fucking times. Although 92% of historians rank W a failure, he built up the largest base of Republican voters in history, enjoyed the highest approval ratings (90+) for the longest time from that enlarged base, despite repeatedly raping the Constitution, one signing statement at a time.

  In contrast, Bush’s father won the most decisive war in American history, while preventing widespread chaos as the Soviet Union fell apart, then got his ass kicked by a non-inhaling, self-destructive, draft-dodging womanizer with more baggage than L.A.X. Some of our best presidents have been the worst campaigners, and some of the best campaigners have been our worst presidents.

  Cooper was determined to become a great campaigner.

  Campaigning is not a 9-to-5 job. Politicians work when others don’t: nights, weekends, holidays, golfing, and mealtimes, while staying on-call 24/7/365. A candidate will spend more time with his campaign manager than with the spouse. Lyndon Johnson shook so many hands his own hand literally bled and William Jennings Bryan gave 12 speeches in 15 hours.

  Politicians are often compared to whores because they both screw people for money, but hookers have it much easier since sex practically sells itself, whereas politicians have to sell tons of bullshit in more flavors than Baskin Robbins.

  Cooper desperately needed to win to justify several years of hard campaigning. He didn’t want to end up like Rudy Giuliani, who spent $50 million and won only one delegate. Or lose the presidency after winning the nomination. Once Kerry became the clear frontrunner, the Bush campaign launched a $40 million media blitz depicting him as a weak, indecisive flip-flopper, and Kerry was too broke to contest the charges. Voters accept uncontested accusations as true. It’s like your neighbor yelling in the street that you’re a putz, while you’ve lost your voice to a cold. And Kerry’s billionaire wife was too cheap to spring for a lousy $10 million to immediately counter the attacks. Kerry lost the war before he got the chance to start fighting. As the saying goes, the best time to win a fight is before it starts.

  Not that Cooper had much sympathy. Neither Gore or Kerry measured up. Bush at least looked like he had his shit together. Gore, Kerry, Hillary, and McCain had decades to prepare for a presidential campaign, and then ran it so poorly that they had to replace their campaign managers and campaign slogans.

  Static suddenly replaced his country station. As he fiddled with the radio button, he found one Spanish station after another and envied, for the millionth time, the radio reception that Mexicans enjoyed in America. After fruitlessly cycling the radio, he turned it off in frustration.

  Although he tried to look presidential, the last thing he felt like was the most powerful man in the world. Cooper tired of stringing Henry Jackson along. Today was a perfect day for a confrontation.

  4

  Sitting in his Spartan bedroom on the second floor, astronomy professor and longtime Spacewatch director Henry Joseph Jackson stared at the picture of his dead wife and wished, for the thousandth time, that she was alive to see this. It was his favorite picture, just after they first got serious over half a century ago. She wore the tight green dress, the one that showed the cleavage, with his arm around her, smiling like he won the lottery.

  Damn, she was hotter than a Class 4 solar flare!

  His computer screen showed a live video feed of another beauty, a sleek nuclear-powered spaceship that he named after his wife as her dying wish right before she passed away a year ago. It still pissed him off that she made him name it after her, since she knew damn well that he didn’t want to. The she-devil always had to get the best of him. And now the bitch claimed his life’s work as her own by making a demand on her death bed that he could not refuse.

  He missed her so much.

  He had a hole in his heart the size of Valle Marinus ever since she left him. And it did not help that she seemed eager to go, after battling breast cancer for so many years. The professor would never forget her last words to him: “Fuck around on me and I’ll come back to haunt you.”

  Normally, he used his online “Gaby-cam” to watch dozens of technicians crawl all over it as it sat in a huge hanger in Cape Canaveral, near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But the damn Rock kept getting closer. After Christmas, they secretly moved it to a decommissioned nuclear-missile silo in the High Plains near Chugwater, Wyoming. He hired experts who earthquake-proofed it, including a specially-designed “mattress” that could absorb shocks from any direction. They enclosed the entire spacecraft in vibration dampeners, with a hard shell in case an impact knocked chunks of concrete loose from the roof.

  It pissed him off that he had to move the ship at all. They spent years getting everything just the way they wanted it. The Jackson Space Foundation bought the engine years ago when NASA stopped funding it, then designed an amorphous metal spaceship around it.

  When his former students at Spacewatch first spotted the Rock, the Jackson Space Foundation raised millions to complete the ship in time to intercept it and futilely begged President Palin for the federal government’s help in getting the spaceship ready. Instead, she dismissed the opportunity while the Republican Slime Machine ridiculed the head of the Democratic Party. Moving it then set them back a few months more.

  Astronomers for decades salivated over putting boots down on the easiest rock to reach from Earth, Apollo asteroid 4660 Nereus, so the prospect of landing on the largest rock to cross Earth’s orbit was a dream come true. Until the president of the United States called it a waste of money needed to give more tax cuts for the rich. That outrage mobilized the entire global space community – huge aerospace firms, academics, advocacy groups, sci-fi fans, even celebrities like Tom Hanks -- to do it themselves.

  Their story made for great headlines, however. To capture it, Jackson funded a documentary to tell the story of the thousands of people who donated their time and talent to the project. Like in politics, he made heroes of the frontline workers who usually labored invisibly.

  The spaceship looked like a huge silver penis with brass balls at the base. The design team took the Prometheus unmanned nuclear probe plans, then modified them to carry humans. This saved them years of design work, but left them with a big dick on their hands. Before she died, his wife pointed out the irony of having what looked like an impressive erection named after her. And ever since, he could not look at the ship without thinking of her. People naturally assumed the opposite: that it was so he would have something to remember her by.

  What made their ship so valuable was its incredible speed. It used an ion engine powered by a gigawatt nuclear reactor that hits argon gas with radio waves instead of electrons. Superconducting magnets then shoot the ions out, generating fifty times more thrust than previous versions. Quite simply, this was many times faster than the fastest ever deployed, and light-years ahead of anything NASA was working on. Depending on their relative orbits, Gaby could reach Mars in less than a month. With space ports near Earth and Mars, this ship could act like a shuttle van to colonize the red planet.

  The professor’s son wanted to fire it up during the campaign in front of thousands of reporters and wow the world. The Republicans would shit a collective brick. If it worked. If not, then the late-night comedians would have their biggest field day since Vice President Dick “Shoot First and Aim Later” Cheney shot a 78 year old lawyer in the face with
a shotgun while drinking and hunting.

  Professor Jackson had space in his blood: Vietnam F-4 Phantom fighter pilot, NASA/JPL engineer, director of the Lunar Research Institute in Tucson, senior member of the Planetary Sciences Institute, fellow of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, visiting professor at the International Space University, longtime space sciences professor at the University of Arizona, director of Spacewatch at the University of Arizona, and national head of the international Spaceguard program.

  He had done it all. Well, except for actually going into space. And, at 72, he should be enjoying his golden years. Instead, like Ozzie Osborne on his Retirement Sucks Tour, he rocked on. And it was his own fault, since he founded the Jackson Space Foundation to turn his dreams into reality.

  Called “Maximizing the Habitability of the Solar System”, the book described how the Jackson Space Foundation planned on cashing in on $10 quadrillion in space resources to re-orbit and terraform worlds to accommodate over a hundred billion people in our solar system. Then, in another example of how it is better to be lucky than good, the book came out just as the biggest Earth-crossing asteroid entered the inner solar system, turning the book into an international bestseller that quickly inspired a movie and merchandising.

  His dead wife would have died of jealousy.

  After Arizona elected his son governor in 2002, the Jackson Space Foundation started organizing annual “space summits” in Tucson held on Arizona State Day, February 14th, the day Arizona joined the Union, which also happened to be Valentine’s Day. Arizona was the last continental state to join the Union in 1912 (Alaska and Hawaii joined in 1959). In 2012 Arizona not only celebrated its 100th birthday as a state, but a big space mountain was expected to pass close by. Huge news since Arizona has the most wannabe Martians per capita on Earth.With the global space community’s help, the non-profit would soon become the only organization capable of flying people to BEO (Beyond Earth Orbit). Gaby’s mission was to push a trillion dollar metallic asteroid into a nearby Lagrange point, slice it up, then parachute precious metal ore back to Earth to end their funding worries. Dozens of metallic asteroids had trillions in precious metals, like 16 Psyche, 21 Lutetia, 22 Calliope, 69 Hesperia, 75 Eurydice, 77 Friga, 97 Clotho, and 135 Hertha.

  Then Gaby would re-orbit 1036 Ganymed, the largest Near Earth Object, at 34 kilometers, into an eccentric orbit where it would be gradually converted into a space port. An easy-to-get-to space port would revolutionize space exploration, and the Jackson Space Foundation alone would control access to it.

  Others wanted to use 403 Eros, the second largest NEO and by far the most studied. But at 33 x 13 x 13, it had the shape of a bent peanut which gave it uneven gravity, an odd spin, and limited burrowing possibilities. Ganymed, in contrast, was not only bigger, denser, and more massive, but more spherical, which evened out the gravity and allowed for larger underground facilities. They had to hollow out the rock anyways because anyone on the surface would soon die of isotropic cosmic radiation. Ganymed also had several trillion more in precious metals, which didn’t hurt. And the more gravity, the better, to reduce micro-gravity-related illnesses.

  To reduce the cost of launching payloads into orbit, the professor planned to build a long magnetic levitation rail in Ecuador going up Mount Chimborazo, which had the highest peak on Earth, thanks to the planet’s equatorial bulge. This maglev launcher would allow them to keep both the engine and the fuel on the ground, saving them literally tons of weight, since rocket launchers are 99% rocket and fuel and only 1% payload. Capsules would exit the launcher above most of the atmosphere, saving huge costs. “Maglev” propulsion would drop the cost of putting payload into orbit by a factor of one thousand, and eventually getting into orbit would not cost much more than the electricity to launch it.

  A cheap launcher and a space port gave them the Moon, which has an estimated $5 quadrillion worth of helium3 (HE3) on its surface, enough to power planet Earth for a thousand years. A rare element crucial to making fusion energy, helium3 was worth a thousand times more per weight than gold. A fusion power plant running D-HE3 would have no radioactivity, would be several times more powerful than fission, yet several times cheaper. The Foundation could not only cheaply install thousands of astronomy scopes on the Moon, but make billions a year selling lunar helium3 for fusion power plants.

  Not that money itself motivated him.

  After installing thousands of arrays on the Moon, he wanted to deploy x-ray interferonomy telescopes on Trojan asteroids floating 60 degrees before and after Jupiter. The lunar arrays would collectively be a million times better than terrestrial telescopes, yet interferonomy arrays in Jupiter’s orbit would probably be many times better than the lunar arrays. The glow reflected by inner solar system dust obstructed seeing far, clear, and deep. This reflected sunlight kept the inner solar system relatively bright, but declined in density the farther it got from the Sun. The solution was to deploy scopes beyond the inner solar system in Lagrange orbits 60 degrees before and after Jupiter.

  Lunar helium3 also enabled them to build a fleet of fusion spaceships several times faster than nuclear fission ones. That effectively opens up the entire solar system to humanity. Getting to the gas giants at a constant acceleration of 5 g’s would then take several months instead of several years.

  With a fleet of fusion spaceships, the Jacksons wanted to import asteroids to triple the size of Mars to increase its gravity and maximize its real estate. Then re-orbit Mercury equidistant between Venus and Earth, bulk it up with asteroids, then give it an atmosphere and oceans with thousands of comets and ice-teroids.

  The gas giants had six moons (Titan 5150 kilometers, Ganymede 5262, Callisto 4821, Io 3643, Europa 3122, and Tritan 2700) larger than Pluto (2390 kilometers), and fourteen larger than 1000 kilometers (Titania 1578, Rhea 1528, Oberon 1523, Iapetus 1436, Umbriel 1170, Ariel 1162, Dionel 1120, and Tethys at 1072 kilometers). The Jacksons wanted to re-orbit them in Goldilocks orbits between Venus and the Main Asteroid Belt, bulk them up as much as possible, and optimize them for human habitability. This would multiply the carrying capacity of the solar system from roughly 10 billion on Earth to well over 100 billion living on a dozen bulked up, terraformed worlds. Each worth quadrillions.

  To manufacture cheap bulk antimatter, the professor wanted to turn the largest asteroid, Ceres, into Venus’ moon, (Venus does not have a moon), after bulking it up with E asteroids to make millions of solar panels to eventually create a solar umbrella that blocked all sunlight from reaching Venus. That much solar could power thousands of antimatter production factories on Ceres.

  With enough antimatter, the professor wanted to send manned ships on one-way trips to hundreds of the closest star systems, starting with the closest, most habitable ones. Antimatter-propelled ships can travel up to 67% the speed of light, compared to just 15% for fusion ships and 5% for nuclear fissure propulsion.

  To reduce travel time, the professor proposed slingshotting ships around the inner planets, then Jupiter, and then the Sun to triple their speed while saving trillions in fuel. Getting to the Centauri System would then take just one decade instead of three.

  Not that the professor thought humanity was going to conquer the universe anytime soon. Some galaxies have over a trillion stars. The Milky Way galaxy alone has 300 billion visible stars, and probably many more too faint to detect. The universe has over 400 billion visible galaxies (antimatter and dark matter galaxies may not be visible), some of which are 11 billion light years away. Even at half the speed of light, it would take 22 billion years to get there. The visible universe contains 70 million billion stars. If like our solar system, then those stars averaged one hundred large worlds. That’s a 7 followed by 24 zeros.

  The professor figured that if only 1% of those 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars had habitable worlds; and only 1% of those had simple life; and if only 1% of those had complex life; and if only 1% of those had intelligent life, then there is a lot of intelligent l
ife in the universe. Like, say, 700,000,000,000,000. On the other hand, that’s just one world with intelligent life out of every 10 million. So if just one world out of every 10 million had intelligent life, then 700,000,000,000,000 worlds in the universe had intelligent life. That comes to an average of 7000 intelligent life forms per galaxy, or just over 2% of all star systems. If our galaxy had 7000 forms of intelligent life, assuming one could include humans, then the professor wondered how close the closest intelligent life was.

  Never in a million years did he expect to find out.

  Fortunately or not, the universe is a very big place: at least 156 billion light-years in diameter. The universe is flat, spherical, pinkish (lots of red dwarf stars), 13.7 billion years old, mostly empty, and growing. The universe itself could be surrounded by multi-dimensional multi-verses, if those geniuses at string theory are correct. And the bigger it gets, the faster it grows, such that the galaxies are flying ever farther away from each other. In several billion years, few other galaxies will be even visible within our event horizon. The Milky Way will be a solitary island surrounded by an impassable ocean of space. When it takes billions of years to get from here to there, then you can’t get there from here.

  As for travel time, one light year is almost 10 trillion kilometers. Even traveling at half the speed of light, or over 1 million kilometers per hour, the closest stars are not really all that close. There are about 200 stars within 25 light years, 2000 stars within 50 light years, and roughly 20,000 stars within 100 light years. Just visiting our closest neighbors will take millennia. And our galaxy is 100,000 light years across, although an outer layer of dust doubles that size. If it took a million years just to colonize our galaxy, then it would take 100 million billion years to colonize 100 billion galaxies. Assuming one found a feasible way to cross the millions of light years that separate most galaxies. Since modern humans have dominated Earth for only 10,000 years, compared to 170 million years for dinosaurs, it was hard for the professor to imagine humanity surviving 100 quadrillion years.