The President looked at Stan Benko for a second, as if expecting him to say something more. When nothing was forthcoming, he smiled. “I’ll see you all tomorrow morning, then. I realize that Professor Kinsella is an early riser, but I like to sleep in. The meeting will get underway promptly at eight. Someone will escort you to the meeting; you will need to be ready at seven.”
The President stood, followed instantly by Captain Gilly and Stephanie, a few seconds later by the others.
Monday morning was more of a zoo than Stephanie had anticipated. The number of people attending the meeting seemed to be closer to sixty, rather than forty. There were a few photographers but Stephanie was sure they were official and not news reporters.
Promptly at eight the doors opened and the President entered, after once again being announced. Everyone in the room stood, and the President walked to the head of the table and waved to them. “Please, be seated.”
He remained standing as everyone else sat down. “We are here today to listen to a rather remarkable proposal.” He motioned to Stephanie and she stood up. “Professor Kinsella, I understand you prefer to be addressed by your professorial title. Please, Professor, if you would, cover the high points.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Stephanie started speaking, ignoring the Power Point presentation someone had prepared that showed on a series of large video screens around the room. She spoke a few words about her background and qualifications, then she kept the discovery of the Benko-Chang effect remarkably innocent of discussion of the ad hoc and empirical nature of the discovery.
She mentioned the VW on the moon only in passing as a “basic proof of principle” and again, left out details like the make and model of car that had ascended to the moon.
She slowed considerably as she discussed the ship she wished to build, but even then she just hit the high points. It took just a few minutes longer than half an hour.
“Thank you, Professor,” the President told her as she indicated she was finished.
“The Director of Intelligence has a brief statement.”
A man in an impeccable suit a few chairs from the President rose to speak.
“The transmitter on the moon ceased to function on Friday evening of last week. However, before it stopped transmitting we gathered quite a lot of data.
“It was most assuredly on the moon. The views the camera provided were sufficient to place it to within a few feet. While we do not have any direct video of our own, there is no reason to doubt the essential facts. A launch was detected from Pasadena, California at the time Professor Kinsella reported her vehicle departed. The vehicle was initially tracked on a trajectory that our people assure me is entirely consistent with the possibility of a moon landing. The vehicle’s signal was detected and monitored from any number of stations, with the most modern equipment. The monitoring of the signal began soon after launch. There was a device launched from California that landed on the moon and transmitted from there for about twelve days.”
He sat back down.
The President stayed seated when he spoke. “I intend to conduct this meeting in an orderly fashion. We will engage Professor Kinsella in questions for the next half hour, or until there are no more questions, in regards to the basic discovery and the lunar mission. Then we will break for twenty minutes. When we come back, we will have a discussion without time limit on her proposal.
“Who wants to ask the first question?”
It wasn’t quite like a physics department meeting, Stephanie realized. No one was so crass as to raise a hand. Several people at the table leaned forward and gave the President significant looks or nodded in his direction.
“I’ll introduce the speakers,” the President told Stephanie, “assuming I can remember all their names myself.” There were a few chuckles around the table. “Mr. Kurt Weldon, the Presidential Science Advisor designate.”
“Thank you, sir. I wish to say at the outset that I’ve met Professor Kinsella a few times at various professional functions, either with the AIP, the American Institute of Physics or the Triple-A S, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. However I would characterize that association as ‘handshake acquaintance.’ I was not on the Professor’s short list of reviewers of the journal article that will be coming out in ‘Science’ magazine in another month, or the Gang of Seven who visited the President ten days ago.
“I have looked over both the article proofs and the patent that has been submitted, as well as Professor Kinsella’s proposal. Professor Kinsella, I’m afraid that I’m still missing something. It’s clear to me that the Benko-Chang effect propagates differently than true gravity.
“Gravity diminishes according to the inverse square law. That is, when you’re twice as far from the center of a gravity source, the force of gravity is only a quarter between the two objects, instead of half like one might expect. Benko-Chang seems to follow an inverse cube rule. Could you explain to someone who is a little out of practice with the math what’s going on?”
“Sir,” Stephanie said, “we call it gravity because it was what we first thought we were seeing. Actually, at the energy densities of the Benko-Chang effect certain basic forces of the universe begin to break down... not in the sense that they don’t work, but in the sense that they are becoming jumbled together. Thus gravity takes on some of the same characteristics as the strong force. And vice versa.”
“Thank you, Professor.”
The President looked at another person at the table. “Mr. James Michaels, the NASA Administrator.”
“Thank you, sir. Professor Kinsella, you have to realize the national security implications of this work. Just about everything you’ve done is a violation of several laws.”
“Sir, that’s simply not correct. I am a professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology. I am working on no classified projects. Misters Stan Benko and Johnny Chang were students of another professor, working on a graduate research project that was not classified.
“The two young men discovered certain physical relationships — fundamental relationships of the physical universe. Saying that their work is classified is like trying to classify Newton’s Three Laws or the Laws of Thermodynamics.”
“This is different,” James Michaels insisted.
“Sir, it wasn’t a classified project. What would you have physicists do? Go to the government every time they discover something to see if it should be classified?” She smiled. “Pity poor Ugh the Caveman. He discovers fire and some bureaucrat tells him he can’t use it, because it has national security implications.”
The reaction of the people at the table was interesting to Stephanie: there were no laughs or smiles. Obviously if anyone agreed with her, they were keeping mum.
The President spoke up. “Two things. One, Professor Kinsella is correct; she was an innocent researcher as were Stanislaw Benko and John Chang. There is no way the academic community would put up with having to come running to the government for permission to publish every time they find a new butterfly or measured a physical force to another hundred decimal places. Second, the matter is moot. It’s done, over and finished. What this meeting is about is how we’re going to go forward now. This is too important to the United States and to the world.
“Mrs. Smallwood, what is your considered opinion of what would happen if the rest of the world found out we were sitting on a discovery of this magnitude?”
Mrs. Janet Smallwood, the Secretary of State, spoke in her rich contralto. “Badly. They gave Clinton a pass for acting in our national interest; ever since the nations of the world have looked at the United States askance anytime we don’t have international approval for whatever we do. And anything that increases the distance between our economy and theirs is ‘offensive’ to them and they strongly disapprove. There would be a hue and cry, Mr. President. We would likely end up having to use our veto in the Security Council to escape a resolution condemning us. We still will proba
bly have to do it, but at least they won’t be able to say we stood in the way of letting the rest of the world know.”
She looked around. “Professor Kinsella is a very clever woman. She has a public website, but few people visit it. She has a web thingie that keeps the various spiders and whatnot out of her files, so the only way to spread the information is word of mouth. Her site gets about three hundred hits a day and the number is flat, neither increasing nor decreasing. Most of those hits appear to be from students at other institutions who learn of the paper and access a copy. It is a very hot topic, Mr. President. But few of those users are eager to share their access.
“There is a core of interested parties in England, but so far as we know, there have been no hits on the site from anywhere other than the US and England.”
The President nodded. “We have a tough enough time doing anything these days on the international scene. Sit on this and we would thoroughly poison the water. Wednesday we’re filing the patent in the EU and about five dozen other countries. At least initially, it will be without fanfare. I imagine that won’t last long.
“Later, at another meeting that Caltech has asked for, we will discuss our approach if countries decide to ignore the patent as they do a number of other patents... but that’s another time for another matter.”
The President recognized another person at the table. “Mr. Jake Woodling, Secretary of Defense.”
“Sir, to tell you the truth, when we heard about this it was met with complete and sheer disbelief. Of course, there’s that damned VW sitting on the moon.” He grimaced.
“Since then, sir, our concerns have skyrocketed, so to speak.” Again, no laughs or smiles.
“Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: Benko and Chang is space flight for dummies. Anyone can do it. All you need is any pressurized aircraft and you can get to orbit or higher. Professor Kinsella has proposed a spaceship that will be able to travel at will within the solar system. Sir, the national security implications are monumental.
“We will never be safe. Not ever again. Al Qaeda can buy an aircraft; they can make the same modifications Professor Kinsella did to her ‘spacecraft.’ They could take it to the moon, and then head back at several miles per second. Think of 9/11, only with a vehicle that will leave a crater hundreds of yards in diameter instead of a hole in the side of a building.
“We will never be safe. Not again. Not ever.”
There was silence from the other attendees for several seconds.
“Mr. President, may I speak?” Stephanie asked.
“Certainly, Professor.”
“I am a university professor from southern California. The left coast. Some of you might deduce some things about me from that that simply aren’t true.
“We have speed limits in our cities and traffic cops to enforce them. In this country, we allow our police to carry firearms to be used in self-defense and in cases where it is necessary to protect citizens.
“I suggest that there are ways to protect the planet, and particularly the United States. Those methods would, currently, raise a tremendous hue and cry. However, after the first crater, that hue and cry will change focus. Better, I think, to be ahead of the curve. Put traffic cops in space and arm them according to the importance of their mission.”
“We’re losing focus here,” the President said smoothly. “Are there any other questions anyone has about the basic discovery?”
Evidently not, Stephanie thought a few seconds later.
“Good. We’ll break for twenty minutes. There is a buffet table in the other room, feel free to get something to eat and return. You can eat here... this is going to be a long meeting, I’m sure there’s no need to be hungry as well as argumentative.”
He glanced at the clock. “We’ll reconvene at nine-thirty.”
Anna leaned close to Stephanie. “Way to go! We’re doing good!”
“I hope so,” Stephanie replied.
“Want me to get you something?”
“Chocolate!” Stephanie replied. “Chocolate doughnuts, at least two! Some hot cocoa!”
Stephanie sat at the table during the break, watching the groups that formed and broke up around the table. She was fairly sure that the Presidential Science Advisor was neutral; she was utterly positive that the NASA Administrator would like to see the project derailed.
As soon as the President stood and called the meeting back to order, everyone quickly returned to their seats.
“Thank you,” the President said after everyone was ready. “First, a presentation from Mr. David Hunsacker, Director of the Office of Management and Budget.”
A young man wearing tortoise-shell glasses and looking very serious stood up.
“Mr. President, sir. You asked my office to review Professor Kinsella’s proposal, at least so far as the budget is concerned.
“I formed two task groups. One group I just handed the project summary to and asked them for an estimate of the cost. The other I gave a copy of the proposal and the estimated costs that Professor Kinsella proposed.
“The estimates do not agree in any degree. The first group estimated about six billion dollars on the ship itself, plus another four billion for infrastructure. They estimated the cost overruns would range from a third to half of the original total. Thus, their estimate runs ten billion dollars after overruns and could go as high as fifteen billion. Their time estimate for project completion was four to six years.
“The second group reported that the budget as Professor Kinsella presented is reasonable at market prices. They were optimistic that the two year time frame was achievable. They were also certain that there was no way anyone would ever be allowed to run a government project in the fashion she describes.”
He sat down and the President was back up. “Administrator Michaels, NASA was also asked to prepare a budget and time frame. You told me you’d be ready this morning with a draft.”
“Yes, sir. This is a very quick and dirty estimate. We estimate it would take two to three years to build the necessary infrastructure and another six to eight years to build and test the vehicle. There would be some overlap in the time lines; call it eight years from now before the ship could fly. Twenty billion dollars.”
Stephanie laughed at the last. “Mr. President, I know this is out of place, but I would like to comment.”
“How out of place?”
“Mr. President, undoubtedly you’ve heard that an elephant is a mouse designed to government specifications. Do you know what a jump rope designed to NASA specifications looks like?”
The President chuckled. “I’m sure I’m going to regret this. What does it look like, Professor?”
“No one knows, sir. They had to go back for a redesign, when they realized it had to be rated for men as well as women.”
Anna Sanchez couldn’t contain herself and snickered. More than one person at the table was smiling.
The President didn’t show any expression and stared at Stephanie.
“Sorry, sir,” she said after a minute. “It’s just that Caltech and JPL are tied together at the hip. I meet and talk to people from JPL just about every day...”
The President interrupted. “Enough, Professor.”
“Yes, sir,” she didn’t sound very contrite.
“Captain Gilly, I believe you have something to say.”
Captain Gilly actually stood, which no one had done for a while. “Mr. President, a young lieutenant on my staff came up to me over the weekend. He’d been reading Professor Kinsella’s proposal and remembered something he’d read long ago. He found a story in a science fiction magazine, sir, and brought it to my attention. I know, I know, you have to consider the source. Not to mention the story was written in the sixties. In the story the Danes discovered a space drive... You have to remember that this was before Apollo landed on the moon.
“In order to beat the Americans to the moon, the Danes couldn’t wait to build a proper spaceship so they got the idea to use a surplus World
War II submarine. In the story it worked — mostly.
“The question we face is two-fold, and we’ve already heard the answer to the first part: there is nothing theoretically difficult about achieving the mission Professor Kinsella has described. I can't believe there is any serious objection as to whether or not it should be done.
“The question then becomes, how do we want to go about it? Is the project so urgent we should use any means necessary to achieve it? Why would the project be urgent? What are the risks? There are a thousand questions that a project like this has to address.”
Stephanie interrupted. “Mr. President, I beg your leave and Captain Gilly’s pardon for breaking in.”
“Go ahead, Professor,” the President told her.
“Sir, a few months ago the Space Shuttle Discovery overran the runway at Cape Canaveral and damaged its landing gear. With only two shuttles remaining in the NASA fleet, and both of them scheduled to be withdrawn from service within a year, the resupply missions to the International Space Station have once again fallen almost exclusively on the Russians. The Russians are now charging market prices for their launches and the only way NASA can afford them is to kill more scientific missions to the solar system.”
Stephanie turned to Anna, “A copy of the other proposal, please.”
Anna dipped down and put the half-inch stack of paper in front of Stephanie.
“Mr. President, I have here another proposal. Only this time, I want to add a personal element. I personally wish to contract with the United States to provide limited support and crew replacement on the ISS. I’ve heard from Lockheed and they are working on a heavy supply vessel for low earth orbit; they say six months before it’s ready.
“My proposal, sir, is to fit a half dozen Gulfstream aircraft with docking adaptors for the ISS, as well as provide them with Benko-Chang turbines. Each vehicle would be able to carry from six to ten passengers to orbit, plus a couple of tons of cargo. I would be willing to commit to keeping one of these vehicles in orbit as a rescue vessel.
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