Journey Into Space

by Charles Chilton

  In the twenty or so years since the capture of the first German V2, experiments in high altitude rockets had gone on at a spanking pace. In 1957, the first rocket to push its nose up and out of the Earth’s atmosphere was launched. By 1960, at colossal expense, another and much more powerful rocket, the A24--a hefty, three-stage affair--had reached free orbit some 750 miles above the Earth’s surface. It had been intended to bring it back to base by remote control, but at the crucial moment something went wrong with the missile’s intricate inside and it failed to respond. As there was no way of getting a mechanic up there to put the fault right, it remained where it was and, to the best of my knowledge, it’s there still.

  The launching of the A24 set the world buzzing with excitement. Since World War II there had been constant reports in the press that space travel was just around the corner. The existence of an artificial satellite proved it--or so most people thought. But they hadn’t reckoned with a few facts. In the first instance, the placing of a rocket out in space had drained the research department of virtually all its money. In the second, before space travel could become a reality, it was necessary to construct, at the cost of millions upon millions of dollars, a huge space station, also travelling in free orbit, to use as a spring board for the long distance ships. For, in the light of the knowledge of that time, no rocket could be built that would reach even the Moon in one jump. Moon ships would have to be assembled out in space, and every tiny part of them would first have to be ferried up from Earth to the assembly point. And before the first ship could be constructed, the space station itself had to be put together, and that, too, would have to be ferried out, piece by piece.

  The cost would be astronomical--no single government on Earth could afford it. Space travel would, it seemed, have to be left to our descendants, unless, of course, some way could be found to reduce cost. With the type of liquid fuel rocket then in vogue, there was little hope of that; an entirely new form of propulsion was needed.

  But if none of us ever expected to see space travel a reality in our time (and, I may add, least of all me) there was no reason why much of the necessary groundwork to make the dream possible should not be carried out. And that’s how I came to be at Poker Flats. As director of space medicine research it was my responsibility, among other things, to design space suits for high-altitude pilots, study the effect of long period gravity-less conditions on the human body (a very difficult task) and the effect of high gravity conditions as well (which was easy).

  It was our work at Poker Flats, in conjunction with similar research centres in England, that made superstratosphere passenger flight possible. The principle of the superstrato-ship is simple. At take-off, it is powered by turbo-jet engines and, under their propulsion, quickly reaches supersonic speed and a height of some 40,000 ft. At that elevation the air is so thin that the turbo-jets cannot function, so they are cut out and liquid fuel rockets take over the job of driving the ship higher and higher into the atmosphere. By the time the rockets are cut out, it is well over the Atlantic, 100 miles high, and travelling at approximately 1700 mph.

  The rest of the journey is unpowered and consists of a gentle glide downwards towards the American coast--rather as a shell, once it has reached maximum height, begins to drop towards its target. The whole trip, from take-off to touch down, takes a little under two hours, enabling passengers to breakfast in London at 7 am and reach New York at 4 am, in time for another breakfast, if they have a mind for it, three hours after landing.

  To all intents and purposes, all passengers travelling on the superstratosphere run journey through space and travel high enough above our atmosphere to see the stars shining in the middle of the afternoon.

  Jet Morgan was a pilot on the Atlantic run and three times a week he coaxed his ship to the edge of space. He lived for his work and for his interest in astronautics. Almost every moment of his life was filled with one or the other. He was a leading light of the International Interplanetary Society and flew all over the world to attend their conferences, give lectures or open astronautic exhibitions.

  I have lost count of the number of nights Jet and I sat up discussing rockets, space ships and interplanetary travel. I know we must have made, principally for our own amusement, drawings of dozens of ships, satellite stations and fancy rockets of all kinds. Our plans and models were complete to the smallest detail, from space suits, living quarters, air conditioning, food containers and pressure couches to motors, meteor bumper and solar mirror.

  Moon ships, ferry ships and space station were all systematically dealt with. When it came to designing the radio, televiewer and radar equipment, we were enthusiastically joined by Lemmy Barnet, Jet’s first radio operator on the Atlantic run, who, although he did not share our enthusiasm for space travel as such, could never resist the challenge to design some special piece of radio apparatus for any purpose we cared to name. Between the three of us we once constructed a working model of a ship, complete with crew’s quarters, that took off, climbed three miles, turned itself over and landed gently on its tail in exactly the way a real ship would have landed on the Moon. The whole operation was radio controlled.

  The hours I spent in the centrifuge and the days I spent watching other guinea pigs undergoing its cruel pressure proved, without a doubt, that it was possible for a man to stand more gravities than he would ever need to experience during a journey to the Moon or planets--should any genius invent a ship economical enough to get him there.

  The pressurised suits were, as far as I could tell, quite adequate but, of course, it was impossible to test them under full outer-space conditions. We had a fair idea of how man would react under the long, gravity-less periods he would have to spend in space but, for obvious reasons, could never put these theories to a practical test either. So we just continued working and hoped that in the not too distant future our efforts would help launch the first Moon-bound ship on its way. Our hopes were not very high.

  Then came the blow. With the first rocket to reach free orbit revolving, uselessly, 700 miles or so above the Earth’s surface, all work other than on missiles of a military nature was stopped. I guess Washington considered further research on theoretical space travel to be a waste of time and, further, that, with elections coming up in just a few months, a little widely publicised economy in public funds would not come amiss.

  Something like half the personnel at Poker Flats was fired. But space medicine, even when it was for military purposes only, was still an important factor in rocket research so I retained my position although my field was narrowed down so much I was thinking of handing in my resignation.

  Then I received the call from Jet whom I had not seen for nearly a month and who had, or so I thought then, no reason whatsoever for being anywhere near Australia. His presence there intrigued me and as the tone of his message was urgent I had little trouble in persuading myself to fly out to Adelaide to see what was going on. I was due for a vacation anyway.

  I packed my bags and left New Mexico for New York a week later. I made the journey across the world in two stratospheric hops--New York to Bombay, Bombay to Melbourne--and reached the Australian city the same day. From Melbourne I travelled to Adelaide by aircraft and found Jet waiting to meet me.

  He gave me no time to ask questions. I had hardly greeted him when I was swept to another comer of the airfield where a helicopter, its blades already rotating, was waiting. My baggage was bundled inside and I took my seat next to Jet who sat at the controls. Within a few seconds we were in the air, heading over the city towards the irrigated, agricultural land to the north. Five minutes later the pink, sandy wastes of the Australian bush were passing below us.

  Jet, in the small pilot’s seat, his long legs stretched out before him, seemed taller than ever. His mop of black hair from which he gained his nickname, was as unruly as ever and there was a glint of good humour in his boyish, grey eyes.

  He put the craft on its course, set the automatic pilot, leant leisurely back in h
is seat and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

  “Well, Doc, how do you like Australia?” he said at last.

  “I’ve hardly had time to form any opinion about it,” I told him.

  “Not very different from New Mexico, do you think?”

  “Not really, but there’s a deal more of it.”

  “How would you like to work in this part of the world?”

  “Me? What at?”

  “Space medicine research, plus the opportunity to put many of your theories into practice.”

  “Is there another rocket proving ground out here then-- besides Woomera?”

  “You might call it that. Launching ground would be a better description.”

  “It amounts to the same thing.”

  “Not exactly. This is something quite new. It has revolutionized the whole business of rocket construction.”

  “I don’t get you, Jet. Why don’t you come to the point?”

  “Very well. Within a year from now, a serious attempt will be made to reach the Moon--in one hop.”

  Had Jet told me he intended to run for President of the United States, I could not have been more surprised. I said nothing for a few moments; instead I gazed at the ground slowly unrolling below us. Ahead was the Flinders Range, a group of hills which, in Australia, pass as mountains. Stretching from below us to the foothills were the sand ridges topped by the inevitable grey-green mulga which is to this sparse country what sagebrush is to the American desert.

  “In one hop?” That was all I could say.

  Jet laughed. “It’s difficult to believe, isn’t it, Doc? At first I couldn’t myself.”

  “You do now?”

  “Not only that. I’m going. I’m one of the crew.”

  For the first time I realized he was dead serious. “But to build a rocket that will reach the Moon in one jump is an engineering impossibility. The fuel tanks alone would have to be as tall as skyscrapers.”

  “With conventional rockets, that’s true. But I thought I made it clear, Doc, this is something new--revolutionary.”

  “It’s little short of a miracle.”

  “It might be at that, but all it comes down to in the end is an atomic motor.”

  “Atomic?”

  “You’ve heard of Stephen Mitchell?”

  “Wasn’t he the engineer who designed the first atomic marine motor for the British Navy?”

  “Yes. His latest creation is a rocket motor.”

  “How does it work?”

  “That I can’t tell you, not at the moment. All I can say is that it’s small enough and powerful enough to do the job.”

  I now began to fire enthusiastic questions. Apparently Mitchell’s rocket motor, in spite of its compactness, built up sufficient thrust to carry a ship almost to the Moon direct from the Earth’s surface. Almost, but not quite. It needed a little assistance.

  The free orbit rocket launched from Poker Flats had, as I have said, been a three-stage affair. When it took off from the Earth it was more than 300 ft tall and left its launching platform under the power of its first and largest stage. In less than two minutes its load of more than 5000 tons of fuel had been burnt and the ship had reached a height of just over 23 miles and was travelling at more than 5000 mph.

  The first stage then dropped away and the second came into action to carry the lightened ship even higher and faster. Two minutes later the 2000 tons of fuel carried by the second booster had burnt itself out and the ship had reached a height of 40 miles and a speed of nearly 15,000 mph.

  Finally the third stage, the smallest of all, carrying the telemetering equipment in its nose, automatically cut in its motor. The second stage, having been discarded, parachuted down to Earth while the ship (now less than a third of its original size) reached a final speed of some 19,000 mph and a height of 750 miles, sufficient to allow it to reach free orbit and enter an ever encircling course round the earth.

  19,000 mph was the highest speed ever reached by a man-made vehicle of any kind, but it was still 6000 mph less than the speed required to escape entirely from the Earth’s gravitational pull.

  According to Jet, Mitchell’s ship was only of two-stage construction. The first stage worked on exactly the same principle as I have just described but, once its fuel had been used up and the booster had been disconnected, the motor of the second stage, the long-sought, small atomic motor, had the power to increase the speed to more than 27,000 miles an hour, giving the ship sufficient velocity to reach the Moon and a little to spare.

  I must have questioned Jet for more than an hour and would have kept up the barrage had we not landed just north of Lake Eyre to refuel. The ‘airport’ consisted of one small, two-roomed building, an underground fuel storage tank and two mechanics. They ran out to meet us as we taxied in and greeted Jet with a hearty, if coarse, Australian greeting. We climbed out of the cockpit, glad to stretch our legs, and, as stepping outside was rather like stepping into an oven, immediately sought the shade of the white wooden building.

  “Make yourself at home,” said Jet as he helped himself to a drink from a bottle on the table.

  “Is this a private airport?”

  “Airport is a fancy name for it, Doc. But we have to refuel somewhere. We’re hardly halfway to Luna City yet.”

  “Luna City?”

  “That’s what the boys call the launching ground. We have a regular little town there. We’re almost completely self-supporting. Fuelling squads come down here on a rota to refill the helicopters that fly between Luna City and Adelaide. When their week is up, they go back to base and their place is taken by somebody else.”

  We stayed and chatted with the mechanics for a while. Half an hour later we were on our way again and continuing our discussion at the point where landing had compelled us to postpone it.

  I finally learned Jet’s real reason for inviting me out to Australia. It was to offer me a post, not only as director of the space medicine department of Luna City but also as a member of the crew. He made the offer quite casually some thirty minutes after we had left Lake Eyre and were rapidly approaching the border of Northern Territory and South Australia. .

  I accepted in the same tone. How I did it so calmly I don’t know. I had been offered an active part in one of the greatest and most important experiments in the history of scientific man, and yet all I could say was: “Thank you, Jet. I’d like to very much.”

  “That’s fine,” Jet replied, and then the talk turned to something else.

  I began to understand now that the virtual closing of Poker Flats had more behind it than the mere shortage of money.

  I also realised why it was that the British had not made any attempt to launch a free-orbit rocket of their own; they had preferred to wait until a more powerful, more economical method of propulsion had been found, and, apparently, they had found it.

  Little more than three hours after leaving Adelaide, we reached Luna City. We came upon the site very suddenly for, until we were almost directly overhead, it was hidden from our view. The launching ground was set in the centre of a mountain range high up on the plateau of the Central Desert. The Horseshoes, as those mountains are called, are part of the Macdonnell Range and are some 250 miles east of Alice Springs.

  ‘Horseshoe’ was a perfect description of them; from the air that was just what they looked like. The open end of the shoe faced towards the west. The highest point in the range was exactly opposite the entrance to the enclosed plain and rose about 3O00 ft above it, the plain itself, part of the great, central continental plateau, being some 2000 ft above sea level. From its highest point the range sloped down on both sides in a curve until, the circle about two-thirds completed, it ran itself into the ground. Inside the shoe the sides of the hills were cliff-like and precipitous, but the outer slopes were fairly gentle.

  What struck me at once about this peculiar formation was its similarity to the ringed plains on the Moon. It had the same crumbly, eroded look and, had any telescope-equipped Sele
nite been able to regard this freakish, terrestrial feature, he would have declared it the one thing on Earth that most nearly resembled his own barren world.

  But the most remarkable feature of this semi-enclosed plain was a man-made one: the launching ground. It was, as Jet had said, a miniature city. From above it looked like a giant cartwheel, the hub being the launching platform itself, with the half-completed rocket, enclosed in steel scaffolding, standing on it. The ‘spokes’ of this giant wheel, which was some four miles in diameter, were roads, every one of which led out from the rocket platform, other minor roads joining the ‘spokes’ in concentric circles. Arc-shaped buildings filled in the areas outlined by the roads, most of them concentrated towards the outer rim of the wheel.

  Jet pointed out a few of the principal blocks to me; living quarters, workshops, centrifuge, cinema, swimming-pool, air strip, sports field, hospital, research centre, crew’s quarters, stores and so on. Just outside the city, and standing apart from it, was a railroad station from which a single track ran twisting and turning through the low sandhills westwards towards Alice Springs.

  “Well, what do you think of her?” asked Jet.

  “Why build a launching ground so far away from civilization? This place is outback of the Outback.”

  “Only place they would give us. If there had been a remoter spot, we’d have got it. They won’t run any unnecessary risks. Want to keep us as far away from cities as they possibly can.”

  We began to descend. As we approached the ground and dropped below the levels of the highest mountain peaks, we lost sight of the great plain beyond. I felt as though I were already landing on another planet. The pinky sand, the red-streaked, precipitous cliffs which, in the clear air, seemed within short walking distance, and the snow-white, man-built concrete structures looked for all the world like a Martian landscape with the first Earth colony already established and flourishing.