Mars- The Red Planet Awakens

by Paul Reaver

  The cabin was quiet except for subdued conversations between various crew members discussing equipment or the mission parameters. Both John and Alexandra were able to help their teams with technical issues if needed; they spent most of their time walking from team member to team member to keep apprised of their status.

  After they had completed two orbits, John said, “Let’s contact Jose and coordinate his teleportation to the ship. We are almost directly above him now.”

  “I’m on it,” said Roberta. She activated communications. “Roberta to Jose. We are ready for teleportation. Do you copy?”

  “Roger,” said Jose. “Teleporting in one minute.”

  They did not necessarily have to be directly above Jose when he teleported, but they did want to make sure he teleported through the air and not through the Earth. Though it was theoretically possible to teleport through the Earth, it would take a tremendous amount of energy to do so, and there was concern that they couldn’t do it without injuring or killing the teleported person. They might try to do it someday, but right now, safety was their primary concern.

  There was a circular area at the rear of the cabin on the starboard side of the ship that served as the teleportation receiving pad. Everyone on board was looking at it, counting down the seconds until Jose appeared. After exactly 60 seconds had passed, Jose appeared on the pad. Though there were a few milliseconds required to complete the teleportation process, it happened so fast that his appearance seemed instantaneous.

  Everyone was talking at once, asking him what it felt like, did he feel ok, and the like. Jose grinned and said, “Hold it! One question at a time!”

  John spoke first. “Here’s the main question. Do you feel ok?” he asked.

  “I feel fine,” said Jose. “When I teleport back down, I’ll run the same series of tests that I did after the first long-range teleportation. But first, let me check out that view!”

  He walked over to the nearest window and looked down at Earth. “Wow,” he said. “That’s incredible!”

  “It sure is,” said John.

  Roberta asked, “Jose, what does it feel like when you teleport?” This was the question that was uppermost in everyone’s mind, after wanting to make sure he was ok, of course.

  “It’s disconcerting,” he said, “and there’s a bit of vertigo. One second I’m on the ground, and the next second I’m way up in the air. But I don’t feel anything physically. It’s probably because the process happens so fast. I’m going to stay up here for a couple of orbits and then teleport back down. I want to have a little fun, too.” He smiled. He wandered around the cabin, talking to the various team members as he went.

  John and Alexandra found themselves alone toward the aft part of the cabin and began to talk.

  “So far, so good,” said John. “Everything seems nominal. The only thing my teams are finding are ways to tweak the equipment to improve the performance of the ship.”

  “Likewise,” said Alexandra. “Why don’t we take a look at the cargo area?”

  “Sounds good,” said John.

  The ship had been outfitted so that the cabin area was separated from the aft part of the ship by a bulkhead. If they were to make short trips for any reason that did not require the use of that space, it could be left unpressurized, which would save oxygen. For these first few trips, they were pressurizing that area so that they could ensure that it was airtight and usable. Though the ship was pressurized with the proper air mixture before they left Earth’s atmosphere, it required modifications to maintain the pressure they needed as they ascended. They walked the few steps to the airlock in the bulkhead. The airlock was simply a safety measure, should the aft area depressurize for any reason. The light beside the airlock handle showed green; They had pressurized the aft area at the proper level. John opened it, and the area illuminated automatically. He caught his breath. He had forgotten how large this area was. They walked into the cargo bay.

  “This is our future,” said John. “The cabin area we are using now is a precursor for what is to come. We can utilize this area for so many different things.”

  “That’s true,” said Alexandra. “This is the area that will enable us to make long journeys, carry habitat materials for colonization, or carry additional people for transportation to an existing colony. I can’t imagine what we can achieve with what our teams have created here. I am sure it represents the next big leap for humanity.”

  John looked at Alexandra and studied her face while she was looking toward the back of the ship. She was unaware of his attention. John realized that, for the first time, he could finally have a relationship with a woman as a friend; prior to now, he had been wholly overwhelmed emotionally with the passing of his wife. This did not mean that he was ready to let her go and move on, even though that is what she would have wanted him to do. It was simply that he could feel something more than just a business relationship with another woman for the first time.

  Alexandra began to look back toward John, and he quickly looked away. “We need to carefully consider our next moves with this ship,” said John.

  “You’re absolutely right,” said Alexandra. “I think it’s amazing that the mission following this trip will be a mission to the Moon. Now that’s what I call a next big step.”

  Was it John’s imagination, or did Alexandra hold his gaze for a long moment, with an unreadable but interested expression? He decided that his mind was playing tricks on him. “Since your engineers have the experience and knowledge to plan our missions into space, and my teams have the experience and expertise with the equipment, we’ll need to steer them toward the Moon mission.

  “I agree,” said Alexandra. “Why don’t we head back up front where the action is?” She smiled. Again, John noticed a mental reaction on his part, this time to her smile. It was a good reaction, but he couldn’t put a finger on its nature. He shook it off.

  They went back to the front cabin, sealing the airlock behind them. Each of them checked in with their team members to get an update on the mission’s progress. The status of the mission itself was nominal; the teams were continuing to discover ways to improve the performance of the ship and the equipment.

  They reached four orbits, and were coming up on being directly above Jose’s teleportation “landing spot” on Earth. John walked over to Jose, “Please get everything ready, Jose. We’re almost at your ideal transit point. We’ll be there in two minutes.”

  “Thanks, John,” said Jose. “I’ll set the controls for automatic teleport in two minutes.” He adjusted the controls, then walked over to the round teleport spot and waited. Everyone was watching. The seconds counted down and as if by magic, Jose was gone!

  “Unbelievable!” said Max. “I’ve got to try that!” The others echoed similar sentiments.

  Roberta confirmed that she had contacted Jose, and he had made it back safely; John breathed a sigh of relief.

  After five orbits, John said, “has everyone gathered all of the information they need from this mission?” Everyone’s response was in the affirmative. “Ok, let’s head back down. Abigail, as we discussed during our mission planning, you’re back in the pilot seat for the return trip.”

  “Roger, boss,” she said, smiling.

  Everyone took their places, strapped in, and Abigail began the descent. She worked with Bob, the same engineer Mark had worked with on the way up. Soon they were landing in their designated spot; the touchdown was so soft that it could barely be felt.

  Chapter 23

  John and his teams were in a meeting the following afternoon to discuss their most recent mission. Everyone had scanned their recordings of the ship’s equipment to make sure they had not missed any anomalies. They hadn’t.

  John said, “Ok, gang, we need to plan our trip to the Moon. Joanne, there is a lot on your shoulders for this mission since you are our gravity expert. We’ve gone over this, but I need to make sure you do some computer simulations again to verify that what we plan to do is fea
sible. I’ll work with you on the simulations. As before, we’ll achieve Earth orbit first. From there, we’ll use the gravity engine to push us out of orbit on a path that will take us far enough away to basically make Earth’s gravity nil; or at least, to an area of space where you can grab the Sun’s gravity to push us toward the Moon without too much interference from Earth’s gravity. As we all know, the Sun has some serious gravitational force. We’ll have to take it easy as we switch over to using the Sun’s gravity to push the ship; we’ll have to start with a very minute fractional gravity thrust.”

  “I agree,” said Joanne. “We have no way of calculating the rate of propulsion from the Sun at that point where we are basically out of the influence of Earth’s gravity and ready to head for the Moon. I can ballpark it, but it’s going to be a very theoretical ballpark. I think the way to approach it would be to measure the Sun’s gravity when we are at the neutral point and compare it to the force of Earth’s gravity at sea level. The comparison is that Earth’s gravity is going to be a minuscule amount compared to the Sun. But whatever the difference is, we’ll have to reduce the gravity engine thrust to that fraction. It might even be better to reduce the gravity engine thrust to that fraction and then cut it in half again, just to be sure. We don’t have inertial dampeners; we don’t want to splatter ourselves against the bulkhead when we initiate the gravity drive. With extreme acceleration, even our straps won’t hold us in place.”

  “Well now, that paints a pretty picture,” said John. “I have an idea. Let’s build three drones with gravity drives. We’ll attach them to the outside of the ship, and when we reach our neutral gravity spot, we’ll release one of them. Using remote controls, we’ll engage the gravity drive on the first drone to the specifications that we calculate in our simulations. Then we’ll see what happens. If it starts within our acceleration limits, we can experiment with accelerating the drone in very, very small increments to make sure its speed stays within our limits. If it does, we’re in business. If it zooms away at a pace that would injure or kill the crew, we’ll try to recalculate the acceleration and retry the experiment. That’s if we can get the drone back. If we can’t, we’ll release drone number two. If that fails, and we can’t get it back either, we’ll try drone number three. If the third one fails, we’ll have to come back to Earth and rethink the mission. I guess to be on the safe side, we should take five drones. We don’t want to have to abort the mission for a reason like not having enough drones.

  “That sounds like a great idea,” said Joanne. I’ll start constructing the drones. Roberta, can you give me a hand with that? That is, if it’s ok with you, John.”

  “Absolutely,” said John. “Pull in a couple of other team members if you want. Though we are going over our equipment performance recordings from the last mission, there should be some slack time on everyone’s plates. And we want to get these drones completed as quickly as possible. Right now, that’s the only thing holding us back from going to the Moon. Try to get your specs put together as soon as you can, so you can make them available to Alexandra’s team. They’ll need those specs to build mounts to attach the drones to the ship.”

  Chapter 24

  It took three weeks to get the drones ready. They were shipped over to Alexandra’s team so they could attach them to the ship. In the meantime, via video conference calls, John and his team and Alexandra and her team worked out the details of the Moon mission.

  During the initial meetings with Alexandra’s team, they had fitted John’s team members with spacesuits. Alexandra’s team already had their suits completed. This was done way in advance, but now it would pay off. They weren’t just going to the Moon; they were going to land on it and walk on it! One of the projects that Alexandra’s team had been working on and completed was a lunar rover vehicle, and it was a fantastic piece of work. They could cover a lot more territory much more quickly using the vehicle. This time, the cargo area of the ship would actually have some cargo!

  Two more weeks went by very quickly. There was an excitement in the air during the conference calls. Everyone was excited about the trip to the Moon. The rover was on the ship. They had mounted the drones on the spacecraft. They had been installed under an airfoil so as to eliminate any air friction while in the Earth’s atmosphere. The mission plan was complete. The final conference call before the mission was on a Thursday afternoon. It went smoothly; the purpose of the meeting was to verify that everything was ready to go. Everything was. The plan was to have wheels up at nine o’clock the following morning. As before, John’s teams would arrive two hours early to make sure all of the equipment was functioning nominally.

  Friday morning came, all of the equipment checked out as ready to go, and a few minutes before nine, John got everyone’s attention.

  “Ok, everyone. We’ve done all of our homework. We’ve checked and checked and rechecked everything. Our mission plan is complete down to the letter. Mentally we are all excited about this trip. I want to express my pride and admiration to the finest team members I’ve ever worked with,” he said.

  Alexandra concurred. “You took the words right of out my mouth,” she said, smiling. “You all have my pride and admiration as well, and I must say it’s been a job well done to get everything ready as quickly as you did. And with that said, let’s get the ship into position for takeoff.”

  With invisibility mode on, they taxied out to their launch area. Abigail would be piloting again. She went through what they had adopted as their standard launch procedure, with standard gravity settings at each course change juncture. These could be modified as needed. Forty-five minutes later, they were in orbit. They had completed about one and one-third revolutions when Abigail said, “per the mission parameters, I am leaving orbit to take us to our launch point for the Moon.”

  “Roger,” said Bob, who was Alexandra’s pilot and engineer on this trip. “Leaving orbit.”

  After about half an hour, they reached the point in space where they planned to alter their route so that it would take them to the Moon. From here, they had to do their mission planning manually. They could not be sure of exactly how the gravity engines would behave at this distance from the Sun. They knew the ballpark; they didn’t know the exact details. Abigail made the ship motionless and set the antigravity engines at station-keeping. “We’re ready,” she said. “You can proceed with the drones.”

  “Affirmative,” said Bob. “Releasing drone number one.”

  The drones would give them an actual performance snapshot of the gravity force using an object in real space and real time. In other words, this was not a simulation or a calculation. However, the mass of the drones was so much smaller than that of the ship that there might be significant differences in how they would perform compared to the spacecraft using the same gravity force from the same location in space. The upside was that, since the ship had a more substantial mass, it would not move any more quickly than the drones using the same gravity force. If anything, it would move more slowly. The calculations seemed to indicate that the difference between the performances of the drones and the ship would be nil because in the grand scheme of things, and in this situation, both were like grains of sand on a beach. Comparing them to a planet or a sun, the difference in the mass between the drones and the ship would be negligible, considering the very low gravity force levels they would be using to begin with. As the gravity force levels became higher, the effects would naturally increase.

  Joanne moved the drone into position in front of and above the ship, where everyone could see it through the big front cockpit window but it would not hit the ship if something went catastrophically wrong. There should be no danger of this. She had done the calculations. The gravity of the Sun at the photosphere, the shiny part that is viewed from Earth, is 28 times stronger than the gravity is on Earth’s surface. However, measuring gravity follows the inverse square law. This means if an object is moved twice as far away from a major gravity source such as the Sun or the Earth, the
gravitational force is divided by four. If it is moved ten times as far away, the effect is divided by 100. This made the calculations for setting the gravity engine’s force more complex. It’s also the reason why the amount of energy the gravity engine emitted when the ship was going from the surface of the Earth into orbit changed very often. Fortunately, as part of building the gravity engine, she had also developed a device that could measure gravity from any source at any location. So she could measure Earth’s gravity when they were on its surface, when they were in orbit, or anywhere beyond. She could also measure the force of the Sun’s gravity from where they were now at their “launch point” in space. The Sun’s gravity force on the ship from where they were was relatively weak because the spacecraft did not exert much of a measurable amount of gravity due to its low mass. This was unlike the relationship between the Earth and the Sun. Each had a large amount of mass, and therefore much more gravity force, which allowed the Earth to maintain its orbit around the Sun. Joanne wasn’t sure how the gravity engine would react when she used its energy for the ship against an object such as the Sun, which had such a tremendous gravity potential. She had done experiments on Earth, but now they were much closer to it. The parameters would be completely different.

  She pointed the drone’s gravity engine emitter toward the Sun. “I have set the drone to use the Sun’s gravity, and the drone gravity setting is 0.2,” she said.

  “Roger,” said Bob.

  “Engaging drone gravity engine,” said Joanne. She pressed the appropriate button on the console with her eyes watching the drone. After she pressed the button, it just vanished! She should have been receiving telemetry from the drone, but there was none. She also should have been receiving scanner information on the drone’s location, but the screen was blank. She tried sending a radio signal to the drone, to which it was programmed to respond automatically. Nothing.