Rocket Girl

by George D. Morgan

  “What's his name?” I ask.

  “Brian Brophy.”

  I'm a member of the Writers Guild of America, so I can drop Hollywood names with the best of them, but Brian Brophy doesn't ring any bells.

  “He'll be getting in contact with you soon,” she promises.

  Delores and I say our good-byes, and I hang up. Right away I search for Brian Brophy on IMDb and discover that he played the role of Commander Maddox in the Star Trek Next Generation episode “Measure of a Man.” It's one of the most well-known and admired episodes of the whole series.

  A couple of weeks go by, then Brian calls me. We set up a meeting on the campus of Caltech. We meet, we greet, we talk shop, we “do lunch” at the Caltech Athenaeum. We have the buffet, and during our meal I find out he taught theater at Cal State Los Angeles at the same time my daughter Averie was a theater major there. So the conversation proceeds in the next most logical direction.

  “My daughter went to school there at the same time.”

  “Really. What's her name?”

  “Averie Morgan. She has bright red hair—you wouldn't be able to miss her. Did you ever meet her?”

  Brian sits bolt upright and stops chewing his food.

  “Averie Morgan is your daughter?”

  “Yes. Did you know her?”

  “She was in one of my classes.”

  “Did she give you any trouble?”

  “Hmm. I'd rather not talk about that.”

  And that was the end of that conversation.

  When Rocket Girl opened at Ramo Auditorium on November 7, 2008, I could not have been happier with the results. Brian turned out to be a terrific director, the actors were excellent, and great attention was paid to the stage set—a section of the mid-1950s engineering floor at North American Aviation. On closing night, when my eighty-two-year-old father came to see the play, I asked him about the set.

  “The only thing you have to do to make that set more true to life,” he said, in his elderly, raspy voice, “is push the desks closer together.”

  “Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine,” said Bill, as he and Toru rolled their chairs over to Mary's desk.

  “It will give us an isp greater than 315 and the mixture ratio is almost identical to alcohol.”

  They handed Mary a paper with their calculations.

  “Unsymmetrical Dimethylhydrazine,” she said. “One of my favorite propellants. More frequently referred to as UDMH.”

  “You can thank the Soviets—they invented it.”

  “Spasiba,” said Mary.

  “Huh?”

  “Spasiba. It means ‘thank you’ in Russian.”

  Bill rolled his eyes. “I'm not going to ask how you know that.”

  Toru pointed to their calculations. “So, UDMH. Really powerful stuff. Is there any reason we can't use it?”

  Mary handed the papers back. “Why did you even bring this to me? Its density is only 0.7914. It's way off.”

  “Yes, but we called Huntsville, and one of the Redstone engineers says the fuel tank is rated to hold a pressure of 20 psi.”

  “So you're thinking if we load the tank with UDMH, and pressurize it before launch…”

  “Its density will increase slightly. It's so close in every way except density.”

  “Interesting idea. The question is, can we bring the density of UDMH up to spec through low pressurization. Crunch the numbers and tell me what you get.”

  Sergei Korolev had built the largest, most powerful rocket in history. Dubbed the R-7, it was designed as both a Russian ICBM and a satellite launch vehicle. On a cold Kazakh Desert morning in May, the chief designer and his crew were preparing to push the button for the R-7's maiden flight. The test was planned strictly as a ballistic flight—the equipment needed for an orbital mission had not yet been installed.

  One of Korolev's deputies, Leonid Voskresenskiy, was the supervisor in charge of loading the propellants. While his team was engaged in loading the liquid oxygen, Leonid noticed a leak in one of the valves. As his men puzzled over how to resolve the problem, Leonid took the initiative. Standing next to the rocket, he unzipped his pants and urinated all over the valve. The −297-degree temperature of the oxygen immediately froze the urine and plugged the leak.3

  “There!” he said. “No more leak.”

  The rocket was cleared for takeoff.

  Bill and Toru wheeled their chairs to Mary's desk.

  “What do you have?”

  “UDMH won't work. We wouldn't be able to increase the density more than about one percent.”

  “I know,” said Mary.

  “You know? If you knew, why did you put us through the exercise?”

  “Because I could have been wrong. What else are you working on?”

  Toru handed her more calculations. “Ethylene diamine.”

  “What about it?”

  “We think this has a lot of potential.”

  “It complies better than anything we've found: isp, mixture ratio, and density.”

  Mary shook her head. “Those three factors are not our only consideration. Remember the original ‘properties and characteristics’ list I gave you. Our propellant has to comply with most of the things on that list. The only one we might be able to bend on is toxicity; other than that, you have to follow the list.”

  Toru turned to Bill. “Is there something ethylene diamine doesn't comply with?”

  Bill removed the list from his pocket and looked it over. “Oh crap.”

  “You figure it out?” she asked.

  Bill nodded. “Its boiling point is too low. We'd have to put it under a lot of pressure in order to keep it in a liquid state.”

  “Which we can't do. Keep at it, guys.”

  Bill and Toru returned to their desks.

  “You want us to do what!?” asked Wernher.

  “I want you to fill the top stage of the Jupiter C with sand,” said General Medaris.

  “Why would you want us to do that?” asked the German rocketeer.

  “It's not me,” said the general. “It's the Pentagon. They're so damned paranoid that one of your test rockets may ‘accidently’ go into orbit that they have ordered us to intentionally weigh it down. They're putting all their eggs in the Vanguard basket. It's a big political football.”

  “Accidently go into orbit.” Wernher smiled. “Well that would be the beauty of it.”

  Both men laughed.

  “Look, Wernher, I understand this is utterly absurd. But I'm a military man, and what I do more than anything else is obey orders. I'll have a truck full of beach sand waiting at the launch site. Just make sure the technicians load it into the rocket.”

  “You Americans are a strange group,” said Wernher.

  “Wait till you live here a while.” With that, the general turned on his heels and left the office.

  From his window von Braun could see the new version of the Redstone resting horizontally on a railroad car. It had three stages now, and so they had given it a new name: the Jupiter C. The rocket was packed and ready for shipment to Cape Canaveral, where it would be undergoing a routine flight test. But nothing was ever truly routine in the life of Wernher von Braun. The new version of the Redstone was America's best option for getting into orbit, and now his adopted country was once again putting him and his hardware on the shelf.

  Wernher took the number-2 pencil he was holding and broke it in half.

  “What about diethylamine.”

  Bill and Toru had been investigating every compound in the four-inch-thick chemical reference book, looking for the Mysterious Unknown Propellant. Today they were certain they had found one that would satisfy the contract requirements. All they had to do was convince Mary.

  “Diethylamine,” Mary repeated. “I'm not familiar with it.” Mary reached out her hand, and Bill passed her a list of the chemical's properties and characteristics.

  “DOW Chemical makes it in large quantities—no problem with availability,” said Bill.

 
; “Boiling point is above 131 degrees,” added Toru.

  “We get an isp of more than 320 with LOX, and the mixture ratio is in the ballpark.”

  “And the density?” asked Mary, with more than a hint of doubt.

  “0.70, but listen: we're thinking the density becomes less crucial if we can get a far higher isp, which in this case we can.”

  “Exactly. What does it matter if we run out of fuel five seconds early as long as we get enough performance out of the rocket to get us as high and as fast as we need?”

  “Good thinking,” said Mary. “I give you an ‘A’ for innovation.”

  Mary stood up and stepped over to the chalkboard. “Let's crunch the numbers.”

  The chalkboard was filled with chemical formulas. As Mary began erasing them, Bill could not help but notice many of the formulas involved unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, a fuel they had considered and discarded four weeks before.

  What is she working on?

  Leonid Voskresenskiy produced a bottle of cognac and passed it around to the leaders of the Soviet R-7 rocket team. After five consecutive failures, the latest R-7 rocket had flown almost flawlessly, hitting its target like a bull's-eye near the Pacific Ocean. Chief Designer Sergei Korolev was in an especially upbeat mood—it was nothing less than the best day of his life.

  As the alcohol coursed through their bloodstreams, and as its concentration became ever higher, the men dared to think the unthinkable: they would launch a satellite into orbit, and do it with or without the blessing of Moscow.4

  Someone put on some music, and the men began to dance.

  Bill and Toru returned from lunch to find Mary standing in front of the chalkboard, staring at it with a blank expression. The chemical formula for UDMH was written there, along with a list of its properties and characteristics.

  “We're back to UDMH,” said Toru, a trace of exasperation in his voice. “We've considered and discarded that propellant half a dozen times.”

  As often happened, Mary was lost in a world of intense thought. Bill and Toru had learned not to disturb her during these focus moments, so they quietly sat in their chairs and waited. After a few minutes, Mary returned to cognizance of her surroundings.

  “Remember that first idea we were kicking around—the one about how UDMH would be the perfect propellant if only we could make it denser?”

  “You said we couldn't do that.”

  “Not with pressure. But there's another way.”

  “We're listening,” said Bill.

  “What if we took a second fuel that had a high density and mixed it with the UDMH. You'd get the benefit of both propellants—the higher performance with the UDMH, a higher density thanks to your mystery additive.”

  “The key word in that sentence is mystery,” said Bill.

  “Is that what you're suggesting?” asked Toru.

  “Yes. That's exactly what I'm suggesting. We've been at this for two months now, and we've got nothing. I think we all know there is no off-the-shelf compound that's going to give us what we need. The next logical choice is a cocktail.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Now we make another prospect list: fuels that are miscible with UDMH, but have a high density.”

  Both men groaned. The moment had a very starting-all-over feel to it.

  “What if this doesn't work?”

  “It better, if we want to keep our jobs.”

  “Okay,” said Toru. “I suppose you want the list by tomorrow, right?”

  Mary shook her head. “You've got one hour.”

  As the men returned to their desks, Mary felt a stab of nausea. It quickly worsened, and so she ran to the rest room, making it to the toilet just in time. A moment later, she was spitting out the scrambled eggs and coffee from breakfast.

  If I didn't know better, I'd swear that felt like morning sickness.

  Collier's was having a heyday with subscriptions and newsstand copies of its magazine. Ever since it had decided to have Wernher von Braun write space-related articles for it, the publication had become the envy of the industry—copies were “rocketing” off the shelves. The latest article involved von Braun's imaginative ideas on what it would take to send men from Earth to Mars and back. It was filled with colorful artwork and, like all the previous articles, was generating a legion of fans for the German expatriate.

  Von Braun had just received his first copy of the latest edition. He read through it carefully, noting places he should have written better, or more clearly. On this particular morning, he was seated in a chair on the observation deck of the Canaveral lighthouse, which had the best view of the launch area. The creation of NASA was still several years away, and Cape Canaveral was little more than swampland whose chief denizens were mosquitos and alligators. His two-way radio came alive, and a voice said the countdown had reached minus ten seconds. He finished the paragraph he was in the middle of, then looked up just in time to see a Redstone test rocket fire and launch high into the clouds.

  “Das ist gut,” he said, then he returned to the article.

  “We have a prospect list,” said Bill.

  “I made one, too,” said Mary. “Tell me what you have.”

  Toru handed her a paper. “The main problem is there's not enough data about miscibility in some of these.”

  Mary nodded. “Right. I found the same problem.”

  “The best options we can see are hydrazine, pyrrole—C4H5N, and furan—C4H4O.”

  “You left out aniline. And what about pyrrolidine—C4H9N?”

  Bill looked at his copy. “Yeah. Well, you only gave us an hour.”

  Mary began to feel queasy again. “Look, why don't we take a lunch break.”

  “We took lunch two hours ago.”

  “Well I'll take lunch, then.” Mary jumped out of her chair and ran toward the restroom.

  The next morning, Bill and Toru arrived at their desks to find Mary standing in front of the chalkboard, once again staring at the chemical formula for unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine. The “mystery additive” prospect list was written in a column on the right side of the board. Every one of chemicals on the list was crossed out.

  “Do you feel as unappreciated as I do?”

  “Yes.”

  The sound of Mary whispering to herself was soft, but distinct. They approached with caution.

  “Nine-five-eight-eight,” she whispered.

  “What was that?” Bill and Toru stepped closer.

  Both men and the entire world were tuned out as Mary continued to stare at the chalkboard.

  “Nine-five-eight-eight.”

  “I'm guessing that's not a batting average.”

  Mary turned and looked at them. “Nine-five-eight-eight.” She closed her eyes, deep in thought. “I think that pencils out.”

  “You want to let us in on what nine-five-eight-eight is?”

  “I think we found it. Now all we have to do is find it.”

  “Huh?”

  Mary pulled open one of her desk drawers and started frantically rummaging through it with one hand, pointing with the other. “Bill—look through that file cabinet. Toru—take that one.”

  “It would help if we knew what we were looking for.”

  “A brochure!” Mary removed one of the desk drawers and dumped its contents onto the floor. “A chemical brochure!”

  “From what company?”

  “I can't remember!”

  “What chemical?”

  “I can't remember! But it's in the amine family. For some reason or other I remember its density: 0.9588.”

  “You can't remember the chemical, but you remember its density!?”

  “Anything else you can tell us?”

  “The brochure has a business card stapled to the front of it.” Mary dumped out another desk drawer.

  As Bill and Toru began searching the file cabinets, one thing became obvious very quickly: almost all the chemical brochures Mary had filed away had business cards stapled to them.
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  “So what's so special about this amine compound?”

  “Listen! A density of 0.9588. And it's an organic compound, which means it's probably miscible with unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine.”

  “So we're looking for our cocktail partner.”

  “Exactly. And we have to find it!”

  Toru held up a brochure. “Is this it?”

  Mary leaned in for a close look. “No.” She was about to go through another drawer when she noticed something under his foot.

  “That's it!” Mary bent over and pulled the brochure from underneath his shoe. She read the name off the cover. “Diethylenetriamine.”

  “Diethylenetriamine. Never heard of it.”

  “No one's ever heard of it,” she said, walking over piles of dumped brochures to get to her phone.

  Nick Toby sat at his desk at Lansing Chemical feeling sorry for himself. As a Marine fighting in the jungles of the Pacific he had sacrificed so much for his country. He wanted to keep a “Semper Fi” attitude, but things were not going well. He was beginning to regret the sacrifices he had made. Chemical sales had dropped dramatically after the war, and his commission checks were meager. He and his wife had a three-year-old daughter to raise, and another child was on the way. Nick had made hundreds of cold calls to potential customers, had hustled day and night putting in sixty or more hours a week. And for what? He made more money than this as a college student busing tables.

  His desk phone began to ring, and he questioned whether he should even answer it. The odds were good it was his wife complaining they did not have any milk for their daughter.

  The phone on the end of the line rang six times before someone picked up. Mary waited, and then a voice.

  “Nick Toby, Lansing Chemical.”

  “Yes, Nick. Mary Morgan at North American Aviation. How are you?”

  “I'm, uh, I'm fine. How are you?”

  “Great. Hey, I was looking over this product brochure you left me on diethylenetriamine. Do you guys still make this stuff?”