by T I WADE
“Well, I still like eating the cooked rabbits and chickens, as long as they weren’t hurt, and I like the eggs. I think we should not stop eating meat on our ship,” Saturn replied seriously.
“That is unfortunate,” replied Martha. “I think your father will the last one to become a vegetarian, or maybe Mars’ father, Herr Noble.”
“Increase my supply of schnapps, Frau Von Zimmer, and I could put eating red meat, rabbit and chicken behind me, but fish? No way,” replied Jonesy, not moving. “The consumption of fresh fish and flying my Gulfstream will still attach me to Earth pretty quickly once we get there.”
“Hard to fly an airplane in a wheelchair, Herr Jones,” replied Martha, winking at Maggie.
“Maybe I need to introduce you to some old scientist horses also in wheelchairs when we get back,” replied Jonesy smiling.
Over the next few months, the rabbits and meat chickens slowly disappeared from the daily menus, and became a request item only for meals. Jonesy, VIN and several of the build crew, including Vitalily, Boris, and a few others shared what they called a monthly feast when the beer was ready and a large number of chickens and rabbits needed to be consumed.
Ryan and Captain Pete became vegetarians, as did Kathy and Lunar for a short while, and the vegetarians stayed away from the cafeteria during ‘feast time’. Feast time, was also the only day when beer was plentiful, and the two commanders stayed on the Bridge for the couple of hours it took the feasters to eat and drink their fill, and smiled at the costumes many wore.
To add to the partying, a vegetarian feast and a vegan feast were planned by Mr. Rose who decided that non-meat eaters should also enjoy themselves. These feasts were scheduled on the days the wine was available to drink; these feasters thought themselves far more civilized drinking wine and eating the ‘fruits’ of the seven cubes.
Christmas was celebrated at the same time as Christmas Day on Earth, which was also true for Easter, and various holidays celebrated in different countries. They were holidays, set aside for fun and enjoyment. It was impossible to shop for presents so most gifts were handmade artwork, or gifts of small luxuries that had been hidden away for a long time. The crew celebrated two Christmases aboard America One on their flight to Saturn, and everybody became at least a year older on the second longest, non-stop part of the tour around the solar system.
The travel time back to Mars would be four or five years once they left Saturn. With Captain Pete’s returning schedule, they needed to find water, the more the better, which would provide more hydrogen fuel and a higher cruising speed; they had close to a year on Titan to do that.
“We have Titan on the radar,” Captain Pete greeted Ryan one morning when he entered, still half asleep, and heading straight for the coffee pot. He didn’t know how he would have survived without Mr. Rose’s coffee trees. Titan was so big, that they had seen the planet days before the radar detected the solar system’s second largest moon.
“Do you know they used to think Titan was the largest moon in the solar system?” Captain Pete said, testing to see how awake Ryan was.
“Yes, until somebody realized that the moon had an atmosphere around it, and the moon was actually smaller than it looked, smaller than Ganymede,” replied Ryan grabbing his coffee.
“I wonder what we are going to find on this moon,” Captain Pete mused.
“Don’t you ever get tired of this Bridge, Pete?” Ryan asked. “There are a dozen of us who can monitor this ship if you want to take a vacation for a week or two,” Ryan replied settling into his Captain’s chair.
“I love this Bridge, and where would I take a vacation? I walk the entire ship four times a day, check in to see Nancy now and again, and I’m not very good at vacationing alone on an unknown planet, or moon. I suppose Las Vegas would do for a few weeks, and I might just take you up on that offer of a few weeks gambling with unlimited funds,” the captain replied smiling. “I could be 71 or older, when we reach Earth.”
“I know. I’ll be 55, Kathy 50, and Lunar 10 or 11,” Ryan smiled. “I wonder who will be the next captain of this vessel, once we older guys retire.”
“I’ll put my money on Mars Noble,” smiled Captain Pete. “He is often up here with his father, and watches everything we do with his eagle eyes. I think the real question is, who will Mars Noble marry? With the frequency of girls being born, he, young Jacob Rogers, and the other couple of boys born on Earth are going to have harems if we are not careful.”
“Look at the bright side,” smiled Ryan enjoying his coffee. “At least we are guaranteed a few space generations before Dr. Nancy or Dr. Martin will need to start a sperm bank for our future generations. With Tow and Fritz finally getting together, maybe the ship will get a third boy from them. Plus, we still have the boys older than Mars. I, for one, don’t ever want to live on Earth again. I never felt completely at home down there, and I really disliked the viciousness and hateful deeds humans are capable of inflicting on other humans, animals and everything else down there. Pete, it has actually surprised me that we have had so little animosity up here. I’m starting to believe that this meat thing Frau Von Zimmer is going on about is the real thing.”
“It would certainly be a good experiment to see the outcome of health on the human race if meat were completely excluded from the diet; Roo and Tow are fine examples of this. Of course, it would like take more than one generation to see any change. Our next possible captain, like his father, will certainly be one of the last to kick the meat diet.” VIN entered the Bridge and the two men told him what they were talking about.
“I think it has merit. We humans have eaten meat ever since we used to live in caves, and bonked people over the head. As far as I’m concerned, if we didn’t have testosterone, and didn’t eat meat,” said VIN smiling, “we would have smelled daisies and enjoyed free love, like during the sixties on our planet, you know what I mean, dude…”
“Ja, and all the other meat-eating animals would have eaten us up and made us extinct long before our time,” Suzi interrupted, who entered with Mars. “There are many reasons why we Homo sapiens are at the top of the food chain, and it has nothing to do with eating tofu hot dogs.”
“What is a tofu hot dog, Mom?” Mars asked and Suzi said that she would make him one. Few crew members asked for tofu, which was available aboard ship as there was a generous quantity of frozen skim soy milk.
The Noble family all looked at Titan, which had grown much larger since their last visit to the Bridge a couple of days earlier. The ship was still 200,000 miles away, and the moon looked nearly as big as Earth had from its moon.
“Looks as big as Ganymede,” observed VIN.
“Does this moon have the same geysers we saw on Ganymede and Europa?” Suzi asked.
“Does it have tofu dogs running around on it?” asked Mars Noble.
The rest of the astronauts, as well as Fritz, Roo and Tow entered the Bridge, and Ryan began the day’s briefing.
“Sorry about the science lecture, Mr. Jones, but most of what I have to say deals with flight inside Titan’s atmosphere. Titan is the only known moon with more than a trace of atmosphere and is the only dense, nitrogen-rich atmosphere in the solar system aside from the Earth's. Like Venus, Titan is also a "super rotator", with an atmosphere that actually rotates faster than its surface; that means you have to be extremely careful when entering the atmosphere and upon landing. We don’t know what this super rotation will do to our craft, except maybe sweep you over the surface faster than normal, like a strong wind. Observations from the Voyager space probes from NASA many years ago show that Titan’s atmosphere is denser than Earth's, with a surface pressure about 1.45 times that of our planet. That in itself is a second major problem, Mr. Jones. Titan's atmosphere is about 1.19 times as massive as Earth's, or about 7.3 times more massive on a per surface area basis. It supports several opaque haze layers that block most visible light from the sun and other sources and renders Titan's surface features obscure. As far as flying t
o the surface, I believe you may have to fly using only instruments until you reach the actual surface, or just before. Landing on Titan is going to take all the experience you pilots have. Titan's lower gravity also means that its atmosphere is far more extended than Earth’s and it is only around 11 percent of Earth’s or close to three times less than Earth’s moon. This means that any breeze, or any blast of whatever down there could easily blow you off the surface. But, there is water down there, and we must find water. We also expect to find Roo’s tribe down there, either alive and well or, hopefully, alive in cryonic chambers. If they could get down there astronauts, so can you. It will be mandatory to physical secure all craft and tie cords onto all external personnel down on the surface.
“The atmospheric composition in the stratosphere is 98.4% nitrogen with the remaining 1.6% composed mostly of methane and hydrogen. Methane shouldn’t be on Titan, but the planet’s atmosphere is very young, compared to other moons and planets. Energy from the sun should have converted all traces of methane in Titan's atmosphere into more complex hydrocarbons within the suggested life history of the atmosphere around this moon; 100 million years—a very short time, a blink of an eye compared to the age of the solar system. Earth-Ex, Martin Brusk’s company has used methane as a rocket fuel. I stayed away from this gas because it is dangerous and easily combusts, but our ion drives have been switched to accept either argon or methane as backup fuels to reactor electricity. The mechanics have already made any changes necessary. Since the third gas on Titan is hydrogen, we expect to find enough to turn into liquid. The chemists are collecting hydrogen out of the atmosphere as I speak, but we know it is cold enough down there to possibly find hydrogen in ice form, like we did on Mars.
“Titan's surface temperature is about minus 179.2 Celsius, as cold as Mars and Ganymede were on their coldest areas. At this temperature water ice has an extremely low vapor pressure, so the atmosphere is nearly free of water vapor. This moon receives just about 1 percent of the amount of sunlight Earth gets, so it is darker than what we have previously experienced. The atmospheric methane creates a greenhouse effect on Titan's surface, without which Titan would be even colder. Conversely, the thick layers of haze in the moon's atmosphere contribute to an opposite, anti-greenhouse effect by reflecting sunlight back into space, cancelling a portion of the greenhouse effect warming and making its surface significantly colder than its upper atmosphere.
“Pilots, this is not an atmosphere to take for granted; it will be extremely dangerous to fly through and there are only two reasons we are going down there: to search for the gases and water ice we need and to connect Roo and Tow with their own people. Why they picked Titan to live on, I certainly don’t know other than the planet was a good source for a rocket fuel they could use. Mr. Jones, astronauts, Titan's clouds, are probably also composed of methane, ethane or other simple organics, and are scattered and variable, punctuating the overall haze. The atmosphere contains everything explosive that you can think of except oxygen, so I believe you will be safer if you avoid flying through cloud layers if you don’t have to. And by the way, there are a couple of other moons in the vicinity that are much safer to visit. Our first objective is to land by Roo’s base on the moon and set up the same small atmospheric dome on the surface we used on Ganymede, big enough to accept the forward atmospheric cargo door area of SB-III. I hope the shield will protect Roo’s people from the elements while we dig, or rescue, or whatever we need to do down there.
“There are streaky features that have been seen on the actual surface of the moon, some of them hundreds of kilometers in length that appear to be caused by windblown particles. This shows us that there are winds, possibly strong winds, on the surface. Examination has also shown the surface to be relatively smooth. Radar altimetry suggests height variation is low, typically no more than 150 meters. Occasional elevation changes of 500 meters have been seen, especially by Voyager, and Titan has mountains that sometimes reach several hundred meters to more than half a mile in height. Hopefully, you will have visual around you by the time you reach a mile or so above the surface; if not, we then have to decide what to do.”
Throughout a working lunch for the next several hours, the flight crew picked at every problem they could anticipate. The crew could see that Ryan was uneasy about this next visit; he would have preferred to visit somewhere else, if not for Roo and Tow’s people having a base there.
It took two weeks orbiting the moon to complete all of the tests on the two craft designated to land on the surface. Wearing spacesuits for six hours a day, the mechanics went over every inch of the outer skins of SB-III and Astermine I searching for any evidence of hairline cracks. Next, they inspected the hydrogen pulse thrusters and completely overhauled the engines to make sure that they were perfect. Inside both the craft, Jonesy and Allen Saunders, the two chief pilots went over every computer, backing up memory and ensuring all commands to the computers worked perfectly.
Ryan ordered the inspections and overhauls in the last briefing. Besides extra precautions for this potentially dangerous destination, both craft were approaching 1,000 hours of flight when inspections would be mandated.
It had taken years for the dozens of top-of-the-line 3D printers in the labs to produce every single backup part, screw, nut and bolt out of the titanium and cobalt stored aboard ship; with the large supplies of the two metals from Ganymede and Europa, the printers operated 24/7 to produce parts for use or storage. There was no part that could not be made from these printers except for the outer skins.
After several extra hours in the flight simulators, the two craft undocked from the mother ship 300 miles above the moon to begin the descent to the surface.
Jonesy and Penny Pitt were flying SB-III while Allen Saunders and Max Burgos were flying Astermine One. Michael Pitt was the backup emergency retrieval pilot on Asterspace Three with Ryan himself as co-pilot. Over the last five years of the odyssey, pilots like Max and Ryan had had spent thousands of hours in the flight simulators and were as experienced as the others. Jonesy, Maggie, Allen, Jamie, Penny and Michael were, without doubt, the most experienced, hands-on pilots; but family issues meant that Ryan did not allow both parents of children to undertake such a dangerous mission.
VIN and Roo were aboard with Jonesy and Penny, and Allen and Max carried Fritz and Vitalily as passengers. In an emergency, all eight crew could squeeze into one cockpit, although it had never been tested. It would be like getting eight adults into a minivan.
Twelve hours later, 67 miles above the planet’s surface, Jonesy reported seeing the first cloud. “Altitude, 67 miles; forward speed, 7,000 miles an hour and slowing. Not much atmospheric drag as yet, but I’m feeling a change through the controls.” They were ten miles ahead of and two miles lower than the second craft. “A cloud, or something hazy is appearing several miles below me, visibility is 1,000 miles at least horizontally, but decreasing below us. Allen, I’m turning to starboard 35 degrees; it looks like the perimeter of this cloud ends several miles to my right.”
“How far from touchdown target?” asked Ryan on the Bridge.
“Sixty-six miles below SB-III and we will fly directly over the target, the red dot on the globe, in seven minutes; it’s about 800 miles ahead of us,” Jonesy replied. “Craft is acting a little lazy, like it is going through air, although a very thin layer of air. More like just before we left Earth’s upper atmosphere. I can hardly feel it, but we are still braking. Speed 6,840 miles an hour and slowing, so something is helping us slow down, Boss.”
The dull yellow cloud, visible in the faint sunlight, came to an end and Jonesy dipped into a large cloudless hole thousands of miles across. He directed Allen behind him, who activated the auto-pilot to follow Jonesy’s directions. Jonesy was doing all the work until it got really tight.
On the next pass, having flown through two more layers of clouds, they passed over where they expected the base to be; they were at 34 miles altitude and a slower 3,100 miles an hour.
> Roo somehow knew where the base was just as he precisely located the sites on both of Jupiter’s moons. Even VIN didn’t know how he did it. Roo told the crew every time they passed as close as they would, even pointing out the direction where the base was, if they didn’t fly directly overhead.
“Layers of cloud darkening quite a bit, as we get lower,” Jonesy reported. “This is our last pass and we expect to touch down in ninety minutes.”
“You have nine hours of daylight left,” Ryan informed him. “The sun will be over the base in 70 minutes. You are two miles lower than expected on your last run. I recommend you ease the stick back a degree or so.”
“Roger that,” replied Penny, dialing in a change to the angle of descent. The computers were still flying both craft, and with one switch, flight controls could go manual, but that wasn’t necessary. Both craft were doing lazy “S” turns going through the layers of clouds.
Twenty minutes later they were enveloped in darkness. They searched for the clouds through the night vision apparatus, especially relying on the infrared scopes, which made the clouds look like vivid pink layers of gas above and below them.
At 20 miles altitude, and on the opposite side of the planet to the base, the clouds began to dissipate. At 15 miles, when they reached the sunlit part of the planet, they couldn’t see above them, but they had perfect night vision to see dozens of what looked like tornadoes, or wind squalls on the surface beneath them.
“It looks pretty stormy down there,” reported Jonesy. Radio communications had diminished considerably; they could discern only faint responses and Jonesy expected that there would be no communication when they reached the surface. He explained the situation, and that there was still no gravitational pull from the moon at all. “Ten miles to target, altitude one mile, speed 400 miles an hour. Perfect horizontal vision to the surface. Tornadoes about 200 to 300 feet high, and we just went over one. There is no cloud above it, but we did feel minor vibrations.”