Blue Planet Rising (Pebbles in the Sky Book 2)

by Jeffery Bagley

  The Ambassador stood to leave. “It’s been a pleasure meeting with you, Mr. President.

  “One more thing, Mr. Ambassador, since you have chosen to represent the New French Colonies and The United German Peoples Republic, perhaps you could tell me why both of those countries names do not include any mention of the native population who originally inhabited those African territories. I wonder why?”

  “Why Mr. President, there’s not much of an indigenous population left after you Yanks sterilized all the women back in the early twenties. What few remained were quite grateful to be integrated as citizens in the new countries. It’s been wonderful meeting and talking with you Mr. President. My government will await your decision regarding our proposal.”

  The President sat in thought for a few minutes after the Ambassador left. Finally, he hit his intercom call switch for his Chief of Staff. “Jerry, I need you to come in to discuss a proposal made by the Ambassador.

  Chapter 9

  June 1st, 2044

  Houston, Texas

  Peter Rockwell leaned back from the table that was covered with drawings. Around the table sat some of the best aerospace engineers in the country. In addition to the engineers, General Seale of Space Force, and Robby Tully of JPL were present. Even though much more detailed drawings were available on the computer, it was easier to wrap your head around large paper drawings that you could spread out on a table and mark up.

  “Ok, let’s sum this up,” he said. “We have about three years before we have to launch this mission to Elpis. The ship “Colonel Mike Pierce” will be complete and ready for service in about a year. That ship is of a proven design and with the exception of some computer and instrument upgrades is identical to the Montgomery and Honstein. What we have to make a decision on very soon is the design of the lander and the ascent vehicle. We have already decided that the crew will consist of a pilot, a copilot/cargo specialist, a biologist, a geologist, and two engineers. All of the scientists need to have cross training in another specialty and the engineers need to have experience in several different fields of study. That leaves room for one more crewman. We can determine the skill set needed for that last crewman in the next six months or so. Robby, will you sum up the design concepts we have to work with?”

  Robby, having just been confirmed as the new director of JPL, was still not very comfortable in making presentations. His specialty was robotics, instruments, and computer system designs. That was one of the reasons his Senate confirmation had been such a nasty affair. In the end, after a lot of haggling between Peter and the oversight committee, one of the more influential congressmen had come through and Robby had received the position. Robby took up the wall display control and flicked the screen on.

  “NASA and JPL have been struggling for about sixty years with the same issues in regards to landers. First, how do we land a crew safely on a planet with an atmosphere? Second, how do we get them back off the planet again? The initial moon landings were done with a lunar lander that did not have to take into consideration atmospheric controls or withstanding the heat of atmospheric deceleration. When we land a crew here on Earth, it has always been done by one of two methods. We can use a re-entry capsule with a big heat shield and parachutes, or we can use a shuttle type craft that has some capacity to perform atmospheric maneuvering and then land it on a prepared runway. Neither one of these vehicles has the capacity to turn around and launch to orbit again without a ground facility to prep them or put them back on a booster. Even our magnetic rail launch system requires that the orbiter be prepped and refueled and then put back on to the launch track.”

  “We have the capability of putting a crew onto the surface of Mars or Elpis, but how do we get them back into orbit again? That’s the problem we need to solve. We have several different solutions but each has its own drawbacks and risks. We’re going to have a three to four month window in a few years to put a crew on Elpis. They will need to explore the alien artifact site as well as doing geology surveys and attempting to study the native biology of the planet. We have to make some serious decisions soon and get to work on our planned vehicle in the very near future in order to make that mission window.” Robby looked over at Peter who nodded for him to continue. “I will outline the three options that we have narrowed the choices too.”

  “The first option is the old tried and true capsule approach. It is the safest of the three, but has the least amount of pin point control as to the exact location that the capsule puts down. Once it enters the atmosphere we can only hope it ends up within about a two hundred and fifty square kilometer landing box. At its worse, that’s a long way for the crew to walk to accomplish their assigned tasks. The crew would have to walk or travel to the alien artifact site to study it. They would also have to locate the robotic ascent ship that would be remotely landed near the alien site. Then, they would have to use water resources in the area to fuel that ship before they could return to orbit and the waiting mother ship. This option has fewer risks in getting down, but a lot of issues arise in getting back into space. On site fueling would be a big question mark, because that has never been attempted before. The equipment to convert water into oxygen and hydrogen would have to be landed separately in close proximity to the ascent ship. There’s a large possibility of the crew getting stranded if something goes wrong. With limited resources, they would soon starve or die of exposure.”

  “The second option is to use a nuclear powered lander. This lander would utilize a hydrogen moderated fission nuclear rocket engine similar to what we are using on the lunar cargo tugs. It could carry enough fuel and has the brute strength to land the crew and get back to orbit. It would pose a small but unavoidable radiation risk to the crew due to neutron activation of the ground at the landing site as well as their close proximity to the reactor itself. Shielding would have to be kept to an absolute minimum to reduce weight and the size of the propulsion plant needed. We do not use this type of ship in the Earth’s atmosphere for the same reasons I stated regarding the radiation hazards.”

  “The last option is to use a shuttle type vehicle. We would use a standard lifting wing type body for the shuttle. This would allow deceleration into the atmosphere as well as some maneuvering capability. The lander would approach the landing area and use conventional jet engines to land similar to a vertical takeoff and landing jet fighter. Obviously, there would be no runway for a conventional landing. This lander also would not have the ability to climb back into orbit as it would only have air breathing jet engines. The crew would still have to fuel and use a remotely landed ascent craft to get back in to orbit. Basically, the approach is very similar to the first option but it would allow us to have a much more controlled landing in a more desirable location very near the ascent vehicle and the alien artifact site.”

  Peter thanked Robby and stood up and addressed the group. “Regardless of the descent and ascent vehicles, we will be using up to a dozen robotic landers to haul supplies and equipment into a central landing site near the alien artifacts. We will need to put some type of ground transport down so that the scientists can get around and do their studies of the area around the landing site. There’s also a big push to mount a expedition to the sea to try and locate some of the native plant life that was briefly glimpsed there by the last expedition. I will now open the table to discussion.”

  Kevin Gardner, one of the non-government engineering specialists cleared his throat and spoke. “Doctor Rockwell, what are the present conditions at the alien artifact site? I know that we previously left instruments there to monitor the weather and such. It’s also widely speculated that there has been a great deal of video and still images transmitted from the site that have not been released to the general public. All of us here are security cleared to a very high level. It would help us to know what the landing conditions are going to be.”

  Robby looked at Peter with an “I told you so” expression. Peter acknowledged Robby with a nod. Robby had speculated that this v
ery question would be brought up.

  Robby stood up and called up some data on the computer display. “This data from the artifact site is two days old. The weather has pretty much stabilized. Atmospheric pressure is at twelve point two psi. That is almost eighty seven percent of Earth’s atmospheric pressure at sea level. Atmospheric composition is twelve percent oxygen, one point one percent carbon dioxide, sixty-two percent nitrogen, and the rest is inert gases, with argon being the major component. Humidity is pretty consistent and is running at about seventy-six percent. Daytime temperatures are in the seventies Fahrenheit with lows at night in the sixties. There is still almost continuous cloud cover. The clouds are minimizing atmospheric heat loss and the remaining ice in the equatorial regions is believed to be melting very fast. Winds are running almost a constant ten to twenty knots and rain storms are very frequent. We cannot get any satellite images at the moment due to the continuous cloud cover. Our meteorologists are predicting that cloud cover should start breaking up somewhat in a couple of years as the majority of the sea ice finishes melting.”

  Kevin Gardner sat back with a thoughtful look on his face.

  “Is something wrong Mr. Gardner?” asked Peter.

  “If I understood Mr. Tully correctly, he just described weather almost identical to that in the Cascade Mountains, back near my old home in Oregon. At least that’s what the weather was like pre-encounter.” Kevin exclaimed.

  “I can see where there’s a close similarity,” said Robby. “What’s your point?”

  “Doctor Rockwell, Mr. Tully, if what you have just said is true, then the solution to your problem is quite evident.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Gardner,” said Peter.

  “You just told us that the atmosphere is breathable. The temperature is quite manageable. You have plenty of water available. Providing you can land the supplies and the equipment with robotic landers, you are under no time constraint. Land the crew and give them the equipment they need to be self-sufficient for a couple of years.”

  “In about a year, they could build a small landing field where your landers could come down, be refueled, and then boosted back to orbit again. Why work under such a strict time constraint? Why don’t we just plan on them staying there until the next time Earth and Elpis are in near conjunction? They would be on their own for about four years. Heck, we had crews doing that in Antarctica in the cold for six months at a time, and the moon colony is nearly independent now. Why the hell could you not do it on a warm and wet planet where you can breathe the atmosphere?”

  The group of engineers broke out into a heated discussion. Several members were talking of how the robotic supply ships could then be disassembled into components that could be used for other purposes. It was obvious they were quite excited at the prospect of designing equipment for building a long term facility on a distant world.

  Robby leaned over and whispered to Peter, “Why couldn’t we?”

  Peter sighed. “It makes sense but the cost would be enormous. In addition, the biologists would scream bloody murder if they found out we were setting up a long term base camp before they have time to study the planet’s indigenous life forms. We would be contaminating the ecosystem with microbiological life forms from Earth.” He had a bad feeling that he was going to be fighting some tough battles in the near future with both congressional leaders and the biologists that were itching to study the planet in its pristine state. He just didn’t know where the funding was going to come from. Peter finally understood why Mike Banscott and David Honstein, the two NASA directors before him, had used the word “NO” so often when it had come to funding.

  Chapter 10

  June 17th, 2044

  New Washington, Georgia

  There was a loud knock on the bedroom door and two secret service agents entered the room and turned on the lights. The first agent spoke up as President Walden was struggling to open his eyes and sit up. “Mr. President, we have to move you and Mrs. Walden to the underground bunker immediately. Can you both please come with us to the elevator?”

  “What the hell is going on?” demanded President Walden. “Have the damned Russians launched an attack against us?”

  “What’s wrong dear, are we at war?” asked his wife. She was trying to pull on a robe at the same time as the second agent was pulling her from the bed.

  “The early warning satellites and Space Station Alpha are reporting multiple ballistic launches from South America. That’s all we know at the moment, but as a precaution, the defense intelligence agency is recommending we move you both to safety until more information can be obtained. We need to get you to a secure area just in case it’s a preemptive nuclear attack.”

  “South America? There’s no country in South America with a known ballistic missile or nuclear weapon program. Either someone doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about or the supposedly best intelligence service left in the world has screwed up big time. Take Mrs. Walden to the bunker. Then, I want you to find Jerry and my military attaché and get them to the situation room right away.”

  “Mr. President, our orders are to get you to safety.”

  “Bullshit! I’m the President and I’m giving you new orders. Get the intelligence team assembled and get me a secure line to Space Station Alpha. I need to know what the hell is really going on.” President Walden pulled on his robe and stormed past the secret service agents. He stopped and grabbed a cup of coffee and then headed to the situation room where he could access secure communications. As he stormed in, an Air Force Captain who was already working there, stood up and offered him his seat at a communications panel.

  “I have Colonel Ellis from Space Station Alpha on a secure channel for you sir.”

  President Walden sat down and picked up the headset. “Colonel, this is President Walden, what the hell is going on?”

  “Mr. President, our instruments and observation satellites are detecting multiple ballistic launches from South America. We’re having a hard time detecting the thermal blooms from the launches themselves due to the ash and clouds in the atmosphere. We have picked up thirteen vehicles climbing toward what appear to be orbital trajectories. Our preliminary analysis shows that the vehicles are not maneuvering in a manner expected for a rocket that was trying to put a satellite into orbit. These are either very huge ballistic missiles or have some other purpose.”

  “Where did they come from Colonel?” The President asked.

  “We don’t have an one hundred percent accuracy fix of the launch site yet, but we’re pretty sure they came from the new launch facility that the Bolivian government is building,” replied Colonel Ellis.

  “I thought that project was still years away from completion?” President Walden growled.

  “Evidently, they are much further along than we had estimated, Mr. President.”

  “This whole thing stinks of Benjamin Greco and his cronies. What the hell does Bolivia need launch facilities for anyway?” the President said angrily.

  “Mr. President, we have confirmed that twelve of the vehicles have completed primary burns and we are detecting stage separation. The last vehicle appears to have malfunctioned and is going to fall back into the South Atlantic Ocean.”

  “Colonel, I need to know now. Are they nukes?”

  “Give me about sixty seconds Mr. President, we are detecting secondary stage ignition on the remaining vehicles. We are plotting trajectories now.”

  Jerry Thornton, his Chief of Staff entered the situation room and the President waved him over to the communications station.

  “Mr. President, we have confirmed that all twelve of the remaining vehicles are making further engine burns that will cause them to leave Earth orbit. None of them are in re-entry trajectories and it will be about ten minutes before we can make a guess at their destination.”

  “Let me know as soon as you figure it out, Colonel.”

  President Walden turned to Jerry. “Get in contact with the ambassado
r from Bolivia and tell him if he doesn’t tell me where those missiles are going we might assume that they are nukes. Tell him I would hate to launch a retaliatory missile attack on his country.”

  Jerry nodded. “They’ve been advertising that they were developing commercial launch capabilities and were going to spearhead a program for mining asteroids. This may either be a demonstration of their capability or the rockets might actually be exploration vehicles”

  President Walden shook his head. “Bolivia does not have the resources to run a damned space program. Hell, it’s breaking our treasury for us to have one. This whole thing stinks of Benjamin Greco. He didn’t get so damned rich by throwing away money on demonstrations of technology. He’s up to something and I want to know what it is! Locate me some kind of intelligence asset on the ground down there and find out what is going on.”

  Jerry nodded and left the room.

  “Mr. President, this is Colonel Ellis, it appears that all the space vehicles that were launched are settling onto a trajectory to the planet Elpis.”

  “Elpis? What the hell is he up to?” cursed the President. “Colonel Ellis, is it possible to destroy those space vehicles?”

  “Sir, we aren’t set up to intercept anything coming from Earth. If the experimental solar powered laser battery at the Lagrange Station was on line it could possibly hit something that small, but it will be several months before it’s operational.”

  “Very well Colonel, track those rockets and figure out what they’re up to.”

  “Somebody get me some more coffee in here,” the President yelled out the door.

  …

  Benjamin Greco sat and watched his command and control team at the Bolivian launch complex. Hans Doerman, his lead flight engineer, came over to report. “All of the vehicles but one was successful in placing their payload capsules toward an intercept course with the planet Elpis. They should arrive in about fourteen months, assuming that there are no more system failures while in transit. We probably could have gotten the other rocket into space if you hadn’t insisted on launching all of them so quickly in sequence.”