Space For Sale

by Jeff Pollard

  “So?”

  “I can beat them,” K says. “I can do it better, faster, cheaper, lighter, AND safer. I was fine with being the ferry, doing these missions to the ISS, building my own space station, while NASA pushed the envelope. Then as I develop reusability, I can start doing bold things myself. But I thought I was enabling NASA to do big things by doing the routine things, leaving them to the deep-space missions. But it's become clear now to me...there's only one space program that's truly devoted to pushing the envelope, and I'm in charge of it.”

  “So what's your plan?”

  Kingsley and Josh step back and review the board.

  Josh looks at the white-board with wide optimistic eyes. “That could build a hell of a space station, then you'd have somewhere to send passengers.”

  “True, but then we won't make any money launching up our own space station. I figure we'll have customers for satellites to fill some of that capacity, we might be the ferry for some other space ships, beyond that I don't know what the payloads will be.”

  “What about a passenger flight around the Moon, or a landing, what would that take?” Josh asks.

  “I've figured that I can do a lunar mission with just two Eagle Heavys and an Eagle 9. We could send a crew of 4 to lunar orbit, land 3 to the surface for maybe 4-5 days.”

  “How much do you think people would pay for a five day stay on the Moon?” Josh asks with a smile.

  “Right now, two Eagle Heavys and an Eagle 9 will cost about 250 million. Add the Griffin, the lander, the Earth Departure Stage, and you're looking at 350 million. If we can send three passengers, that's a 120 million a piece. Do you think people would pay a 120 million for a two week vacation with a few days on the Moon?”

  “There's plenty of billionaires that would absolutely pay that much. People have paid what, fifty million, for a week on the ISS.”

  “And that's the cost assuming no reusability at all. If we can just cut the cost in half, that would be huge. You want a drink?” K asks as he walks to a bar in the corner.

  “Ummm, what do you have?” Josh asks.

  “Everything,” K responds as he makes himself a glass of Absinthe.

  “Tequila and Dew?” Josh asks. Kingsley drops the sugar cube in his glass of absinthe, it's the 1898 Bohemian Existentialist equivalent to a 1%-er dropping their monocle in their drink.

  “Tequila and Dew?” K asks.

  “If you've got it,” Josh says, red-faced.

  “Are you planning a Taco Bell run after this?”

  “I'll have what you're having then,” Josh tries to get past this embarrassment.

  “No, my boy, you ask and you shall receive,” K comes back from the bar with his Absinthe and a Tequila-and-Dew. The men look at the board, the schedule, the plans, thinking and sipping on their drinks.

  “Why do we assume we're not going to re-use the landers?” Josh asks.

  “What?”

  “Well I mean, you're all about re-using everything right? Why not the lunar landers?”

  “Well, if you bring the whole heavy lander back to lunar orbit, you're going to need a lot more fuel for lunar ascent. In Apollo, lunar ascent was done with just a fraction of descent because they left those heavy tanks, consumable tanks, landing gear, a lot of stuff on the surface. But if we bring all of that back up, then we need a lot more fuel for ascent. More fuel on ascent means descent is pushing a heavier spacecraft, thus we need more fuel for descent. Thus we've got significantly more fuel for both ascent and descent, putting more demands on the Earth-departure-stage.”

  “Right, but,” Josh says, “if we go for a single-stage lander, we don't need two sets of tanks and two engines, so that saves some weight. And sure, the whole lander will be heavier, but if we don't need to take a new lander with us to the Moon every time we go, then each Moon mission will only need an Earth-departure stage big enough to send the capsule and some extra fuel.”

  “Okay,” K says, “So first we send the lander, unmanned, lands, comes back to orbit, rendezvous and docking with a space station in lunar orbit. Then when we send people, they don't bring a heavy lander, but they bring fuel for it. Dock at the lunar space station, then fuel the lander and go.” K says.

  “Can't you make fuel on the Moon?”

  “No,” K says, “but you can extract oxygen from the lunar regolith, theoretically. Set up a small outpost that makes the oxidizer, then each mission to the Moon only needs to take the fuel for the lander, not the oxidizer.”

  “And, every lunar landing mission would have some margin for safety, some unused propellant. So every time you get back to the lunar station, you'd have some excess fuel and you put it back in the tanks.”

  “If we had a lunar space station, then Apollo 13 wouldn't have been a big problem. It's a safe haven around the Moon, we could have a spare Griffin there in case of emergency to bring them back, or they could hide out in lunar orbit until we send a rescue,” K says. The men, giddy like school boys, thinking a mile a minute, feed off each other, sketching out mission architecture, different space station designs, various lunar landers.

  Caroline enters the sim room, finding K and Josh still going strong, hours later, with dozens of designs on the board.

  “So with the oxygen-production plant online, we need a way to move that O2 to the new lander, we don't want every landing to be at the same site,” K says.

  “Right, which is why the autonomous rover is there, it goes to the plant between missions, then drives to the next landing site and waits for the lander to arrive. See, and that way, every mission arrives and has an electric rover already in place, we re-use it for each landing. We can have the thing drive itself hundreds of miles between missions, so why bring a new one for each landing?”

  “That's good,” K says. Caroline stands in the doorway, watching the nerds work, admiring Kingsley's boyish wonder. “Let's look at abort modes, types of failures. I want redundancy anywhere I can get it. So, once they land and get down to the Moon. What happens if the lunar lander won't fire up?”

  “Well, we could always keep a second lunar lander at the station, and if one fails on the surface, the backup can be sent down to retrieve the crew,” Josh says.

  “Right. That's exactly what I was thinking. So we have to have a minimum of two landers before we go. Alternate using each one. It costs extra, to always have two landers ready, but you can eliminate a black zone in the flight plan. I don't want any black zones. I always want an exit strategy, an abort option, even if it costs more, because if we're going to make spaceflight routine, we're going to have more opportunities for accidents, and the more backups and redundant systems we have, the better able we'll be to stop disaster. I mean, if you think you're going to fly to the Moon six times, you can handle a black zone, just make sure you are extra careful, but if you think you're going a hundred times, a thousand times, then you can't count on diligence alone being enough to save your ass.”

  “Well,” Josh says. “If we have two landers, then we could use them both for a single mission. Say we use one to land four people, right? Once they've landed, we send the second lander down autonomously, it lands fifty yards from the first one. Two astronauts walk to the other lander, and they stay in there, we effectively double the size of the shelter and the length of time we can stay on the lunar surface. Then they get back into the first lander, take off and fly back to the lunar station. If that lander fails to light, then they get out and walk to the other lander and take that one.”

  “That's good, but that would double the amount of fuel they would need to take to lunar orbit to do the mission.”

  “Not if we have oxygen creation up and running,” Josh says. “Then we could do a double lander mission for the same weight as a regular mission where you're both oxidizer and fuel.”

  “Okay, good, let's keep that in mind. Now, what if both landers fail,” K asks.

  “You're shit out of luck,” Josh says.

  “I guess so,” K says. “No...wait a second
. We've got a big rover that's driving around, carrying tanks of fuel and oxidizer right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let's strap some rockets to it. If the lander doesn't work, then you get on the rover, fire up the engines, and fly up the station,” K says.

  “But then we'd have to put a cabin, cockpit, life support on the rover,” Josh says.

  “Why?” K asks.

  “So you want four people to get on the lunar rover, in space-suits, exposed to the elements, no cockpit, and rocket up to the lunar space station,” Josh says.

  “Why not?”

  “I guess it's an emergency backup, doesn't need to be pretty.”

  “Exactly,” K says. “They studied it for Apollo. They called it the Lunar Escape System. Some designs doubled as a means of point-to-point travel on the surface, extending the range beyond that of the rover. Some were very simple and would use fuel drained from the lander, thus you don't bring along dead weight, just a few kilograms of this rocket chair. Some were so simple they didn't have controls, you just steered by leaning. They jokingly called it an Ass-Guided-Rocket-Chair. No guidance, no telemetry, no compass, no fuel gauge. Talk about flying by the seat of your pants.

  “Would it be able to dock?” Josh asks.

  “Nope,” K replies. “And the astronauts would just be on suit oxygen. So they would just hope to get into an orbit close enough to the Command Module that they could be retrieved before they suffocated,” K says.

  “Yeah, it ain't pretty. I don't know how many people are going to be made to feel safer knowing that's a backup. You might be better off telling them that the lander engines can't fail,” Josh says.

  “Just say hypergolic and watch their eyes glaze over,” K says with a laugh.

  “Okay, so we need a spare Griffin, and a spare lander before we send people. That way we have a redundancy for each piece of hardware. And then as we ramp up, maybe we can find a place with some water ice. Produce oxygen in-situ. Then we can figure out how to plug some lunar regolith into a 3d printer and start printing out structures. Build some greenhouses, some telescopes, and get a permanent manned presence up there. Once we do that, we're ready to go to Mars, having proven all of this hardware, learned some lessons, before we send people on an 18 month journey to Mars with no abort capability.”

  “Kingsley,” Caroline finally says something, alerting the nerds to the presence of a lady.

  “Oh hey, I didn't hear you come in. How was the baby shower?”

  “It was a fundraiser for infant mortality. Kingsley, I don't mean to be a bother, but...what exactly are you planning?” Caroline says as she looks over their numerous drawings

  “A Moon colony. Well and that's in preparation for a permanent manned presence on Mars.”

  “And while you're off building a Moon base and retiring on Mars, where am I in these elaborate plans?”

  “It's kinda late, I should go,” Josh says as he heads out. Caroline sits, looking at Kingsley as he waits for Josh to get out of earshot.

  “What do you mean?” K asks.

  “This isn't rocket science Kingsley,” Caroline says. “You know that your Mars ship will use methane as a fuel, that's pretty specific. So if you think ahead this specifically, where do I fit in?”

  “That's different, which fuel to use is a knowable problem. That's a question of engineering. You're a...”

  “An unsolvable problem?” Caroline asks.

  “An unknown. I can't plan for what you'll want to do.”

  “I mean, you've never asked me if I wanted to retire on Mars. What about children?” Caroline asks.

  “I don't want to have kids yet,” K says, looking away.

  “What does yet mean exactly? What are you waiting for? Kingsley...I love you, I want to be there with you, but you're planning for a retirement on Mars, I don't know that I want to leave the planet instead of spending time with our kids and grandkids.” Caroline puts her hand under Kingsley's chin and raises his head up to make him look at her. K doesn't say anything. “Well?”

  “I don't know.”

  “You don't know what Kingsley?”

  “Those things,” he's clamming up. He looks away from her.

  “Kingsley? Are you alright? Is there anything you want to say to me?”

  “I'm not good with this stuff,” K says, exasperated.

  “You sure there's nothing you want to say to me?” K looks scared, though he tries to hide it. “Like, I love you too Caroline, I'm sorry that I didn't include you in planning our future, let's talk about it now. Okay Kingsley, how about shared custody, the kids will go to your place on Mars every other weekend and I'll get them the rest of the time on Earth. Great Caroline, that sounds like a good compromise.”

  “I don't want kids,” K blurts out.

  “What?”

  “I don't want to be a father,” K says. He walks away from her, heading for the stairs.

  “Maybe you could have shared that with me a little earlier in the relationship,” Caroline says as he disappears up the stairs. Caroline sighs, sitting down. She looks at the white board and the elaborate drawings and plans. Dozens of Moon missions, architecture for a Mars landing, in-situ methane production, an autonomous lunar rover, and yet, he can't share with his girlfriend of two years that he doesn't want kids. She sees a drink sitting on the table. She exasperatedly takes a drink, then spits it back out. “What is this, a roofie-rita?”

  Caroline wakes early, checking the time on her iPhone 6. 4:39. She feels the bed for Kingsley, finding it's cold and empty. Puzzled, she sits up and turns on the lamp. She half-expects to find him in the guest bedroom, as he often comes to bed late and doesn't want to disturb her, but he's not there. Maybe he couldn't sleep and he's in his simulator, she thinks as she walks downstairs, poking her head in one of the spaceship sims. No sign of him, except for the dank smell of old sweat from hair-raising near-misses and crashes. She heads to the garage, expecting to find one of his three Tezla cars missing. But all the cars are there, each plugged in with cables that snake over to a SolCity charging port. “Where the hell is he?”

  Caroline walks back to the bedroom, calling K on her iPhone. It rings four times. Is he ignoring me​​?

  “Hey, did I wake you?” K asks.

  “Where are you?”

  “The Tezla X unveiling is today,” K replies.

  “So where are you​?”

  “Flying to New York.”

  “Oh, I didn't know you were going to that,” Caroline says, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “I forgot to mention it to you yesterday.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you want to go?” K asks from the cockpit of his Starship.

  “Well,” Caroline says exasperatedly.

  “Well, what?”

  “I don't want to have to catch a commercial flight. I'd rather have flown there with you.”

  “Yeah, it's pretty great having your own plane,” K says.

  “Yeah,” Caroline says in a way that means something.

  “What is it?” K asks.

  “Nothing...just...”

  “Just what?”

  “Do you want me to come back and pick you up?” K asks.

  “I don't want to ask that, I mean, I don't want to be a bother,” Caroline says.

  “It's alright, I haven't gone far, I can come back and get you.” K says.

  “No, just keep going, you don't need to come back just for me.”

  “I'll turn around,” K says.

  “No really, just go without me,” Caroline says. Kingsley thinks hard for a moment. Does she really mean that? Is this a trap?

  “So...do you want me to come back for you, or do you just not want to be a bother?”

  “I wouldn't mind if you came back for me,” Caroline says.

  “Oh good god woman, just tell me what you want. I'll come back, if you just tell me you want me to come back, okay? I'm not a mind-reader. Just tell me what you want, and I'll make it happen. That simp
le.”

  “I want a baby,” Caroline says.

  “Oh dear god.”

  “I'm kidding. Kingsley. K. That was a joke.”

  “I'm turning around. Be there in about 10,” K says.

  K's two-engine, pusher-delta Starship bears down on the small private runway at just after five in the morning. He lands, taxiing to the front of his private hangar. He opens the door with folding stairs, hoping to find Caroline ready to leave. “Of course she's not ready to leave.”

  K shivers in the cold February air. It might be California, but it's not always t-shirt weather, and Kingsley's typical attire is jeans or shorts with a t-shirt. That is unless he's wearing one of his ten thousand dollar suits. K shivers and debates walking up to the house to get her, but if he does, he shouldn't leave the plane running. He elects to call her instead. “Hey, I'm back, you coming out?”

  “Could you help me?”

  “Do I...do you need me? I don't want to come back inside cause then I'd have to shut the plane down and that'd be a whole deal.”

  “Umm, I guess I can get it all myself.”

  “What are you even bringing, we're going to be in New York City for like 9 hours.”

  “Well I don't know what I'm wearing to the event, and I could make a decision right now and bring one thing, or I could bring options and decide later when I know what you're wearing and more about the event.”

  “I'm wearing the Zegna. So match that.”

  “That silver leisure suit thing?”

  “What's wrong with the Zegna? And what's a leisure suit?” K asks.

  “Never mind. It...just makes you look like a robot, it's so metallic.”

  “That's why I like it, it's like I'm wearing armor. I think the thread actually has silver woven into it. I mean, it better have some real silver in it for twenty grand. So does that make your decision easier...Caroline?”