by Purple Hazel
However, it’s also used in the fabrication of silicones for the aerospace and construction sector, thereby making it possible—with the acquisition of millions of tons of it that is— to eventually conquer space.
Nuclear fusion-powered craft could in all likelihood fly to the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and bring back just what Earth needed to develop a ship fully capable of going even further into space than humans could have ever imagined going only a century before.
Chapter 5
Operation Goldilocks
The crown jewel by far in Cory’s 2076 exposé was her depiction of the race to send a manned mission into deep space to seek out long term possibilities for galactic colonization. That was indeed the most exciting and inspiring part of her presentation and she saved it for last.
Back in the 2040’s, scientists had begun work on developing innovative solutions to the challenges surrounding manned missions into deep space. There were several obstacles of course, but the biggest by far, and the one most seemingly impossible to resolve throughout the early 2000’s, was simply distance. Planets and star systems nearest to Earth were too far to reach, given the technology mankind possessed at the time. This she didn’t hesitate to overemphasize.
“To cross it with a manned spacecraft would require decades…unless of course technology advanced to the point a propulsion system could be designed that could travel at or near the speed of light,” she said in her report. “And even then, distant missions to potentially habitable planets might require something like Generation Ships, or interstellar arks, which might take centuries to reach nearby stars at sub-light speed; with the great grandchildren of the original crew ultimately landing on the destination planet.”
Therefore, in Part Five of her series, Cory turned her attention to the GU’s diabolical and rather ambitious thirty-year long space flight program which brought the world’s best and brightest together to create a propulsion system capable of doing just that…before the Earth could no longer feed its burgeoning population. That became the impetus basically—the inspiration to pursue this goal in earnest. For having resolved the Earth’s previous threats—converting from the use of fossil fuels and eliminating the threat of Radical Islam—this was the remaining critical issue facing the globe by the middle of the 21st century. Feeding the world quickly became the next major priority for the leaders of the Global Union...
* * * *
Social scientists predicted back then that the world’s population was on pace to hit nine billion by 2050, eleven billion by 2100, with most of the increases occurring within developing countries which already suffered from strained resources. To ever hope to feed these people, the GU Food and Agriculture Ministry (FAM) calculated in 2049 that food production needed to increase by a minimum of seventy percent to meet this rising demand. Failing that and the consequences, it coldly stated, would be rather dire indeed—even more dire perhaps than anyone would like to think about.
After what Cory had learned from first-hand accounts about urban anarchy during the Collapse of 2028, she could only begin to imagine what this might entail. Terrified citizens, starving and stirred up into rebellion, rampaging through the streets of major cities? Rioting? Murdering? Could the world endure such a terrible disaster once again?
Yet there simply wasn’t any definitive way to accommodate this rise in need—not on planet Earth that is. True, global climatic change had not resulted in oceans swallowing up the world’s major port cities—but fact was rising sea water had been gradually shrinking the coastal areas of most continents, resulting from the ongoing melting of the polar ice caps. Thus urbanization, desertification, crop diseases, soil erosion, salinization…were all working against mankind in continuing to feed its growing numbers.
Cory was amazed at the bluntness and brutal honesty she found in decades-old government writings and White Papers pertaining to this deadly crisis. Nothing seemed to be censored or even sanitized for the public’s protection. Truly, humans were consuming food far faster than they could continue to produce and thereby sustain themselves as a species. What’s more there was no gentle way to state this in her exposé. Anything less than the unabridged truth would have been poor journalism; she knew that. Quite similarly, FAM Ministers during that era simply weren’t about to mince words either.
“Scientists say the world will begin running out of food,” Cory said in her report, “by the end of the century. And they’ve been warning of this impending crisis for decades. There simply won’t be enough food to handle a growing world population, expected to exceed 11 billion by the end of the century.” She filmed this segment while sitting in the cab of a massive solar combine harvester in a Michigan cornfield, with the camera filming her from ground level looking up. The camera then panned around the near-infinite fields now devoid of corn stalks shortly after the annual harvest.
“No matter how much we plant, how much we grow, or however much we try to conserve, the land can only yield what it can. So, we have to ask ourselves: what happens when we’ve exhausted all that our planet can give us?”
Using videos clips from twenty-year-old news broadcasts, Cory next showed stock footage of starving Sudanese villagers crowded around government distribution centers and food trucks offloading sacks of grain, potatoes, yams, and rice. Hands reaching desperately, no one even bothering to queue up or wait their turn. Longer arms and stronger bodies reaching over old women and young mothers clinging to babies. Cries of distress and despair intermingling with each other into a roar of torment and misery.
In her husky narrator’s voice, she calmly spoke over the partially muted audio with the ominous words, “Think it can’t happen again? Think it can’t happen most everywhere in the world? Think again. When food runs out, it likely will. And this very well could be the fate of people in most any country or territory within the Global Union, not just Africa.”
“Climate change is affecting agriculture in so many uncontrollable ways: average temperatures are rising, changes in average rainfall adversely affect crop production in low latitude countries which see detrimental changes in their annual crop yields. What’s more, ironically enough, agriculture contributes to this very same problem via anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, and through the clearing of forests and grasslands, converting them into agricultural land.”
“Deforestation affects our planet by changing the climate. Tragically, the more land we clear to farm, the worse this becomes, making it harder to attain the same yields per hectare,” she went on to say, adding “…therefore we must pose the more difficult question: at what point do we start seeing diminishing returns…and what might be the repercussions? Drought…famine…panic and insurrection?”
Temperatures on the planet had already increased upwards of 3.3 degrees ̊C on average and the expectations were for that to triple by 2100. There simply wasn’t any easier answer. Studies had reached one irrefutable conclusion: the destiny of humanity is to explore and colonize space.
During this last part of her 2076 exposé, Cory then turned her attention away from all this negativity and fearful foreboding about the future of planet Earth, to the brave and dedicated work of scientists, especially astronomers, who worked tirelessly to find a solution. In the last half hour of her broadcast, she concluded her five-part series with an inspiring and detailed look at what was discovered and proposed during the 2040’s and ’50’s…
* * * *
Kapteyn B, an exoplanet within the Kapteyn star system 12.8 light years away, was widely believed to be the best candidate for colonization. The only remaining obstacle was in somehow getting there and establishing a colony with enough people, equipment, supplies—and in a short enough period of time—that humans could lay the foundation for a new world to conquer and settle. This was the daunting task facing scientists throughout the 2050’s.
Of course,” Cory hastily pointed out in her broadcast, “science is already rapidly catching up. As always, when pro
perly motivated, humans in a position to do so rose to the occasion to champion all of mankind.”
Cory was glad to state this in her exposé with a tinge of inspired pride in her husky voice. But she was shocked to discover the process by which science had “risen to the occasion” had its origins many decades before. Probes had attempted to explore this far-away system as long ago as the 2030’s using a ground-breaking technology called Breakthrough Starshot. This was a research and engineering project that ultimately manufactured a fleet of nano-spacecraft…literally shooting them into space, initially at nearly half the speed of light, and then far faster in the following years as technology progressed.
Amazingly enough, with all the exciting developments going on in both solar energy technology, as well as the mining and exploitation of the Moon, astronomers were diligently working together with aerospace engineers and other applied scientists to determine the next step for mankind in its potential survival as a species.
Only twenty-four years old and fresh out of college when she put together this report back in 2076—with everything that was occurring around the world and the many existing challenges that still needing to be resolved—Cory could hardly fathom just how this had been going on thirty plus years ago. Yet it was all there, in official texts published on the government macronet.
The origins of this Breakthrough Starshot technology hearkened back to before the Great Collapse of 2028, when physicist and venture capitalist Yuri Milner teamed with world-renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking (along with about 111 million Euros just to get the ball rolling). Thus with a final cost of 11.1 billion Euros when completed, a mothership carrying around one thousand tiny spacecraft—centimeter-sized and weighing one gram each—launched into high-altitude orbit. Earth-based lasers were then focused, sending a light beam onto the crafts’ lightsails to accelerate them into space.
Solar sails, also known as photon sails, were a form of spacecraft propulsion which used large mirrors driven by radiation pressure exerted by sunlight. Cory left out much of the science of this bizarre technology, but basically light exerted a force on the mirrors much like wind blowing a boat sail. Therefore, high-energy laser beams could be used as an alternative light source to create greater force than by using mere sunlight. No moving parts. No propellant. They could simply catapult through space within 150 million kilometers of their target and send back captured images of a high enough quality to determine surface features of any planets they passed.
By the mid 2060’s, almost twenty-five years since these tiny probes were launched, grainy full color images were finally being broadcast back to Earth; and the excitement it stirred within the scientific community was electric to say the least. The public soon found out about it as well. What’s more…Kapteyn-B was indeed habitable! It contained vast oceans, land masses apparently capable of sustaining plant or animal life, inland seas and marshes, and quite possibly fresh water lakes and rivers flowing from its icy polar caps. It had massive rocky deserts in the continental interiors. Spectacular mountain ranges ringed inland plains likely devoid of all life on the dark side of the planet, but otherwise it looked like Kapteyn B could support a colony.
The Kapteyn System had already been estimated to be 11.5 billion years old—much older than our own Solar System. But there were even more intriguing facts about this mysterious planet that were soon coming to light as the Star Shot Probe transmissions finally began reaching Earth. Nearly five times the mass of Earth its gravity was 1.7 times that of Earth. It would be hard to live there, and there was no telling whether there would be breathable oxygen for humans. But with its size and spectacular oceans on the sunny side of the planet, it still made for a tantalizing prospect.
Kapteyn B was classified as a synchronous rotator, with one side always facing its sun. Models developed by scientists for this much older planet indicated that such planets could maintain habitable conditions if they possessed a sufficiently dense carbon dioxide atmosphere. Thus, if Kapteyn B had always been a terrestrial planet with chemistry similar to the inner planets of our Solar System, there must be a good chance it possessed an atmosphere as a natural consequence of its position within the habitable Goldilocks Zone as astronomers humorously referred to it. Not too hot, not too cold, in other words.
Scientists prior to the Star Shot Probe’s exploration of the Kapteyn System had often worried that “B’s” extreme age—10 billion Earth years—would present a problem. This was vitally important, because as planets age, they slowly cool due to the decay of their original radioactive elements. Perhaps then, “B” might be a geologically dead planet that had lost its atmospheric carbon dioxide and entered a perpetual Ice Age eons ago.
However—and to the delight of Earth scientists within Space Programme—this turned out not to be the case. Apparently, some speculated the cooling for a super-Earth like “B” was much slower than smaller planets like ours. Whether it be God’s providence, mankind’s manifest destiny, or plain old good fortune, the sunny side of Kapteyn B had maintained an ability to support oceans and inland seas, even if the chances of finding vast jungles and forests was no longer likely, based on probe transmissions.
Intelligent life existing there was also given a very slim chance on such a cold, aged planet. Scientists from both camps were quick to caution against trying to imagine bipedal intelligent beings scurrying up to greet landing parties or even swarms of insects and edible life forms to be found anywhere on the surface. Any potential life to be discovered, they seemed to agree, would likely be found in the planet’s massive oceans. Official plans from Space Programme depicted a planetary operation that might involve harvesting marine life and plankton to be turned into edible food; and perhaps inland agriculture utilizing desalinized ocean water.
The only thing left, therefore, was to send a large, well-supplied, manned mission and determine this from the mysterious planet’s very own surface. And in fact, that’s just how Cory concluded her exposé back in 2076:
“The race to develop an interstellar exploratory mission to Kapteyn B quickly became the prime focus of legions of scientists both funded and authorized by the Global Union to develop a craft capable of traveling this great distance and colonize this alien planet.”
Operation Goldilocks as those involved with the project playfully referred to it, was already in full swing…
Part Two
Pioneers and Explorers
Chapter 6
The Twin Paradox
Ten years had now passed. Cory’s career had flourished. Her ground-breaking 2076 exposé about the Collapse of 2028 and its aftermath garnered global recognition and even a few awards from media organizations. The international film academy in Berlin even recognized her with its prestigious FELIX award at the restored Theater des Westens in Berlin. And yet, as she sat in her chair receiving touch-ups to her makeup—on this early morning in 2086—Cory could only think of the exciting investigative report planned for this evening’s broadcast. She’d been working on the story for over a year, and tonight was finally going to be the night she’d tell the whole world.
Things had come full circle indeed. A day thirty years in the making was rapidly approaching; and Cory Redmann plus maybe a few select insiders within the GBN hierarchy, were about all who knew anything of it for the past thirteen months. The public had been kept in the dark for reasons of security—and also in an effort to keep the crazies and lunatics on guerrilla radio stations and inside evangelical Christian churches from stirring up controversy.
And yet somehow, despite all the other challenges involved, men and women charged with the task of designing and building a large-scale manned vessel capable of near-light speed travel had somehow come through.
They’d done it! All those eggheads and brainiacs; as Cory used to hear her Father call them back in her youth, had actually done it. Space Programme was now about to unveil a newly planned mission to Kapteyn B after nearly three decades in the works. Launch was rumored to be slated for l
ater that year! Therefore, covering this story for Worldweek was to be the culmination of her lifelong career as a journalist…a dream come true for any reporter, really. Yet no other reporter at GBN would do and the front office executives well knew that. No, this was Cory Redmann’s story, and hers alone. A few minutes more and it’d finally be time for her to take the stage and tell the world of mankind’s next great achievement. A new era of human colonization of the galaxy was about to begin.
“Good evening and welcome to Worldweek,” she began confidently, trying to suppress her excitement, “I’m Cory Redmann. Here’s our top story.” Then she smiled brightly for a moment, barely able to contain herself before continuing. Her nostrils flared excitedly as she drew a deep breath.
“Sources close to the situation say the GU Space Programme is about to announce a scheduled launch and maiden voyage of the new Santa Maria Galactic Explorer. Official announcements of the mission are expected within days. Mankind, we’re proud to report, is about to embark on its first bold foray into deepest space. At this very moment, plans are in place and the top-secret vessel is nearing completion up in Earth’s orbit. We’re also pleased to report that right now, designs for the craft along with details of the accommodations for the crew, are being made public.”
She then turned in her chair to a different camera angle which caused her to turn her head slightly. She grinned ever so subtly as she continued, “We’ll take a look at these newly released images and artists’ renderings of the ship right after these important messages from our corporate sponsors…stay with us, will you?” Newsroom-style music then rose up in the background of Cory’s broadcast while the screen faded out her face shot. A montage of pictures took its place showing the evolution of the space program ever since man’s first mission to the Moon over a century ago…