by Jeff Pollard
Moon
For
Sale
Phase 2 of 3
Jeff Pollard
Moon For Sale
Book 2 of 3
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2015, Jeffrey Scott Pollard.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and all things are fictional and not to be confused with actual persons, businesses, events, locations or things.
ISBN-13: 978-1500328399
ISBN-10: 1500328391
Cover Design by Chris Marino
Created by Jeff Pollard
www.amazon.com/author/JeffPollard
www.JeffPollard.webs.com
Novels by Jeff Pollard:
Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium (2012)
Air Force Two: Going Rogue (2012)
Space For Sale (2013)
Moon For Sale (2015)
Mars For Sale (TBA)
For Michael Alsbury
“To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the Moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to Earth—all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.”
Said by Lee De Forest – Inventor of the vacuum tube,
known as “the Father of Electronics.”
He made this prediction in February 1957.
Men were on the Moon twelve years later.
Chapter 1
“In 1908, an ancient rock, leftover from the formation of our solar system, pierced our sky. After billions of years of silently orbiting the Sun, bearing silent witness to the formation of the planets, making close approaches to Earth before it had a Moon, passing by a blue Mars with oceans of water and white clouds, the rock, perhaps the size of a football field, abruptly entered the Earth's atmosphere at precisely 7:14 am on June 30th, 1908. For a brief moment, it shined a hundred times brighter than the Sun. The rock exploded some fifteen kilometers above the ground in an air-burst more powerful than a thousand Hiroshima bombs. The shock wave flattened eighty million trees over an area of two thousand square kilometers. The Earth was shaken, ringing like a bell as Richter scales all over the planet registered the impact.”
Kingsley Pretorius addresses the audience at the world's largest comic-con. Many in the audience are dressed up as their favorite characters: X-Men, Avengers, storm troopers, hobbits, Kerbals, and some are dressed as Kingsley. He has been a fixation of this community ever since the Iron Man films were partially based on him. But he has never enjoyed their attention, finding that they mostly want to hear about his “playboy” lifestyle. In the past, he has told stories like how he went to Russia to buy ICBMs, “without the nukes of course,” or how he won the Grand Prix of Monaco just to get a kiss from a particular Duchess, or the story of how he had accidentally drugged Gwenyth Paltrow. But Kingsley had tired of the same old jokes and stories and especially of the cult of personality around him that was obsessed with the sex and drugs while ignoring the thing that really mattered to him: saving the planet.
“Luckily, the Tunguska Event occurred in a remote region of Krasnoyarsk where the bears outnumber the people. In 2013, another ancient rock pierced the sky over Russia, this time over Chelyabinsk. Much smaller, the Chelyabinsk meteor exploded with the power of only twenty-five times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb. People for miles saw an intense flash of light, thirty times brighter than the Sun. Many thousands rushed to their windows to glimpse the phenomenon and saw a line traced into their sky, ending abruptly at an altitude of 76,000 feet. They looked on with wonder, searching for any clues, unaware that a shock wave was heading their way. When it arrived, it shattered windows, collapsed roofs, and injured some fifteen hundred people. Over seven thousand buildings were damaged.
This was a small meteor and even though it was 2013 and we were busy finding planets in far off solar systems, we still couldn't see this rock coming right for us.”
Kingsley notices the crowd at the front of the stage has swelled and now has dozens of women staring at him, some wearing shirts that say things like “Future Mrs. Pretorius” or “Don't you want to colonize Venus?” or with a variation on the SpacEx logo that instead says “SpaceSex.”
“It is a coincidence that both of these meteors hit Russia, but quite lucky that neither of them hit the Soviet Union. Had the Tunguska Event or the Chelyabinsk Meteor hit the Soviet Union in the 1960s, the flash of light and shock wave could have been mistaken for a nuclear attack by a hungover Soviet and they may have retaliated, resulting in an all-out nuclear war that would have doomed the planet.
We have proof that even in the modern age, even after we've walked on the Moon, we've hacked the human genome, we've invented Twitter and twerking, and yet we still can't predict when a rock might fall out of the sky and wipe out a major city in a single moment. We like to imagine that we would see a killer rock coming, we'd be able to send up Bruce Willis with nuclear bombs to deflect or destroy that would-be-killer, that we control our destiny. But Chelyabinsk hints at a different story; the story of a massive rock orbiting closer to the Sun so that we can only see its shadowed dark side until it abruptly becomes hundreds of times brighter than the Sun as it hits our upper atmosphere. We'd have just a few seconds warning before it explodes, sending out a flash of energy that ignites anything within line-of-sight of the air-burst, followed by a shock wave traveling several times the speed of sound that wipes whole cities off the map, followed by a world-wide earthquake. In the coming days, the Sun disappears behind a blanket of ash enveloping the planet. Even if some people survive, human civilization will come to an end.
We like to think we can prevent such a calamity. We like to think that global warming is a hoax, or that we'll come together as a species to stop and reverse the negative effects. But it seems far more likely to me that we'll speed past a point-of-no-return and only realize the planet is too far gone some years or decades after the fact, or that our first clue that a killer asteroid is coming for us is that flash of light as it announces its presence. The best we can do is to warn you not to rush to your window if you see a flash of light.
We can't guarantee the Earth's safety. All of human civilization may end any day, at any time. As long as Earth is the only place we call home, we can all be wiped out by one unlikely or unforeseen event. But we can reach out to the planets. We can call more planets home, and that is the only way we can guarantee that a single massive meteor won't destroy all the progress and all the potential future of our civilization. That is why I want to make humanity a multi-planetary species. And it may just be that we're doing enough to ruin the planet by ourselves, without the need for a massive asteroid. That is why I am trying to kill the internal combustion engine. That is why I am trying to power the world with solar energy.
But we live in a world dominated by dollars and cents, short-sighted business people who care about their bottom line and not about the planet or civilization or even about the town that's downstream from their pollution factories. I wonder what they'll do with their billions of dollars when society collapses because we can only grow enough food to feed half of the planet. I wonder what they'll tell their grandchildren when they have to explain why we ignored all the warning signs, when we kept on polluting, kept on burning and destroying because it was cheaper. How will we explain that we ruined the planet because it was good for the economy?”
The crowd erupts in a standing ovation.
“Mr. Rocketman will be taking a few questions,” the emcee says, the crowd clamors to get to the two microphones at the front of the stage.
“Oh I don't think that will be nec
essary,” K says. “No I will not marry you, I already have a girlfriend, no you can't get a free ticket to space, no I don't have any free cars to giveaway, no I will not take acid with you, yes your costume looks great, no I don't currently posses any nuclear devices, no I can't hand you a job right now, no I don't play Kerbal Space Program, no KSP does not make you a qualified rocket engineer, no I don't have an evil nemesis, my enemies are just boring people who are trying to kill my companies with frivolous law-suits and with corrupt laws that they lobbied for.” The crowd of potential question-askers deflates, but several smitten women remain and with those easily recognizable insistent crazy-eyes. “Oh and If you want to have my baby, I have an agent for that so please go through proper channels. Any other questions?”
The clamor has almost completely died down. One brave nerd steps up. “Yes, I have a question. You've mentioned that the Mars Colonial Transporter will deliver 100 tonnes to Mars and that it will be Raptor powered. Does that mean it will deliver 100 tonnes of cargo to the surface? Because if so, doesn't that mean you're looking at a payload to LEO of 300 tonnes at least? Is that really a feasible proposition, that's like three times the size of the Saturn V, and whatever that massive rocket is, will it be reusable?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Next question,” K replies. “No other questions, excellent.” Kingsley walks off the stage and finds a crowd of fans waiting for him. “Just keep on walking,” K mutters to himself. Then he spots that one of them women is pulling her top down, revealing most of her breasts and waiting patiently for an autograph. K resists his better judgment and approaches her.
“Can I have your John Hancock?” The woman asks.
“Well alright,” K says. The woman reaches into her back-pocket for a pen, but instead produces a folded up envelope.
“You've been served,” the woman says as she puts her boobs away.
“Talk about bait-and-switch,” K mutters.
“I'd be careful what you say. You might want to read that,” the woman replies before walking off.
“What's it say?” An overweight man dressed as Iron Man asks.
“I'm being sued for sexual harassment,” Kingsley replies. “This is what I get for going out in public.”
“Mr. Pretorius,” a man dressed as Batman says with a desperate tone.
“Yes Batman?” K asks.
“I have a gift for you,” the man says, trying to be calm and cool but his voice wavers like he's about to ask out a girl that's out of his league. He reaches for his utility-belt. “I just wanted to give you, a little something.”
“It's a gun!” Overweight-Iron-Man shouts. Batman reaches for Kingsley, gun in hand. K turns away, the gun going off in his ear. There's a struggle on the ground as Iron Man and a middle-aged CatWoman wrestle the gun away from the evil Batman.
SpacEx HQ
Kingsley is greeted with applause as he enters the main office area at SpacEx. He hasn't been in to work for two weeks while recovering from a perforated ear drum.
Kingsley quickly grows uncomfortable from the large crowd and heads for his office.
“Where are you going?” Brittany Hammersmith, CFO of SpacEx asks K. “We've got a board meeting.”
“Right,” K says as he reverses course.
“You're not becoming a shut-in, are you? Don't go all Howard Hughes on me.”
“Somebody tried to kill me, cut me a little slack.”
“Well I hired you a bodyguard, does that make you feel better?” Brittany asks.
“No.”
“I knew you would say that, so I got some friendly faces to be your bodyguards.”
“Who?” K asks.
“Iron Man and CatWoman. They've saved your life once.”
“You're joking right? That's not funny.”
“Oh come on, I should be able to joke about the fact that your life was saved by cosplayers,” Brittany says.
“Hilarious,” K replies sarcastically. “I'm glad my assassination attempt is a joke to you.”
“Sorry. Just please don't go on one of your paranoid rants about how Ford is trying to kill you.”
“Why would I do that?” K asks.
“You do watch the news right?”
“I try not to watch the news when they talk about me,” K replies.
“The shooter, he was laid off from General Motors. He said he was going to kill you because you cost him his job and he wanted to stop you from killing more jobs.”
“Jesus, what an asshole. Why not kill your asshole bosses who run one of the biggest car companies in the world but spent two decades trying to pretend that electric cars would never happen.”
“You really should get a bodyguard,” Brittany says before they enter the conference room.
“Why don't we have any major satellite contracts?” Bill Koke asks while stroking his pet pig and sitting at the head of the conference table. Kingsley's the CEO, but the Koke brothers are together the largest stake holders in SpacEx, and they're miffed that their attempts to gain a majority stake and take over the company have so far been unsuccessful. Sergei Kuznetzov, a Russian ex-mafia billionaire under house arrest on Long Island, appears via Skype on the wall, and other investors and their surrogates are also in the meeting.
“We've got the cheapest rocket on the market, so why don't we have the market,” Bob Koke asks, sitting at the opposite head of the table. All the heads at the table whip back and forth like they're watching a tennis match as the Koke's take turns speaking. They always insist on sitting at the heads of the table, opposite each other, because they believed it made everyone else at the table feel like children who didn't belong at the adults' table.
“And you're spending how much on making these things reusable?” Bill asks.
“When we're already the cheapest, you're trying to make them even cheaper?” Bob asks.
“I've been to space three times, but I get whiplash from a board meeting,” Kingsley mutters.
“What was that!?” Bill shouts. Kingsley rubs his temples.
“Explain to me why we're spending all this money on reusability,” Bob asks.
“And why do we have to spend it now?” Bill adds.
“To answer your questions, Billy Bob,” K says, staring straight ahead, rather than looking to either end of the table, “reusability is the key to the future. Normally I'd say, to make humanity a space faring race, but for you I'll just say, because we'll make more money. How's that sound? If the rocket costs us five million instead of fifty, we make more money.”
“It's not that simple!” Bill shouts.
“Yeah, it's not that simple,” Bob adds.
“Reusability only makes it cheaper if you do more volume,” Bill says.
“A lot more volume,” Bob adds.
“Tell me how we're ever going to drastically increase the number of flights without lowering the price,” Bill says. “And if we have to lower the price to get the higher volume-”
“We have to do more launches to make the same profit,” Bob finishes his sentence.
“Who the hell wants to run a business where you have to move high volume at low prices when you can move low volume at high prices and make the same amount? For one thing, higher volume means more liability. And in a business like this-”
“You're gonna kill someone eventually. So why press your luck doing as many launches as possible?”
“There's a reason no other company is doing reusability.”
“It doesn't make any financial sense.”
“Which is why we have to do it,” Kingsley says, standing up. “You're right, it doesn't make sense if the only thing you care about is the bottom line.”
“We're businessmen.”
“And I'm not,” K declares. “A study came out last week. We're in a unique position now, with seven billion people on the planet, that a volcano like Krakatoa, something that wasn't the end of the world when it happened, might very well doom civilization today.
If there's seven billion and you can only feed four billion, then it's going to be like a zombie apocalypse out there. They looked at super volcanoes, plagues, and meteors, looking at new data from Chelyabinsk, looking back through history at Tunguska, at the impact on the Moon witnessed by 15th century monks, at Schumacher-Levy-9. They came up with a figure. While we're at seven and eight or even nine billion people, an event casting all of civilization into jeopardy might occur every 200 years. In 1883, Krakatoa was a problem, it lowered global temperatures, it darkened the sky for over five years. But they weren't trying to feed seven billion people in 1883, population then was about one-and-a-half billion. Krakatoa tomorrow could wipe out half the human population. A meteor much bigger than Tunguska might set off a five year winter that starves the planet, and who knows what's left when the skies clear.”
“What is your point?”
“I care about making humanity a multi-planetary species more than I care about the bottom line of any company,” Kingsley replies. “If I don't do it, nobody else will.”
“Because it's a dumb thing to do.”
“Look, K,” Bill says, “You'd rather run a Jaguar dealership and sell twenty cars a month than run a Hyundai dealership where you have to sell two hundred cars a month to break even.”
“Which is why Tezla sells cars directly and I don't use dealerships,” K replies.
“But if you can't even sell enough volume now, while we have easily the cheapest rocket, then how will you ever sell the volume needed to make this work?” Bill Koke asks.