by Jeff Pollard
“And don't tell me that if we lower the price we're suddenly going to have tons of customers,” Bob adds.
“We absolutely will have more customers with a lower price,” K says.
“So I say we move for a vote from the board for cancellation of the reusability projects,” Bill says.
“They just don't make sense,” Bob adds.
“Just because you don't understand them doesn't mean they don't make sense,” K adds, exasperated.
“I have a question,” the source of the voice surprises K. It's Sergei Kuznetzov, via Skype at his home on Long Island. “If we have the cheapest rocket, then why don't we have the customers. Why is anyone choosing to use a more expensive alternative?”
“Hey!” K says, excited, “a good question. And it's from the gangster. How about that? The world's biggest rocket customer is the US Department of Defense. As of now, the DoD is mandated by law, a porky law written by friends of yours,” K says while looking to Bill, “that says they can only buy rocket launches from companies that are certified. And of course getting certified is basically impossible. This actually started the same year we launched the first Eagle 1. Until then, Boeing and Lockheed Martin had competed against each other for DoD launches. Boeing with the Delta and Lockheed with the Atlas. It was a stiff competition too, they were caught spying on each other, hacking and stealing documents, and were of course spending millions trying to out-lobby and out-lawyer each other.
Then just as we were starting to launch our first rockets, the two companies got together and went to D.C. and told Congress to let them merge into one company, United Launch Alliance, and that they should give this one company a monopoly on DoD launches. They argued that if they continued competing against each other, eventually one or the other company would win and the loser would discontinue their rocket line and then the DoD would be relying on a single rocket for access to space. And the DoD doesn't like single-points of failure. So they told Congress, give us this monopoly, pay us a billion dollars a year to maintain our infrastructure, and then we'll actually bring down costs because we won't be spending so much on lawyers and lobbyists and we'll pass the savings on to you.
And of course Congress bought it, and then they rushed to do a huge block buy of rockets right then that would last for almost two decades. At the time, I tried to tell the press that they were trying to lock us out of the market, but the press doesn't understand this stuff and just thought I was trying to get attention or something and it went by with no problem. And since they made this deal, their prices have tripled. Who would have thought giving them a monopoly would cause a price increase?”
“Then lets get our own lobbyists and lawyers and beat them at their own game,” Bob says.
“And figure out every district that stands to gain from us, and go to the dicks who represent those districts and let them know the pork they'll get from it,” Bill says while literally petting a hunk of living pork.
“We can get our army on that,” Bob says, referring to the Koke brothers' political machine of lobbyists and PAC money.
“Just tell us who that would be,” Bill adds. K lowers his head.
“Who stands to gain from SpacEx getting DoD contracts?” Brittany Hammersmith asks. K rubs his temples. “Kingsley?”
“We're just going with that? Lobbyist army to pork up the place. I can't attack the pork system and exploit it at the same time.”
“This isn't some civic lesson, Kingsley, we're not leading by example, we're running a company,” Brittany says. “So who would stand to gain?”
“If we can loosen the restrictions on DoD launch contracts it would open the market up not just to us but also to Orbital Sciences in Virginia, SpaceDev-”
“Well, we're not just going to knock the doors wide open, just wide enough for us to get through,” Bill says.
“Yeah, let Orbit Science buy their own lobbyists. Why the hell would we do them a favor?”
“Look, I want to blow apart this pork system, not just remake it to help us,” K says.
“It's our army,” Bob says sternly.
“And it's my company. Keep your corruption army out of it. I can take these guys on myself. Most companies can't take on the big guys because the press won't cover corruption on this scale. But most companies don't have a celebrity in charge that can actually get attention on the bullshit and force a change.”
“Going back to the flight manifest,” Brittany says, trying to retake control of a meeting she was allegedly leading. “We've got Griffin 8 with Robert Downey Jr., Justin Timberlake, and Tom Hanks coming up in about three months. We've got about ten serious customers, interest from a lot more, but NASA isn't going to let us take passengers to the ISS again, and it's hard to sell a two-week vacation in a spacecraft the size of a van.”
“We can launch a cargo Griffin and give them extra supplies and double the space,” K says, “but then we just about double the cost of the mission.”
“So you've got a transportation system and no destination,” Bill Koke says.
“You told us we'd have tons of passengers once you had one mission,” Bob says.
“Well, if it's any consolation,” K says, “Virgin Galactic is reporting a 500% increase in customers thanks to all the interest in private space flight we helped generate.”
“So we're helping our competitors?” Bill asks.
“Need I remind you that every passenger we've booked so far has been a passenger on a SpaceShipTwo before they came to us,” K says. “We might as well embrace them as our best friend in terms of generating interest. They provide the test drive, we sell the real thing.”
“Fucking board meetings,” K mutters to Brittany as they leave the meeting, walking briskly to another meeting.
“Hey, I'm not the one that brought in a Russian gangster,” Brittany replies.
“Yeah, you somehow found worse partners,” K replies. “Can we have them barred from the building? I really don't want to see another pig in here. These Koke-heads are looking for any excuse to get rid of me.”
“Just wait till they hear about your plan to give away Tezla's patents to your competitors,” Brittany adds. “They'll think you're like the Joker, setting fire to piles of money just to watch them burn.”
“Whatever I need to do to get pollution factories off the roads,” K replies.
“Any news on the lawsuit front?” Brittany asks.
“She's asking for a settlement of 10 million dollars. We countered that she can go fuck herself,” K says.
“Kingsley, I don't know that telling her to go fuck herself is a great idea in a sexual harassment lawsuit.”
“I was paraphrasing,” K replies.
“Maybe you should just pay her. I mean, you were fucking your assistant, then dumped her and fired her simultaneously. Whatever else there is to the story, that's pretty damning and you don't want a trial.”
“She pretended to be pregnant with my kid so I would either marry her or pay her off. If that's not proof she was a gold-digger...”
“Maybe she's actually working for one of our competitors, drumming up bad publicity, pre-occupying you with a law-suit, distracting you, smearing your name. Just pay her and make the whole thing go away. You can pay her off and end it. Now is the part where you say, 'but it's the principle of it,' and then I exasperatedly say that it's just not worth it, then you go on a rant about how greedy and corrupt the world is these days.”
“I've got work to do,” K says as they reach his office. Brittany heads off as K walks in and discovers a bald middle-aged man standing behind his desk, looking out the window.
“Who the hell are you?” K asks.
“Sorry, they told me I could wait in here,” the man says timidly, walking back around in front of K's desk.
“Who are you?”
“Ed Parton,” the man says, extending his hand to shake K's. Kingsley walks past him, plopping down in his chair and putting his feet up o
n his desk. Ed starts to sit down.
“No, don't sit,” K says. Ed nervously complies, standing in front of K's desk. “So, Mr. Ed, who are you and why are you in my office?” Kingsley wheels his chair over to a globe in the corner of the room, opening the globe to reveal a hidden bar.
“I'm the Dream Chaser program manager at Sierra Nevada.”
“Right! I remember you, you kicked me out of the Dream Catcher, very rudely I might add, right as I was hitting on a nice young lady engineer,” K says as he rolls back to his desk with a fresh drink.
“Chaser,” Ed corrects him.
“No thank you,” K says.
“What?”
“I don't need a chaser, I can drink my scotch like an adult,” K says.
“You called it a Dream Catcher,” Ed says.
“Well it's a better name. Or you could just call it Spiral, since that's what the Russians called their version that you guys basically ripped off.”
“I'm not here to talk about the name,” Ed says.
“What was the name of that girl you cock-blocked me from?”
“That was my daughter,” Ed replies.
“Well I'm not interested anymore, not with those genetics,” K says, sipping scotch and staring at that shiny bald forehead.
“Anyway,” Ed says, “I'm here because I wanted to explain why I chased you out of the Dream Catcher.”
“Chaser,” K replies.
“Right. Well, it was because we were warned not to deal with you,” Ed Parton says.
“By who?”
“It's not in my nature to be mysterious,” Ed says like a seasoned secret agent, “but I'm not at libergy to say.”
“Libergy?”
“I meant liberty.”
“Yeah.”
“I was told that SpacEx was going to get frozen out of future contracts and that if we worked with you, we'd be blacklisted too.”
“That's why you're launching on an Atlas for thrice as much as I'm charging,” K realizes.
“Technically we're over the Eagle 9 payload limit, and so the Atlas V is our only choice. But we could get that mass down if we tried. That was just an excuse to explain the decision to go with the more expensive launcher.”
“And that was the old payload figure, the new model we got coming off the line right now has a payload of 13 tonnes, but that's another story. Why are you telling me this now?” K asks.
“Well, with the sequester delays to our development funds, and now Congress delaying crew missions again to go with Soyuz for another year, we feel like we have nothing to lose.”
“So you want to book some Eagle 9 flights for the Dream Journal,” K says.
“Chaser. And yes. We'd like to purchase three Eagle 9 flights. An unmanned orbital test, a cargo proving mission to the ISS, and a manned crew transfer proving mission.”
“But if you're convinced NASA is going to keep using Soyuz, then why bother? I mean, we've proven crew transfer and they aren't interested, still buying Soyuz,” K says.
“The rewards for the two proving missions are more than the launch costs, and we've already got the Dream Chasers almost flight ready. Who knows, maybe they'll change their minds. Or, no offense, they might want a low-g return vehicle as a semi-permanent life boat.”
“You know, if I don't help you, then that just leaves my Griffin and the ULA's capsule as the only competitors left for the crew transfer contract. They've been clearly sandbagging you to keep the Dream Chaser out of the competition. Why should I help you?” K asks.
“Well, the way I see it, if it comes down to CST-100 vs. Griffin, you lose. They've got the influence and the billions and the lobbyists. Your capsules have the same features, so they can claim the CST-100 is better and you're out. You have to figure that at best you've got a fifty-fifty shot of getting any contracts at all. If you add Dream Chaser to the mix, a Dream Chaser riding an Eagle 9, then you've got two horses in this race. Now your chances of getting picked are two-out-of three instead of one-in-two. You help us out, and yeah, it might cost you on the spacecraft side, but it still helps you on the rocket side. The odds of SpacEx getting money out of the crew transfer program go up if you do this, way I figure.”
K looks over the not-so-suave Mr. Parton. He's not much of a salesman, nor does he project a great deal of confidence. But he made some good points. K spins his chair, looking out the window into the distance. He nods his head and makes a decision.
“I have one stipulation,” K says. He spins his chair back around. “If I agree to do your launches, you have to sell me Dream Chasers at cost.”
“What do you need one for? You've got the Griffin.”
“I'm thinking about starting my own space station, and I'd like to have a permanent life-boat,” K replies.
“How many?”
“As many as I want,” K replies.
“We can't promise that.”
“Alright, how about I get to own one and you guys will refurbish it for each launch for its lifetime, and I pay for everything at cost.”
“And you can't turn us down for rockets,” Ed replies.
“Well, I mean, I can't promise you any rocket, we have a manifest,” K says.
“And we have a manifest of DC missions we have to do, we can't just throw that aside to do yours right away,” Ed replies.
“You have a manifest of missions?” K asks.
“Theoretically.”
“Alright, so if we ever sandbag you, then you can retaliate by sandbagging us on the Dream Chaser stuff. We're both good, we help each other.”
“Deal.”
“Alright, let's book us some rocket launches,” K says.
“Do the Koke's know about this?” Travis Clayton asks K in the SpacEx astronaut office.
“Not yet,” K replies.
“You think they'd be cool with it? I mean they're our direct competitors. If we help them out now, what's to stop them from stealing business, be it ISS crew missions or tourists?”
“Well, we'd at least be the rocket supplier,” K says.
“Unless they switch to some other supplier that comes along, maybe Orbital Sciences.”
“Last I checked, Antares payload is way too small to lift a Dream Chaser,” K replies.
“Forgive me for not memorizing the payload of every rocket in the world,” Travis replies. “And how do you know Orbital Sciences doesn't come out with a new rocket in a year or two that can lift the Dream Chaser. Or maybe Blue Origin or whoever else.”
“Blue Origin? Is that a joke?” K asks.
“With Amazon money, you can't count Jeff Bezos out. How many people counted you out when you were starting out because you were just the PalPay guy?”
“Yeah, well, Jeff has the money to be digging up Apollo 11 and starting his own army of drones and to try to out-lawyer me on this launch pad thing, but he can't seem to find any actual rockets with that fat wallet of his.”
“Army of drones?” Travis asks.
“You didn't hear about that?” K asks. “He went on TV and said Amazon.com would start delivering packages with quadcopter drones. That was like the water-cooler moment of the year. How'd you miss out on that?”
“What kind of range do those quadcopters have?” Travis asks.
“Yeah that and what happens when there's a gust of wind and half their fleet disappears, or worse, crashes into a crowd of people with those four terror blades chopping people up. They'd probably set a record for most lawyer fees racked up on that one.”
“In any case, this Dream Chaser thing can backfire on us,” Travis says.
“Bottom line, helping them now means we might have them as another customer for a long time, and that's worth more to me than seeing them drop out of this competition that we figure is rigged against us anyway.”
“So what do you want me to do about it?” Travis asks.
“Nothing,” K replies.
“This isn't the big new pro
ject you had for me?”
“No. I want you to expand the astronaut program,” K says.
“How much?” Travis asks.
“How many do we have right now?”
“Should I count you?” Travis asks.
“You're not still miffed that I took your seat on Griffin 7 are you?”
“Me? No. But Gary is pissed.”
“Who's Gary?” K asks.
“My backup.”
“So how many guys do we have?” K asks.
“Four pilots and four flight engineers.”
“I want you to quadruple that,” K says.
“By when?”
“Today if possible,” K says sarcastically.
“Why so many? We just have one Griffin on the manifest right now.”
“Wait until Justin Timberlake releases his zero-g music video featuring Robert Downey Jr., Tom Hanks and you. We'll have passengers.”
“You still want nothing but bachelors?” Travis asks.
“If possible. And I want you to hire flight engineers from within SpacEx. Let any engineer apply, put them in simulators. I want everyone to feel like they have a stake in this company.”
“Are you sure that's a good idea? There's plenty of qualified people out there. Our engineers aren't going to be the most qualified. Hell, how many of them have actual flying experience?”
“Just give them a fair chance. If every person in this building thinks they might get to fly on an Eagle 9 one day, they'll be damn sure not to half-ass anything. So run their asses in the simulators, prove they aren't good enough. You never know, there might be some natural pilots in the bunch.”
“Have you been at work all this time?” Caroline asks as Kingsley sneaks into bed.
“Gotta set a good example,” K replies as he settles into bed.
“What do you think about the fundraiser tomorrow?”
“What fundraiser?” K asks as he kisses her neck.
“For my charity,” Caroline replies, lowering her book.
“You have a charity?” K asks. Caroline replies with a glare. “Kidding, I totally knew you had a charity, that was a little joke.”