by Jeff Pollard
“I'm glad you asked that, you see, the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation tells us that the change in velocity of a rocket stage is equal to the natural log of the mass fraction times the exhaust velocity, and when building rockets it's important to take into account the personal life of the CEO of the rocket company in that equation.”
“Right. No comment on that? You're being sued for sexual harassment. Can you comment on that?”
“I cannot. But here's something I can comment on: two weeks ago, a trio of congressmen introduced a bill that would require NASA to investigate anomalies in SpacEx launches. They cited things like delays, or that time we had an engine go out, but the payload still made it to orbit because we have an engine-out capability. Basically, they are demanding NASA to investigate and look for fire where there's not even smoke. All this would accomplish is that there will be headlines that NASA is investigating us, it's just a smear tactic. So these three congressmen, why would they do this? All three happen to be from Colorado, the state where ULA's headquarters is. So I looked even closer. All three have taken contributions from ULA. So right here is proof that ULA is paying congressmen, and these congressmen are mis-using their power to make NASA go on a wild goose chase all so it will make SpacEx look bad. Why is it not a major story right now that ULA has congressmen on their payroll? Why aren't these guys being asked a million questions whenever they leave their houses? This country has apparently decided that politicians are corrupt and it's fine and nobody cares.”
Kingsley leaves the studio in North Hollywood, getting into his new car, a prototype Tezla C. The new car is a small inexpensive two-door meant to compete with the likes of the two-door Honda Accord. The car would be unveiled in a few months, but Kingsley would use his notoriety as a way of getting free advertising and building hype for the car. After driving a few blocks, K notices a black GMC Suburban on his tail, with two men in the front. “Not the typical paparazzi car,” K muses, while thinking nothing of it. He makes a sharp turn and puts the pedal down. The benefits of the electric powertrain are immediately obvious. Even the non-sports car, practical, inexpensive Tezla still has incredible acceleration and cornering. Electric motors offer instant acceleration and the weight distribution is much lower to the ground, allowing for sharp cornering.
K has no trouble shaking the Suburban, with just a few rapid turns they're gone. K activates the rear camera and watches for signs of the suburban. He forgets about the intrusion and continues his drive. And he would have never thought anything more about it if it wasn't for what was to happen next.
K pulls into the parking lot at SpacEx headquarters in Hawthorne. He grabs his phone and wallet and when he looks up, the black Suburban is parked directly behind him. He turns around, finding the men staring at him. Nobody blinks. K looks back to his phone, calling SpacEx security. In a moment, two security cars approach and the driver of the Suburban finally relents, leaving the parking lot in a hurry.
K walks into his office, finding a twenty-something dude sitting at his desk with a bluetooth ear-piece in, talking a mile-a-minute.
“Who the hell are you?” K asks, stopping in the doorway.
“Wait!” Brittany shouts, rushing down the hall toward K. “Hold on.”
“Who is that?”
“Your new assistant,” Brittany says, taking K by the arm and leading him away from his office.
“What? That bro? No, I'll hire my own assistant.”
“No you won't. You've lost that privilege with that last one.”
“Not my fault she was a golddigger,” K replies.
“Yeah, legal is with me on this, you no longer get to hire your assistants, nor do you get to fire them. And don't repeat this, but legal agreed that your assistants should never again be female. But don't tell anyone because that's discriminatory.”
“So legal has decided that the best tactic to avoid lawsuits is to start discriminating.”
“That's the pickle you've put them in,” Brittany replies.
“Get him out of my office, I don't want him,” K says, spinning away from her and heading back towards his office.
“Why?”
“I don't trust him,” K says.
“You haven't even met him.”
“He's a spy. Look at him,” K says from the doorway to his office. The kid sees them and waves, his eyes light up, excited to meet Kingsley. “He was probably planted by a competitor, or maybe the feds.”
“You're paranoid.”
“Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after me.”
“Who's after you?”
“The feds!”
“What?”
“Just now I was being followed by a black Suburban. They followed me into the parking lot. This wasn't just a typical tail, they were trying to intimidate me.”
“Why would the feds intimidate you?”
“I don't know, so that I come in here all scared and tell my new assistant about how scared I am that the feds might find out my secret that I'm doing illegal things X, Y, and Z.”
“You're not doing illegal things though right?”
“What do I look like to you, a lawyer?” K asks.
“That's the last thing you look like to me.”
“See that's sexual harassment, I think I should go tell legal you're harassing my sex.”
“Just go talk to your new assistant for thirty seconds,” Brittany says indignantly. Kingsley sighs and enters his office.
“Mr. P, such a pleasure to meet you, I can't believe I'm meeting you,” the kid jumps at K, shaking his hand, and then turning the handshake into some kind of secret seven-step handshake and fist-bump combo.
“Don't touch me,” K says as he takes his chair back. “And don't sit in my chair ever again.”
“Alright dude, no big deal.”
“What are you like seventeen?”
“Twenty-three. Can I just say that you're like my hero, seriously. I've followed you on twitter for like six years.”
“I just had a stalking incident, so if you could stop telling me about how much you've cyber-stalked me, that would nice.”
“Stalking incident?”
“Normally they keep their distance, but these guys were trying to intimidate me,” K says as he opens his globe-bar.
“Who would be trying to intimidate you?”
“Any number of people,” K says, closing his globe, unhappy with his drink choices. He rubs his temples.
“Maybe it was the Kooz.” That grabs K's attention.
“How do you know about Sergei?” K asks suspiciously.
“I mean it seems like a gangster technique to intimidate like that. Is there any reason he would be trying to intimidate you?”
“I'm not saying nothing,” K replies, sitting back, feeling out his new assistant. “So if you would go out to your desk and out of my office, that would be good.”
“I have a desk?”
“Yeah, outside my office.”
“Alright, let me know if you need anything at all.”
“That's the whole idea,” K says as he waves the kid away. Moments later, Hammersmith enters.
“How'd that go?” Brittany asks.
“With the KGB spy you planted in my office, fine, went great,” K says sarcastically.
“He's not KGB,” Brittany says.
“He's FBI or he's ULA, he's something. Did the Koke's pick this one out?”
“He's a good kid, would you relax?”
“I'm sure he is.”
“He is! He's got a degree in spacecraft systems engineering.”
“That bro-douche has a degree in spacecraft systems engineering?!” K is astonished.
“Yes.”
“From where? North Korea State? And if he's so qualified then why is he working as my assistant?”
“Because he wanted to work here and this was the best we could offer him.”
“But he's overqualified,” K prote
sts.
“Why is that a problem?”
“Well if you start giving engineers these shitty jobs, then what jobs will the vapid hot girls do?”
“Please don't ever say anything like that when there's a microphone or a camera present,” Brittany says with a sigh. “Just go talk to him for five minutes, you'll like him.”
“What is he your nephew or something?” K asks.
“Second cousin twice removed?” Brittany says unsurely. “First cousin thrice removed? I'm not sure how cousin math works, do you know how that works?”
“Ask Caroline, she can tell you every one of her third and fourth cousins, Earls and Dukes and shit like that.”
“Just give him a chance.”
“I already did,” K replies
“You already judged him.”
“I work fast, I have to. Quick decisions my dear,” K says, snapping his fingers.
“What's his name?”
“I don't need to know his name to fire him.”
“Well you can't fire him,” Brittany says, heading for the door. “And his name is Seth by the way.”
K sighs and waits for Brittany to clear out before he sneaks up behind Seth and peers over his shoulder at his computer screen.
“Mars First?” K asks incredulously.
“Yeah, they're taking applications for people to go to Mars. Isn't it awesome?”
“Mars First is a scam,” K says.
“A scam?”
“Yeah, a scam. I mean, you don't really think they're just going to send random people from the internet to Mars right? They just want people to give them fifty bucks to apply.”
“No but they're going to finance the whole trip by making it a reality show, and so they don't want the typical astronaut types, they need great characters.”
“You think that the ad revenue for a reality show can pay for a mission to Mars?” K asks.
“People would watch that.”
“You think they can find twenty billion dollars in ad revenue?”
“First people on Mars! That'd be so big, yeah people would watch.”
“And you have a degree in spacecraft systems engineering,” K says.
“That's my major,” Seth replies.
“What year?”
“Well, it's my fifth year of college coming up, but I just switched to that.”
“What was your major before that?”
“Music business,” Seth replies. “And religious studies.”
“So you think Seth the failed music-business-major is going to be an amazing character worth putting on The Real World: Mars.”
“Nobody calls me Seth except Britt. Call me Hammer.”
“Nope, not gonna do that,” K replies. “Why does anyone take this shit seriously?” K says gesturing at the Mars First website. “When I was starting out they couldn't say two words about SpacEx without calling it a pipe dream. Now any doofus with a website gets news coverage. Mars First is all over the place, and all they have done is claim they are planning on sending people. Never mind that they don't make hardware, don't have any money, and all they've accomplished is taking application fees. Yet they ask for more applications and Spacestuff-dot-org is all like, hey everyone apply to go to Mars.”
“So...I shouldn't apply?”
“Religious studies?” K asks.
“So?”
“I mean, you studied scams, so shouldn't you be able to tell one when you see one?”
“What?”
“Never mind, you're fired,” K says.
“But I don't even get paid,” Seth replies.
“Even better, now get the hell out of here, you're dumbing down my chi.”
“Good one,” Seth says, turning back to the computer and surfing the internet. K takes a breath and prepares to tell him to GTFO, but stops, shakes his head and says nothing.
Travis Clayton enters quickly along with Sylvia Probst. She's from the second batch of astronaut hires, a former Navy F-14 pilot and now SpacEx “Astronaut” who had yet to fly. “Tell him what you told me,” Travis says to her.
“The F-35. They just, lost them,” Sylvia says, anxious.
“You don't need to be this nervous, he's not the President,” Travis adds, shocked to discover that Sylvia has nerves at all.
“An F-35 crashed huh,” K muses. “Hot gas ingestion? I know they had trouble with that in early testing.”
“No sir, it was a flight of F-35Cs,” Sylvia says.
“That's the Navy version,” K says.
“Right. They lost a flight of four of them,” Sylvia says.
“Crashed?” K asks.
“Don't know yet.”
“I gotta go, meeting with Bigelow people about the payload fairing,” Travis says. “Why don't you hang out here and keep K updated.”
“Hamster, see if you can find any news on this,” K says to his very capable assistant.
“Say the magic words,” Seth replies.
“What?”
Seth stares.
“Please?”
“Not that,” Seth replies. K is bewildered. “Get news on the F-45, Hammer.”
“See if there's news about the F-35 crash, Ham... Best I can do.”
Seth starts Googling.
“Why do you care about the F-35?” Sylvia asks.
“They are made by our main competitor,” K replies.
“So for you this is good news, something to celebrate?” Sylvia asks, appalled.
“Do I look like I'm celebrating?” K asks.
“But it's not a rocket, so what does it matter?” Seth asks.
“Our main rival isn't a rocket company, they also make fighter planes and drones and all kinds of military shit. They're already in trouble because they're way over budget and about a decade late with the F-35 and they've been having tons of problems with it. The F-35 is in the news about once a month for another fuck-up or set-back or a new report saying they're never going to get costs down. There's a pretty big groundswell of support for the idea that this is a boondoggle that should be canceled. So you've got lots of people wanting this expensive boondoggle canceled. Meanwhile, if you cancel it, we have no other planes in the pipeline, so the military would be stuck with old hardware, plus this thing was designed politically, they make parts for it in 40 some states and some things are made in other countries. So there’s lots of politicians who will defend it because of the pork it brings them.”
“I'm not seeing anything about this,” Seth says.
“Do you know how to use advanced search? Just look up stuff posted in the past hour,” K says.
“How do I do that?”
“I thought your generation was born knowing how to do this shit. I published my own video game when I was twelve. What were you doing?”
“Playing video games.”
“My generation is the last one that's going to be tech savvy. You kids just think everything works.”
“You're like seven years older than me.”
“And I had to learn how computers worked so I could play games. Then we would mod them and get into the programming, design our own maps and levels, then write our own games. You kids just buy map packs. It's just magic to you, hidden behind the glossy interface and you don't have any idea how it works.
“Okay old fart, I bet I could beat you at Call of Duty.”
“I bet you I could create a game more fun than Call of Duty in a day,” K says. “And there it is,” he says, discovering a new article about the F-35C incident.
The three of them skim the article at the same time. “Oh, there it is,” K says.
“What?” Sylvia asks.
“Contact was lost with the flight just after they crossed the international date line,” K reads.
“They fell off the side of the world?” Seth asks sarcastically.
“Their computers crashed,” K replies.
“So they lose the radio and rad
ar and stuff, but they will just fly home right?”
“Can you even fly these things without a computer?” K asks Sylvia.
“I don't know. Everything on these is computer-controlled. There's supposed to be redundancies, but...”
“But if the computer crashes and you have no radio and no idea where you're going in the open ocean, the odds of finding a carrier are probably not great,” K says.
“That or the fuel control also died and they just dropped out of the sky,” Sylvia says. “I gotta go call somebody, see if I knew anybody in that squadron.”
“There's no way it was just a computer error, North Korea probably shot them down or something,” Seth says.
“Hey Ham, remember the Space Shuttle? Big space thing with wings?”
“Yeah?”
“They never had a Space Shuttle in space for new years, know why? The computers couldn't handle the year roll-over and would crash. In 2011, we were flying space planes that would crash because they couldn't properly write a guidance program that could handle the fact that parts of the planet were in one year and other parts were in another. So don't be shocked when it turns out that a modern plane couldn't handle the international date line.”
“How much do these things cost?” Seth asks.
“Two hundred million a piece,” K says.
“You're telling me that a single fighter jet costs four times as much as one of our rockets?” Seth asks.
“The entire Apollo Program cost about two hundred billion dollars in today's money. Lockheed Martin is supposed to be getting paid two Apollo programs worth of money to build some fighter planes. That's adjusted for inflation,” K adds.
“That's insane! Apollo was such a huge thing, like, how did they ever get support to spend that much money on this thing and I haven't even heard of it?”
“That's the DoD for you,” K says. “The US spends about as much on the military as all other countries in the world combined. NASA's budget is about seventeen billion a year. The military is as well funded as forty-five NASAs. We could be running forty-five space programs, but instead we spend billions on tanks the Army doesn't want and planes that can't fly. That's why it kills me whenever I hear someone say spending money on space is a waste. Whether we're spending money on planes and tanks or on spacecraft, that money goes to pay people to work on it, ultimately a dollar spent on space is really no different from a dollar spent on a tank or an IRS employee or an FBI agent. We put someone to work and the nation gets something back for it. The conversation needs to be about what it is we get out of a program. Do we want to get bombs or do we want truths about the universe and where we came from, where we're going?”