Moon For Sale

by Jeff Pollard

  There are only five launch systems that eclipse the Eagle Heavy. There's the grand-daddy of them all, the Saturn V, which could put up to 118 tonnes in orbit, and flew 13 times, the last in 1973 (though that launch didn't include a third stage, which was replaced by the dry workshop Skylab, and thus was technically not a full Saturn V and might instead be called a Saturn INT-21).

  Second was the Energia launch system developed by the Soviet Union. Energia had a payload of 100 tonnes, and was the rocket that put the Buran space shuttle into orbit. Unlike the American shuttle, the Russian version could be launched by itself without the orbiter, as the engines burning the fuel from the external tank were actually mounted to the tank itself, not the orbiter, which meant those engines weren't recovered. The Energia was launched twice before being mothballed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The second launch lofted Buran in 1988. The first launch in 1987 was supposed to put up Polyus, a space weapons platform straight out of the gee-whiz '80s cold-war Star Wars programs. However this launch suffered a software failure and failed to reach orbit. See, the Russians could build a space weapons platform with lasers, but they couldn't write software that knew to boost the Polyus pro-grade rather than retro-grade, causing it to perform its final insertion burn in the wrong direction, resulting in a destructive re-entry. So Energia never actually managed to put a large payload into orbit (since orbiter weight doesn't count).

  Then there was the N1 rocket. This was the Soviet answer to the Saturn V that was developed in the '60s and into the '70s. The N1 would have had a 95 tonne payload if it ever worked. Four launches failed spectacularly before the project was canceled. One of the N1s crashed back on the launch pad and utterly destroyed it. The explosion was one of the largest man-made non-nuclear explosions in history.

  The coming SLS, Space Launch System, would come in three variants, 70, 105, and 130 tonnes, but as of yet were still on the drawing board.

  The only other thing seriously on the drawing board was the Chinese Long March 9 rocket, an evolution of their Long March rocket family, which is penciled in as a 100 tonne launch vehicle, but the details of this design aren't well known, and China isn't keen on sharing information.

  So in terms of launching a payload to orbit, not including orbiter mass, only the Saturn V had ever done more than this Eagle Heavy was about to do. The sketchy history of Energia and the N1 should be a cause for alarm. Perhaps there's a reason so few rockets of this magnitude had ever succeeded. The Saturn V had a severe vibration issue. They managed to somewhat fix the problem after the first two unmanned launches, one of which, Apollo 6, vibrated so hard it would have triggered an automatic abort if there had been astronauts on board. Even still, the successful Saturn V launches were so violent that some astronauts remarked that they were unable to read the instruments right in front of their faces.

  The Eagle 9 works. But three of them strapped together is not guaranteed to work, even if the engines themselves all work and nothing goes wrong, the added vibrations and heat from tripling the number of engines could have all kinds of unforeseeable side effects. Now all they could do was hope they'd done their due diligence in designing the rockets.

  There was an added wrinkle of complexity in the design of the Eagle Heavy to take into account. The Eagle Heavy would be the first rocket in history to use cross-feeding. In an ordinary rocket with boosters, the strap-on rockets burn until they use all their fuel and are discarded. Meanwhile the center core runs throttled down, and when the boosters are dropped it throttles up. In the Eagle Heavy, the center Eagle 9 will run at full power, but will be using fuel from the booster Eagle 9s. That way the center Eagle 9 will still be full of fuel by the time the boosters are dropped away. This was another one of those ideas that had been around for ages but had never actually been done (remember all those spinning space stations that make artificial gravity?).

  For the Eagle Heavy, the three middle engines of the center Eagle 9 would actually run on propellant from the core tanks. The three engines on each side, closest to the boosters, would be fueled by the boosters. So that means the boosters were powering 12 Arthur engines, while the center rocket would only fuel three Arthur engines. At booster separation, the center Eagle 9 would still have most of its propellant.

  Since the boosters were powering 12 instead of 9 engines, they would use up their propellant faster than the standard Eagle 9 first stage would, and thus would be dropped away at a lower altitude and velocity than the Eagle 9 first stage separation. And that means the recovery of a booster Eagle 9 would be easier than a standard Eagle 9. For this first launch, they would not attempt to land the boosters. They would parachute to splashdown, however both were fitted with data-gathering equipment and cameras. They needed this data in order to facilitate programming the landing software for future boosters.

  The day before the launch, Kingsley kept busy doing numerous interviews as the media flocked to the cape. In the early days of SpacEx, Kingsley was the attraction, creating a cloud of fanboys and swooning females everywhere he went. He was the genius, playboy, philanthropist, rocket scientist, the man who inspired Iron Man, invented electric cars, turned California into a solar power haven, and promised his new space program would let him retire on Mars. Now a decade had gone by and he hadn't founded any new companies, hadn't totally reinvented any new fields. The cool factor drops when you're working on mass production to lower unit costs instead of making the world's fastest car.

  Don't be mistaken, his celebrity status was still pretty high, but not quite as fevered. His twitter account seems like a viral marketing campaign for a Bond movie, featuring an eccentric billionaire villain with his own space program. While other people tweet jokes or pictures of their food, Kingsley was tweeting things like a picture of the new Eagle 9 landing leg with the caption: “Graphite-Epoxy. High pressure Helium deploys telescopic piston before landing #NotARobotfistIPromise,” and “Lunch with Spielberg, says Brad Pitt should play me. I think Leo. #BetterthanAviator #MaybeYoungBradPitt,” and “Russia's president announced 50 billion $ program to make Russia leader in space, mentioned me by name. Challenge accepted. #Isthisreallife.”

  In an interview with the Science Channel, Kingsley changed the subject slightly. “Oh the Science Channel? I have a bone to pick with you guys. The Science Channel showing bad Sci-Fi is almost worse than The History Channel making shit up. Almost. The Learning Channel seems to be about following around rednecks that need subtitles to be understood. I hereby postulate Kingsley's Law: as the duration of a channel's existence goes up, the probability of that channel becoming the antithesis of its name approaches 1. Music Television seems to be a celebration of talentless idiots. History Channel is about fake history. Comedy Central is winning Peabody Awards, meanwhile watching FoxNews is like watching a propaganda channel from 1984, very surreal. ESPN seems to be nothing but fat middle aged people talking about sports. What's next? ABC Family showing porn? Animal Planet becoming the barbeque channel? Because that's how absurd the Science Channel is right now. I flipped it on the other day and they were talking about mermaids.”

  “Kingsley's Law,” became a trending topic on twitter within two hours. People across the world tried to figure out what the antithesis of each channel would be. What's the opposite of The Country Music Channel? The twitter-sphere zeroed in on a consensus that a channel devoted to dentistry would be the opposite of country music. The tweeting phenomenon of making fun of the awful quality of television spread so quickly that K was being asked about it only a couple hours later while still doing interviews.

  A correspondent from The Daily Show asked Kingsley, “What would the opposite of Nickelodeon be?”

  “Nick at Nite,” K replied, dead-pan.

  The weather would not cooperate and the launch was scrubbed for the day. K heads home to try to get some sleep before they try again the next morning.

  Kingsley was quite busy for the launch, juggling the different duties of CEO, Chief Designer, and playboy. He
'd join Caroline to entertain prospective customers, then talk to reporters, and then be back in Launch Control monitoring the fueling of the rocket.

  K was busy but he was not distracted. His mind raced through the potential results of the launch. They'd done full-duration static tests of the Eagle Heavy, but those were performed with the rockets horizontal (otherwise they would destroy the test stand). Maybe the rocket would be unable to sustain the heavy load. The connections between the boosters and the core needed to be very sturdy, but also would be separated in a split-second after only a few minutes. The combination of sturdy and separable was not exactly an easy engineering challenge. Maybe the structural loads would be too much and the rocket would start to collapse soon after liftoff, turning 200 million dollars into a 1400 tonne firework. Imagine three million pounds of rocket fuel exploding all at once. The launch pad would be utterly destroyed. They'd be lucky if anything was still standing for two hundred yards in any direction. The explosion would be deafening even from their vantage several miles away.

  That was a worst case scenario.

  If she makes it twenty seconds past liftoff, the launchpad would probably be safe. Kingsley was always most nervous in those first twenty seconds.

  Those attachment points were a concern, but most rockets use drop-away boosters in some capacity and so they weren't much of a mystery. The crossfeeding presented a hazard however. In order to pump the fuel from the outer booster to the core engines, you need plumbing to carry the propellant. That means pipes going from one rocket to another, pushing rocket fuel through at high speed. That means these pipes have to be flexible, since they bridge a gap between two structures that aren't all that rigidly connected to each other. The liquid oxygen line has to carry a cryogenic liquid on the inside, and be exposed to intense heat on the outside without cracking. And to make all these engineering hurdles even more difficult, this plumbing needs to separate when the boosters do, without spewing rocket fuel all over the place. That means they are a part of the booster and are only attached to the core Eagle 9 by an instantly separable plate that also instantly shuts off the flow of propellant.

  These design challenges were probably why nobody else had ever attempted it (other rockets like this would merely reduce the throttle on the core), despite cross-feeding providing a healthy boost. At the current thrust and impulse ratings of the Arthur engines, the Eagle Heavy had a payload of 52 tonnes. With future marginal improvements and confidence in the engines, that payload would probably increase to around 55 tonnes. Those figures are with cross-feeding. They could run the Heavy without cross-feeding, throttling the center engines down until the boosters run out of fuel, but the max payload would drop to 42 tonnes.

  If much of anything goes wrong, Excalibur would be destroyed. If it mostly works, and the payload gets to 99% of its target velocity, that means it re-enters and turns into a fireworks show in the south Pacific in about an hour.

  As the clock ticked down towards launch, everything looked great. The skies were clear, the tanks were topped, and the Eagle Heavy was ready to fly.

  The 27 Arthur engines ignited at once, creating 3.8 million pounds of thrust. The clamps released and the 70 meter tall, 1400 tonne skyscraper took to the air while being cheered on by hundreds of thousands and emitting a thunderous roar that could be felt for miles.

  Four seconds after liftoff, a turbo-pump on the starboard booster failed, causing three engines to flame out almost instantly. The rocket veered to the right as the flight computer tried to compensate for the yaw-moment created by the uneven thrust. The Heavy picked up lateral speed, heading south towards Cocoa Beach and thousands of spectators. The flight computer fought gravity for control, gimbaling engines to compensate. She looked like she might recover and return to a vertical ascent, but the battle was already lost. The Range Safety Officer turned a key, then flipped the cover off the self-destruct button, poised to blow the thing up into a three million pound piece of fireworks. The pilot of the launch, Sylvia Probst, a forty-year-old former F-14 pilot with a PhD in Aerospace Engineering and was hired by SpacEx only a year ago, quickly acted, overriding the autopilot by steering the Heavy out to sea. If the RSO blew the rocket now, it would rain flaming debris on spectators at the beach and maybe into the town of Cocoa Beach. Probst fought the crippled Eagle Heavy, finally getting the nose pointed out to sea, but in doing so the Eagle Heavy was losing altitude. The RSO monitored the trajectory, waiting for it to safely be out to sea, and only then did he press the button.

  The self-destruct command is sent to radios in both boosters, the core, and the upper stage. When the message is received, the radio sends the command to a series of shaped-charge explosives that tear open both kerosene and oxygen tanks, causing an explosion that dissipates the fuels into a cloud of fire rather than a bomb poised to hit the ground. The core, the upper stage, and the port booster exploded, however the starboard booster did not. When the engines failed and the rocket veered off course, the starboard booster wasn't producing enough thrust to support its structure, and so it was torqued, resulting in internal structural damage. The wires leading from the radio to the self-destruct charges had been severed and so when the radio received the order, it relayed the command but the charges didn't receive the signal. Amazingly, the booster made it through the exploding shower creating by the rest of the Eagle Heavy. But three of her nine engines weren't burning and so the booster turned sharply and picked up speed, heading back towards the beach.

  If she had kept yawing, she would have simply continued spinning and falling roughly on the original trajectory, but after turning and facing back towards land, the booster began rolling rapidly, which spin-stabilized the booster to a certain degree and turned the yaw-moment of the unequal thrust into a corkscrew flight path headed east.

  Kingsley rushes to a window as the booster disappeared from the view provided by launch tracking cameras. He sees the corkscrew heading inland a few miles away, almost certainly headed towards a populated area. The booster disappears behind a nearby building and a moment later a bright white flash is visible. Kingsley had about ten seconds to contemplate the magnitude of the disaster before the shock-wave from the explosion hit him, shattering the window and throwing him to the ground.

  Kingsley jolts upright in bed, sweating, heart racing. “Oh dear god,” he mutters as he realizes it was just a nightmare. An all too real and certainly possible nightmare. K gets up, leaving Caroline still asleep, and heads to the kitchen for a glass of water.

  Kingsley bought this 12 bedroom mansion to serve as semi-permanent housing for himself, some SpacEx employees, and potential passengers to stay in while at the Cape. SpacEx also owned two more modest houses nearby for lower-ranking staff, but most of the people that worked at Launch Control lived in Florida year-round.

  He finds Seth Hammersmith and Josh Yerino sitting in the living room, watching TV with the volume at whisper level.

  “What are you guys doing up?” K asks.

  “Looking through the contacts on your phone,” Seth says.

  “Why do you have Antonin Scalia's phone number?” Josh asks.

  “I prank call him about once a month,” K replies, plopping down on a couch.

  “Can't sleep?” Seth asks.

  “You're a regular Sherlock Holmes,” K says. “I had a nightmare which, now that I think about it, is probably a super-villain origin story.”

  “Do you really know Lady Gaga?” Seth asks.

  “That's the celebrity you zero in on? Give me my phone back.”

  “What do you say?” Seth asks.

  “Give it to me,” K insists.

  “Please give me my phone back, hammer,” Seth says.

  “I'll give you a million dollars if you don't speak for a month,” K replies. “Now give me my phone back, hamster.” Seth nods his head, accepting the challenge and tossing K his phone back.

  “Count hold at T-Minus Ten Minutes.”

  Launch Control is buzzing.
Numerous technicians talk over each other on the internal loop. Thousands of cameras are pointed at the Eagle Heavy.

  Kingsley has nothing to do but watch from the back of Launch Control, with Travis Clayton sitting next to him. The count was held at ten minutes as there was low-level cloud cover. Clouds didn't present a problem for the rocket, it could fly straight up through them with ease. The problem was that clouds obscured the flight of the rocket. This was acceptable in some circumstances, but not for risky launches, especially a first launch. If something went wrong and there wasn't video of the event, it would be more difficult to figure out what happened and make resolving the issue that much more difficult.

  “How long until the sky clears up?” K asks Seth. Seth replies by putting up his index finger and half-way putting up his middle finger. “A weird claw?” Seth shakes his head and tries again. “One and a half?” K asks. Seth nods. “Hours?” Seth nods. “Alright, go get me some water.”

  “Is your assistant a mute?” Travis asks.

  “I'm trying to teach him sign language.”

  “This waiting is the worst part,” Travis says.

  “Yeah,” K replies simply, looking at the big board at the front of the Launch Control room where several camera views showed the white Eagle Heavy at the pad, poised to liftoff. Three hours later the clouds had yet to clear up. The anxiety for all involved seemed to amplify as time went on.

  Six hours late, the skies cleared up and the countdown resumed.

  “Finally,” K says, “I feel like I've lost three pounds in sweat.”

  Seth makes an exaggerated grossed out face.

  Everything proceeds normally. There were three times as many things that could go wrong with the first stage, but nothing did and the clock kept ticking.

  At T-minus-one-minute, the reality set in. Success or failure, catastrophe or triumph, Eagle Heavy would be flying soon.