Moon For Sale

by Jeff Pollard

  The top of the kerosene tank is filled with helium, an inert pressurant. When the oxygen sprays through the cracks in the rapidly deteriorating aluminum bulkhead, it doesn't take long for it to traverse the pocket of helium and meet pressurized kerosene. When combined in a combustion chamber in proper proportions, they make rocket fuel. When combined by a failed bulkhead, sprayed together at high pressure, the result is essentially a bomb. Pure oxygen under pressure is like fire in a bottle. You might think a spark is necessary to ignite this mixture, but pressurized pure oxygen will easily ignite with just a source of heat. The Apollo 1 crew was killed because the Apollo spacecraft at the time used a pure oxygen environment. In space, the capsule would have been pressurized at a fraction of Earth's atmosphere. But on the ground, in order to simulate the capsule being at pressure in a vacuum, they needed to pressurize the capsule above atmospheric pressure. The result of just 2 psi above sea level atmosphere of pure oxygen is that just about anything will burn. Suddenly Velcro becomes a dangerous flammable material. So if 16.7 psi of oxygen can do that, imagine what a high-pressure bulkhead breach of pure oxygen can do when it hits kerosene.

  The combustion of kerosene and oxygen causes the pressure in both tanks to rise drastically. The bulkhead fails and a flood of liquid oxygen meets kerosene and the results are catastrophic. Within milliseconds, the pressure in the now undivided tank is so high that the entire outer wall of the tanks reaches its failure point simultaneously. The breach occurs roughly in the middle of this cigar-shaped tank, a little more than halfway up the first stage. The tank and the skin of the rocket rips open, allowing the extremely high pressured propellants to escape. The heat is so intense that the aluminum itself ignites, causing a rapidly expanding shower of sparks.

  This entire process, from crack in the bulkhead to giant explosion, is so quick that the nine Arthur engines are still running perfectly fine, having not even noticed a change in pressure from their fuel lines.

  Caroline tries to ask what the alarm means, but before the signal from her brain can actually produce the words with her mouth, she is violently slammed back into her couch by over 15 Gs of acceleration. She loses consciousness as the Griffin maintains over 15Gs for several seconds, in effect making her weigh about 2000 pounds.

  She comes to in weightlessness, her arms floating away from her. She realizes that Kingsley and Tim are working quickly, pressing a flurry of buttons and uttering abbreviations so quickly it sounds like they're speaking a foreign language.

  Caroline looks to her right and finds Jim Lovell is unconscious. She sits up, pulling against her straps, trying to give him a closer look, then she's pushed back down in her seat and she hears a low rumble.

  The first stage of the Eagle 9 exploded. The Griffin capsule automatically triggered an abort, firing up its engines at full power and boosting the capsule away from the explosion at a tremendous rate. The cloud of burning aluminum blocked the signal from the capsule from reaching the ground, causing a loss of all the data from the capsule, including the video feed of the crew. On screens across the globe, the crew seemed to have been lost in the explosion. The second stage is detonated by the range safety officer as it tumbles uncontrollably, causing a new shower of sparks. All of this debris rains down just off the coast.

  But then the Griffin reappears on tracking cameras, far away from the remnants of the Eagle 9. Less than two minutes after the explosion, the Griffin splashes down safely.

  “I hate hospitals,” Kingsley says uneasily. He struggles to get comfortable in a stiff waiting room chair while flipping aimlessly through a six-month-old issue of Sports Illustrated.

  “Why?” Caroline asks.

  “Everything. The sterile smell, this fluorescent lighting. See that, consultation room, you know what that means? That's the room where they take you to tell you somebody's dead. It feels more like half a hotel room. You know the half by the window with a desk and chair that's never been used, that shitty carpet, purposely generic art. Like do they commission generic art? Is that a job? Like elevator musician?”

  “You're not worried?” Caroline asks.

  “Worried? No. I'm terrified. I killed Jim Lovell. Guy survives Apollo 13 but my spacecraft kills him? We're done, we just killed a legend.”

  “He's not dead,” Caroline says. “But it's a good thing Marilyn's not here. She'd kill you.”

  “She would have probably had a heart attack if she came to the launch,” K adds. “How's the neck by the way?”

  “Hurts,” Caroline replies. She has a bruise the size of a baseball on the side of her neck, causing her head to take on a permanent list like a sinking ship.

  “We trained you on not sitting up during launch.”

  “And I told you not to blow me up,” Caroline replies.

  “You're fine,” K says dismissively.

  A doctor opens a nearby door and beckons them to follow. The doctor takes them to one of the labeled consultation rooms. He has them sit, closes the door behind him and takes a moment. “Well shit, I really killed him,” K mutters to himself.

  “He's doing okay right now,” the doctor begins reticently. “But we have detected an abnormal heart beat. This is the kind of thing that can be a prelude to a more serious cardiac event.”

  “So, he's fine?” K asks.

  “He's okay right now, but like I said, he has an intermittent arrhythmia.”

  “Can he go tomorrow?” K asks.

  “I'd like to observe him overnight.”

  “So he can probably go tomorrow,” K says, upbeat.

  “Probably.”

  “What?! You're not serious are you?” Caroline asks Kingsley.

  “He said he's fine,” K replies defensively.

  “He said he can leave, he didn't say he could fly into space,” Caroline says.

  “What?” The doctor asks.

  “Sure he can, he's fine,” K replies.

  “You want to launch him into space tomorrow?” The doctor asks incredulously.

  “Why not?”

  “He has a heart condition.”

  “And there's nothing better for that than hanging out in zero-G,” K replies. “That's as low-stress as it gets.”

  “Yeah but he has to get there first, and that's not low stress,” the doctor replies.

  “He can handle it,” K says.

  “You trying to kill him again?” Caroline asks.

  “Let's go ask him if he thinks he can handle it,” K asks with a chuckle, knowing the old Gemini and Apollo veteran would of course rather go to the Moon than sit in a hospital.

  “Alright, let's go ask him,” the doctor says while planning on scaring Jim into doing the safe thing, sure he will succeed.

  “Alright,” K replies happily, knowing Jim has never in his life been scared into playing it safe.

  “Tomorrow?” Jim Lovell asks, sitting propped up in his bed. “We can go tomorrow? I thought that was the only Eagle 9 we had in stock.”

  “It was the only new one we had in stock,” K says. “We've got a used one on a barge on its way around Florida right now. It was the core on one the Heavys we launched a couple weeks ago. We're gonna try to get it ready for tomorrow. We've never put people on a reused Eagle 9 before. But we're gonna try. And if you're up for it, we're gonna try to launch again tomorrow,” K says.

  “Before you answer,” the doctor jumps in.

  “I'm in,” Jim says. “Don't tell my wife.”

  “Your heart,” the doctor tries to jump in.

  “You know,” Jim says, cutting the doctor off. “Jim Irwin had a heart attack on Apollo 15. A minor one. But it wasn't a problem. The flight surgeon said that space was the best thing for him, pure oxygen, no stress.”

  “See,” K says to Caroline.

  “So we're doing this quick huh? When do the bad guys launch?” Jim asks.

  “ULA launches the Luna 100 crew tonight,” K replies.

  “So they've got this in the bag t
hen,” Jim says.

  “Assuming they don't have any problems. And it's not so bad if they beat us by a day or two.”

  “What!? You're suddenly okay with them getting their first?” Caroline asks.

  “I wouldn't say okay,” K says.

  “How are you doing?” Jim asks Caroline, genuinely concerned.

  “Just a bruised neck,” K says, unsure why he would ask that.

  “I'm fine,” Caroline says warmly. She and Jim share an odd smile making Kingsley suspicious that there is some sub-text here that has gone over his head.

  “I'm no rocket scientist,” the doctor says, “but did you just say you're putting him in a recycled rocket? Are you trying to kill him? What are the odds that one blows up?!”

  “Oh probably about 20%,” K says. “We have about a 95% success rate on reused rockets, but on a short turn-around, racing to do this in just two days. Yeah, 20-25% chance of rapid unplanned disassembly.”

  “You can't seriously be considering this,” the doctor says, as if he expects to be confronted by cameras and surprised that this is all some odd practical joke.

  “On Apollo 8,” Jim says, “nobody had ever left Earth orbit. Hell, nobody had ridden a Saturn V either. The thought of sending people out to the Moon, needing to make course corrections and actually do navigation out there, honestly we thought we had a fifty-fifty shot of making it. And we went. That's called the right stuff. It ain't called the okay stuff for a reason. Let's go put some Lovell prints on the old lady.”

  Just after nightfall, the barge arrives at the Kennedy Space Center, having circled around the tip of Florida, bringing a used Eagle 9 first stage, covered by several layers of taut plastic. It navigates the shallow waterways leading in from the sea, while the Luna 100 Delta-V sits on Pad 39B.

  Kingsley debated whether he should oversee the loading of the Eagle 9 from the barge to a truck. He had discovered years ago that his presence tends to make his employees more nervous and wondered if that led to more mistakes. He hadn't gotten around to a statistically rigorous study of the phenomenon. On the one hand, the underlings were more nervous and thus seemed more likely to have a case of butterfingers. On the other hand, they were almost certainly less likely to make lazy mistakes. Kingsley curses himself for having still not determined if a project was made more or less likely to succeed if he observed it. He calls it the Kingsley Uncertainty Principle in his head and makes sure to never mention it to Caroline as he watches the small crane raise up the Eagle 9 and move it toward the flatbed.

  Less than two miles away, the Luna 100 Delta-V is clearly illuminated by ground lights. K keeps one eye on the Delta-V while the Eagle 9 is firmly attached to the flatbed. The Delta-V rises silently for nearly ten seconds before the deep rumble finally arrives. The body of the rocket disappears and all that's visible is the fire from the two RS-68 engines. He tracks the engines until he can see them no more. It seems like Luna 100 has had a good launch. SpacEx is now officially behind in the race to Tycho Crater. Kingsley keeps himself from internally rooting on failure or thinking about all the ways in which Luna 100 might fail. That would bring on bad karma. When so much of your life relies on events that are rather indistinguishable from luck, it's bad juju to wish others bad luck.

  K supervises through the night as a new second stage is mated to the used first stage, and then the Griffin spacecraft is mounted to the second stage. The Griffin was the backup Griffin for the mission, now pressed into service.

  At three in the morning the stack was complete. Kingsley heads back to his Florida house to get some sleep as the rocket is driven out to the pad horizontally. By five the rocket is raised to vertical at Pad 39A.

  Just before eight in the morning, the crew experiences deja vu, heading out to the rocket to go to the Moon with many cameras documenting their journey. Lovell once more needs a great deal of help getting into the spacecraft in his flight suit. The weight of the suit is too much for him to bear and he cannot stand on his own.

  During the two hour countdown in the rocket, Kingsley watches the livestream coverage on one of the cockpit display screens. They cover the broadcast from inside the Luna 100 spacecraft. They docked with their ACES departure stage while Kingsley was eating breakfast. K watches the live feed of ULA's Mission Control in Colorado as they prepare for the trans-lunar-injection burn. Once TLI is done, it's a three day trip to the Moon. If SpacEx has any chance of catching up to or passing ULA, this is it. Once they execute the TLI burn, it's all coasting for three days.

  “Check, helium pressure looks fine,” Tim Bowe says. “How are the bad guys doing?” He asks K.

  “TLI burn in 90 seconds,” K replies.

  “Don't worry guys,” Jim Lovell says, “even if they do TLI before us, I know a shortcut or two.”

  “How's the wife doing?” K asks Tim.

  “She wants to kill you,” Tim replies.

  “Hey Jim, did you hear that?” K says.

  “You don't want to hear the names Marilyn called you,” Jim replies.

  “This is why I wanted to hire bachelors,” K says. “I'm gonna be murdered one day, and it'll be somebody's wife. Actually no, it'll be Sylvia's husband.”

  “Yep. That's affirm,” Tim replies.

  “Hey Caroline, if I end up dead ever for any reason, no matter how natural-causey it looks, it was Mr. Probst.”

  “In the hangar, with the garden shears,” Tim adds.

  “I have a question,” Caroline says uneasily.

  “What?” K asks.

  “Can you roll the window down, I need to throw up.”

  “These windows don't roll down,” K says.

  “She knows that,” Tim says.

  “Get your helmet off,” K says, loosening his straps in a flash and sitting up to help her. They get her helmet unscrewed and Tim tries to hand over a sick bag. K helps Caroline loosen her straps to sit up, but they don't have time. The throw-up is coming and rather than spew on the instruments, Caroline, desperate, seeks out any alternative that doesn't require more than half a second. It's the kind of intellectual desperation that makes one feel lucky to get their face into a toilet. Caroline envisions the headlines: “Woman Pukes, Ruins Moon Landing.” That'd certainly make her a good role model.

  She deposits half a liter of breakfast into her helmet, the stomach cramps help her to bend at the waste and keep from vomiting straight up in the air from a lying position. She holds the helmet and breathes a slight sigh of relief. Lying on her back, holding the helmet above her, the liquid sloshes just above her face.

  “Tower,” Tim says, “Yeah, we're gonna need to open up the hatch-”

  “No,” Kingsley cuts him off. “We're gonna have to cycle all the tanks before they are cleared to get back on the tower. That'll set us back three hours,” K says.

  “So what do you suggest?” Tim asks. “Never mind tower,” Tim relays with his confident pilot voice. Kingsley completely unstraps from his seat, kneeling in his seat. He takes the sloshing helmet. His plan is immediately clear. He is going to screw the helmet in to the bottom of the seat. Once in orbit, the helmets can be stowed to the bottom of the seat for safe keeping. However, while waiting to launch, this mechanism is horizontal, thus requiring him to get the helmet's threads into the mechanism in one quick motion lest all the vomit pour out.

  He holds his breath, then flips the helmet sideways ninety degrees and shoves it into the mechanism and rotates it, screwing it into place.

  “Got it!” K says.

  “No spillage?” Tim asks.

  “Minimal spillage,” K replies. He extracts the spare helmet from behind a panel in the bottom of the capsule. Caroline attaches the spare helmet and K gets back in his couch and redoes his straps.

  “Shit,” K says.

  “What!?” Tim asks, alarmed.

  “Luna 100, they're almost done with TLI,” K says looking back to his screen. In another thirty seconds their burn is complete. “Yeah, they're on t
heir way. Assuming everything goes well for us from here on out, we're about five hours behind.”

  As the Pegasus 3 countdown reaches 12 minutes to go, the livestream switches focus to the Chinese Shenzhou 19 mission. They have completed the lunar orbital insertion burn. The Shenzhou 19 mission is now in orbit around the Moon. Shenzhou follows essentially the same flight plan and mission architecture as Apollo, with only a few minor differences such as the lunar module descent stage performing the lunar orbit insertion burn.

  “Please put the tray tables in their full upright position,” Tim says in his pilot voice.

  “How's Lovell's heart look?” Josh Yerino asks the flight surgeon in Mission Control in California.

  “Looks good.”

  “Five minutes, we're go for launch,” Yerino relays to Commander Bowe. Weller and Hammersmith had spent the last 48 hours in an ongoing debate on the topic of grounding the Eagle 9 fleet. They had both switched sides at least twice.

  Weller began by pointing out that they did not know the cause of the catastrophic failure, and you don't launch again until you know why the previous launch went so spectacularly bad. Hammersmith countered that it was likely a rare occurrence, given that 95 Eagle 9Rs had launched successfully at least once (this does not include the three that failed on a second or third launch), and not a systemic problem that required the entire fleet to be grounded. And besides, the Griffin abort system worked perfectly, so even if another catastrophic failure occurred on this mission, they would still likely be safe.

  Later in the day, when more information came in about the nature of the problem, it became clear to Weller that the issue was a bulkhead failure. This was the only way to explain the rise in kerosene tank pressure and drop in oxygen tank pressure simultaneously. Weller flipped sides and was on board with the launch at this news, considering it was going to be a launch of an Eagle 9 that had flown twice before, and so it was quite unlikely to have a serious flaw in the bulkhead, otherwise it would have arisen in its previous flights. But just as Weller was ready to sign on, Hammersmith also switched sides. A failure of a bulkhead indicated some kind of weakness in the material, and since the bulkhead is one of the most important parts of the rocket, it's also one of the most inspected. If a flaw found its way through the cracks in their quality control in such an obvious place, what else could be getting through the cracks? Hammersmith argued that until all of their quality control procedures were reviewed, they couldn't certify anything as ready to launch, much less a manned launch.