Oceanworlds

  The meeting was over. People began moving out.

  A baffled James saw the Administrator coming over to him and starting to speak. Something about NASA having no say, as both the Senate and House Subcommittees on Space had vetoed it. He sounded ashamed or regretful. He kept talking but James was having a hard time making sense of the words. Until he said it: “Jimmy …” looking around to make sure they were alone, “it was the White House’s doing. The President of the United States has, for reasons I can’t possibly fathom, a personal vendetta against you or the mission.” On the parting handshake he said, “I can promise neutrality. We won’t speak publicly about Shackleton.”

  The press will have a field day tomorrow.

  James had been inside the restroom by the building’s entrance for a long time. To the dozen missed calls from Helen he finally replied with a message: “Need to reassess, alone. Don’t wait for me.”

  He looked at the outdated aide-mémoire for a meeting that should have gone radically different.

  “No spacecraft could hope to carry instruments matching the capabilities available on Earth. This is why a sample-return mission is often viewed as the end goal of planetary exploration.”

  “Currently, space agencies spend decades and billions on uncertain outcomes of rather humble mission objectives. Shackleton instead proposes a $2 billion check payable only upon sample returned to Earth. This mission will be tens, if not hundreds of times more valuable than any other mission ever attempted, and risk-free for you!”

  “So far it’s been a lot of theories but little to no data. Shackleton will make a huge dent in the vast area of science known as Don’t Know.”

  We are the confident collector that got fleeced clean—a timeless fable, I’m sure.

  James splashed his face one last time. He needed to escape to the anonymity and freedom of the leafy National Mall three blocks away. Maybe the statue of Lincoln would shine a path forward.

  Somebody called him as he was exiting. “James? James Egger?”

  No respite. Here we go again. He turned and found himself in front of an angel. If there ever was an agreed canon of beauty … James flushed when he realized she was becoming uncomfortable by his shameless stare.

  “I’m sorry, it was just—strange evening. My … I’m … yes, James.”

  “I’m awfully sorry to disturb you at such an inappropriate time—” She was English.

  “Quite an accent you carry … I mean that in the best sense—I love your voice.” Suave, Jimmy. Not just making a fool of yourself but making it super awkward for her too.

  “What I—”

  “I’m Be—”

  “I … Belinda Addington …” Both stopped, blushing in unison.

  James recovered his dignity, and with that part of his composure. “I am that whom you seek.” She had an infectious laugh. Gorgeous laugh, really—what’s all this schmaltzy lovey-dovey first sight stuff?

  “I have been looking for you. I work here and—”

  “Didn’t know you could work in this building and be under 50.” That addictive giggle again.

  “Here, only in the sense that it’s NASA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory.” The legendary research center run by Caltech, in charge of robotic space missions, probes, and rovers. “… where you have quite a following.”

  “Good, because we didn’t get any converts around here today.”

  “A group of us at JPL want to help. After office hours naturally …” she said.

  “Look, I realize this could sound a bit strange … but I could use a walk. Today has been … well … maybe we can talk about your people at JPL.”

  “Unfortunately, I have to fly back to California in four hours.”

  “I totally understand.” His face must have looked miserable, because she couldn’t contain a warm smile. His face lit up with a broad boyish grin.

  It was a chilly winter sunset. Contrails criss-crossed a fading sky while a current of bitter air drawing from the river washed over all. Belinda and James did not seem to mind, seated at the start of the upper steps of the Lincoln Memorial, right where Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. She was as petite as he was tall.

  “I have a somewhat similar story, borrowed from my half-sis Stevie. Not Arthur C. Clarke but Isaac Asimov—my older sister was the one that got me hooked on sci-fi,” said James. “Asimov was signing books at the Sacramento Public Library, but Stevie’s mom was late picking her up from school. As Stevie is dashing to the entrance, the doors swing open and the great man comes out swarmed by a mean-looking fandom. She tries pushing through but only gets glares. She was losing him. In despair, she screamed in invented Yiddish ‘Isaak! Isaak Ozimov!’—his original Russian name, mauling every ‘s’ and ‘z’ into a ‘sh.’ He turned toward the impostor, came smiling, and signed her I, Robot copy. Not long after …” he stopped, choking back unannounced tears. “She’s the one that’s no longer with us. What he wrote is still my most priceless possession: ‘To Stephanie, the best of impersonators, may you never forget the sky’s not the limit. Yours truly, Isaak Ozimov.’”

  She was visibly moved, again.

  “Jimmy, I really must go now.”

  “I know, I know … well,” James turned red again, “at the risk of souring this, could you envision—” He stopped cold at the sight of a band around her right ring finger. He stuttered, “I’m so v’ v’ very sorry. I did-didn’t realize you were married …”

  Belinda glanced at her right hand. It was her time to turn pink.

  “I think you are confusing left with right.”

  Both looked at her hand again. It was easier than looking at each other.

  Belinda recovered control. “But you have been rather unclear on the proposal …”

  * * *

  5 It was believed but not confirmed that gravity around 40 percent of Earth’s should cancel out the negative effects. This sounded suspiciously similar to Mars’ 38 percent gravity, which really meant “we don’t know.” There were several complications, the most evident of which would be physiological: a cylinder inside the spaceship meant that a person standing would experience significantly lower gravity in the head than in the toes, which at the very least would produce motion sickness.

  11 | Sergei Lazarev

  Seven months later, September 2025, 656 days before launch

  LOW EARTH ORBIT

  Sergei Lazarev’s impenetrable eyes scanned the view through the single window, the glass almost touching his face, as their Soyuz capsule undocked from the International Space Station. The sphere 250 miles below was, save for a few cotton wisps, an unremitting blue blending with that of his eyes, a greedy Pacific Ocean expanding in all directions. The countdown had begun, and in three and a half hours Sergei and two other crew members should be touching down on the Kazakh Steppe.

  His large frame was bent in the narrow seat like a bumper car driver while his shoulder almost rubbed against the German astronaut’s in the ultra-tight cockpit. Taller and broader than most cosmonauts, he would have been ineligible in Soviet times. Even now, somebody his size was nobody’s pick at Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.

  Except that he was Sergei Lazarev. Drafted into the air force following off-the-charts recommendations from aerospace mechanical engineering professors, after only six years as a pilot he was awarded the Hero of the Russian Federation medal for his involvement in the Syrian Civil War. Groomed for space, during his first stint in the ISS he shattered the longest untethered spacewalk record, held by an American. Now he was leaving the ISS for a third time after 203 days as its commander, the youngest to date. A celebrity and national hero, the question creeping into his mind was no different from what a multiple Olympic gold medalist needs to ask himself and the world. At 35, what next?

  The Soyuz emitted three thumps before coming to rest on the monotonous late summer plains. The spring pastures had given way to sparse bouquets of solyanka brown wild grass and the occasional stunted birch tree. R
ussian military transport helicopters landed, creating dust clouds swiftly swept out by the unbroken Eastern winds, and a dozen people commenced the ritual of rescuing the crew from the charcoaled capsule. After months in weightlessness and a punishing re-entry roller coaster, the crew could barely move. The assist team took two out like crash test dummies. Not Sergei, who crawled out by himself. His face couldn’t conceal the pain and strain, yet no one called him out on the protocol transgression. It was Sergei Lazarev, after all.

  People watching him operate in space could have been forgiven for thinking everything in life came unfairly naturally to him, that he was predestined to be a physical wonder and a virtuoso engineer. But that’s not how it had worked for him. Born in Vorkuta, a coal-mining town just north of the Arctic Circle, the son of a couple of high-school teachers, nothing was handed to him on a silver plate. Realizing early in life that he wanted to become a cosmonaut, his obsessive personality made that his one goal in life. Gifted with a privileged intellect, yes, but it had all been sweat and toil for him really.

  A few days later

  The courtly 19th-century grand room was mostly empty of furniture, with an overly high ceiling from where long windows stretched down looking at the Moskva River eleven stories below. There was a parade of military bigwigs talking casually, who all snapped to attention in an almost perfect clack when the double doors opened. In came the Roscosmos Administrator, the Commander of the Russian Space Forces, and the Marshal of the Russian Federation—the highest military rank in Russia; bringing up the rear unexpectedly was the Minister of Defense.

  All the uniforms were seated by rank at the long table. The meeting had been going on longer than anyone had anticipated, the Minister being the possible exception as he delivered a lingering soliloquy. But the last five minutes had replaced tedium with terror as he went ballistic at Roscosmos.

  “—that’s for Roscosmos to figure out! The annual budget stays the same, but effective today, a third will go into artificial gravity development.”

  The Roscosmos Administrator took a long pause. He had better tread lightly, as the Minister was not known for his magnanimity. “Minister Artemyev, I respectfully ask you to reconsider this directive. Tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs could be compromised.”

  The Minister of Defense glared at him. “You have ten months to provide a full-scale working prototype,” he said, cutting in a single swipe two months off the schedule he had given minutes before, “in space.”

  “Artificial gravity is a nice name for a hamster wheel. Just larger,” said the Marshal of the Russian Federation. Massively underestimating challenges was endemic in the Russian armed forces. Very risky, but on occasion, wildly successful.6 “Call Captain Lazarev.”

  Sergei entered and stood at attention in front of his superiors.

  “Captain Sergei Dmitrievich Lazarev, this committee has chosen you as a crew member for the international mission to Saturn. This is the greatest honor bestowed upon a cosmonaut. We are committing the reputation of the motherland and significant resources to this endeavor, and you will represent all of us and our nation’s interests in the conquest of these new worlds.”

  If anyone expected an emotional reaction, none came. He thanked the committee, finishing with a steely military salute.

  “This is a six-year mission into uncharted territory, with a high chance of not coming back. If you have any qualms, this Monday is your last chance to excuse yourself. After that, it becomes official to the world.”

  * * *

  6 In a shrewd reframing of Cold War accomplishments, President Kennedy galvanized the landing on the Moon as the be-all and end-all, sweeping the overwhelming Russian space superiority of the previous decade as a necessary but comparatively minor accomplishment.

  The Russian space program was born handicapped by a declining economic regime and consequently, as the country had done since Prince Alexander Nevsky in the 13th century, it compensated the comparatively shoestring budget with institutional and individual risk-taking that would have been considered deranged in the West.

  In 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to journey into outer space, with a 50 percent chance of not making it back. In Soviet Russia, those odds were acceptable across the board. When US Colonel Paul Tibbets dropped Little Boy from Enola Gay over Hiroshima, the chance of the crew dying was negligible. When Mayor Andrei Durnovtsev dropped Tsar Bomba sixteen years later, the most powerful weapon ever detonated—at 3,000 times the destructive power of Little Boy and twenty-five times that of all bombs dropped in every city during World War II—his bomber was treated with reflective paint to limit heat damage, yet the crew were still assigned only a 50 percent chance of surviving.

  In 1967, the Leader of the Soviet Union wanted a spectacular rendezvous in space to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Communist revolution. That meant flying an untested new capsule, the Soyuz. Gagarin himself had inspected the capsule and found 203 structural problems, and called the mission suicidal. But it proceeded anyway. Colonel Vladimir Komarov, family man and revered cosmonaut, would launch first, followed the next day by another cosmonaut to meet in orbit and dock. Komarov knew launching meant death, but in one of the most poignant deeds in memory he did not refuse to fly, because the backup pilot was Soviet hero and friend Yuri Gagarin. On launch day, Gagarin showed up at the launch site demanding to take Komarov’s place, but was removed by guards. Once in space, the Soyuz failures began and the next day’s launch was canceled. One of the Kremlin’s most powerful men, Alexei Kosygin, along with Komarov’s wife, called Komarov a few hours before re-entry, reminding him between bouts of tears that he was a hero to the Russian people. Komarov plunged to his death on re-entry, the Soyuz’s parachutes failing to deploy. A historical and readily available photo shows a piece of deformed charcoal in an open casket, Komarov’s remains being observed by the inscrutable faces of Soviet officials.

  Today’s Soyuz would have looked oddly familiar to Gagarin. During the 70s it became, through incremental improvement, a sturdy, proven, and cheap vehicle to go to and return from space—as long as you use the very narrow definition of Low Earth Orbit, between 100 to 1,200 miles above the Earth’s surface. The Moon, 239,000 miles away, which no earthling has visited since 1972, is off-limits. Because in an industry carrying people while operating in the most unforgiving environment known to man, the name of the game is reliability. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

  The US followed an altogether different path, which would involve a revolutionary new vehicle designed to dramatically reduce the cost of taking people and cargo to Low Earth Orbit. It was to become the Space Shuttle. Instead of disposing of an entire spacecraft each time you go up, as Russia still does up to today, why not partially recover the spacecraft? By 1981, after nine years and tens of billions of dollars, the first shuttle, Columbia, climbed into the sky. But lofty promises gave way to abysmal reality: the expected $20 million cost per launch turned out to be laughably off mark. Like an imploding Ponzi Scheme, the official number of $450 million per launch ended up being $1.2 billion once all fixed and hidden costs were considered. The old-fashioned and increasingly outdated Soyuz cost tens of millions per launch. Russia: 1—USA: 0. But this pales compared to the shuttle’s worst failure: security. Two of the five shuttles exploded during launch and re-entry, carrying six and seven astronauts respectively.

  Following the Space Shuttle’s retirement from service in 2011, the Soyuz became the only means to go to the ISS. Applying monopolistic best practices, Russia jacked up the ticket price per astronaut from $22 million in 2007 to $81 million by 2018. Outrageous opportunism it may be, but still a mere fraction of the shuttle cost, while being an order of magnitude safer.

  But market forces were coming back at full strength. SpaceX took the noble aspiration of the shuttle, and through a complete shift in the space design and fabrication paradigm achieved the holy grail of space economics: full reusability.

  Today, Russia’s Roscos
mos knows this means checkmate: from indisputable leader in carrying cargo and people to Low Earth Orbit, to destitution. Unless they can develop enduring competitive advantage in some area of the $300 billion space economy, their demise is inevitable.

  12 | Russians at the Gate

  Two days later, 650 days before launch

  SILICON VALLEY, CALIFORNIA

  Yi Meng gripped the stiff narrow passenger seat as the light, two-bladed helicopter dipped in the warm summer air well past the trigger of his free-fall reflex. This is no civilized way to travel. Perhaps, but the pastoral sight of houses and low-rise buildings lost between patches of tall trees hundreds of feet below—which a year onward still made Silicon Valley look bizarre, almost suspicious to Yi—was deceiving: I-280 and US 101, the two arteries herding traffic throughout, had bad cholesterol and were prone to standstill. And the one—maybe the only—thing everyone agrees on about the mission is that time is our mightiest foe.

  Yi had landed at San Francisco International Airport twenty minutes earlier and the conference would start in fifteen. The flimsy rotor blades slicing the air sixteen times each second were the only means of guaranteeing his attendance. James, the mission director and future Shackleton commander, had been adamant about having the relevant crew member at every important meeting, and for this particular one experts from all over the world had flown in. The directive meant a disproportionate amount of traveling for Yi as the 3D Printing and Robotics mission specialist.

  He looked to the west at the fluffy tentacles of the mass of Pacific Ocean moisture, clinging to the other side of the coastal range carpeted in pinewoods, vainly trying to cross over into the perpetual spring cocoon of Silicon Valley. The tac-tac-tac-tac of the rotor had settled into a metronome for his thoughts.