“There is a reception in the main building lobby, with light refreshments. Please return any borrowed binoculars, and again, if you are experiencing any discomfort, please check in at the medical tent. Thank you.”
Drake got up from his seat, Vukovich doing the same, and shook his head slightly. The ringing was fading. “Well, that was loud.”
Vukovich nodded. “Yeah. I wonder how much of that was some atmospheric effect focusing the sound waves. The first test wasn’t nearly that loud. On the other hand, they were running this at higher power.”
“Between that and the light, a launch would sure get someone’s attention. But I guess that’s true of any rocket launch. Will we get a beam like that in space?”
“Not likely. Most of that was atmosphere being superheated. In space, the plasma stream is hot but not turbulent, so shouldn’t emit much light to the sides.”
“That’s something, anyway. I’m thirsty. Let’s go see what this reception has in the way of ‘light refreshments.’”
“Roger that.”
∞ ∞ ∞
“Then it was partially atmospherics,” Drake reported to the admiral a few days later. “There was a layer aloft that bounced some of the sound back down.”
“What was the rest of it?”
“Shear between the air and the high-speed exhaust was more than expected. They’re looking at a design mod to sheath the main exhaust with a stream of slower moving gas to help muffle it. It will reduce the efficiency slightly but make takeoffs from existing facilities more tolerable.”
“Good. What’s the effect on the schedule?”
“Not as bad as you might think.” Drake skimmed the data on his pad. “The fluid dynamics computations are done and they’re already modeling the changes. Fabricating and assembling the new hardware will take four weeks; it’s a simple change to the nozzle, and some of that will be in parallel with other changes they were planning anyway.” He looked at the admiral. “Looks like the net delay will be about ten days, but that’s just this component, which isn’t the long pole in the critical path.”
“So, we can absorb that, then. Good. Stay on top of it, not that you need me to tell you that.”
“Indeed, sir.” Drake had given up any hope he had of a return mission to recover the crew of the Anderson before the new class of ships were ready. He would do all he could to make sure they were ready as soon as humanly possible.
Chapter 25: Warp Test
Office of Deep Space Exploration, a few weeks later
“Commodore Drake, we need to talk,” came Greg Vukovich’s voice over Drake’s omni.
“Sure, I’ve been wanting to hear how the tests of the new warp drive went. Is that why you’re calling?”
“Kind of. Obviously not something we can discuss by omni. Are you coming out to Nevada any time soon, or shall I come to DC?”
It was a constant source of irritation to Drake that the project was being run directly out of the Pentagon rather than closer to where the action was. Given the level of politics involved, and the fact that the various system contractors were spread all over the country, it was inevitable. Drake wished they could have just turned over a stack of money to one of the private, vertically-integrated space companies and let them do their thing, but given the secret nature of some of the technologies, that wasn’t likely to happen any time soon.
“I’m ready to get out of DC for a while,” Drake said. “I have meetings with some of our contractors in Colorado later this week. We could meet in Denver, or somewhere nearby. Perhaps one of the bases if we need security. Does that work for you?”
“That works.”
They worked out the details and ended the call. Going over it again in his mind, Drake wondered what was up. Greg had sounded like something was bothering him. In fact, Drake realized, the last time he’d heard that particular tone in Vukovich’s voice was when, at Alpha Centauri, he had approached Drake to tell him he thought the Xīng Huā explosion had been faked. That did not bode well.
∞ ∞ ∞
Colorado, Denver
Drake had flown into Denver International Airport that morning. The place was a maze of construction activity. Above ground they were building extensions that would, when complete, transform it into the Denver Air and Space Port. Below ground the Denver Maglev Station was nearing completion. The latter would be the terminus of a high-speed maglev rail following the Interstate-70 corridor east as far as St. Louis, and another south through New Mexico to Texas. Idly Drake wondered just how much traffic the airport itself would handle when those were complete, although it was currently one of the busiest hubs in the country.
None of which would help him get to his contractor meetings with Northrup-Grumman in Aurora, and with Lockheed at the old Martin facility in the foothills southwest of town where, a century earlier, they had assembled Titan rockets. He made his way to the car rental desk.
“Franklin Drake,” the clerk, a young blonde woman, said as she checked his reservation. She looked up at him, eyes widening. “Are you the Franklin Drake, from Alpha Centauri?”
Drake grinned. He hadn’t heard it phrased quite that way before. “No, I’m from Louisiana. I just visited Alpha Centauri,” he said, smiling so that she wouldn’t take offense. “But I never got to leave the spacecraft, so you’ll have to ask somebody else what that was like.”
“Oh, well, it’s still an honor to meet you, sir.”
“Thank you. Now, my car?”
“Of course. Is this just for around town?”
“I’ll be going up into the mountains too. Nothing off road, but probably off the main highway.” In fact, he’d be meeting Vukovich near the summit of Mount Evans, but he knew the road was paved all the way.
“Certainly sir.” The clerk finished making the arrangements, scanned Drake’s omni and gave it the authorization code, then handed it back. “The car is on its way. A gray Plazma. It will be waiting just outside door 511. Fifth level, near carousel six. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“No, thank you.”
“Alright. Enjoy your stay.”
Drake nodded and turned to find his way to door 511. The car would be driving itself from the rental parking lot to meet him. He was looking forward to meeting with Vukovich. With the contractors, not so much.
∞ ∞ ∞
Colorado, Mount Evans
Even on this weekday there were still a dozen or so cars parked in the lot near the observatory and the old Crest House on Mount Evans. At 4,304 meters—14,120 feet—this already qualified it as one of the “fourteeners”, with the actual peak nearly another fifty meters higher. The Crest House hadn’t been a house since a fire nearly a century earlier had destroyed most of it, but the foundations and concrete-and-stone walls had been converted to an observation platform. Tourists wandered the decks, took pictures of the vistas in all directions—Denver was visible to the east fifty kilometers away—and climbed the trail up the rocks to the very summit. Drake found the thin, cool air and the expansive view a nice change from his office back in DC, to say nothing of the weeks he’d spent confined to spacecraft and the Lunar Quarantine Facility.
As did Greg Vukovich, who Drake found sitting on a bench enjoying the scenery.
“Man, this is a nice change from Nevada,” Vukovich said. “I’m glad you suggested it.”
“My pleasure,” said Drake. “Shall we walk?”
“Sure.” Vukovich rose and joined Drake in a casual stroll away from the parking area and the tourists.
“So, Greg, what’s on your mind?” Drake asked when they were finally away from possible eavesdroppers, human or electronic.
“Did you read the report on the initial trials of the new warp drive?”
“Yes, and it looked good. Only minor fluctuations in the artificial gravity, and a good fifty percent
faster than what took us to Alpha Centauri. The gravity is fixable, right?”
Greg nodded. “It will take some fine tuning and calibration, but we’re pretty sure we can dampen out that fluctuation to where it isn’t noticeable.”
“Why do I get the feeling there’s a ‘but’ to that?”
“Probably because I wouldn’t have suggested this meeting if there wasn’t. And it might be nothing.”
“But...?”
“But it might not be nothing.” Greg held up a hand to stall any interruption. “Now, just to be clear, we know what the problem is...and by ‘we’ I mean me and two others on my team. We haven’t reported what we’ve found yet because it’s not definitive.” He paused. Drake just looked at him expectantly until he continued. “There’s a second-order interaction between the changes made for artificial gravity and other changes made to reduce power consumption and increase speed. Long story short, under some unlikely circumstances the Finazzi compensation could fail and quantum instability would fry the warp modules. Or possibly the ship.”
Drake digested this. The warp drive mathematics worked perfectly according to general relativity. Analyzed according to quantum theory, however, there was an element of randomness that could cause the warp field to self-destruct. Finazzi and his colleagues had described this at a purely theoretical level way back in the 1990s. The fix for it was one of the secrets of the warp drive, one the Chinese had deduced when they reverse-engineered the Xīng Huā’s drives. And that was about as much as Drake knew. He was aware of the buzzwords, but didn’t have a feel for what they really meant the way Vukovich did. But it sounded like there was a chance the warp units could burn out in flight, possibly taking the ship with them. “If the warp drives burn out half way to Alpha Centauri, it won’t matter much if the ship is destroyed or not. Except in how soon we all die.”
Vukovich grinned a lopsided-grin. “Fair point. Going out all at once might be better than dying of hunger or asphyxiation in interstellar space.” He straightened up. “But it isn’t as bad as all that. The risk is really very slim, and we’re pretty sure we have a fix for it.”
“But...?” Drake wished he would just get to the point.
“A proper hardware fix could add a year to the project. It would mean some serious design changes.”
“Another year? We don’t have time for...wait, you said ‘hardware fix’. Is there a software fix?”
“Yes and no. We can see where we could make some subtle algorithm changes to mostly compensate. They’d bring the risk down an order of magnitude or so. But actually making the code changes to implement that, and testing and verifying those changes, is also almost a year-long project. The good news is—”
“Oh, so there is good news. I was starting to wonder.”
“Yeah. Anyway, unlike the hardware changes, the software changes won’t require stopping other work to accommodate them. We can develop the software while the construction is ongoing and load it when it’s ready.”
“And it will be ready before launch,” Drake made it more of a statement than a question.
“Ah, almost certainly.” Vukovich avoided making eye contact.
“So why are we having this discussion? I mean, you’ll need to turn in your final report on the tests. The higher ups are going to decide which way to go. I might have my preferences but I’ve been overridden too many times already to believe they hold much weight with the higher-ups. So, what’s really on your mind?”
“The safest course would be to delay the launch, revise the hardware designs, and make the necessary changes. The fastest course would be to go the software route. If certain details were to, ah, be overlooked for, say, six months, then construction would be too far along to consider tearing things apart to make changes. The changes would go into the next block, of course, but you’d have workable starships a year earlier.
“But, if you’re going to be commanding those ships, you need to know the real situation. Say the word and I’ll make sure my report outlines everything in full. The risk of fixing it in software is small but real. Otherwise, my report might be a little sloppily written, and by the time any oversights or confusion is cleared up, they might as well finish the ship as designed. And you’ll be flying out on something that just might blow up or leave you stranded light-years away.”
Drake said nothing for several moments. He appreciated what Greg was doing. Drake had no objective way to evaluate the risk to Sawyer and her team of spending yet another year stranded on Planet Able, so he couldn’t really balance that against the odds of a slightly less reliable ship not getting there at all. He could, however, gauge the odds against the normal hazards of interstellar travel, if normal was even the appropriate word.
“The new drive is fifty percent faster?”
“Yes. Why?”
“So it gets there in two-thirds the time. That’s already a thirty-three percent lower chance of hitting something solid out there.”
“Uh, I’m not sure it works that way.”
Drake waved that aside. “Just go with it. Now, gravity is better than no gravity, right?”
“Only over the long haul. The trip to Alpha Centauri would be less than a week.”
“Trust me, doing two hours of exercise a day to maintain muscle and bone in zero-gee is not fun, but you know that. All right, we’ll call that a wash. The new plasma thrusters have more power than chemical rockets, right?”
Vukovich barked a laugh. “You saw the demo.”
“Right. Therefore, they have better margins for landing and take-off from a planet.”
“Who are you trying to convince, me or yourself?”
Drake grinned. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“You know you’re comparing apples and bananas. You should be comparing two kinds of apple, since the next block ships will also have plasma thrusters.”
“But they’re safer than chemical rockets.”
“Yes,” Greg said and sighed. “They are.”
“So, how does all that ‘safer’ stack up against a slight extra instability risk of the new warp drives?”
“If you want a real answer I’d have to run the numbers. But your point is taken. Space travel is risky.”
“Okay, one more question. Would you fly on a ship with just the software fix? Keep in mind that may not be hypothetical, I could ask for you to go along. Would you?”
“In a heartbeat. Is that an offer?”
Drake shook his head. “Sorry, I can’t make any promises yet. If you’re serious, put in a request; I’ll keep it mind. You know, I did suggest you’d make a good second in command for the Heinlein.”
“I appreciate that. But they’ve got her limited to test and training flights within the Solar System. I want to set foot on another planet. I never did on the first Centauri mission.”
“I understand. Neither did I.”
“At least you had Mars,” Vukovich said, then apologized. “Sorry, that sounded bitter. I didn’t mean it that way, and it wasn’t your fault. Mission parameters, and all that.”
“No offense taken. Don’t worry about it. I’ll see what I can do. Meanwhile, make sure we have something we can call space-worthy as soon as we can, okay?”
“Roger that, Commodore.”
“Good.” Drake stopped, stretched, and looked around. “We should be heading back. Things to do. And Greg?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks.”
Chapter 26: Final Countdown
Kennedy Space Center, three years later
The three V-class ships stood gleaming white at the end of the runway at Kennedy Space Center. Drake looked at them admiringly, then let his gaze wander to the old Vehicle Assembly Building two kilometers away, and further, to the distant towers of the old launchpads. It was a clear day, a great day for the official turnover of two of the ships
to their allies and partners.
The ships had flown in last night from Edwards Air Force Base in California, near where the final assembly had been done. After a series of atmospheric and low-orbit test flights, they had crossed the US in atmosphere, their delta lifting bodies cruising in formation, the muted roar of their engines providing a thrill to watchers on the ground across the country. This had been played up big time, with a PR blitz rivaling anything from the early days of space.
The climax had been when they arrived over Florida. After breaking formation, each one in turn had descended toward the newly refurbished Shuttle Landing Facility, flared its approach over the threshold, then flown the four-and-a-half-kilometer length of the runway, flaring again to stop their forward motion, hovering for a few moments, then doing a smooth vertical landing, dust billowing out from under in the exhaust of the landing jets.
The Endeavour had a few minor differences from her sister ships, she was the prototype, and some of the lessons learned in her construction were incorporated into the others. More improvements would be included in the Block 2 spacecraft, when they were built.
The Victoria—Drake had gotten the name approved—would technically be owned by the European government, on extended charter to Centauri Pharmaceuticals Corporation, the vast majority of which was, in turn, owned by Skrellan Pharmaceuticals, with several other bio-pharmaceutical companies also holding shares.
The Vostok, named for the first ship to discover and circumnavigate Antarctica, as well as the first manned spacecraft, was of course Russian. At least most of it was. Technically the fusion plant and warp modules were still property of the United States, on lease.
They were each about the size of the old Shuttle Orbiters, but the landings had been very different. No drag chutes, and no gang of technicians in haz-mat suits to make safe the orbital maneuvering systems. These beauties used electric thrusters, not the old toxic hydrazine thrusters of sixty years ago.
Alpha Centauri: The Return (T-Space Alpha Centauri Book 3) Page 16