AMERICA ONE - NextGen II (Book 6)

by T I WADE

  The helicopter arrived the next day, lifted up the small Cold Fusion plant from the runway as a reserve unit for Tow, and within two days had hundreds of tons of sand out of the crater.

  Young Johnny Walls, now a master at driving, used the earthmover to fill a large metal mesh blanket that had a thick layer of plastic that covered the mesh. It took about twenty loads of sand before it was ready, and the helicopter lifted up the mesh by the four corners and headed away from the crater. Once it was away, two corners of the blanket were released, which spread the sand over the desert below.

  Two trips an hour and with fifty tons an hour being moved every hour, within five days, 50 hours, its job was over and the beast headed home. The level of sand inside the crater had been reduced by thirty of the forty feet down to the cavern roof, and some of the sand could be spread out to the other areas of the crater.

  Another three days’ work was scheduled to be completed by the helicopter on its next visit in a few weeks. It had other jobs to do and returned to Tel Aviv. Dr. Walls needed lessons from Johnny this time on how to drive the large yellow Caterpillar, the only one remaining in the crater.

  The Astermine crew left The Pig’s Snout, leaving behind the two new occupants a few days later with enough supplies for several months. Dr. Walls, under Tow’s guidance, wanted to travel the outside desert and see what was out there. The tracked vehicle with remaining drums of fuel would allow him this adventure.

  At the same time the crew were enjoying the Sahara, work inside the Nevada hangars was back to three shifts per day. Every day, the security team had to use a loud hailer to turn away people from the outer gate. Everybody wanted a job, and the only suggestion Pluto Katherine, who was in charge of the base, could think of was to send them over to Creech and Nellis to clean up the two bases. She told the daily crowd that jobs would be there when the two bases were occupied in a few weeks’ time and that they had the employment news first.

  For the next couple of months, the new shuttle, SB-IV, was worked on 24/7. So was the instrumentation for America Two. Many of the same types of instruments would be fitted to all the ships in production.

  The latest computers were hard to find, so a quarter of one of the hangars was set up for computer manufacture. Same with the latest and much needed 3-D scanners and printers that would make many of the parts out in space.

  Once information arrived from the several dozen astronomy installations around the country, work began sourcing asteroids to mine. All the crew wished for was a decent-sized asteroid rich in either gold or rare earth metals.

  The asteroid the first generation had mined, DX2014, had been a freak of the universe, many astronomers believed. It had been full of rare earth metals, but its real treasure were the thousands of diamonds brought back to Earth. Now that treasure was of insignificant importance compared to that time decades earlier.

  For days, the scientists and crew went over electronic information looking for an asteroid out of thousands on record. Some were too small, and some were too large. Some were useless rock, and some not. Finally one was found which was just right named 2030JD. It had been found and logged nine years earlier by Jack Dempsey.

  The asteroid had visited close to Earth before, nearly 250 years ago, and seemed to be on a slow and massive orbit around the solar system. To Mars, who was looking through the information as much as the others, its trajectory reminded him of DX2017, the little blue planet where all the first generation were asleep. It was about twice the size, the color was reported to be a dull grey, silverfish color, and it was more like DX2014 in shape.

  “As with DX2014, 2030JD looks like a long oval shape, like a hot dog, and it seemed to rotate very slowly, about half the rotation speed of DX2014. It seems that it could be in a 100-million-mile range within five months,” stated the head of the asteroid research team, Jack Dempsey, studying the asteroid.

  He was an old man, nearly seventy, but Lunar had been surprised to learn that Jack Dempsey, when he had arrived to work at the base, had known her father very well. He had applied for the job through one of his colleagues who was already working on the airfield in Nevada. Word had got through to him that Ryan Richmond’s Astermine was back in business, and he had gathered up his dog, the only family member he had, and driven from New Mexico to the base in Nevada in an old, rusty Ford F-150.

  The whole crew and many of the older scientists had been very surprised when he stated on his arrival that he had actually found DX2014 for Ryan right at the very beginning. At that time, he had been working at a large space observatory in Austin, Texas, and a couple of years later had been fired by the government on suspicion that he had leaked information to Ryan’s organization.

  Jack had saved his 10 years of research on asteroids, and had used a wealthy friend’s telescope to continue his work mapping the solar system for the next two decades. This telescope was not as powerful as the ones he had been used to, but he had found a similar asteroid to DX2014 16 years later in 2030. He had named it 2030JD and put the information away in case Astermine ever returned. Now he was head of Astermine’s Asteroid Mining Research team on the base.

  “Much like DX2014, there seems to be a sort of metallic aura from the black and white images taken of this asteroid. DX2014 was born deep in some exploding planet or sun, and had cooled in space. Given how the astronauts who mined it described DX2014, I believe DX2014 had been hit by several smaller asteroids over its billion-year life span. 2030JD looks to me a metal-rich Q-type asteroid. It's just a guess that it will have the usual iron-nickel make up most asteroids have, but there is a chance that clumps of platinum and its group metals could be prevalent on this piece of rock. To sum up forty-nine years of asteroid studying, 2030JD has a 65 percent chance of giving you what you want, Ms. Richmond.”

  “Is that gold as well as the rare earth metals?” asked Lunar.

  “I believe that this is the asteroid, only second to DX2014, mind you, which all those asteroid mining companies were searching for between 2012 and 2016, when private asteroid interest was at its highest,” Jack Dempsey replied. “It just wasn’t noticed when the orbital satellite telescopes were still in place above Earth. At that time, with a forward speed of only 27,600 miles an hour, 2030JD was millions of millions of miles away.”

  “So you estimate a passby, the closest distance 2030JD will come, is 97 million miles?” Lunar asked.

  “Unfortunately a rather long flight, and I believe you will only have one shot at mining it before it begins to travel away from Earth. Since the asteroid and Earth will be going in virtually opposite directions, that distance will increase by over 70,000 miles an hour.”

  “Captain Pete, your figures on travelling there?” asked Lunar.

  “With Jack’s 97.155-million-mile closest distance, I have worked on Dr. Schmidt’s estimated new forward speed for our smaller shuttles and the latest velocity figures with their larger thrusters of 85,000 miles an hour. If SB-V, the second new shuttle, was ready, the same speeds would be taken into account. To arrive to the asteroid at a perfect opposition, I have figured on 160 hours of low fuel usage acceleration, ten days of slowing, and a 25-hour, 180-degree turn to equal the asteroid’s forward direction. We end up with an average 51,000 miles an hour forward speed between two empty points in space. Travel time 79.375 days. As you all know, we need to estimate at least ten days on the asteroid for mining. That was given to Jonesy and VIN when they headed out to DX2014 the first time, understanding that there was enough time for a second trip. This time we won’t have that luxury. Remember, DX2014 was heading towards Earth, not passing by. Therefore, I have added another 11 days for mining in advance of perfect opposition. One day of that is for getting settled and twenty days for mining. With the added time and the exact opposition in the middle of the 21 days, twelve days must be added to the flight and fourteen days added to the return. In total, the mission needs to begin in 91 days’ time, that will be from leaving Earth’s orbit, and the total mission will last 127 da
ys.”

  “Very close to my calculations, Herr Captain Pete, and we still have one of Ryan’s old MMAs, Magnetic Metal Analyzers,” added Dr. Schmidt. “The other was lost on the DX2014 asteroid when it broke up. My team have tested it and it is ready to be housed in Astermine One’s cargo hold.”

  “Captain Pete, I assume you have allocated which shuttles will head out with the three mining vessels, and the names of the crew,” asked Lunar. Who do you suggest to be commander of the mission?”

  “Captain Mars Noble would be my first choice. He learned much from his father, but he is leading the Mars mission. I would recommend your sister, Commander. Pluto Katherine is one of our best pilots. Jonesy recommended her to me for any mission when she was a youngster doing flight training with him. As her second I would recommend Shelly Saunders. Both girls have excellent spacesuit experience and are trained in spacesuits far more than the rest of the crew.”

  “May we assume husbands are also part of the crew?” stated Gary Darwin, much to the crew’s amusement.

  “Yes, Mr. Darwin,” replied Captain Pete, animating the way Ryan would have responded. “You will have spacesuit training and flight simulator time, ten hours a day from now until the mission leaves. So will you, Mr. Price, as it seems you have begged the powers-that-be to head out on a mission.”

  There was much laughter and Lunar blushed slightly. Her husband had been pestering her for a mission, and she had mentioned it to the captain.

  “No pregnant astronauts or crew will be allowed on the asteroid mission,” added Dr. Nancy, sitting next to her husband. “All astronauts who are selected will go through a full physical before training, and before departure.”

  Captain Pete then read out the names of the ten members selected for the mining mission. The two Aussies were among them, and Pluto Katherine felt proud that she was commander and that they were both going along.

  Then the Mars mission crew was called out with Mars Noble and Saturn Jones leading that mission. Dr. Nancy had suggested to Lunar that she and Captain Pete allow themselves one more space flight. It also meant that the two girls she thought to be pregnant could be used on this mission. There was a lot of room in the new shuttle so it would be far more comfortable for the Mars mission crew, herself and Captain Pete than the return from Mars. Both the older two crewmembers had thought to call it a day, but as had happened in many instances, the call to space hadn’t completely left them.

  Luckily for Dr. Nancy, two of the who had studied by her side for a dozen or more years were not astronauts, and as far as the doctor was concerned, already as good as any doctor on Earth. One would be needed to look after the build crew and mechanics in orbit in space in a year’s time and swap around to be the medical person at the base.

  That left six astronauts under the command of Lunar to fly up the supplies to the new build station that was about to be built in orbit. There was a lot of cylinders and parts already up there, and each piece was important. Even “The Office,” the small capsule Captain and Nancy had returned to Earth in, would be the build commander’s office in space.

  The supply cylinders that had been used for the crew’s return would be upgraded with fresh supplies to house the thirty or so human workers up there. A cube much like the old America One cubes was being made in Israel, and its outer skin parts would be lifted up to form an in-space atmospheric production laboratory. One entire side was to open and allow parts built up there to float out once complete.

  Dozens of new robots were on the drawing boards to weld and bond most of the outer walls until there was an atmosphere inside the new ship. Then the human workforce could do the rest on the internal fittings receiving them through a space lock.

  Since the second mother ship had been agreed on, a second cube was to be built and sent up a year after the first one got underway.

  As the meeting drew to a close, everyone realized how much work was ahead of them.

  Mars and Saturn were already looking forward to returning to the red planet. Since Mars had been in space fights with the nasty Matts, he had always wondered if any had survived that massive blast when their base had exploded. Many good friends of his had died that day, and he wanted to make sure that Astermine’s spaceships, not theirs, ruled the skies over Mars. Captain Noble was also happy that Captain Pete was coming along. He enjoyed the captain’s company and perusing star maps with him.

  For the next several weeks, the country seemed to lift itself out of hibernation. Every day there were new people at the gates wanting work. Sergeant Meyers handled them, sending them to the two bases. The news began to return, as did television stations.

  The news from Washington was good. With new members in the House and Senate, work went through the two chambers faster than anybody could remember. New agreements were drawn up, first with Canada and then Australia and Israel. Europe, seeing this rebirth of a nation, wasn’t to be outdone, and soon aircraft and ships were again flying over the Atlantic to connect the two continents.

  Even though many people were turned away from the gates, every day there was one or two acknowledgements to Sergeant Meyers and the old guards. These were returning people who had worked on the airfield, and each one was allowed in to speak to either Dr. Schmidt or Lunar.

  Quickly the base filled to capacity, and even the idea of morning runs around the airfield was brought back.

  One morning, Lunar headed out for an early morning walk with Mark. The airstrip was a nice walk, but often she did it as the sun set. She was surprised to see many of the older scientists around the airfield. She stopped one and asked if this was usual.

  “Oh yes, Ms. Richmond. Ryan and the whole group used to run around the airfield at least three or four days a week. Of course we were all younger then, and the new kids with the prostheses, young VIN and Suzi, were a hoot.”

  This gave Lunar the idea to restart the early morning runs. Excitedly accepted by the older generation, but not so eagerly accepted by the NextGens.

  Chapter 15

  Setup for Mars

  “You have to be patient to get to the red planet, lover boy,” stated Saturn to her husband while holding baby Mikey Noble, as the crew had named him, and giving the forever hungry baby milk. The young Noble sucked food as if there was no tomorrow, and Mikey was as impatient as his father had been acting for the last month. It had been three months since the meeting when Lunar had designated the crew for the three independent missions, and since then the airfield had prepared 24 hours a day.

  In each of the hangars, three shifts in every department had quickly filled up with returning and new specialists in their fields. The new shuttle was coming along and was only a week behind schedule, hence Mars’ impatience to test-fly her.

  “It’s just we have so little time between test flights and the start of the mission,” replied Mikey’s father. “We are seventeen hours behind on the “Mid Fuel Storage Tank” completion schedule, and there are still millions of items to checklist before the maiden flight into orbit. The opposition deadline doesn’t change, and every day means a longer flight and a shorter stay.”

  “No, you don’t give a rat’s arse about a longer flight or a shorter stay. All you want, General Bloody Noble, is to go and beat the crap out of those guys who attacked us. It has been getting on your mind for weeks now. You even mouth obscenities at them in your sleep.”

  “Maybe. I suppose you are right,” he mumbled, head hanging low and thinking about what Saturn had just said.

  “I want to go as much as you do. So does little Mikey here. He is our next security officer or little flight commander, is he not?” she stated, laughing and lifting him high to fly the baby above her head. He loved this. Drooling milk over his mother, Mikey Noble smiled from ear to ear. “Mars, SB-IV will be ready and in my hands before we know it. You will be mission commander, I will be chief astronaut, and we’ll have to teach Mikey how to float around in zero gravity, get him a baby spacesuit, and bring sipping bags of lukewarm coffee. I just
hope we don’t get stuck up there on the planet like the last time we wanted to return.”

  The new shuttle was being worked on by three build teams in eight-hour shifts. Every day, Saturn and Mars spent hours inside her cockpit testing the newly installed instruments, and especially any new systems added during the recent day.

  SB-IV would fly much like SB-III, but her cockpit was far larger. Also, the captain had small but comfortable private quarters behind the cockpit separate from where the rest of the crew would reside during the expected 171-day flight to the red planet. The larger shuttle could cut the journey down by ten days due to her more modern hydrogen thrusters, but speed wasn’t the issue in space. The use of valuable fuels and supplies was.

  Going on the mission with the larger shuttle was SB-III. With newly fitted larger thrusters, SB-III was to be docked upside down to the middle one of SB-IV’s three roof docking ports. On the rear port, Mars would park one of the two Matt spacecraft. They would have to be positioned at a ninety-degree angle to the front of the new shuttle to fit, and there was a three-foot gap between the wings of the spacecraft.

  The forward Soyuz docking hatch, in between the cockpit and the captain’s quarters, was primarily for spacewalk exiting. The transfer of cargo and crew whilst in flight would be completed through the rear two hatches and floated straight into the waiting spacecraft.

  As with all Astermine missions, hundreds of aluminum canisters would be used to transfer goods through the docking ports. The supply and mining canisters were used on all missions and were the most important equipment on every flight.

  Many of the canisters had been to several asteroids, planets, and moons and many were scratched and dented but still performed their valuable service. The build crew had planned to produce another 500 of these for transportation of just about anything that fit inside them for the build of America Two in space.