Pillar to the Sky

by William R. Forstchen

  But she could not. They, far better than she, knew the risks they were taking and had made clear their decision. They had no cause for complaint. She thought of how Robert Falcon Scott, the Antarctic explorer, had written those lines in his final diary entry. He had embarked on an adventure, things had played out against him, but his final words were for others to continue the dream. Such had been the spirit of the age of polar exploration, which preceded that of the sky above, and she prayed that the spirit of this age, which her father, mother, and Franklin had struggled to open up, was renewed again now.

  There would be risks aplenty in the years to come as the ribbon became the first truly viable means to reach the heavens and at the same time a way to solve some of the environmental problems on an overcrowded and polluted earth. Her comrades aboard this smelly, aging craft, laughing one moment, talking serious business the next, were the forerunners of a new generation that would lead the way.

  And she understood yet again that there were things in this life worth putting your life on the line for.

  She gazed at the earth below.

  This was no longer about just building a tower to get to geosynch, as her parents had dreamed. This was about saving the world below.

  Content, she drifted off to sleep, barely hearing the laughing and singing just beyond her curtain, nor worried about the arguments she would have to counter from the people down below come dawn, explaining that now the station had seven on board and they damn well had to figure out how to double the shipment of supplies to keep them alive while the tower was being built.

  22

  The Ribbon Goes Down

  In the four months since Victoria and the other three crew members had docked, so much had changed, in space and on earth. The team had merged together somewhat well, though when on the following day she had passed the word back to the mission controls in Kiribati and Houston that all seven were staying up for the time being, there had been howls of protest. The schedule was for the three veterans to undock and head back “for home” the day after the new team arrived.

  It was a historic moment. The first mutiny in space! And inwardly Victoria rather enjoyed it, as Singh and Kevin articulated their position to the world in such a forceful manner that even the president, the head of NASA, and Franklin were forced to concede, even though it meant a doubling of resupply launches—at no small expense—with the caveat that there would be no more pizzas and they would be lucky to be eating Spam out of squeeze tubes, with showers rationed to one quart of water per week.

  The delicate balance of personal relationships also went on edge. Kevin and Hurt bonded wonderfully. Hurt was the crew’s new expert on ribbon design, which had evolved significantly in the two years that the station had been cut off, while Kevin walked him through his own thoughts on deployment and stitching. The newer design did bear striking resemblance to old-fashioned movie film, with perforated edges to facilitate a stitching thread bonding them together, either side by side, or laminated one atop the other. Each thread carried a conductivity fiber to provide energy—not enough to fully power, but at least to augment spinners and the ascent or descent of a pod.

  All was moving into place for renewed deployment after a delay of over two and a half years to make the second try, this time with the full backing of NASA.

  But much was transpiring on earth as well. Oil was peaking at over $225 a barrel now, and there was the usual threat of war in the entire Middle Eastern region as the oil-producing nations scrambled to milk the last of the reserves. With global demand increasing at more than 10 percent a year even as production peaked, some were saying that—rather than fund yet another mad scheme in space—the money could be better spent on R & D for better oil extraction, the cleaner burning of coal, or even fusion power.

  The economic crisis in America and the European Union in the second decade of the twenty-first century was coming home to roost in the third decade, taxes to handle the debt loads were spiraling, and many were arguing that the investment over four years of at least $180 billion of taxpayers’ money on top of what Pillar Inc. had sunk in and pretty well lost was absurd. Garlin and others like her were readily available on the Internet casts to bitterly denounce the entire project as the greatest boondoggle of the century, out of which somehow the wily Franklin Smith and his cohort, who was simply cast as a sentimental crowd pleaser, along with Victoria Morgan, would find a way to walk away with what was left when the entire project failed as the previous one had.

  Perhaps it is best I’m up here, Victoria thought even though she finally agreed to a televised “discussion” with Garlin that swiftly broke down, with Garlin attempting to lecture her as if she were dressing down a recalcitrant undergraduate; Victoria deeply resented it but did not let her temper show, until Garlin mentioned that Victoria’s father had once been a student of hers as well and she regretted he had not paid closer attention in her class, a veiled implication that he would still be alive if he had.

  “Mention of my father is beyond the scope of this discussion,” Victoria shot back, now angry.

  Garlin, sputtering, prepared to strike back but Victoria shot first, “When you are ready to debate the merits of what the Pillar will accomplish rather than act in such a disdainful manner let me know, until then I have far more important things to attend to,” and she switched the screen off.

  Her response was greeted with applause from her comrades on board the station, and from around the world.

  The final supply vehicle launched from Kiribati, hurriedly prepared ahead of schedule in order to support the crew of seven, had been a near-run thing, as one of the five thrusters was lost shortly after lift-off. If it had gone down, they would have been delayed nearly a year, since along with additional food, water, and oxygen, the rest of the hull was packed with Fuchida’s ribbon, as yet unpaid for. It carried as well the newly designed drop stage, a generation ahead of the one that had carried down the first wire. If the launch had failed, the station would have been abandoned, its reserve supplies consumed by the near doubling of the crew size.

  With the supply run docked, the air far more breathable (and someone had smuggled aboard a sandwich, a pizza, and some contraband for the Brit), it was time to truly begin their task. That had darn near triggered a true fistfight. Kevin had demanded the right to direct the EVA as the ribbon was deployed, while Sanders, the actual commander of the second crew to join them, argued he was the one trained for that. Victoria, management skills to the fore, pointed out that it would have to be Hurt, with Kevin—their EVA expert with more hours “out there” than all other astronauts combined—ensuring the safe and continuous deployment of the ribbon out of the four reels, with 23,000 miles of ribbon for the drop, while several reels of the retrieved wire from the earlier effort would be sent out with counterweights attached to balance the load.

  With the ever-improving technology of ribbon spinning, the designs had changed, but fortunately the integration of the older ribbon design with the new had been kept in mind.

  The descent stage would start the long fall back to earth, while Malady and Hurt, rotating shifts with Jenna as backup and safety control, would supervise the stapling together of the end of one ribbon on a reel to the next one in line. The reels’ unique design left the last hundred meters of ribbon exposed, and while only a dozen meters away a reel played out the ribbon to the descent stage—which, once started, could not easily be stopped—the EVA team would hurriedly staple the next reel of nearly 8,000 miles of ribbon to the previous one. When each reel was empty of its cargo, it would break apart, making room for the next reel to start spinning out its load. Once the ribbon was locked in place on earth, its upper end would be attached to the still-intact upper wire of the tower, which stretched upward for thousands of miles, counterweighted by discarded upper stages and empty reels, providing a nearly rock-solid attachment for the reels of ribbon lined up and ready to go. The thousands upon thousands of miles of the old wire now continued to serve the mi
ssion, providing the extension for the counterweight that would eventually extend outward 17,000 miles, thus sustaining tension on the ribbon below.

  It would be a highly dangerous operation. The deployment of the first wire was a strand only two millimeters in diameter, all on one reel. This was magnitudes greater, a ribbon, with almost fifty times the tensile and compression strengths, requiring four reels, their size limited by the third-stage vehicles that sent them aloft over the last year, the single most expensive line item of the entire budget now under NASA’s control.

  Once in place and securely locked, within days the ribbon could withstand stress loads twenty times greater than the first wire. Additional ribbon would then be run up from earth, a ton or more at a time, the first load going up to geosynch, then the second one laminating a layer on top of the first one from ground level up to a thousand miles. One more supply run via rocket would carry up additional ribbon, supplies for the team on board, and an extension unit for the station to eventually support additional workers. If the drop was successful, the program would truly shift into high gear; if it failed, chances were there would not be another chance, for surely political will would turn against the program yet again. Though Proxley had announced his resignation, he would surely leap back in if he saw the chance.

  And thus it would go with each additional reel of ribbon, most to be stitched on to broaden the width of the ribbon and its carrying capacity. A ribbon a couple of meters wide could have easily endured the hit by the errant Soviet satellite and kept right on functioning, with a repair unit running down on the side of the ribbon not damaged, patching the cut, and then returning.

  Each ribbon now had fibers that could conduct electricity to provide supplemental power to a “stitcher,” as the units were now called, rather than “spinners.” Eventually, some of the ribbons would be almost entirely made of conductive fibers; then Victoria could reach for her particular dream: to use the tower for transmitting absolutely limitless solar energy back to earth.

  * * *

  The day at last arrived, and Sanders, Hurt, and Kevin were all EVA. Someone in Houston casually mentioned that they had just achieved another first—three outside a station at the same time—while Jenna, a bit frustrated that she always had to play backup, remained in the upper hatchway, ready to go if there was a problem. Victoria and the other two astronauts were suited up as well, for safety and in the event of an emergency.

  “Let’s make a pillar!” Victoria announced joyfully, and NASA broadcast her words to the entire world.

  The descent unit fired its reverse thrusters, the reel holding the ribbon, anchored to the wire—the remnant of the first tower—several hundred meters below the station. The immutable law of action and reaction was, of course, at play as the ribbon started to spin off of the reel. Part of the downward thrust was counteracted by its attachment to the counterweighted upper tower and achievement of the first “construction tower,” which had stood firm and was now an essential component of this second effort.

  It was nearly all automated; much was happening too quickly for human reaction, especially in these first minutes as the ribbon spun out. Though in the silent vacuum of space, Kevin swore he heard a spinning sound, like that of his grandmother’s old sewing machine at work. Brushing against the side of the ribbon as it spun out would be like touching a diamond-tipped saw: it would slice right through an EVA suit and the person inside in a heartbeat.

  Malady and Hurt worked perfectly as a team, already positioning the second reel behind the first, ever so carefully handling the ribbon. Though it was more than a day before the second reel would begin deployment, they were already at work matching it up with the hundred-meter strand extending from the end of the first reel while Sanders, operating the handheld automated unit, much like an actual sewing machine of old, “stapled” the perforated edges together along the length of that hundred meters.

  That took the better part of an hour to complete at which point more than five hundred miles of ribbon from the first reel had been played out, the downward thruster long gone from view except for occasional flickers of light from its thrusters. In space one could indeed see a long way.

  Sanders went back into the station to recycle his air supply and rest. They were now on a four-hours-on/two-hours-off rotation for the next six exhausting days until touchdown of the ribbon on Kiribati.

  While Sanders recycled his air, took a bite to eat, and hydrated up inside the station—it was indeed strenuous work that had at times nearly fogged up his faceplate—Hurt and Malady floated a safe distance from the first reel, watching it spin out, ready to react in an instant if something jammed up.

  All the experience gained in deploying the first wire was now coming to the fore and it was indeed a handsome payoff, in the same way Gemini had once been for Apollo, training and preparing all involved for the “real mission.”

  A day and a half later the moment came when both of them held their breath. The first reel was just about played out, running out the last few miles of ribbon. It was designed to actually break apart in the middle and separate, small thrusters pushing the two halves a safe distance away, to be retrieved later when time permitted them to be added to the counterweight and sent up the side, but the priority of the moment was giving free play to the ribbon attached to the next strand.

  “Ten seconds to second strand,” Singh announced, Houston and Kiribati echoing her words a split second later, and it went as designed. The second reel, attached to the old upper part of the tower, flexed down several dozen meters until its own built-in thrusters counteracted the force of the downward pull. The surge was even felt inside the space station, but no one spoke or outwardly reacted, even though it was a bit startling.

  “Kevin, this is Sanders. Time for rotation.”

  Kevin was reluctant to go off duty. He silently looked at Bill Sanders, who grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. Bill effortlessly pushed off and floated directly to the open airlock hatch, where Jenna helped to pull him in. He headed out to replace Kevin in overseeing the second reel playing out and stapling the end of the second strand of ribbon to the beginning of the third.

  And thus it went, exhausting but exhilarating as the second reel played out, while far below the thruster unit moved toward the threshold where the gravitational influence of the earth would exceed the upward drag of the ribbon. It extended far down in a long curving loop, which, as it was gently maneuvered into position, with Kiribati Tower Control in command and Houston as backup for this final maneuver, would eventually lock into the same position where the first tower had once connected.

  The only partially constructed platform that would have received the second tower was already beginning to rust. Few recalled now that a couple of decades earlier a second launch site for the shuttle had been built, out at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, to put shuttles into polar trajectories for military missions. After Challenger it had been abandoned. The history of space flight had more than one such half-constructed dream, abandoned and rusting away.

  But the experience and training gained in building Pillar One was now applied to the far more sturdy and complex second attempt. However, this attempt, particularly at this stage was as fraught with peril as the first.

  But this time NASA was behind the effort.

  All of its tracking facilities, augmented by military tracking, were now at work, along with the cooperation of the EU space program and even the Russians and Chinese. A few phone calls from the president of the United States could indeed work wonders at times, and she had made it forcefully clear that their help now would be a debt that NASA and America would long remember.

  And there went by other channels another clear message as well.

  Two American Aegis-class ships now cruised off of Kiribati along with the new British ship Diamond, which boasted the most sophisticated antimissile systems in the world. If any state, real or underground, tried another attack, the warning was clear: the missile would be t
aken down and whoever had launched it hunted down with complete annihilation of the port facilities that sent out the attacking ship. There would be no repeat of the last incident, not with the whole world watching.

  And so the second reel of ribbon became the third, gravity now increasingly influencing the flight of the descent stage, ribbon spinning out at a constant rate. When not actually connecting reels together, the three space walkers remained “outside,” monitoring the paying out of ribbon in case a reel jammed.

  They had a backup plan in the event a reel did jam up without hope of freeing it. They would quickly shift into place the one reserve reel, staple it to the deploying unit, and cut the jammed reel free of the sequence, then sort out the jam later without the pressure that Singh and Kevin had faced with the first such attempt.

  They would only have minutes to do so, because with a jam, the tensile stress would build up quickly to the snapping point.

  As they floated hour after hour outside the hatchway, watching the reels deploying ribbon, Kevin made more than a few private comments on the comm link about their sanitary state after days in EVA suits. At one point he even threatened to go to the public link on that issue, but of course did not do so.

  And then, as the third reel played out, that old law that if anything can go wrong it will go wrong at last came into play.

  Kevin and Sanders were inside, changing out and getting a bite to eat while Hurt monitored the deployment and Jenna kept watch from the upper-level open hatchway, when it hit.

  They could feel the lurch as the reel silently screeched to a stop, a kink in the ribbon or overlap jamming it up. The sudden stop jarred the entire station, knocking Victoria out of a half sleep, Kevin already reacting, shouting for Jenna to help him and Sanders to get their helmets on.

  The entire crew did have upper and lower EVA suits on as a safety precaution in case of some catastrophic event, and Singh shouted for the rest of them to be ready to head to the emergency escape capsules. Victoria ignored her orders, bringing Singh’s helmet over, offering to help her put it back on, but Singh shook her head.