by Ben Bova
Treadway smiled. First things first, he thought. He had a launch to cover.
Most of the visitors were gathered around the temporary bar the spaceport management had set up along the far wall of the center. The rest stood at the sweeping, ceiling-high windows, staring out at the rocket booster standing alone and seemingly inert more than a mile away.
“Quiet please!” shouted Treadway’s producer, a plump round auburn-haired woman in jeans and tee shirt. “On the air in three . . . two . . .” She aimed a finger like a pistol at Treadway.
Standing before the hovering thumb-sized camera, Treadway smiled and introduced, “This is Benson Benson—or Bee, as he’s called—the command pilot of the Mars mission.”
Benson was tall, lean, almost regal in his erect posture and calm, austere expression.
“And this,” said Treadway, swiveling his head slightly, “is the crew’s other astronaut, Ted Connover.”
Connover was a bantamweight, no taller than Benson’s shoulder, a typical jet jock, wiry, bouncy, full of energy, his blond hair trimmed down to a military-style buzz cut. He was smiling lopsidedly, but in his intense, eager face the smile looked like a challenge, almost pugnacious.
Turning back to Benson, Treadway said, “I understand you’re sometimes called Bee Squared.”
Obviously suppressing distaste, Benson softly replied, “My parents had an offbeat sense of humor.”
Obviously Benson’s name was not a subject the man relished talking about.
“And you’re the command pilot of the Arrow.”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re a Canadian.”
A minimal nod. “That’s right.”
Making Benson commander of the mission had been a political compromise, Treadway knew. Although the United States had shouldered the major burden of funding the Mars mission, their European, Japanese and Russian partners chafed at the idea of having an American in charge. So the Canadian Benson had been given the responsibility.
Treadway gave up on trying to get more than curt replies from Benson. He turned to Connover, and the tiny camera automatically pivoted to keep their images centered. Treadway asked, “And you will be the pilot of the vehicle that actually lands on Mars?”
“Yeah,” said Connover, with a cocky grin. “I’ll put her down on Mars and then I’ll fly her back to the Arrow for the trip home.”
“And you’re an American.”
“Like Mom’s apple pie. Born in Nebraska, flew for the United States Air Force, got my doctorate in engineering from Caltech. How American can a guy be?”
Connover was much easier to interview than Benson. All Treadway had to do was ask a banal question and Connover rattled on happily.
“T MINUS THIRTY SECONDS.”
Looking directly into the camera again, Treadway said, “The final seconds of countdown are here. Remember, this is an uncrewed launch, totally automated. Commander Benson, Pilot Connover, thanks for your time and your thoughts.”
“You’re welcome,” said Benson.
“Anytime,” Connover said.
The crowd surged toward the sweeping windows. Out at the launch pad, umbilical lines were disconnecting from the rocket booster. A thin cloud of white vapor issued from its lower section.
“LAUNCH VEHICLE ON INTERNAL POWER,” the speakers in the ceiling announced. “ALL SYSTEMS ARE GO.”
Treadway noticed that Ted Connover headed not for the windows, but toward a slim, good-looking woman and teenaged boy standing alone across the room. His wife and son, Treadway knew. The astronaut wrapped one arm around his wife’s shoulders and pecked her affectionately on the cheek, then tousled the teenager’s straw-colored hair.
They should have made him the mission commander, Treadway thought. NASA had wanted Connover for the top job; he was the veteran of a dozen spaceflights to the International Space Station and two flights to the International Moon Base. But the politicians had overruled the engineers.
Benson stood alone and seemingly aloof, no one within three feet of him. The Canadian was married, but his wife was not present for this launch. There were rumors that their marriage was on the rocks, but Benson refused to discuss his private life with the news media.
“T MINUS FIFTEEN SECONDS . . . FOURTEEN . . . THIRTEEN . . .”
The crowd seemed to hold its breath. Treadway felt their excitement. He had covered dozens of rocket launches over his years of reporting, yet the final moments of a countdown always clutched at his guts. It was as if his pulse rate synchronized itself to the ticking of the countdown clock.
“FIVE . . . FOUR . . . THREE . . .”
Despite himself, Treadway held his own breath. And felt foolish for it. He reminded himself that they’d launched this kind of rocket a hundred times. It was the most reliable booster on Earth. Still, he held his breath.
A burst of flame flashed from the base of the rocket, almost immediately blotted out by billows of steam from the launch platform’s cooling water system. Standing tall in the midst of the clouds, the booster seemed unmoving, immovable.
Come on, Treadway urged silently. Get your ass in gear.
Slowly, slowly, the tall slender booster lifted out of the billowing steam, bright orange flame streaming from its base.
“Go, baby,” someone shouted.
Then the noise hit them, the dragon’s roar of the rocket engines, pulsing, throbbing, washing over them even through the thick, shatterproof windows. Treadway’s innards went hollow; he felt as if he wanted to weep.
Up, up the booster rose. Slowly at first but then faster and faster, accelerating into the bright turquoise sky until it was no more than a bright star hurtling across the heavens.
Treadway turned to the huge screens that covered the visitors’ center’s rear wall. One showed a telescope’s view of the booster soaring up into the sky. Another relayed the view from a camera on the booster’s outer skin, showing the Earth falling away, the launch pad and spaceport buildings dwindling to dots on the desert floor.
Faster and faster the booster rose. The flash that separated the spent first stage brought a gasp from the crowd, but the gasp quickly turned into a cheer as the second stage’s engines lit off and pushed the bird higher and higher until it was too distant to be seen by unaided eyes.
“THE ARROW SPACECRAFT HAS ACHIEVED ORBIT,” the overhead speakers confirmed. “ORBITAL PARAMETERS ARE NOMINAL. THE LAUNCH IS A SUCCESS.”
The crowd sighed, then cheered, and then rushed to the bar. Treadway looked past them, toward Connover and his little family, still standing by themselves off on the other side of the room.
Connover’s eyes were fixed on Benson as the Canadian was pushed to the bar by the press of news media and celebrities.
But Treadway saw the expression on Connover’s grim face. Silently, the American astronaut was saying to Benson, You shouldn’t be the mission commander. They should have picked me. I’m the better man for the job and we both know it.
March 30, 2033
Earth Departure Minus 25 Months
14:55 Universal Time
Earth Orbit
“Steven Treadway reporting from four hundred miles above Earth’s surface, thanks to the wonders of virtual reality.”
He seemed to be standing in empty space, solidly three-dimensional, real. Behind him curved the massive bulk of Earth, heartachingly blue flecked with purest white clouds. To his right on the television screen hovered an ungainly-looking spacecraft, bulbous and bristling with piping, antennas, and a single cone-shaped thruster at one end.
“Today,” Treadway intoned, “the centuries-old dream of using the energy of the atom to propel a ship into deep space will become a reality when the nuclear thermal rocket engine of spacecraft Fermi comes to life.”
Treadway was actually standing in a TV studio in New York, in front of a blank green screen, reading his script from a teleprompter. He felt an urge to cross his fingers when he said so assuredly that the nuclear rocket would work, but realized tha
t the viewing audience would see him do it.
“Within seconds,” he continued, “Fermi’s propulsion system will begin pumping four hundred thousand pounds of hydrogen through the fuel rods in the core of the nuclear reactor. The fissioning uranium atoms will heat the hydrogen fuel to three thousand degrees, giving the nuclear thermal rocket twice the propulsion efficiency of chemical rockets like those that were used on the old Space Shuttle or the Apollo program’s Saturn V.”
On TV screens across the world, Treadway walked godlike on the face of the deep, explaining, “The Fermi lander is unmanned, completely automated. Its mission is to land on the surface of Mars, delivering enough supplies to keep the Arrow’s crew of eight men and women alive and well for thirty days, once they get there. The lander will also serve as rather Spartan quarters for the human explorers as they live and work on the surface of Mars.”
Pressing one finger into the electronics bud in his left ear, Treadway announced, “Rocket engine ignition will take place in thirty seconds. Remember, there will be no sound. In space, there’s no air to carry sound.”
Treadway’s image disappeared from the scene, but his voice continued, “There won’t be much to see, either, since the ultrahot hydrogen gas expelled from the rocket’s thruster will be invisible. But—there she goes.”
It seemed that nothing much happened, but suddenly the huge bulk of the Fermi spacecraft leaped off the screen. The view immediately changed to a camera on board the ship, and the immense sphere of Earth dwindled noticeably.
“Godspeed, Fermi!” Treadway’s voice called after the departing spacecraft. “On to Mars!”
Treadway’s image appeared again. He was standing in the empty studio, looking slightly embarrassed after his burst of emotion.
“Steven Treadway reporting,” he said.
The TV broadcast immediately switched to a scene of picketers marching in front of the main gate of the Kennedy Space Flight Center in Florida, some carrying signs proclaiming no nukes in space and others hands off mars.
October 4, 2034
Earth Departure Minus 6 Months
16:05 Universal Time
Marshall Space Flight Center, Alabama
“. . . and that’s the NTR, behind the shadow shield,” Benson was saying.
He and Treadway were in a huge, hangarlike building where the full-scale mockup of the Arrow spacecraft was spread across the concrete floor: a big rocket nozzle at one end, bulbous tankage, square panels the size of baseball diamonds, all connected to a long, metallic ladderlike central boom.
Four different TV miniaturized cameras were floating across the floor beneath toy-sized ballons of helium, automatically following their progress along the length of the mockup, with a fifth camera unit hanging up near an overhead truss that ran the length of the cavernous building.
Around the world, viewers who had the new three-dimensional home theaters didn’t merely watch a screen, they could step into the scene along with Treadway and Benson, walk along the length of the spaceship beside them.
“NTR?” Treadway asked. He knew the initials stood for nuclear thermal engine, but the VR Net audience wasn’t familiar with NASA’s bewildering jungle of acronyms.
“Nuclear thermal rocket,” said Benson, his voice flat, no trace of annoyance in it. “The nuclear reactor heats hydrogen gas to three thousand degrees Fahrenheit and the hot gas is fired through the rocket nozzles. That’s what gives us the thrust we need for TMI.”
“Trans-Mars Injection,” Treadway translated the NASA acronym.
Looking halfway between embarrassed and irritated, Benson explained, “Right. That’s when we break Earth orbit and head for Mars.”
Making a slightly worried frown, Treadway said, “A nuclear rocket? Isn’t that dangerous?”
Benson shook his head. “The Russians have flown dozens of nuclear power systems over the years. With the NTR we only have to carry half the propellant that we’d need with chemical rockets. It’s got twice the specific impulse of the best hydrogen-oxygen rockets. It’s actually a lot safer with the nuke, saves us months of travel time.”
Suppressing a wince at the word “nuke,” Treadway forced a smile as Benson pointed out the ship’s propellant tanks, the payload section that held the smaller vehicle that would actually land on Mars, the square flat panels of the radiators that got rid of the ship’s excess heat and the bigger, darker oblongs of the solar panels that would generate electrical power for the spacecraft.
“Why the solar panels?” Treadway asked. “Doesn’t the nuclear reactor generate electrical power?”
With a shake of his head, Benson replied, “The reactor is for propulsion only. It’s not bimodal. The engineers decided it would be too expensive and complicated to make it do both.”
They slowly walked along the length of the spacecraft, the floating cameras following them, while Benson explained each segment of the ship.
“How long is this bird, anyway?” Treadway asked.
“Two hundred meters, from the end of the main thruster nozzle to the tip of her nose,” said Benson.
“Two hundred meters . . .”
Benson’s lips twitched in what might have been a smile. “That’s right, you Americans aren’t accustomed to the metric system.” He frowned in silence for a moment, then said, “It’s roughly six hundred and fifty-six feet.”
“About an eighth of a mile.” Treadway grinned, a trifle smugly. I can do arithmetic in my head, too, he told Benson silently.
Smiling back at him, Benson said, “Yes. Almost two and a half football fields.”
As they neared the spacecraft’s front end, Benson pointed to the metal gridwork boom that held the various attached components.
“The truss is the ship’s spine,” he explained. “It’s got to be strong, yet light.”
Playing the straight man, Treadway asked, “What’s it made of?”
“MWNT,” answered Benson. Before Treadway could respond, he explained, “Multi-walled carbon nano tubes. Four times stronger than the best metal alloys, yet lighter than any of them.”
“Nano tubes?”
“Like Buckeyball fibers.”
“Oh.”
At last they reached the habitation module, a smallish cylinder near the front end of the spacecraft.
“Eight men and women are going to live in that little bubble for nearly two years?” Treadway prompted.
“It’s not that little,” said Benson. “There’s a privacy cubicle for each member of the crew, plus a wardroom, control center, workshop and labs, and an observation blister.”
“Can we go into the habitation module?”
On that cue, Benson replied, “Not the one in the mockup, up there. But we have another mockup of the module by itself, over there.” He pointed across the floor. “We can go inside that one.”
“Cut!” cried the director, from behind the monitor set up in the corner of the hangar. “Take ten and re-spot the cameras. We’ll pick it up inside the module.”
Treadway gave Benson a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “You’re doing fine. Great.”
Benson grimaced. “I’d rather have a root canal.”
The director pressed his hand against the communications bud in his ear, then said to Treadway, “New York’s happy. They think we’ll get the biggest chunk of VR netviewers when this airs tonight.”
Treadway broke into a genuinely pleased grin.
It was a tight squeeze inside the habitation module, with three of the cameras bobbing along with them. The director had squeezed into the module, too, telling them he wouldn’t miss this opportunity—at least not for anything less than an Emmy award.
The module was compact, but efficiently laid out. Benson showed them the control center, with its consoles and display screens, the workshop and minuscule laboratory for the two geologists and their one biologist. Then they went a few more steps back, to the wardroom.
Treadway looked at the circular table and eight chairs.
“Ch
airs? They don’t have chairs in the International Space Station. And the tables are chest height.”
Benson explained, “That’s because the ISS is in microgravity. Zero-gee, just about. You don’t need chairs. You just stand at the table and hook your feet into the floor loops to keep from floating away.”
“Won’t the Arrow be in zero-gee?”
“Only while we’re in Earth orbit. Once we start the TMI burn—” Before Treadway could interrupt, Benson explained, “Once we break orbit and start for Mars, the ship will rotate end-over-end to give us a feeling of one-third-gee during the trip.”
“One-third gee?”
Nodding, Benson said, “That’s the level of gravity on the surface of Mars. Rotating at one-third gee all the way out means that the crew won’t suffer from muscle atrophy and calcium loss in their bones the way we would if we were in zero-gee all that time.”
“And when you land on Mars you’ll be accustomed to the gravity level there?”
Benson smiled slightly, like a teacher rewarding a student for a correct answer. “That’s entirely right. You’ve got it.”
Treadway beamed happily.
The individual privacy cubicles were about the size of telephone booths, big enough for an air-filled mattress fastened to one wall, a display screen on the wall opposite, and a modest closet on the third wall.
“There’s a laundry further down the passageway, right beside the lavatory,” said Benson.
Staring at the inflated mattress, Treadway asked, “You’ll sleep standing up?”
Benson broke into an amused chuckle. “When we’re in orbit and effectively weightless, the orientation of the bed doesn’t matter.”
“But when you’re rotating to give you one-third gravity . . . ?”