Rocket Girls: The Last Planet

by Housuke Nojiri

  While the captain spoke, Yukari was watching Akane’s expression.

  At first she looked relieved. But that relief soon shifted to quiet anger. The other crewmembers were making fists with their hands and cursing under their breaths.

  “If we were able to rendezvous with Orpheus, the solution would be simple. All we’d have to do is remove the safety tag and the jumper wire from the circuit. However—” the captain paused to let his men prepare themselves for the bad news. “As I mentioned, the orbiter is on an elliptical orbit with an apogee of roughly three thousand kilometers. We don’t have enough fuel to accelerate Atlantis enough for a rendezvous with the probe. Not to mention the shuttle has an altitude limit of one thousand kilometers.”

  “So we’re done here,” Luis said quietly with a shrug. “Let’s go home, have a few beers, and forget any of this ever happened.”

  “That’s looking like the best course of action,” the captain admitted, shaking his head. “Incidentally—” He turned to Yukari. “What’s Mangosteen’s altitude limit?”

  “Eight hundred kilometers.”

  “As I thought.”

  There was silence for a few moments.

  No matter which craft they used, neither of them would be able to reach Orpheus. Though the probe would pass through the shuttle’s orbit at its closest point to Earth, there would be a speed differential of nearly 640 meters per second. Even if they could reach the same exact spot, without matching speeds there’d be no rendezvous.

  Akane spoke. “So what happens to Orpheus?”

  “It’s pretty low when it approaches the earth. Eventually it will bump up against the atmosphere, which will slow it down, and after several orbits it will plunge.”

  “And what about after we return to Earth? Will there be no chance to save it after that?”

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  “Then, Captain,” Akane said, “I have a suggestion.”

  The captain looked up at her.

  “Neither of our ships on its own can catch Orpheus. But what if we combined the ships?”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Well, we could put Mangosteen inside Atlantis and accelerate as fast as the shuttle will go. Then we release Mangosteen and accelerate with her.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “It’s an addition problem,” Luis said, shaking his head. “One thousand plus eight hundred doesn’t equal three thousand.”

  “Actually, it does,” Akane said. “What you’re saying would be true if the orbits were circular, but in order to match an elliptical orbit, we only need to accelerate half of the distance between us.”

  “Wait, you’re right! We could hit an apogee of thirty-six hundred kilometers!”

  “Correct. It helps if you think in terms of velocity instead of altitude.”

  “But hold on,” the captain interjected. “We need fuel to adjust our orbital plane, but we also need fuel to get back home.”

  “Actually, the orbital plane won’t change that much. And both of our ships can handle atmosphere. You won’t need much fuel to get back.”

  “What’s Mangosteen’s mass?” Norman asked.

  “Roughly two tons, including crew.”

  “The shuttle weighs seventy thousand kilograms. That’s barely different than flying with an empty bay.”

  “We’ll fit in the payload bay nicely too,” Yukari said. “Even at its widest point, our orbiter’s diameter is only three meters.”

  “So we’ve established that theoretically, this is possible,” Gordon said, leaning forward. “As long as we got the rendezvous timing perfect.”

  “It is possible. It’s totally possible!” Akane said.

  “Now, hold on. Just hold on,” the captain said. “Loading a space shuttle with an unscheduled cargo and accelerating has never been attempted before. This isn’t some eighteen-wheeler we’re driving up here. If that orbiter were to, say, topple in the bay midflight we could be looking at a catastrophic explosion.

  “Also, the shuttle needs an airport in order to land. If we change our course and have to make an emergency landing, we’ll be looking at a far worse disaster than just losing Orpheus. Not to mention that a height of three thousand kilometers hasn’t been attempted since the Apollo missions. There’s no telling what could happen up there.”

  “And we’ll find out as much as we can! Call the Solomon base and the Johnson Space Center and have them plan the whole thing out!” Akane said, a mounting strength in her voice. “If you keep bringing up why we can’t succeed, it just means you aren’t up to doing it!”

  The captain raised an eyebrow at her.

  “It’s like she says,” Yukari joined in. “We’re ready to go to three thousand kilometers or thirty thousand kilometers, whatever it takes. As long as you’re up to it.”

  The captain shook his head, then got on the intercom for the space transmission network. “Houston and Solomon, this is Atlantis. Do you copy?”

  “Atlantis, this is Houston, we hear you loud and clear.”

  “Hoi, Atlantis. Solomon here.”

  “We need you to look into something for us. We have a possible way to rescue Orpheus. The idea’s from the SSA’s Miura, and it’s a bit…radical.”

  [ACT 9]

  BACK IN THE control center at the SSA, Nasuda listened attentively to Captain Berkheimer talk. When he was finished, Nasuda practically howled with delight. “She might have fainted, but Akane’s got what it takes! Have our communications group send Houston whatever information they need. Kinoshita, you divide up everything else that needs to be done.”

  Kinoshita wasted no time. “I want the navigational team calculating an orbit. Go from the moment Mangosteen separates from the shuttle and try to predict as many variables as you can.

  “I want the orbiter systems team figuring out how we can mount Mangosteen inside the shuttle. Whatever it is, it will have to be able to withstand three hundred kilograms at 0.1 G acceleration. Work up a chart of anchor points on our orbiter and any anchoring materials we might have and send it on to Houston. They’re calling the shots on this one, so whatever they need, they get.

  “Medical team, I want you to do some modeling on Yukari and Akane’s life support systems. Remember they’ll be going to three thousand kilometers.

  “One last thing, and this goes for all of you. We’re working in lockstep with Houston on this. I want you to share data and any ideas, no matter how far-fetched they might seem. Communication, work on setting up contact people from each team to facilitate this.”

  The relationship between an orbiter and ground control is a bit like the relationship between the bridge and the deck on an old large-scale sea vessel. The lower deck was where all the crew worked, and the bridge backed them up. On the water, both were in the same boat, but as space on orbiters was limited, astronauts left the bridge back home. Though space jockeys didn’t like to acknowledge it, the real captain of a spaceflight was on the ground. Either way, constant contact and communication between the two was vital, especially during crises.

  The response at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, was little different from that of Solomon Mission Control.

  “That little girl up there is upping the ante in a big way on us,” mission director George Grant muttered. What got him most was not that it was a bad idea, but that the situation forced him to take it very seriously.

  Once they acknowledged the possibility, however slim, that it might work, they couldn’t afford to not take it seriously. Grant himself was ready to do whatever was required to get Orpheus back under control.

  The biggest hurdle they had to pass was safety regulations. Everything about this plan was going to push both crew and equipment to their theoretical limits. Just getting the shuttle by itself up to an altitude near two thousand kilometers would require using most of its remaining fuel. And then they had to factor in the strange, tropical cargo it would be carrying.

  In order to calculate the amount of fuel re
quired for the shuttle’s return, they would have to assume a worst-case scenario in which they were still carrying Mangosteen after a launch failure. Was saving an unmanned exploratory probe worth this kind of risk?

  George’s mind went back to the Apollo 13 disaster.

  It was already thirty years ago when it happened: the oxygen tank on a spacecraft bound for the moon exploded, and though they were short on fuel, electricity, and air, somehow they managed to get the astronauts back home safely.

  At the time, George had been a twenty-year-old recent hire at NASA, but he still remembered going for sleepless days and nights hunched over his IBM 360 making and remaking orbital calculations. No one could’ve predicted what happened, but they had made it through by using what they had on hand to make the impossible possible.

  George was proud to have been part of the effort to bring the Apollo 13 crew back home. That pride had kept him at NASA all these long years.

  Well, let’s do what we can do.

  As a senior engineer, George was quite adept at making rough calculations in his head.

  Orpheus has an orbital frequency of one hour fifty-nine minutes.

  Atlantis has an orbit of one hour thirty minutes.

  It was roughly a ratio of 4:3. Once Atlantis had gone around four times and Orpheus three times, the two would meet. If somehow before that moment they could accelerate Mangosteen to 640 meters a second, they would be able to rendezvous with Orpheus. The acceleration would have to happen in two steps, with the separation of the orbiter from the shuttle between them. They couldn’t leave this one entirely to the nav computers; it was too complex.

  Already an hour had passed since the accidental engine burn.

  So, what, I only have five hours left to make this happen?

  George picked up the phone and dialed the person in charge of mock-ups down at the training center. Previously, they had constructed life-sized models of Atlantis and Orpheus for use in prelaunch training.

  “I need you guys to work on something right away. I’m going to be accelerating Atlantis with the SSA’s Mangosteen orbiter in her payload bay. You should be receiving specs on Mangosteen any moment now. The bad news is, you only have five hours—no, make that four and a half.”

  “We’re on it.” The engineer on the other side of the line thought for a moment. “Might be able to use the platform we put in there for Orpheus.”

  No waffling, no extraneous questions. I love working with professionals, George thought. For the first time in a long while, he felt genuine excitement stirring in his chest.

  [ACT 10]

  TWO HOURS LATER there was a general assembly of the crew on the middeck of Atlantis.

  They had all clipped on intercom mics, getting ready for the next communication with ground control—the communication that would determine whether or not they were going to try to save Orpheus.

  Norman and Gordon had already changed into their space suits and were pre-breathing to get ready for the next round of extravehicular operations if it came to that.

  “Solomon and Houston have an early report for us,” the captain told them. “If we like the sound of what they’re saying, then we’ll go ahead with Akane’s plan. Let’s hear what Houston has to say first.”

  “This is George Grant speaking,” the voice said over the intercom. “Mission director at Houston. I’d like to share our results with you. Though our flight safety committee expressed considerable concern, they concluded that we should go ahead with the operation. Speaking only of the shuttle’s safety, we predict no critical danger. They had one condition, however. They want the SSA astronauts to perform Mangosteen’s separation.”

  Yukari responded immediately. “That was our intention from the start.”

  “Thank you, Yukari. We’ll share what details we were able to work out by fax. Over and out.”

  This was a surprising decision coming from the usually very conservative NASA. Yukari wasn’t sure what dealings had gone on behind the scenes, but it was clear that damage control was part of the equation. So far, the SSA had been showing NASA up, and they didn’t want to lose even more credibility by failing to reclaim their errant probe.

  Yukari looked around at the faces of the shuttle crew. They looked determined, ready to do whatever they had to.

  “Atlantis? This is Solomon.” It was Matsuri. “We looked into Akane’s plan as well.”

  “Go ahead, Solomon.”

  “Well, we don’t think it will be impossible to properly stage Mangosteen inside the shuttle and rendezvous with Orpheus. Your splashdown point will be off the coast of Chile. Our recovery team won’t be able to make it there in time, but the U.S. Navy have a cruiser nearby, and they’ve agreed to help. There’s just one problem.”

  “What is it, Matsuri?” Yukari asked.

  “Hoi, I’ll have our flight surgeon explain.”

  Satsuki Asahikawa came on the intercom. “Listen up, you two. The problem is with radiation exposure. If you take Mangosteen up to Orpheus’s current orbit, you’ll be passing through the Van Allen belt close to the equator. There’s a lot of radiation focused there.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “It’s not fatal, but it’s a lot more radiation than any X-ray technician would ever dream of subjecting you to. Compounding the problem is the fact that both you and Akane are of childbearing age.”

  “So what’s the bottom line?”

  “As your physician, I can’t allow you to stay up there for more than a single orbit.”

  “So you mean we have to do the rendezvous and all our work on the orbiter and reentry in the space of two hours?”

  “That’s right. If you can’t pull that off, I’m afraid we have to cancel the mission. The radiation is highest at just around three thousand kilometers. You’ll hit that halfway through your first orbit, so you’ll need to finish all your work outside the ship by then. Though the protection won’t be complete, you’ll be a lot better off inside the orbiter than outside.”

  Yukari was silent.

  “Personally, I wouldn’t recommend even doing a single full orbit. Discretion is definitely the better part of valor here. A brave astronaut is a dead astronaut. I’d like you both to consider what this risk means for you personally before deciding to go ahead with this.”

  “Thanks, Solomon. Over and out.”

  “Let me state for the record what I’d like to see,” the captain said as soon as the transmission ended. “I don’t like this plan. I’m grateful to both of you for your dedication and your passion, but I think you’ve done enough. Let’s call it off.”

  “You’re right…” Yukari said, the fire gone from her eyes.

  She felt like she could do what had to be done in the space of two hours. But even if she made no mistakes herself, there was no telling what might happen up there. If they messed up their return timing for some reason, they might end up passing through the Van Allen belt more than once.

  If I could just do it by myself without putting Akane at risk too…

  Yukari turned to Akane. “Let’s call this off. It’s just not worth it.”

  Akane shook her head. “I appreciate what Satsuki said,” she said. “But I think she’s being too cautious. She’s exaggerating the danger. I know it.”

  “I’m not too sure about that.”

  “The Apollo missions went through the Van Allen belts both ways. And they were up for days on the moon, which has no magnetic field at all. They must have endured a lot of radiation. And they were fine.”

  “But their equipment was designed for that, and let’s face it, they were all old guys.”

  “We’re hardly any different. Sexual development stops around the age of sixteen.”

  “Really…?”

  Uh-oh. She’s going to out-brain me here.

  Yukari changed tack. “Well how do you feel about this? Are you confident we can do it?”

  “Huh?”

  “We had, what was it, four hours of sleep, and we’ve been
working for fifteen hours straight. Do you think we can make it through the next seven hours without making a single mistake? Because that’s what this is going to take.”

  A moment’s hesitation passed over Akane’s face. “Well, I’ve stayed up all night preparing for tests before—”

  “Taking a test and navigating a spacecraft are two different things. And we’ll need both of us working at full capacity in order to pull this off. If you made a mistake, it could mean both of our lives.”

  Akane’s eyes fell, and Yukari immediately regretted her words.

  “I’m sorry, I take that back. I was only thinking of myself—”

  Akane nodded and thought. For a full minute neither of the girls said anything.

  Then Akane looked away and started to talk. “I know it’s dangerous.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I know Orpheus is just a machine.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But it’s more than that. It’s a dream…it’s science! And I think it’s worth risking my life for. I truly believe that,” Akane said, her emotion spilling forth. “Yukari. We need to save Orpheus!”

  At that moment, the whole mood on the middeck changed.

  It was like all six of them there had signed the same unseen contract by some unspoken agreement.

  We’re not going home as failures. We can do this.

  [ACT 11]

  IN THE MANNED spacecraft design center located within the easternmost building on the Solomon base, a 3-D model of something resembling a bell was slowly rotating on a workstation screen.

  The surface of the object was crisscrossed by a lattice-work of countless vectors, each square colored from white to red, purple, and blue. The object represented the orbiter Mangosteen, and the colors reflected surface temperatures at different points along a simulated reentry. A young technician was working the controls.

  “Right, now increase impact speed by 640,” Mukai, sitting off to the side, directed. The technician included the figure and restarted his simulation.