2
Politics
By midmorning the next sol, the Elysium was back at Aurorae, bearing Paul, Érico, and Carmen. The Mars shuttle had made its third flight, the last one scheduled before it flew back to Earth in another two years; it had performed flawlessly. Since its parachutes had been deployed on the first landing and were not reusable, the engines had to cancel out all the shuttle’s velocity after it completed atmospheric entry; some 5,000 kilometers per hour.
At supper that night, Érico rose. “We have a presentation to make,” he began. “It’s simple, but the best the three of us could do when we heard that Will would be our new commander.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a grayish rock. “One piece of Deimosian chondrite, for your rock collection.”
Will laughed. The others chuckled and applauded; everyone knew that Will had a small rock collection that he had planned to leave on the Earth, but because of an explosion in the engine of a lunar Lifter, it had come to Mars with him instead. He accepted the rock and looked it over curiously. “Very nice; a good, typical specimen. Thank you.” He sat. “So, tell us about the visit to Deimos.”
“What’s there to say?” said Paul. “You were listening in. The place looks like Phobos; meteor-smashed bedrock covered with fluffy regolith. But we found some outcrops, and there were some pretty spectacular cracks to explore. I got fifty meters down inside one of them.”
“The new location for the driller is much better for fuel making,” said Carmen. “I wish we had had better seismic and radar data two years ago when we landed it.”
“Well, it made enough fuel for your visit and return here, so it served its purpose,” replied Will. “And I gather this new location should allow full production?”
Carmen nodded. “One hundred tonnes per year. When Columbus 3 arrives, the Lifter will be refueled and then some.”
“Good,” said Will. “And the ITV Ausonia is mothballed with the docking unit and the manipulator arm.”
Paul shrugged. “Of course, as usual.”
“I’ve been thinking about orbital operations a lot in the last few sols,” said Will, to explain his stray comment. “We’ve had one or two ITVs in the same orbit for four years, now, the ‘High-Elliptical One-Sol Orbit’ where we’re supposed to have a station eventually.”
“You mean the so-called HEOSO Station?” asked Ethel. “That’s scheduled for Columbus 4 or 5.”
Will nodded. “We’ve actually had HEOSO Station for four years; there’s always been at least one ITV there, plus a docking unit and above all, the remote-controlled arm. The only thing it doesn’t have that HEOSO will is a Lifter, and we can station one there any time we want. I think it’s time to give the place a permanent name and start developing it as our interplanetary transportation nexus.”
“What will mission control say?”
“I don’t know. Fact is, HEOSO was supposed to come into existence when some Columbus crew stayed an extra columbiad, which meant an ITV had to stay. That happened with Columbus 1! That’s why I said it really has existed for a while.”
“What would you call it?” asked Ethel, curious.
“A name is very important. In this case, it’s the difference between a collection of ITVs and a designated station.” Will paused. “I’d call it Embarcadero Station. It’s the best I’ve been able to come up with. It will be our equivalent of Gateway Station, the jump-off point for transportation beyond Mars. The ‘embarcadero’ is the old wharf district of San Francisco’s waterfront.”
“A good name,” agreed Érico.
“Spanish,” added Carmen, pleased.
“You’re always innovating,” said Ethel, admiringly.
“Embarcadero Station it is, then,” replied Will.
“It’s easy to pronounce in various languages, too,” pointed out Paul. “Mission Control shouldn’t mind, since it’s just a name change.”
Carmen looked at him. “True, but it’s a shame we can’t actually use the place as an embarcadero, a place for loading and unloading passengers and cargo from ships.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about that, too,” replied Will. “As you know, our shuttles are designed to lift themselves, four crew, and a tonne or two of cargo plus twenty-four tonnes of methane and oxygen fuel to Embarcadero. But now that we have fuel from Phobos, we can replace the twenty-four tonnes of fuel with other things. Furthermore, the Lifters that push the automated cargo vehicles to Mars have to go back to Earth, as do the ACVs, since they’re reusable. The plans for shipping cargo back to Earth are already pretty well developed; it’s just that they’re supposed to be implemented by Columbus 4 or 5.”
“Are you thinking we should implement them instead?” asked Ethel, surprised.
“We should consider it. Each mission needs about thirty-six tonnes of xenon for the ion tugs, which has to be put into Earth orbit at six million bucks per tonne. Next year the new tugs will use argon instead to save money. I don’t know how much argon we can make here in the next ten months—”
“About . . .eight to ten tonnes,” interrupted Ethel.
“Okay. Then there’s nitrogen we could sell to the moon; they have to import it from Earth. The current cost is thirteen million per tonne; after they switch to the Swift shuttle to low earth orbit and the ion tugs switch to argon, the cost will be two and a half million per tonne. And each Lifter can haul twenty to twenty-five tonnes of methane back to Earth.”
“Where would the argon and nitrogen be put?” asked Roger, skeptical.
“The shuttle has enough tank capacity to lift it to Embarcadero, and there we would transfer it to empty tanks on the Lifters,” replied Will.
“But it’s scheduled for Columbus 4 or 5,” groused Roger.
“Yes, but we have everything we need to inaugurate it now.”
“And the methane would be burned with spare oxygen in Earth orbit?” asked Paul, trying to remember the plan.
Will nodded. “The conversion of water to hydrogen and oxygen fuel generates 18 tonnes of waste oxygen per hundred tonnes of water, since engines burn a very hydrogen-rich mixture. Most of the waste is vented into space. Methane will convert it into a saleable product. Three Lifters could haul enough methane back to Earth orbit to fly all of Columbus 4 here if the oxygen’s available.”
“And it will!” said Érico, making a mental calculation. “Right now I think they’re venting almost 100 tonnes per year, between low Earth orbit, Gateway, and Shackleton.”
“Even Shackleton will buy our methane,” added Paul. “They’ve got a serious carbon shortage on the moon.”
“Exactly,” said Will. “Each tonne of methane will be worth ten million bucks at Gateway or the moon, until the Swift shuttle reduces its cost. Or we can burn it on Columbus 5 and reduce its launch costs twenty percent.”
“And if we supply our own argon there would no longer be a need to lift argon from the Earth,” added Ethel. “That would increase our cargo by a third.”
“It’s a shame NASA won’t let us do more things to earn them money,” said Paul. “Columbus 1 hauled eight tonnes of samples to Earth. Columbus 2 is hauling twelve tonnes. That’s twenty tonnes of rocks and dust, and only about four tonnes have been distributed and analyzed. Meanwhile, because of sloppy security at campus labs, three kilograms of the samples have disappeared. And much of that is for sale on the black market for two hundred dollars per gram; that’s twenty times the price of gold!”
“It’s crazy,” agreed Ethel. “Especially if they sold Martian samples, there would be no security problem for the scientific labs.”
“But their point of view makes sense,” objected Roger. “First, commercial priorities could take away from our scientific purposes here; second, once some income comes in, there will be pressure to cover as much of our expenses as possible, and inevitably people will complain we are failing to cover them.”
“I wonder if we can find a happy balance, though,” said Will. “Some day, Mars will have to be partially scientific and partially commercial. There will be a transition from outpost to settlement, with people living here decades and raising their children here.”
“Like us,” noted Ethel, nodding.
“Some day, commercial considerations have to begin,” agreed Paul. “We can export maybe sixty or seventy tonnes of methane from the moons next year. If we export sixteen tonnes of samples and they’re worth the same as gold—ten million per tonne—that would be another 160 million. That’s a lot of money; maybe five percent of the annual cost of running this place.”
“But the next five percent would take a lot of our time,” said Roger. “That’s what would worry me; a creeping set of expectations, to raise our ‘contribution’ from ten percent to twenty, then to thirty. . .”
Érico nodded. “It’s a risky strategy, politically.” He looked at Roger, who looked back at him, a bit surprised; the two of them usually disagreed.
“Well, this isn’t the time to resolve the matter,” said Will. “I’ll ask Mission Control. Meanwhile, one task I want us to carry out for the next nine months is stockpiling argon, nitrogen, fossiliferous samples, and methane. It won’t take much time; the gasses are recovered automatically, and we always have lots of spare samples lying around.”
“I have a much simpler request,” said Madhu. “Could we make a request to Mission Control for a wedding package. It has to include a proper wedding gown and a three piece suit or tuxedo. I’d also like to make some changes to the ecological mix we’re importing to include more flower species; we need more than daisies for weddings! I want some roses, maybe orchids, carnations, fuscia.”
“And we drank all the booze,” added Roger. “Now we’ll be dry for nine months. We need to import more wine and champagne.”
“I’d worry more about spices; we used most of them up, too,” complained Madhu.
“Speaking of ecology: I want cotton,” said Ethel. “We can’t make anything as absorbent from plastics, and we need diapers!”
“Cotton is coming,” replied Madhu. “Meanwhile, Mission Control is doing research on cotton substitutes from waste plant matter, at least for absorbing liquids. I think they’ll work fine.”
“If there’s anything I’d like, it’s paper,” exclaimed Will. “Electronic paper is just not the same. Can you make paper from the plant matter we have here?”
Madhu shook her head. “We lack the equipment. The plant matter could be used that with the right equipment, though.”
“Good to know,” said Will. He looked at everyone. “We have nine months together before Columbus 3 arrives. We have a plan from our meeting in late December. We’re in the dust storm season for three more months, so we have to stay pretty close to the Outpost. Then we have three or four months before we can head for the northern lowlands again; a good time to explore the western end of Marineris and see whether we can get up onto the Tharsis Plateau. And we have a lot of preparations to complete for Columbus 3’s arrival. Do we have any changes?”
No one spoke. Then Roger said “We’ll get back to you.”
“Okay,” said Will.
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Part of that night, Will thought about the dinner conversation. The next morning he called up the website with Columbus 3’s latest cargo manifest. It was a massively detailed, tedious, exhausting database to review, and he had maintained only the most cursory familiarity with it in the past. Just an item like “Truck 3, 2,187.3 kg” was deceptive. A left click on the entry expanded it into eight subsystems, each of which could also be left-clicked on to reveal sub-subsystems. Eventually one got down to the smallest individual part and its mass. A right click on any entry pulled up reports about that item, its components, their properties, the tests performed on the item, its history, the previous versions of the item, even the future improved versions being considered. As a result, as Mars made more and more items, vehicles could be sent partially assembled with missing parts described and reported on, but having to be supplied by the Outpost on arrival. A small army of webmasters and inventory specialists maintained the database on Earth. As the items were used up and as they aged, reports about each item’s condition and fate would be added.
As Will explored the database—which was updated on the Outpost’s computers four times per sol—he noted that most of the items had already arrived at Gateway Station, the departure point for Mars hovering some 60,000 kilometers above the moon on its Earth side. A cargo pallet was in the final stages of preparation for launch into low earth orbit next week, where an ion engine would slowly but efficiently spiral it up to Gateway over six weeks time. The crew would head to Gateway on two different vehicles in early November and were taking about four tonnes of consumables each. There was also a flight to Shackleton in early October that could take a tonne or two of supplies; the astronauts would spend four days at Gateway and launch the three automated cargo vehicles on a minimum-energy trajectory to Mars.
Furthermore, many of the items for Columbus that already were at Gateway could also be used on the moon. Consequently, Will realized, there was some flexibility in the cargo manifest, even at this late date. The cargo manifest was largely determined by Mission Control, but the Commander could play a role. And he had ideas about how it could be changed. The next morning after breakfast he started by talking to Madhu.
“We need to make this place more comfortable,” he said. “Shackleton is set up for four to six month tours of duty because of its proximity to the Earth; it’s a place of hard work and simple conditions. Then there’s the new lunar tourist hotel, which is quite different. The Mars Outpost was modeled on Shackleton, but we stay at least eighteen months, and it is now clear that many people will stay forty-four months, and others, like Ethel and myself, will stay even longer. If we want to make Aurorae Outpost a place where people can stay for one or two decades and raise a family—where people will want to stay that long—what do we have to do?”
“Greenery,” she replied. “I’d say that’s the big need. I can’t tell you how often, when I walk into a Greenhouse to do some work, I find someone sitting under trees or amidst the vegetables with their attaché, working. We need bigger green spaces, and green spaces where we can socialize together.”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“What have you thought of?”
“Better food. If we have a wider range of species and more places to raise them, and we import a wider range of spices, you’d be empowered to cook a wider range of things. There would be less monotony in diet.”
Madhu nodded. “I argued with Sebastian about that, but he overruled me.”
“Well, maybe I can change it back. What did you want?”
“I’ll find the email and forward it to you. It was a lot; 466 kilograms, but even some of it would help. Spices, cooking chocolate, pomegranates, Coca-Cola extract, a wider range of wines. . .you get the idea.”
“You mean, we’d have Coca-Cola here?”
She nodded. “We’d have to supply the carbonated water, sugar, and a few other items, and the company would pay for the shipment in return for the right to advertise our use of the product. We can get many of the items on my list for free.”
“Interesting. What do you think of the idea of doing more with dinner; singing, movies, etc.?”
She shrugged. “You organize it! I have to handle the food and cleanup.”
“Maybe we can talk about the idea more. I want to make life here more pleasant and knit together. I’d love to see much of Columbus 3 want to stay here. If we could keep ten people every two years, the Outpost’s population would reach fifty in a decade. Imagine what we could do with fifty.”
“I get the idea, so I’ll keep thinking.”
“Thanks.” Will headed over to the industrial area, where Ethel was already hard at work.
“My dear, I was just talking to Madhu about items she wishes we had gotten onto Columbus 3. She actually has quite a list; about half a tonne of spices and other items that could greatly improve the quality of the food.”
“I know of a few items we needed to get on the flight as well. Lisa Kok is on her way to serve as a horticulturist and mechanic here. She’s also very capable as a craftsperson. Some of the manufacturing equipment she needs is in the cargo manifest; there’s a robotic clay molding machine, for example, and I think the knitting machine was included. But the robotic loom didn’t make it, and it’s capable of making rugs as well.”
“How much mass?”
“Four hundred kilograms. But last week there was a study by the manufacturing unit in Houston that it can be reduced to two hundred kilos; we can make the rest here. Of course, making the parts and assembling them will take about three person months of work.”
“How can we include it?”
“There’s only one way: making more daring assumptions about what we can make here. For example, we’re importing one hundred kilos of lubricant for the vehicles for the next two years. But we’ve managed to save fifteen kilos over the last year and a half, and we’ve kept forty kilos of dirty lubricant. There are ways to filter it better so that some of it can be reused. And there’s a study that we can take soybean oil, animal grease, and a few other locally available ingredients and make a half decent lubricant, especially if it’s mixed with imported lubricant. I think we can import forty kilos instead of one hundred.”
“How many savings of this sort can you identify?”
Ethel shrugged. “I don’t know. Most of them are controversial or risky; if the lubricants don’t work, we can’t drive the rangers! The biggest savings I can think of is the 350 kilograms of copper wire we’re importing. We can make copper wire here, though we haven’t tried. We know we can make the wire from weldalite—we’ve got two tonnes of weldalite we can strip off of unusable cargo landers—and if that didn’t work, we could always make wire from iron! It conducts electricity fine over short distances.”
“Would the quality be high enough?”
“That’s less certain, I suppose. But we could always use it to replace the wiring between the Outpost, the solar power units, and the spaceport. That’s high quality wire and it’s running on top of the ground.”
“That would take a week or so of work. If we eliminated the wire and the lubricant, we could import the stripped down power loom and most of the food supplements. A few hundred kilos can be flown to Gateway in November with the crew.”
“But there’s already wire and lubricant at Gateway, waiting to fly here.”
“Both can be used on the moon. Let’s say we embarked on programs to simulate lubricant and make copper wire. Could we demonstrate both in the next two months?”
Ethel nodded. “That should be plenty of time.”
“Can we accommodate them in the work schedule?”
“I suspect we can. The manufacturing schedule is very slow for the next four or five months; we’re scheduled to do a lot the last few months before Columbus 3 arrives.”
“Okay, I’ll take a look at these projects right away. We’ve found low grade copper ore at several localities nearby. I suspect a ranger and two astronauts could dig up enough ore in a week to make a few hundred kilos of wire.”
“Refining the copper is extremely easy, also, because in an acid solution with pure iron present, copper oxide and carbonate will convert to copper and the iron will oxidize. We have tonnes of meteoritic iron lying around.”
“Good. I’m going to work on this.”
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By the next sol, Will had a plan; one that Madhu and Ethel were enthusiastic about, Paul supportive of, and Mission Control willing to permit. Madhu got to work right away collecting the soybean oil and other natural oils that Paul would need to supplement the lubricant. Meanwhile, Paul started refiltering the old lubricant repeatedly and synthesizing several chemicals needed either to bind with and remove impurities or replace some of the oils that broke down when the lubricant was used. He immediately found that he had to modify the techniques that had been developed, but the results were good.
Will persuaded Shinji to go out with him in a ranger and they stopped at every rock outcrop in the area where traces of copper had been found. The first sol they found the easiest pieces, sandstone and basalt streaked with malachite and azurite right below or above ancient lava flows. The next sol was frustrating, as there was little else that was loose, so the third sol they went out with pickaxes and chipped away at an outcrop that proved to have a respectable supply of copper. By the end of the sol they had sore muscles, but an adequate supply. Ethel promised to run it through the rock crusher; meanwhile, she and Paul had to make the acid. Will promised to run the manufacturing equipment so that she would have the time.
The next morning, Will was resting his muscles and sitting at his desk in the bridge considering other minor modifications he could propose to the cargo manifest when he received a videomail.
“Dr. Elliott, you don’t know me, so allow me to introduce myself; I am Carl Reed of the Committee to Reelect the President.” The man was tall, with very closely cropped blond hair, fastidiously dressed, with a picture on the wall behind him of the President shaking his hand. “It was suggested that I give you a call. As you may know, the presidential campaign this year has several focuses, and an important one is strengthening and preserving the family. While NASA has been resistant to the creation of stable families on Mars, it occurred to the campaign the other day that what you have done on Mars is of great symbolic significance to the President’s priorities, and has the potential to reinforce and highlight some of the platform’s planks. Furthermore, if you were willing to speak out in favor of strengthening and preserving traditional family values, it would strengthen our hand in helping the space agency appreciate the approach that you have taken.
“Therefore, we were wondering whether you were willing to make a taped statement that could be used in the campaign, endorsing the President and his policies in favor of a strong family. It strikes us as a mutually beneficial effort. I’m attaching to this video mail a text file listing some of the talking points that occurred to us. Let us know what you think, please. And best wishes with all your efforts up there. Goodbye.”
Will stared at the screen and felt his anger slowly rising. Was there the implication that the White House would lean on Mars Operations in a reciprocal arrangement? He was a celebrity, but should the Mars Commander get drawn into terrestrial politics? Furthermore, he was a member of the Bahá'í Faith and thus had not joined any political party, nor could he endorse a candidate for anything.
But this was a dangerous situation; the reelection campaign was run out of the White House. The people asking him for a favor were powerful. Best to ignore the request for now and think about what to say in return.
By late afternoon he hadn’t progressed much on a response. He went to Habitat 3, where Ethel and Roger were helping Madhu with food preparation.
“I don’t see any connection at all between two coincidental marriages, an accidental pregnancy, and the current administration’s so-called family-centered policy, which amounts to restricting abortions as much as possible, driving people off welfare, and refusing to pay for child care,” complained Ethel.
“I think it’s brilliant,” replied Roger. “The link is psychological, and that’s the way politics works.”
“Well, maybe you should make the statement instead,” said Will.
“So you won’t do it?”
“I don’t think the Commander of the Mars Operations should endorse politicians. Otherwise, he has to endorse French candidates, British candidates, etc. That is not the Commander’s role.”
“Theoretically, yes. But Will, this is how it works in practice. Everything is political. Everyone makes endorsements.”
“I know, Roger. But what we are talking about, in practice, is two gigantic machines that wring money from special interests, get their own people in power, and lie to the voters in order to get elected.”
Roger shrugged. “That’s the way it is. As Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government in the world until you consider the alternatives.”
“Well, there is a better alternative.” Will’s voice trailed off.
Roger frowned. “Oh Will, are you talking about Bahá'í stuff? You are free to hold to your theoretical and private ideas, but I wouldn’t drag them into this situation.”
“Roger, Bahá'ís are not allowed to get involved in partisan politics. So I can’t—I won’t—endorse anyone.”
He shook his head. “Suit yourself. Of course, I know your own private political leanings are more liberal than those of our President.”
“I don’t think I should endorse any candidate, regardless of his or my political position.”
“I think your argument that the Commander shouldn’t endorse candidates is strong,” said Ethel. “I quite agree with it. The argument can even be made that we’re too busy to keep track, and that we are not part of a local political jurisdiction, so we really don’t have a role in national politics.”
“I agree; I think the Commander should stay out of politics,” said Madhu. “I’ve never heard of the NASA Administrator or the head of Lunar Operations endorsing a candidate.”
“One, they’re not famous; and two, they’re political appointments anyway,” replied Roger.
“If I endorsed someone for President, that would make the position of Commander a political appointment as well, and I don’t think that’s wise,” said Will. “I’ll decline tomorrow.”
Roger shook his head, but didn’t offer further comments.
There was a lull in the conversation. Then Madhu said “Say, Will, I’ve been reexamining the food allocation. I can save a few kilos here and there, I think. For example, rather than import breakfast cereals, we can now make half-decent substitutes. I may need to import a few ingredients, but they’ll weigh less.”
“Figure it out,” agreed Will.
“But a lot of that stuff is already at Gateway,” complained Roger.
Will shrugged. “Some isn’t; but so what if some is? It can be credited to Shackleton instead. An astronaut can go find it and pull it out of the packaging; every packet is numbered.”
“Your plans are increasing our work here, though.”
“I’m hoping we can increase our efficiencies as well. For example, most of us could use an Earth-based secretary. I have some ideas for keeping Outpost records using a terrestrial secretary. Furthermore, if we had assistants on Earth who are potential crewmembers on the next flight, we’ll be training future colleagues.”
“We’ve been pushing for that arrangement for two years,” said Ethel.
“Sebastian didn’t push much. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Changes,” said Roger. “I hope they work out.”
Others began to arrive for supper, so the conversation shifted to other things. Paul and Monika pitched in to help; Madhu and Ethel had been making pasta, and rather than making enough just for that meal, they were making several weeks’ worth at once, so it took some time for them to finish.
After supper, Will lingered to help with cleanup. Since Ethel then hurried to the industrial area for another hour to wrap up her work on metal beams—she was preparing the parts to subdivide the basement of Habitat 2—he had time to do a bit more office work. He had composed a videomail to Carl Reed in his mind and wanted to send it. But when he entered his office—the sick bay of Habitat 3—he saw that he had a message from Harold Lassen. It was new, too, even though it was 7 a.m. in Houston. Lassen had called from his home.
“Good sol, Will. I understand you received a call from the White House yesterday. Anything you can do to help out would be much appreciated. If you have any questions, let me know. Bye.”
So, NASA was subtly pressuring him as well; that was a surprise. Will jotted down a list of points he wanted to cover. Then he pulled up Reed’s videomail, set up a “copy” to Lassen’s home internet address, blind copied Jerry McCord, and taped his reply.
“Good sol, Mr. Reed. Thank you very much for your call yesterday asking whether, as Commander of Mars operations, I would be willing to tape an endorsement of the President and his policies. I am immensely appreciative of everything the President has done for Mars exploration and am very grateful for his support of space exploration. I have thought long and carefully about the request so as to do it justice. After careful deliberation I have decided that it is not appropriate for the Commander of Mars operations to endorse political candidates of any sort, for any office, on any planet. The position exists to coordinate and foster exploration and development of Mars, and tasks greatly at variance with that mandate strike me as a potential distraction or a misuse of the office. Nevertheless, I appreciate that you contacted me about the matter.
“I do not think that endorsements from individuals are inappropriate, though, and I suspect Dr. Roger Anderson would be willing to endorse the President, so you might wish to contact him instead.
“There are some efforts I can make that will further reinforce the President’s policies and general philosophy, and I hope to be able to implement them in the next month or so. The first is an approach to the Outpost to make it more friendly to married couples, and perhaps eventually to families. While the settlement of Mars is not a part of the mandate of the Columbus missions, inevitably it will emerge as a concern. This concern is very close to the concern of the President and in some ways reinforces it.
“The second is a reexamination of the role of private industry and private citizenry in the exploration of this world. Private enterprise and individual initiative are important concerns of the President, and the time has come to consider ways to work them into Mars operations. Again, within a month or so I will have some concrete ideas that may be of use to the President in his continued support of Mars exploration.
“Allow me to convey my thanks to the President for his leadership and extend my warm greetings and best wishes to him in his efforts to serve the American people. Goodbye.”
Will reviewed the message, then sent it. He was pleased by the result. He was still sitting at his desk a half hour later when three responses arrived almost simultaneously. Lassen’s was first.
“Will, thank you for copying your response to Reed to me. I’m impressed by its clarity, but I wish you wouldn’t express policy ideas to the White House directly. Send them to me first, and they’ll work their way through the chain of the command as appropriate. I look forward to your ideas. Bye.”
That was predictable. Will hit reply. “Thanks, Harold, for your message, and I apologize if I have made your job more difficult, but I wanted to offer the White House the sort of support that struck me as fruitful, helpful, and fully ethical. Where better to exhibit the highest ideals of our nation than in the efforts to found a new world? I’ll have some ideas for you in a few weeks. Have a good day; bye.”
The second message was from McCord. Jerome McCord was eleven years older than Will, but his face still looked reasonably young and his hair had barely a trace of gray. “Good morning, Will, or at least it’s ‘morning’ here at Shackleton, where we’re wrapping up our training. Thanks for copying me. The nerve of them, to ask for an endorsement! I agree with you, it isn’t the role of Commander to do that.
“We’re doing pretty well, here. The moon’s been a good experience binding us together. Lal has never been here before, so it’s quite an eye opener for him. The space available to us is tight; two Habitats that usually hold twelve. Naturally, we’re having a lot of clumsy interactions among the fourteen of us. It’s pretty crowded and our experience together is relatively limited. But we should have those problems ironed out before long.
“I look forward to hearing your ideas. I have quite a lot of experience, as commander of Shackleton, with commercialization of the moon, and that could help a lot with plans for Mars. Let me know how I can help. Bye.”
Will scratched his head about that reply. He hadn’t meant to involve McCord in his plans; he wanted them to be his effort. But perhaps the collaboration would be better. He hit reply. “Good sol, Jerry. We’re about twelve hours behind Houston, right now; we’re the evening of the 24th while they’re the morning of the 25th. Thanks for the report about Columbus 3. Maybe we should start sending reports to each other every day or two. I’d love to hear about your experience at Shackleton, some time, and I’ll plan to share my ideas with you as they develop. Yes, I was surprised about the request for an endorsement, too; I’m glad you agree with me! Have a good day. Bye.”
Then Will turned to Reed’s message. “Thank you, Dr. Elliott, for your reply. While we are disappointed with the result, we can appreciate your feelings and respect the ethical position you have taken. Please do share your proposals for commercializing Mars with us; we’ve been gently pushing NASA that way for the last few years. The agency is also gradually rethinking its philosophy about married couples in space; for long voyages and tours of duty, it seems to make sense to send stable married couples, rather than tearing marriages and families apart for years at a time. Considering the expense and risk of getting people to Mars, it makes sense to encourage many of the astronauts to stay there as long as is reasonably possible. A certain amount of commerce then seems to follow logically from the need to develop families there. So we would appreciate hearing your ideas. Goodbye.”
That pleased Will; it was exactly what he wanted to achieve. He doubted the White House was really that interested, but nevertheless, it was a lever against NASA. Will copied Reed’s message to Lassen, with a quick cover note that he needed to share proposals with the White House at some point, but would take into account Lassen’s input first.