9.
Conference
Will continued to exchange emails with Armando, Kimball, and even Lassen the rest of the sol. Kimball and Armando called Lassen, as well. He decided to say nothing to the other Mars personnel, however. The next morning everything was quiet, so Will went outside to help place Habitat 4. By the end of the sol it had been inflated, Greenhouses 5 and 6 had been attached to it, and they had been inflated as well. They were ready for the interior work to begin: In the case of the habitat, reinforcing floors and walls with hard plastic sheeting, placing metal support columns, running pipes, installing stoves and other heavy equipment, laying wallpaper over everything to beautify the interior, installing plastic hoods around the skylights and windows, and covering the structure with a mix of water and reg; in the case of the greenhouses, setting up electricity and heating lines, hauling regolith-soil mixture from other greenhouses, placing the mix in locally made plastic trays and sowing seeds. A month of work faced them.
The next morning, everyone rose at the usual time—6 a.m., with dawn at 7—to eat breakfast, wash, and get ready to go outside. Ethel was to be among the workers, so Will planned to stay inside with Marshall. He carried Marshall into the great room of Habitat 3 with him, Ethel walking at his side. As they approached the habitat from their apartment in Habitat 1, quite a discussion was raging over breakfast.
“This is what I can’t understand about all of you,” Jerry said to Paul. “You’re treating Mars like it was. . . your home world. The Outpost seems to be your hometown. It’s just. . . crazy. As much work as you’ve done—and I salute you for your dedication—this is a little hamlet out in the middle of nowhere. This isn’t a sheep station in the Australian outback or something. It’s much worse than that, it’s isolated, primitive, in an incredibly hostile environment, dangerous, and constantly on the verge of getting wiped out.”
“Jerry, you make us sound like a little European camp in a jungle surrounded by savages somewhere,” objected Monika.
“Well, if you want to play colony, I can recommend a lot of places in Antarctica that are more hospitable to settlement.”
“Oh, I disagree,” replied Paul. “Antarctica is a wretched place to live in the winter. This place may be colder, but that’s a technical objection. In a pressure suit it’s too warm. It’s much safer to be outside here than in Antarctica in winter. And we have sunlight all the time, too.”
“But surely you would agree that this is no place to raise a family,” said Patrice. “Who will the child play with? How will they get an education?”
“Now the Australian sheep stations are a good analogy,” replied Paul. “They manage fine, there.”
“They’re not bombarded with as much radiation.”
“But the radiation levels in the Habitats has been determined to be safe, long term,” replied Érico, who was also listening. “A few months ago we doubled the mix of reg and ice covering them. They’re the safest environments off Earth. And with all that reg and ice, nothing can puncture the habitats, either.”
“I’d worry more about other things,” added Carmen. “Like a safe pregnancy or all sorts of birth defects that could crop up independently of Mars.”
“Those would worry me, too,” agreed Jerry, seizing on a point of agreement.
“Look, Jerry, this is not the moon, where we can rotate the crew back to Earth every six months,” said Érico. “It’s not the moon in terms of gravity, either; lunar gravity is too low for good health, long term, unless one really works at it. This place will become a successful center of science and exploration only if some people decide to stay, acquire far more experience than they can get in eighteen months, really get to know the place, and maintain their health carefully. If people plan to stay many years, you can’t expect them to be celibate monks or emotional automatons. They have to have partners. I don’t see how science suffers. We don’t ask nuclear physicists, or chemists, or surgeons, to be celibate on Earth. We don’t assume that their professional skills suffer as a result.”
“I can see that,” agreed Eve, who was listening from another table.
“Just don’t pressure me to marry,” replied Lisa, grumpily. She glanced at Karol, with whom she was sleeping most nights, and he nodded.
“I think there are two different concerns that are being mixed,” added Rick. “One is the couple versus non-couple dynamic. Of the twenty-three adults here, about half are couples and about half aren’t. You all from Columbus 2 were almost completely couples; those of us just arrived were not, except for the Strogers and Gilmartins. Furthermore, we’re used to serving in space in teams that have no couples at all. And the couples that have been here a while naturally regard this as home; no one has ever viewed ISS, Pax, Gateway, or Shackleton that way.”
“Definitely,” agreed Jerry.
“And the people leaving their spouses on Earth suffer a pretty high divorce rate,” added Paul. “I speak from painful, personal experience.”
“I suppose I’ll get used to this place eventually,” said Jerry. “It’s still culture shock every morning, though. And sometimes you all are a bit clickish.”
“Well, I count at least two clicks among the Columbus 3 crew,” replied Gaston. “So I think we have at least three clicks, here.”
At that point, Will came in with his family. He had heard only a bit of the conversation; it immediately ceased with the Commander present. “Good sol,” he said to everyone.
“Morning,” replied Jerry, as if he were correcting Will, but others replied with “good sols” and “good mornings” of their own.
“Here, let me take the baby while you get your breakfast,” offered Eve, so Will handed Marshall to her. She cuddled the little boy, who had become used to being passed around in the Great Room. Gaston took the boy next and kissed him; then he handed him to Jerry. “Here; it’ll do you good. Holding a baby releases serotonin; you can always justify it that way.”
“I don’t need to justify holding a baby!” replied Jerry, and he took Marshall quite gently and cooed at him. “My son’s now twenty-one; it’s been a while.”
“I wonder whether he’ll start walking early, in the lower gravity,” commented Gaston.
“Unlikely,” replied Eve. “Animal studies don’t reveal any changes of that sort.”
“We’ll wait and see,” replied Ethel. “He’s just three months old, remember. He couldn’t walk right now if the gravity were one percent. And the normal range is nine to fifteen months, so one data point won’t tell us anything.”
“Furthermore, I walked early and Ethel walked late,” added Will.
The two of them got their food and sat, choosing a table closest to the Columbus 3 arrivals; Will had been very concerned about the crews integrating. They chatted about the latest soccer and tennis games on Earth, the growing worry about the behavior of Turanistan—the only rogue state left—the continued global recession, the continued successes of the Swift shuttle, and a few other topics.
Breakfast was beginning to break up when Roger and Madhu arrived, later than usual. “Have you heard the news?” Roger asked. He glanced at the television screen on the wall; it was off, which was unusual. He looked at Will first, then the others. Everyone shook their heads. “I was very surprised and concerned. The Mars Exploration Society has said NASA considers it impossible for us to mount two missions at once, like we plan, because they can’t support them. MES criticized the agency for shortsighted planning and for refusing to let us ship methane back to Earth. They called for the sale of Martian land and rock samples to those who wanted them.”
“Can’t mount two expeditions?” asked Jerry. “What will we do?”
People turned to Will. “It’s true,” he said. “I’ve been in discussions with Lassen on and off for the last two sols. Apparently the freak accident on the moon has triggered a safety crackdown, and the support staff on Earth is considered sufficient to support a Mars operation of only twelve.”
“That’s crazy!” exclaimed Érico. “It’s idiocy!”
“What’s being done?” asked Paul.
“I think this is something all of us have to work on,” replied Will. “Since the MES has made the problem public, those of you who don’t work for NASA are free to comment on it to the press. They’re going to get some bad publicity.”
“Serves them right!” replied Érico.
“There’s not a lot of support they can provide us with, anyway,” said Jerry. “That was true on the moon as well, but with the time delay, it’s even more true here.”
“Geological support is abundant anyway,” added Roger. “There are hundreds of professional geologists anxious to serve as ground support staff. There are even talented amateurs. If a fuel cell malfunctions, it can wait until we try to fix it, and it isn’t hard to get stand-by support when the repair’s scheduled.”
“I’ve spent the last two sols reminding them of this,” said Will. “And of the fact that they’ve spent four billion dollars to put Columbus 3 here, yet can’t find about thirty million to provide adequate ground support. Apparently the White House is putting the agency under a lot of pressure to avoid other accidents. The MES publicity was really aimed at getting the White House to move, I think. I told Lassen that if they don’t change their policy, we’ll send out a five-vehicle expedition with twelve people on board to the north polar region, and with the midnight sun there this time of year, we’d run the expedition in shifts twenty-four point six hours a sol; the result would be as much exploration as a two-expedition plan anyway, but greater safety because the vehicles are all in one place.”
“We could do something like that even at the equator,” said Roger. “We could keep the expedition moving forward thirteen hours a sol instead of nine or ten, and use three vehicles to clear the route instead of two. We could probably average fifty kilometers a sol instead of thirty.”
“Exactly,” said Will. “We can be creative and solve the problem. Meanwhile, I’m scheduling an entire extra week of safety training before the first expedition departs. We have to focus on safety more; we don’t want a casualty here.”
“By the way, Will,” said Stroger. “I think the moon people will support our shipping of methane back to Earth orbit. The ones I talked to said they would consider buying it from us because they need carbon, and we can provide it more cheaply than Earth can. They’d buy ten tonnes of nitrogen, if we can get it to them. They’d even consider buying Martian argon for their ion tugs.”
“I already have a pledge from them for the nitrogen. Now we just have to see a meeting, where these issues can be discussed and resolved,” exclaimed Will.
---------------------------
It was another week before the meeting Lassen had promised could be held. Eight top brass attended, included Lassen and Armando Cruz; in addition, Laura Stillwell, Commander of Columbus 1, attended, as did a balding, slightly overweight representative of the White House, John White. Will Elliot invited Roger to “attend” with him as well.
“We’ve already laid out our arguments in detail,” Will began in a video he taped an hour before the meeting. “You have the twenty-page proposal and Powerpoint summary we emailed to you, so all I’ll offer is a compressed summary. Mars is set up so that half the personnel can go on expeditions while the other half maintains the Outpost and does horticultural and industrial experiments. Leaving more than half of the crew at the Outpost simply idles them, or will cause them to go out on day trips that need just as much emergency support as a formal expedition. Our recommendation is to send out an expedition of five vehicles and ten to twelve people; it will require about as much support as a three-vehicle, six-person expedition, but will accomplish about thirty percent more. Frankly, I cannot ask my people to sit back and watch television in the Outpost. It would be an insult to their professionalism and their courage.
“One alternate activity for my people would be exporting a payload of argon, nitrogen, and fossiliferous rocks. We have to fly three Mars shuttles to orbit anyway to bring back the cargo of the three automated cargo vehicles or ACVs. We have ten tonnes of argon, ten tonnes of nitrogen, and thirty tonnes of samples ready. Our three shuttles can easily lift them to Embarcadero; the argon and nitrogen will go in empty fuel tanks. The mechanical arm at Embarcadero can be used to exchange the ACV’s Mars-bound cargo with our Earth-based cargo, and the nitrogen and argon can be transferred into empty tanks in the Lifters. Then the shuttles refuel from methane and oxygen stored in a Lifter at Embarcadero, and three other Lifters with twenty tonnes of extra methane head to Earth with the ACVs. Finally, the shuttles return to Mars with the cargo.
“The ACVs and Lifters will aerobrake separately into Earth orbit. The argon will save us sixty million dollars lifting ion tug propellant. The methane will provide all the fuel we need to launch Columbus 4 to Mars and the surplus will pay for the oxygen the methane needs and make a small profit as well. The ten tonnes of nitrogen will be purchased by Shackleton for two point five million per tonne. The thirty tonnes of samples are worth between sixty and one hundred twenty million dollars, depending on demand.
“I’ve heard the objection that the effort’s expensive. It’ll cost less than ten million, so the result is a profit. The Mars shuttles have to fly to orbit anyway; the ACVs and Lifters are flying back to Earth anyway. The profit will buy all the extra ground support we need. Mars will not pay for itself any time soon, but in a few years it can export as much mass as it imports and thereby cover the cost of flying the supplies here, and that’s a statement of symbolic importance. Or, the increase in available funds can be put into the dome project that we are requesting; we need a large pressurized open space for agriculture and recreation.
“So, in summary, we are asking for three things: full expedition rights, exportation of methane and Mars surface resources with the ACVs, and a project to build us a pressurized space some twenty to thirty meters across. We see them as reasonable requests. We’re prepared to launch everything next month. Based on articles in several newspapers yestersol and today, some other influential people and organizations think our plans are sound. In fact, at least two Congressmen have said they will sponsor bills to authorize the additional spending.”
Will could hear the last words playing back in the meeting room in Houston. Lassen looked at the others. “Comments?”
There was a pause, then the director of exploration services spoke up. “The rules governing support are clear. We can’t do two expeditions with our current staffing levels here.”
Will was tempted to respond, but he knew they wouldn’t hear him for fifteen minutes. He had to scribble notes and send long responses to many issues at once. Lassen nodded. “What you say is true, and cutting corners with the rules is not possible in the wake of the accident on the moon. But idling ten people on Mars because we can’t support them is insane.” He looked at White.
“How much are we talking about?” White asked.
“Thirty to forty million per year if we are to support the expeditions and the activities at the Outpost adequately.”
“How did you underestimate this so badly?”
“We turned in the estimate two years ago when we projected twelve people on Mars. We’ve been pressured not to raise the amount since.”
“Okay,” said White. “The nuclear power initiative is soaking up a lot more money than expected. ISS II remains a huge expense, even with twenty-five participating countries, even with the lower inclination orbit. NASA’s in serious financial trouble, and it’s refusing to authorize a Swift Shuttle to replace the EELVs which are six times as expensive—”
“Mr. White, this matter has nothing to do with the Swift,” objected Lassen.
“Oh, is that what you think? Tell that to Congress. You’ve already botched this affair, Harold. You look like idiots by planning to idle half your Mars staff. And if those Congressmen act, you can be sure their bills will specify that EELV money be transferred to Project Columbus.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“Well, Eliott has saved your ass by telling you where you can get your money to hire support staff! Let Mars export!”
Lassen’s face sank. “Mr. White, we’re talking about mixing pure science and exploration with very low level profit-making efforts that might not make much money and will distract our people from their real tasks up there.”
“I understand, Harold. But your people want to do this, they have offered reasonable estimates of the profit, it won’t strain the equipment, and we’re stuck. We can’t look like idiots and we don’t want Congress involved in this matter.”
“But Mr. White, the scientific community is strongly against trivializing Mars exploration this way,” objected the science advisor.
“They’ll complain, then spend two hundred bucks to
buy a Mars rock for their office,” White replied. “I can’t see how we’ll fund a
dome for them, but you have no choice but rearrange spending to provide enough
ground support or change the safety rules.” And White shrugged. There was
nothing more for him to say.