7

Heat Shield

 

“Are you ready to catch?” Will asked Marshall.

“Ah-huh,” replied the boy, waving his hands. Will carefully threw the ball underhand to his son, who was standing about two meters away. Marshall reached out and managed to catch the big, soft ball in his hands momentarily before it bounced out. But he didn’t mind; he chased it under an orange tree, grabbed it, and ran back to his place. He threw the ball with fairly good accuracy back to his father, who caught it easily.

“Very good,” Will said. Marshall, now three, had developed quite a bit of coordination over the last few months.

“Oh, the fish are nibbling my toes!” exclaimed Ethel, delighted. She was sitting on the stone edge of the pool and had her feet dangling in the cool water. She held Liz carefully as she leaned over. The baby continued to nurse at her breast, ignoring the strange angle.

Sam ran over. He was in the dome also with his parents. Madhu was sitting under a tree and reading a book; Roger had been reading a story to his son.

“Be careful!” said Ethel as the two year old leaned over the edge of the pool. He saw the fish surrounding Ethel’s feet and a worried look spread over his face.

“Do they hurt?”

“No, they tickle.”

“Tickle?”

Ethel nodded.  Sam laughed, not sure what to make of her statement, then ran back to his father.

Several other people sat in the dome as well, relaxing, reading, sipping a drink or eating. It was Satursol afternoon; a lazy time. The dome had proved immensely popular as a recreational area. People craved the greenery, the water, the sound of the water trickling; and the immense transparent surfaces of the dome made them feel like they were outside. The high ceiling was itself liberating. The big problem was radiation exposure; the dome was much safer than interplanetary space, but still exposed people to about ten times as much radiation as one would get when living high in the Rocky Mountains.

Dr. Tang came in, his attaché dangling from his waist. He looked up at the sky. “Darn; still gray and overcast.”

“It’s dust storm season, after all,” replied Roger. “It’s a lot better than a few weeks ago.”

“True, but I miss the sun,” replied Tang. He watched Will throwing the ball back and forth with Marshall. “By the way, we just identified two new species this morning.”

“Really? Congratulations! That raises the number to what; forty-seven?”

“Forty-eight, and we now have four subphyla and two phyla. The latest chemical analysis again supports the common origin hypothesis.”

“Hum.” Will contemplated the eternal question the hypothesis raised: did Earth get its life from Mars, or Mars from Earth? The former was more likely, since the evidence was accumulating that Mars achieved some level of environmental stability a few million years earlier.

Tang just stood and watched the ball go back and forth, smiling every time Marshall tried to catch it. Will tossed the ball to him. “Enlai, you need a little exercise, perhaps. Would you like to throw the ball to Marshall?”

“Yes, I would!”

“Good. That’ll give me a chance to catch up on messages.”

Marshall did not look pleased, but it was momentary; Tang threw the ball very exactly to him, and Marshall caught it easily. Will watched, then retreated under a lemon tree laden with ripe fruit, sat cross-legged on the grass—they had real grass in the dome!—and grabbed his attaché. He had a brief email from Louisa Turner: Your talk to the Brown University Alumni Association on Tuesol should be titled “Living Well on Mars.” We’ve got a draft almost finished; it’ll focus on family life on Mars and the importance of creating a reasonably high quality of life there based on social ties and mutual support, as that makes up for the lack of material advantages. We’ve got a psychologist reviewing the points you listed and giving you some facts to use. This is a message that will be immensely popular with Mars fans. We’ll have the details to you in a few hours. Will had to smile; the message was getting honed quite well, and was gradually making Mars exploration popular. He was pleased that his ideas were working out so well, but he had to admit the professional staff’s polishing and their recommendations about pacing and repetition of ideas was what made them effective.

But more interesting, he saw he had an email from Sebastian Langlais, the Commander of Columbus 2. He opened it and read.

Dear Will: As you may have heard, I have now arrived on the moon as Long-term Commander of Shackleton Station. Unlike previous commanders, I will be here for nine months, with an assistant commander to run the support efforts on Earth, then I will rotate back to Earth for nine months where I’ll supervise the operations there directly with an assistant commander running Shackleton on my behalf. The constant rotation of crews and commanders through here has made continuity much more difficult than on Mars. I hope as Long-term Commander, I’ll be able to bring more unity and consistency to the activities. It’s very exciting to see this change in operations. I hope the Lunar Commission will move in the direction of a long-term commander for all lunar operations, but I don’t see the various national efforts accepting that arrangement any time soon. It’s quite a breakthrough that NASA has decided to allow me—a German—to take this job. It may very well be that my appointment will force the matter, since the Houston staff I am responsible for provide support services for the other stations in such areas as water, plastics, physical plant, and transportation, while the ESA support staff for LeMonnier also provide Shackleton with support in agriculture, life support, and medicine. The Chinese station is a mere sixty meters away, connected to us by a new pressure tunnel, and shares the same spaceport, so inter-station coordination is urgently needed.

As long-term commander I’m getting more deeply involved in long-term strategic planning; again, Mars provides a useful model. And with such a short time delay, we are in much better shape to communicate with the commission folks on a spontaneous basis. I don’t know how you deal with the time delays; they drove me crazy when I ran Columbus 2.

“The exciting development here is that tourism is about to undergo a big expansion. Launch costs have dropped enough and demand has grown enough to cover the costs of six two-week flights between low earth orbit and the moon per year. We’re grouping them together in three clusters so someone can stay two, four, or six weeks. Grouping them simplifies the provision of support staff as well. The rest of the year there will be six more cargo and passenger flights. We can support that many because of the new radio telescope initiative about fifty kilometers backside of here that uses our spaceport. It’ll require several hundred tonnes of cargo and a lot of construction personnel, who can stay in the hotel when the tourists are absent.

An interesting challenge is how to deal with the growth at Le Monnier. The French are pushing the Europeans to do more there because it is on the equator, and Helium 3 extraction appears to be much better there, so I’m pretty sure the pilot plant will be set up there. But the supply of hydrated minerals is not as large as they thought, so if they expand we’ll have to ship water to them. We’re already running an automated water truck there once a month. They have proposed some excellent projects; the Imbrium Deep Drilling project is very important scientifically, and once the Helium 3 extraction equipment gets going it’ll allow experimentation in the helium-3 fusion process. It doesn’t appear to be the breakthrough fusion needs, we’re glad to be a part of the project. But it’ll also provide experience for extraction of platinum-group metals from nickel-iron, and we know that can make money.

“I’d better run. Say hello to Ethel for me. I was looking at pictures of your kids on your website the other day. The little one is so cute, and I can’t believe how big Marshall’s getting! My son Helmut, by the way, has decided to apply for the ESA Astronaut Corps when he completes graduate school. He’s a junior  year student at university. He’s studying geology, meteorology, physics, and engineering. He wants to emigrate to Mars. The Commission’s informal quota—half the arrivals will be persons planning to stay at least three cycles—is beginning to get attention from a lot of young, idealistic, intelligent people. Of course, my son hears from me how the idealism really isn’t an adequate reason to go to Mars; life there is still hard and options are limited. But he’s still enthusiastic. You may be his commander in about six or eight years.

I hope to hear from you some time. Let’s keep in touch. Bye.

Will had to smile and re-read the message. He had tried to maintain contact with the various commanders at Shackleton. Often it had been a frustrating effort because the person at the other end was there for six months and then had a totally different assignment. Because of the very fast communication with Earth, mission control had a much larger role in the day to day operations and the commander was correspondingly less important. In actual fact, the real commander was essentially in Houston, not at Shackleton. With Langlais in charge of both the Shackleton and Houston operations and going back and forth, the effort would have much better continuity.

“Ethel, listen to this,” he said, and he read the message aloud. The others in the dome listened as well.

“Fascinating,” she said when he finished. “It’s good to know that the moon is run by someone we know.”

“I suppose we can work with them, too,” added Madhu.

“Well, right now they’re in competition,” replied Roger. “And they’re getting about twice as much funding as we are, right?”

Will nodded. “That’s about right. They’re closer and can get tourists.”

“How big are the lunar facilities now?” asked Érico.

“Shackleton International Station can accommodate forty now, including tourists,” replied Will. “The Chinese station there can accommodate twelve. LeMonnier can accommodate eight, but the plan is to expand it to sixteen. The Japanese station at Grimaldi can accommodate four, but it’s staffed only half the year.”

“Shackleton’s actually not much bigger than Aurorae, then,” noted Tang. “Though when you add all the lunar facilities together, the moon has room for about fifty percent more people than us.”

“And they’re much more tied to Earth,” added Will. “They don’t have a dome like this; the moon has no atmosphere to provide protection against micrometeoroids, and at the equator the two-week night is impossible for plants without power-hungry grow lights. They’re still importing a fair amount of food because until a few years ago they had no reactors to provide power at night and the low sun at the poles is hard to direct for agriculture. And they’re more dependent on Earth because they can be.” Will glanced at Marshall, who was now chasing Sam among the trees. “I’d better write him back.” Will turned back to his attaché

Dear Sebastian: It’s great to hear from you! Congratulations on your appointment to the position of Long-term Commander of Shackleton and your arrival at your post. I’m glad you’ll be in charge even when you’re on Earth; that is an excellent arrangement and will greatly improve the efficiency of the operation. It is easy to think of the Shackleton team as including people on two worlds, with the commander going back and forth between them. It’s much harder to do that with Mars, even though we have a dedicated support team on Earth far outnumbering the residents of the Outpost. For us, the challenge is to keep the two groups, which inevitably have their own administrative structures and priorities, unified in their vision and efforts. As you noted, this involves a lot of tedious meetings with long time delays. My efforts to get a reliable assistant in Houston who can serve as my ears in the hallway have still been unsuccessful, which means I’m often working in a vacuum. Our long-term thinking is often overridden by the Commission or suddenly and unexpectedly by NASA.

But in spite of that, things are going very well here. The Pisces Trail is cleared about two thirds of the way around the southern hemisphere and has gone through some very significant terrain. Our study of the Noachian period has advanced quite far and it’s telling us a lot about the origin of Mars and therefore of the Earth as well. The Tharsis Trail has been cleared from Pisces northward to Olympus Mons and our people will reach the top in a few weeks. Our ‘PhD’ mission has left Phobos and has just reached Deimos. And while we don’t have helium 3 to make money for us, both fossil and land sales are promising.

I’m writing you from inside our recreational dome. It’s Satursol and a group of us are relaxing here, watching the kids run around. The dome has fruit trees and two hundred square meters of vegetables and berries that can be stacked when we want to relax here. Now that we have fourteen greenhouses, coupled with this dome, theoretically we can raise one hundred percent of our food. It’s the first time agricultural self-sufficiency has been possible. Right now the dust storm has cut agricultural output in half, though, so we’re using every kilowatt the nukes can make to make up for the weakened sunlight.

Ethel says hello. The kids are growing very fast. Marshall’s now over three years old and the other sol he said ‘hey dad, Marshall has the word Mars in it!’ Maybe he was just lucky to recognize the words. But his reading skills are coming along, and physically he’s fine. He still hates wearing the weights and sometimes takes them out of their pockets when he wants to run around and jump a lot, but he wears them most of the time and they clearly have helped his bones to develop normally. Lizzie is now six months old and is smiling a lot, making sounds, rolling over, and doing the other things six month olds do. She seems to have a lot of allergies, which is worrisome. The next flight will bring allergy tests and medications for her condition. We also have one adult here who is having severe reactions to Martian dust. I remember the runny nose I got on the moon from moon dust. It went away in three days. But this person has had a runny nose for eight months!

Got to run. Let’s keep in touch. Maybe we can collaborate. Bye.

Will re-read the message, sent it, then got up to play with Marshall. He threw the ball back and forth and lamented that the Mars Commission couldn’t trust someone on Mars to make all the decisions about the world, including how to allocate terrestrial resources to provide support. It seemed unlikely that interplanetary flights would get short enough, safe enough, and frequent enough for a commander to go back and forth. Still, his prestige, seniority, and fame among the public gave him considerable clout, and his patience for tediously long and slow meetings had allowed him to arrange for most of the projects the Mars residents requested. He had managed reasonably well.

His thoughts were interrupted by an urgent string of beeps emanating from his attaché He hurried over and opened the channel. Rosa Stroger, who was the day officer, suddenly appeared on the screen. “Will, can you come to the bridge immediately?”

“Sure; what’s wrong?”

“We’ve got an incident in orbit.”

His heart sank and he could feel adrenaline surge into his bloodstream. “How serious?”

“It isn’t serious yet, but come on up.”

“Okay, and Érico’s here as well. I’ll bring him.”

“Acknowledged. Out.” Will turned to Érico, who had been listening to the conversation, like everyone else in the dome. “Let’s go.”

“What is it?” asked Ethel.

“I don’t know.”

Will and Érico jogged to the airlock and hurried through into Renfrew Hall. They ran the length of it, then turned and went through a greenhouse to the Geology Building, and from it into a tunnel leading to Habitat 1. One of the new rooms—equal to two bedrooms in size—was a new and expanded bridge. Five large screens hung from the wall. One held the basic environmental data of the three habitats and the science building; air pressure, composition, temperature, and humidity, giving average data and data from at least two sensor arrays in the structure that were either unusually high or unusually low. General data for the structure, such as electrical demand, was also displayed. The second screen held similar data for the two new buildings—Renfrew and Joseph—and simpler data from six greenhouses. A third screen gave the data for the other greenhouses, the dome, and conestogas 1 and 2. The fourth screen had data for the other rangers and conestogas and reactors 1 through 4; if any of the vehicles were turned off, their sections of the screen were dimmed. Screen five carried the data on the Olympus, which was approaching Deimos. Screen six had the data for the Solis, the interplanetary habitat temporarily in orbit around Deimos. Data from the other shuttles and interplanetary habitats was not displayed, but could be instantly if something happened on one of them.

Will immediately saw that screen three wasn’t showing data from the greenhouses; instead there was a picture of the bottom of the Olympus, showing one open engine port. Extra data from the Olympus had been projected onto screen 4, displacing the ranger section normally found there. The engine bay port status was being broadcast, and engine 3’s data was red; bay door open it said.

“What’s wrong with the engine 3 bay door?” he asked right away.

“Good question,” replied Rosa, calmly. She pointed at the image. “That’s from the Solis. We can see the sensor information is correct; the door won’t close.”

Will contemplated the image. The Mars shuttles were giant capsule-shaped vehicles; the bottoms not only had the engines, but the heat shields as well. Any opening in the bottom had to close or the vehicle could not return to the surface.

“At least we have the Solis to provide a view,” said Érico. “How many times have you tried to get it to close?”

“Six. We’ve sent the commands from here and Yevgeny has been sending the command from the cockpit.”

“Spacewalk?” asked Will.

“Maybe. We’re concerned about landing on the moon with an open bay door; Deimos has a lot of dust.”

“The metal landing pad is a pretty clean surface, though,” replied Will. “They could perform a spacewalk in Deimos orbit and close it.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Érico, who was their expert on orbital flight. “Houston will analyze the data also. Any indication what the problem is?”

“The motors have been working real hard; they’re using a lot of power. Something is sticking the door open,” replied Rosa. “We may have to perform a walk because we may need to clean the door and verify that it’s shut.”

“Phobos dust,” said Will. It had long been a concern that dust kicked up on landing would get into the mechanisms and make the bay doors hard to close. They had never had a problem before, however.

“Maybe,” said Érico. “The chance of dust doing this is regarded as fairly remote.”

“What are our options?” asked Will.

“First a spacewalk. That should work, but if it doesn’t we’d send up another shuttle to bring the crew down and land the Olympus on autopilot as best we could.”

“No one has ever tried landing via engines alone before,” said Érico. “The Olympus could refuel on Deimos, use very gentle aerobraking to bring it into a circular low Mars orbit—where the orbital velocity is only about thirteen thousand kilometers per hour, barely half the speed of a low orbit around the Earth—then fire its engines and burn off about five or six thousand kilometers per hour. At that point, it would enter the atmosphere fast, but not fast enough to generate significant heating.”

“And we’d still need a delta vee of 3,000 kilometers per hour to land,” added Will.

“Yes; the aerobraking would be minimized.”

“I’m glad that’s possible; it would get the equipment back here, at least.”

“Probably. Since it hasn’t been tried, there are a lot of unknowns.”

Will nodded, contemplating the situation. He approached the main console and the open microphone. “Hello Olympus, this is Commander Elliott; do you acknowledge?”

“Roger, we acknowledge,” replied Yevgeny. “We heard some of your conversation. It confirmed the scenarios already rolling around in our heads.”

“We’ve got plenty of options,” confirmed Will. “We have four shuttles and a much more forgiving environment than low earth orbit. What do you guys think? It’ll be a few hours before we get more analysis from Houston.”

“We can sit tight. We’d like to dock to the Solis and get the complex spun up so we have some gravity. Alternately, we’d like to land on Deimos and get started with the primary mission. But both options can wait.”

“Good. Sit tight. We’re doing our analysis down here, and we know Houston will devote a big, high-powered team to this problem. Let’s wait and see what appears to be the best course of action. We want to get you guys home safely, and hopefully the Olympus as well.”

“We’ll get her home too,” agreed Yevgeny.

-----------------------------

 It was a long wait. NASA—who was in charge during emergencies of this sort—assigned a team to study the problem, and they used computers to analyze the data. Almost twenty-four hours passed before they were ready to make a decision. Meanwhile, the Olympus docked to the Solis and a very slow rotation was set up to create a tenth of a gee, enough to use toilets, sinks, and showers conveniently, and possibly enough to dislodge the obstacle (though it did not). The docking also gave the crew a convenient emergency escape route, though none was thought to be needed.

While everyone waited, Will continued with his usual work. At one point Martha Vickers showed up, accompanied by Jennie and Kevin Dunbar. They came into Will’s office and carefully closed the door. The Dunbars looked very uncomfortable.

“I need a new accommodation,” Kevin said. “Jennie and I are separating.”

“Oh,” replied Will, surprised, but not wanting to look judgmental. “Alright. Let me think; what do we have available.”

“There’s a fairly good room on the top level of Habitat 4,” Kevin continued. “I’ve thought about the various possibilities, and I think I prefer a room with a window. It’s empty right now.”

“Top level of Habitat 4; there’s a lot of space there,” agreed Will. He pulled up the space inventory for the habitat on his attaché, then zeroed in on the top floor. “Here; room 4?”

“Okay.” Kevin sounded resigned to it.

Will looked at Martha. “Is there anything else I need to know?”

“They are trying to resolve their differences,” she replied. “I’m impressed by the efforts both Kevin and Jennie are making. The change of environment, the closeness of the quarters here, the different social situation, and the loss of family supports together have destabilized their relationship. They’re hoping that a trial separation will help.”

“So do I. I’ve been divorced and I know how difficult emotionally a situation like this can be. If I can be of any help or support, please let me know.”

“Thank you Commander,” replied Jennie, with a forced smile. Kevin nodded as well.

They headed for the door; there was nothing else to say. Will turned to his attaché and assigned the room to Kevin. A few minutes later Alexandra came by his office adjoining the bridge to confer with him about construction. “Hasn’t this new space worked out well?” she asked, looking around the Habitat.

“Yes, it has,” Will agreed. “The enlarged bridge is just the right size for the additional screens and people we occasionally have to squeeze in, and my new office is perfect. I like the door giving me direct access to the bridge.”

“That’s what you need. We’ve finished testing the new metal production and fabrication unit. It’s remarkably flexible: nickel-iron meteorite is crushed and exposed to carbon monoxide, the carbonyl gas rises up a fractionation column and condenses as liquid carbonyls of different metals at different levels and temperatures, then the unit mixes the liquids in whatever proportions you request, reduces the liquid carbonyl to a solid metal alloy—usually as a sheet, but we can produce beams and a dozen other basic shapes—then the unit hot or cold-rolls the product to give it greater strength and cuts it into any shape you want up to 2.5 meters by 4.5 meters. The software allows it to work all night untended, except for some monitoring from the bridge.”

“I’ve heard that it’s a real breakthrough,” agreed Will. “The robotic welders are working well, too, I understand.”

“Yes. We now need something new to do with the equipment, though, Will. I’d like to remodel Habitat 2 or 3. As you may have heard, everyone living here is pleased with the new design.”

“I have heard that; I’ve even talked to them myself. You’ve convinced me that it works and I congratulate you. But I’d like to see a design for a new building at some point, even if we don’t have to build it in the next year or so.”

“It’s premature, I think. We’ve still got machinery to test, and to do that I need to use the products to remodel some spaces.”

“But surely there is some planning that’s necessary? There have been constant complaints over the last six years that the construction department needed a larger workspace. A new building could have a large basement area for construction.”

“But we have access to the garage and that works well. The vehicles don’t take more than a sol or two per week for maintenance. We should be able to expand our rolling equipment, using products made by it, until we can make pieces up to five meters by ten; that’s the maximum dimension the airlock will let us take out of the space.”

“Okay, work on that. Are you sure we won’t need space for Columbus 5?”

“Pretty sure, if we remodel our existing space.”

“Alright. Make plans to remodel Habitat 3, then 2. Talk to the physicians; they need more space for the sick bay.”

“I already have, and I’m working on it.”

“Good.”

“Will, we’ve got the recommendation from mission control!” exclaimed Érico from the bridge next door.

“Oh, thanks.” Will turned back to Alexandra. “I’d better go. We need to talk more about this, though.”

“I agree! You and I have different approaches. Let’s talk them through.”

“Definitely. After this crisis is over, though. Bye.” Will showed Alexandra out, then walked into the bridge.

Érico summarized the email while Will read it. The Brazilian was not impressed. “A landing on Deimos and a spacewalk to inspect and repair the problem; that’s what all of us would have recommended an hour after the problem developed.”

“Which would have been only thirty minutes after Houston heard about it,” added Rosa. Earth and Mars had passed conjunction less than two months earlier and were still about three hundred million kilometers apart.

“So, now we have the satisfaction of knowing we would have been right,” replied Will. He turned to the videoscreen where Yevgeny and his two companions could be seen. “You guys ready?”

“Sure,” replied Yevgeny. “We’ll despin and undock in half an hour and land an hour later. We’ll have the problem fixed two hours after that.”

His prediction proved fairly accurate. It took about half an hour to close up the hatches, stop the rotation of the Olympus and the Solis, and separate the vehicles. Landing took ninety minutes—they used very gentle bursts from the shuttle’s reaction control system to avoid stirring up dust—but the crew used the time to suit up for the extravehicular activity. An earlier crew had brought a sheet of aluminized mylar a bit thicker and much stronger than aluminum foil, had spread the sheet out over the surface of Deimos, and had anchored it with several dozen stakes pushed into the moon’s fluffy regolith, providing shuttles with a landing pad that was easy to see, smooth, and dust-free. They landed on it without incident.

Yevgeny and the others pulled on special backpacks—they cooled the astronauts in a different way than was practical on the Martian surface, and were equipped with maneuvering jets to move them above the surface easily—and headed out. It would be much easier to inspect the vehicles when there was a surface underneath them against which they could push, and where even a tiny bit of gravity guaranteed that nothing could drift away. In fifteen minutes they were in place underneath the Olympus.

“My God!” exclaimed Yevgeny, as he inspected the partially open engine bay door. “There’s a small piece of transparent plastic stuck in the motor! That’s the culprit!”

“Plastic?” asked Will, surprised, from the Outpost.

“Yes; plastic! Like the cellophane wrapper of something.”

“It’s a plastic bag for storing sandwiches in!” exclaimed Andries Underwood a minute later. “You know, the kind that snaps shut!”

“You’re kidding!” replied Rosa.

“No; that’s what it is,” confirmed Jacques Deschanel. He was carrying the camera and maneuvered it in close so they could watch Yevgeny’s effort to extricate it from the motor. It took some time, and everyone had to be patient, but finally the plastic came free. They applauded.

“I’d bring it inside so it can be analyzed further,” advise Will. “Does the door close now?”

“We’re trying right now,” replied Rosa. The astronauts backed away from the door, so she pushed a button. They watched the door slowly slide into place, leaving only a faint circular crack to reveal its location.

“The door has locked tight,” reported Rosa, with a smile. “All three sensors report a tight close, also.”

“Fantastic!” exclaimed Yevgeny. “Because we have some exploring of Deimos to do, and I really don’t want to have a problem like this distracting us!”

 

© 2004 Robert H. Stockman

 

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