4

Hearings

In spite of the late hour, the hearing room was still full. For three sols it had been filled almost to capacity, with others watching on television. Much of Mars had taken vacation, since it was between Christmas and New Years, and thus had the time to participate or watch.

The last speaker of the sol was not a moderate or pleasant fellow. Colin Hack was an Australian and an environmentalist. “I own ten square kilometers of Aurorae Borough,” he said, concluding his videotaped testimony from Canberra. “So my voice must be heard. Furthermore, I have a lot of friends who agree with me. None of us want our land dusted with radioactive fallout. Mars must not have large nuclear reactors and the small ones already there must be retired. They really aren’t needed; huge solar arrays and wind turbine farms can meet all of the planet’s power requirements, and the microwave relay on Phobos can capture, store, and rebroadcast it anywhere it is needed. The geothermal project is equally a folly, interfering with the last environment where native species can survive. They are Elliott’s fantasy, his dream for glory and immortality. But they will just earn him a reputation for mindless expansion and wasting Mars’s precious resources. These double erections must be stopped and sanity must reign. Otherwise, along with my friends, we will sell our lands and precipitate a collapse in Martian property prices. Thank you.”

Father Greg, who was chairing the Mars session, rolled his eyes slightly. He glanced at the nine members of the Mars Council. Madhu appeared to be nearly asleep. “Are there any questions from the Council?” he asked.

No one spoke; no one even shook their heads. Greg turned to the audience. “We’ll be receiving questions and answers from Canberra in a minute. Does anyone here have anything to say?”

No one did. Greg turned back to the screen, where the action had been frozen momentarily. A member of the audience in Australia had risen to attack the speaker; he replied by defending himself loudly. Then the chair told both men to shut up and sit down. He began to give closing comments for the sol.

“Okay, that ends sol 3 of our hearing,” said Greg, cutting off the procedure in Australia. People could watch it later anyway. “I should probably remind everyone that it is now 5:05 p.m. on Wednesday, December 31, 2036 in Canberra, Australia, and the hearings are ending for the day. Here in Aurorae it is 3:20 p.m. on Frisol, December 30, 2036. Because our sols are 40 minutes longer than terrestrial days, an Earth year consists of 355 sols, and December is one of the months that is shorter on Mars than on Earth. On both Earth and Mars, the morrow is New Year’s: January 1, 2037. It will be Satursol here, and we will have no hearings on Sunsol either. At that point it’s the weekend on Earth, so our next hearings will occur on January 5, 2037; Monday on Earth and Wednesol on Mars. They will be based in Beijing and will begin at 11 a.m. there, which will be 9 a.m. here on Mars. The January 6 hearings will be from New Delhi and the January 7 hearings from Moscow. Have a good, long weekend, everyone. This meeting is adjourned.”

Greg banged the gavel and everyone rose. Érico walked over to Will. “I’m sorry that last speaker was so nasty to you. I find the attitudes expressed by landowners shocking.”

“It is distressing,” agreed Will. “I don’t mind being attacked that much; I’ve gotten used to it. But the hearings have underlined the need for better communication with the landowners. They’ve invested a lot of money in Mars and often they aren’t well informed about things. Our work is cut out for us.”

“I think so. Happy New Year, Will.”

“Thanks, you too, Érico.” Will turned and walked out of the room, chatting briefly with a few others as he went. He took his time to walk back to his office because he was hurt by the various comments hurled at him. He took advantage of the peace and quiet of the rooftop farm around his office to face west—roughly toward Earth—and say his daily obligatory prayer, which also made him feel better. But once in front of his attaché on his desk, he no longer felt quite so good. The messages from Earth looked ominous.

Louisa Turner sent him a video message from Houston, where she had been burning the midnight oil. “The press release about 2031KL12 hasn’t generated any news stories at all. Everyone who’s covering Mars is covering the hearings, and with the venue slowly moving around the Earth, every national media is involved. We’re getting great coverage, but I’m afraid it isn’t helping our reputation with the public; most are so distrustful of the U.S. that our link with Project Odyssey is a negative. I’m working on some new talking points; we have to stress that Mars is about exploration and that we are developing the caravel for our use. It just so happens to meet the needs of the U.S. as well. But it’ll be pretty hard to draw attention away from the nuclear and geothermal issues. Ideas needed, Will. Bye.”

Will felt too tired to tackle that request just yet. He reluctantly hit “play” on a message from Charles Kern, NASA’s Administrator, that had arrived four hours ago. “Good day, Will. We need your help calling some Senators about Odyssey; there are several freshmen Democrats. I’ll attach their names and contact info to this videomessage. The new Congress convenes in ten days and with the new Democrat majority in both houses, we’re expecting rough treatment for Odyssey. At least the recession has bottomed out and the economy will soon be growing again, so calls to shut down the project are less likely.

“God, I wish you could have stopped the hearings! We get a bloody nose in the media every day, especially overseas. Opposition to the use of nuclear power in space has been emboldened. The irony is that right now everyone’s oogling over the spectacular images coming down daily from the Russian-Chinese Titan balloon, of methane ‘waterfalls’ and wave-cut cliffs, and no one is complaining that a fifty-kilowatt reactor on board the balloon is making it possible. You can’t do most of the solar system on solar power. We’re facing serious congressional hearings about nuclear reactors in space. We may need to consider some drastic restructuring of our plan. So if there’s anything you can do to divert the media in another direction, it would be welcomed. Bye.”

Will was tempted to reply by noting that he wasn’t a magician. He was certainly too tired to deal with that message, and he was out of ideas. He closed his attaché, attached it to his belt, and went for a walk.

The thin air of newly inflated Oregon Biome seemed bracing, though he did pant a bit. He looked at the barely greening ground—they were planting the first crop of sorghum to pull heavy metals and other undesirables from the future soil—and contemplated Mars’s very complicated future. Because of a whole host of factors, few nations were willing to subsidize Mars. The Europeans had their hands full with Venus and Mercury and with a rapidly aging population that was sucking government coffers dry. The Americans were busy saving the moon facilities from bankruptcy—though tourism was now picking up—and continuing Project Argo to explore near-Earth asteroids, while pinning the future on Project Odyssey. Their support for Mars focused on reconstruction of the Mars Commission’s ruined headquarters near Houston. The Chinese were expanding their moon base and contemplating a leapfrog over the asteroid belt straight to Jupiter. The Japanese, in the midst of a demographic crisis worse than Europe’s, were cutting back on space or asking for a lot for their money. India and Brazil were starting their own national exploration programs to near-earth asteroids. Mars, with its gold, was being relatively ignored. It was still possible to find small nations willing to pay for a citizen to go to Mars, but many of those countries lacked skilled workers to represent them there.

And Mars’s economics were highly unpredictable. The price of gold was likely to fall to prewar levels soon or even lower, disrupting Mars’s main source of income. Platinum group metals and deuterium were expensive to harvest, except with a huge infrastructure, and too rare to help the bottom line much. The Swift Shuttle C offered the promise of cutting the cost to low earth orbit below $500 per kilogram, undercutting Martian exports of methane, nitrogen, and argon. The demand for Martian land was largely filled; releasing more land to the market would cause the value of property to fall and push up demand for services that were already not being provided adequately.

As a result, Will was left with a sense that they were grasping at straws: the caravel project would import people to Mars who might not be employable or would build a vehicle the U.S. wouldn’t want; the Geothermal Project would provide energy they couldn’t use; the nuclear project would build massive reactors the Martian population didn’t want or need; bioarchive would store and study American biomes and species in artificial environments they couldn’t provide. The result was a looming disaster; any one of the plans could fail and ruin Mars’s reputation for careful planning and forethought.

On the other hand, he didn’t see an alternative. They were in the position to drop the geothermal project if they had to, but it was a useful political counter to the Americans. The caravel project could always be slowed down. They could speed up bioarchive various ways, including the importation of an enclosure for a few of the environments. And they could keep working. He turned and headed out of the biome, to go home. It was New Year’s eve; no need to toil the rest of the afternoon.

He flopped down on the couch and watched television for two hours; something he hadn’t done in ages. When Ethel came in, she stopped at the door, surprised. “What are you doing?”

“Vegging out and ignoring the world.”

“How many times were you attacked this sol?”

“Three times in nasty ways, but that didn’t bother as much as the rational arguments against everything we’re trying to do.”

She frowned. “I doubt that! Since when do we make irrational plans. You have available to you one of the best group of brains ever assembled.”

He sighed. “True. I guess we have to stay the course. The reactor worries me the most. Érico’s right; we don’t need a fifty megawatt reactor. I’d like to think we can store the heat underground, or could use all the power for something like making greenhouse gasses, but anything we could do to use the power would take staff we don’t have.”

“That’s a problem, I agree, and I have heard it raised several times. I’m worried about bioarchive, too.”

“So am I. I’ve reminded Alexandra twice that we can’t stretch it out any more.”

Ethel walked over to him and sat on the couch next to him. “Don’t worry. This isn’t as bad as other crises, I think.” She put her arm around him.

“Thanks.” He leaned over and kissed her. They sat together on the couch silently, cuddling, for a few minutes before heading out to find the kids and eat supper.

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

Mars watched New Years in Australia that night, then in Japan, then celebrated midnight at Aurorae on the Patio in Yalta. The next two sols everyone relaxed by the pool or played games while enjoying special meals and desserts.

Monsol morning the decorations began to come down and everyone went back to work. Will started by calling Rosa Stroger, Lisa Kok, Alexandra Lescov, and Ruhullah Islami to a meeting. “I’m concerned about the nuclear plans,” Will said. “They’re designed for efficiency in making plutonium, but not for our needs. As Érico said, we can’t use fifty thousand kilowatts; it’s impossible for the foreseeable future.”

“It also requires a massive construction effort,” added Alexandra. “The U.S. can’t launch a reactor vessel of that size fully fueled; it’s too heavy. We’ll need an entire caravel load of personnel to put together the pieces after they’re shipped here.”

“And I don’t feel we can use the waste heat in the greenhouses because it won’t be available when the reactor is shut down, unless we build a huge heat storage system,” added Lisa. “We could use it in special agricultural biomes, though; the reactor maintenance could be scheduled between crops.”

“This is a problem for using the reactor’s electricity as well,” added Ruhullah. “There’s also the problem of beaming the power around Mars; it can be done, but we lose forty percent of it.”

“I am skeptical of the plan,” added Rosa. “The fifty thousand kilowatt plutonium breeder reactor will put out roughly 400 times the power of our 1-tonne, $300 million dollar, 125-kilowatt reactors. They’re hoping the reactor will mass 100 tonnes and cost 5-10 billion old dollars—10-20 billion new dollars—to make on Earth, fly here, and assemble here. We’ll have to supply about 100 tonnes of materials here as well, which will take a huge amount of our time and personnel, and the welding job to assemble the pieces of the reactor vessel will be incredibly complex. It’ll take ten years to design, build, fly out, and assemble the reactor, and that’s optimistic. Meanwhile, they’re designing a 5,000 kilowatt flight reactor, two of which would propel each caravel. Those reactors will mass 20 tonnes and will use enriched uranium; they don’t need plutonium. Since the new Swift shuttle can put twelve tonnes in orbit at once, each reactor requires two launches, and there’s some ability to accommodate mass creep. The estimated cost of each reactor is still very rough; two to four billion new dollars each. The research and development of the entire program has increased from one hundred billion new dollars over ten years to three hundred billion new dollars over fifteen years and it could still increase significantly.

“So they are spending an enormous sum of money to build enormous reactors over a politically unsustainable length of time, especially considering the change in Congress and the inevitable change in administrations in two years.”

Will considered her comments a moment. “What would you suggest?”

“That’s a difficult question.” She considered. “It’s incredible how much emotion is involved in these decisions. A gas-core nuclear engine would be cheaper to build and would mass less, but exhausting hydrogen laced with radioactive plutonium into space is politically unacceptable, even if it isn’t directed at the Earth and even if it would do the Earth no measurable harm if it were. A vehicle with a small chemical or solid-core nuclear engine could go to Venus, where a solar-powered VASIMR or ion engine and a Venus gravity assist could send it to Jupiter in a year or so, where a chemical engine could put it into jovian orbit pretty well. A relatively small reactor—say, 1,000 kilowatts—with a VASIMR would be quite useful because the cruise is so long. But these schemes are ‘mixed’ in terms of propulsion, using chemical, solar, and solid core nuclear as well as VASIMR, and thus purists don’t ‘like’ them. The decision to build big reactors to power VASIMR engines comes from assumptions like these.”

“I almost wish the U.S. would give the money to us, because we could do this more cheaply,” added Alexandra.

“Well, that’s not happening,” said Will.

“If the caravel were being pushed to Jupiter with standard ion propulsion, how big would the engine be?” asked Lisa.

“Well, five hundred kilowatts accelerates twenty tonnes to 3.5 kilometers per second in six months. We need to accelerate about one hundred tonnes to 10 kilometers per second in six months, so we need about fifteen times the power; 7,500 kilowatts,” replied Alexandra.

“But with gravity assists and chemical kick engines, that can be cut in half,” said Rosa. “That’s the thing.”

“You’re talking about the Earth end of the flight only, right?” asked Lisa. “What about the Jupiter end?”

“The advantages of a VASIMR are even less, there,” replied Rosa. “Because Jupiter has such a powerful, deep gravity well, small delta-vs at perijove make an enormous difference to your departure velocity. A delta-v of about 1.5 km/sec to 2 km/sec at perijove will send a spacecraft back to Earth or will be sufficient to brake an incoming spacecraft into Jupiter orbit. Gravity assists from encounters with the galilean satellites can do the rest, except for landing. But the delta-v has to be applied over a short time period at perijove to reap the maximum benefit, requiring a very high reactor mass, and for landing you have to resort to chemical or nuclear engines anyway.”

“So why are they building these huge reactors and engines?” asked Lisa.

Rosa shrugged. “Because some lobbyists have managed to convince them. Because they want to do something new and advanced. Maybe after spending a huge sum of money they will achieve some technological breakthroughs, resulting in powerful reactors that are smaller and cheaper than what I think is possible. Or maybe the next generation of reactors will be the springboard to a future generation that’s small and cheap. I don’t see it in fifteen to twenty years. If I were designing a spacecraft to send people to Jupiter in that time frame, I’d use the solid-core nuclear engine they’ve already developed. Hydrogen’s getting cheaper in Earth orbit all the time.”

“That’s the plan of the Chinese, I think,” added Alexandra. “And it’s at least as far advanced as NASA’s. I’d sell caravels to them!”

“Maybe we should,” said Will. “If you all are right, this NASA plan may go no where. Kerns even hinted at the possibility of major changes to it, also.”

“The critics of the plan were already becoming negative, but the hearings have made their criticisms worse,” agreed Alexandra.

“Then I think we should propose something more practical to them, because we’re getting killed by the criticism as well,” said Will. “If the engines need enriched uranium, then make enriched uranium on Mars, not that and plutonium. Maybe they should add the plutonium reactor later when it’s smaller and we’re bigger, and therefore able to provide the work and absorb the power output better.”

“Even then, I wouldn’t send one big breeder reactor here,” added Rosa. “If they sent ten 5,000 kilowatt reactors instead, they’d mass less and therefore would be easier to fly here; we’d have less complex tasks to assemble them; and the reactors could be placed at the outposts in pairs or triplets, backing each other up and eliminating the need to beam power around the world. Maybe the 5,000 kilowatt flight reactor could be designed to be a breeder as well, reducing two designs to one.”

“It sounds like the flight reactors need a redesign as well, though,” noted Will. “Let’s talk to Brian Stark and our other contacts down there. Rosa, can you make some video calls? I’ll call Kern, also, and find out from him what redesigns they have in mind. Maybe if we threaten to pull the plug at our end, something cheaper and more practical will result, and it’ll be more likely to survive Congress.”

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

Helmut alternated his gaze between the television screen in his cubicle and the view outside the window. The German national soccer team really wasn’t doing very well against Brazil; the game was a huge disappointment to both him and his father, who was watching simultaneously in Houston. The view outside the window was little better; one of northern Elysium’s ice chimneys could be seen half a kilometer away, a big cylinder of ice thirty-five meters tall with a lazy curl of water vapor extending upward into the atmosphere. In the middle ground was the Elysium geothermal drill. A team of astronauts was struggling with a repair as he watched, because the heat at 1,200 meters had been high enough to damage the shaft. It would seem that they were parked about two kilometers above an active magma body, one that might be slowly rising to cause a surface eruption in a few thousand years.

His attaché beeped and a video message from his father popped onto the screen. The two of them were “spending” the afternoon together, in spite of a thirty minute time delay. “Hey Helmut, did you like that goal by Hirsch? Thank God they’ve gotten one! It’s a start, anyway. Clearly, this year Brazil has a very strong team. I’m glad Érico’s not around to overhear me.

“Say, can you adjust your position a bit? I see there’s strong light on your face from the right. Is that a window over there? I’d love to be able to see outside when you reply. I miss Mars in many ways; so much more softly lit than the moon, so much more earth-like. I’d love to be able to explore with you. Heck, maybe I should just retire there; I suppose I’d be welcome. Of course, who knows whether you and Clara would be there! Bye for now.”

Helmut was amused; he had to smile. He adjusted his position so as to lay on Clara’s side of the cubicle and turned up the lights to compensate for the glare from the window. He hit reply. “Well, I guess Clara won’t mind if I lay on her side, especially if I haul my pillow over. She has an incredible sense of smell and will smell my head on her pillow otherwise. She’s busy this afternoon doing inventory, so I don’t think she’ll see me here. They didn’t have conestogas up here when you were commander in 2023, right? Each vehicle has two pairs of loft cubicles, but Clara and I got permission to remove the wall between ours, so we have a single bigger cubicle two meters long, a bit over two wide, and about 1.2 meters high in the middle. We’ve actually got windows on both sides, but the left side had sunlight streaming in, so I closed the shade. Can you see the drill rig outside? That’s the Elysium Geothermal Project. We’ve been drilling since early November; three whole months, now, and we’re almost done. We’ve hit some incredibly hot rock, too! In few weeks they’ll finish and then Clara and I will go the rest of the way around Mars on our way back to Aurorae.

“Yes, that was quite a goal by Hirsch. But I don’t hold out much hope!

“As for moving here when you retire, that’d be great. I’m sure you’d be welcome as an old veteran of this place. Maybe Clara and I will be in the belt sometimes, but we’d be coming back here. Back to you.” He hit send and unpaused the television to watch more of the game.

Things did not improve; the Brazilians didn’t score more goals, but they constantly had the ball and were always taking shots. Commercials came; he opened the door, dropped down into the main cabin of the conestoga to grab a cup of tea, then climbed back up into their loft. And his dad soon replied.

“Damn, when will we see some momentum! Germany’s had incredible teams in the past. Of course, I haven’t lived in Germany now for almost twenty years. Maybe I should root for the Brazilians; they’re closer to Houston!

“Yeah, maybe I’ll apply for Columbus 10. Of course, at 62 I’d be on the old side, but I’d pass the physical. I’ll be flying back to the moon next month for six months, and I haven’t had any troubles. And don’t forget that even though there were no conestogas on Mars until Columbus 3—they were too massive—we had them on the moon by 2022. Last year I spent two weeks in a conestoga at Mare Moscoviense! If anything, you all are still catching up with us. Your new designs incorporate ten centimeters of water shielding over much of the roof and selective polyethylene shields over sleeping areas; we’ve used that for the last decade. The radiation environment inside is pretty good. I admire Clara for pushing the issue about children, even if few families want to bring their kids along.

“I’m still torn about continuing as head of the Lunar Commission. I suppose we should give the job to an American, and I’ve been doing it plenty long enough. Eleven years have flown by so fast. The situation is now improving, with the tourists returning, thank God. The restructuring has pushed costs down, so that helps. Marriott wants to build a hotel at Shackleton, believe it or not; there may soon be some competition for the tourist business. Water exports to low Earth orbit can make a thirty percent profit and still beat the price of the new Swift shuttle. In a decade we may be looking at a million old dollars per tourist for a two-week stay. So in another year it may be a good time for me to retire. We’ll see; don’t tell anyone. At that point the Imbrium Drilling Project will be finished and will move on to other locations where the scientific data is useful. We’ll have the lunar interferometric telescope system set up and ready to be expanded to deep space, maybe to Mars eventually. Same with the interferometric radio telescope system. The Kepler Crater big dish will be done, also. It’d be a good time to move on to other challenges, like sitting back at Aurorae, working part time, and writing memoirs. Who knows. Do you really think both of you will be able to go on asteroid missions together? Bye.”

Helmut paused the t.v. and hit reply. “Sorry for the dumb comment about conestogas; I forget that the moon gets everything first! I even read the summary of the geology that expedition did, so I should have remembered. Gee, dad, I hope you can come on Columbus 10. Even if both Clara and I can’t go to the belt together, you could help whoever stays here with the kids. We’re planning to start a family not too long after we get married; the longer we wait, the harder and riskier it’ll be. The next four years will be devoted to our Ph.D.s and a family. We’re hoping that ten years from now, the caravels will make it possible to do asteroid research with kids along; not babies or toddlers since their health could be endangered by brief exposure to zero gee, but older ones who know what to do when they get nauseous and in emergencies. I don’t know whether radiation shielding will advance enough for that to be possible, though.

“You’ve really created a legacy, dad. Moon exploration owes a lot to you, not to mention popularizing land ownership and commercialization of lunar resources. I bet you could do a lot for Mars, too. I hope you come. Back to you.”

He sent the message and turned back to the game. The German team seemed to catch on fire; they scored a goal, then another one, tying the game. Brazilian fans were bitterly disappointed and began to jeer their own team. Half time came and went, then Sebastian’s reply arrived.

“I’m pretty skeptical about the idea of taking kids on expeditions to the asteroids or Jupiter. Call me old-fashioned, but I just don’t see space travel getting that routine any time soon. It’s too dangerous; the environment is just too harsh. Even on Mars, under a thin atmosphere and inside sheltered buildings most of the time, your cancer rate appears to be a thirty percent higher than it would be on Earth. The kids have some health problems, too. It may be better than the nineteenth century, but some in the twenty-first century would consider it unacceptable.

“I’ll take the chance, myself; with all your body scans, the cancer gets caught in time and cut out, and your death rate is lower than on Earth with its smokers and drinkers and people who refuse to go see doctors regularly.

“Say, the team’s finally getting its act together! They may even win. We’re cheering for them here.

“Speaking of caravels, during half time I got an email bulletin from the New York Times. Check it out; it’s on their website. Those hearings on Mars last month really pressured NASA to reconsider its plans for Project Odyssey, and the new Congress was not in the mood to spend three hundred billion, even stretched over two decades. So they just announced a scaling back. No plutonium production on Mars, just uranium enrichment for flight reactors, and the flight reactors are being scaled back to 2,000 kilowatt, ten-tonne units that can be flown into space in one piece, eliminating orbital assembly. They’re also a much more reasonable size for powering large bases on the moon, Mercury, and Mars, especially with the new industrial facilities coming on line. They’re initiating rigid cost controls in the hopes to make each reactor for half a billion dollars each. This gives me real hope that Odyssey will happen; I was getting pretty skeptical. From conversations I’ve had with Will Elliott and Brian Stark, I gather the nuclear power team on Mars had a hand in the redesign. So you can be proud of what Mars can accomplish, and those caravels are more likely to fly than ever, now.”

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

The news of NASA’s change of plans rolled across the big screen in the Patio on a lazy Sunsol morning during brunch. They had the BBC news on at the time. Within seconds conversations stopped as everyone listened to the oral report that followed. Then someone started to applaud.

Applause broke out across the Patio, with a few cheers echoing as well.

Many turned toward Rosa Stroger, their chief nuclear engineer, the highest ranking expert present at the time. Lisa and Alexandra walked over. Alexandra had a twinkle in her eye. “We won, Rosa,” she said.

“Yes, I guess so,” agreed Rosa. “Of course, some will remain convinced forever that Mars doesn’t need any nukes.”

“But that’s an extreme view,” replied Lisa. “Two megawatt reactors are a good size; that’s two thirds of our total installed capacity here at Aurorae. We can expand reasonably at that rate.”

“It’s a good size not just for us,” added Alexandra. “We need about ten kilowatts per person, so each reactor is the right size to support the immigrants brought here by two caravels, or the right size to provide emergency backup during dust storms for six caravels if we stick to solar and wind as a principal power source. A colony on Callisto or Titan will need about eighty kilowatts per person in order to support agriculture as well fabrication, so a two-megawatt reactor will be the right size for a crew of 25, which is the plan for a caravel in exploration mode.”

“Yes, sanity has reigned,” noted Lisa. “And the 5,000 kilowatts of waste heat each reactor produces will be sufficient to heat an agricultural biome 300 to 400 meters across during dust storm season, and the technology we have for building B-75s will allow very low-pressure domes in the 200-meter range. So an expansion of our ecology sounds practical.”

“Good,” exclaimed Rosa. “Now we have to see whether Congress will authorize the funds.”

“What will Brian think?” asked Lisa.

Rosa nodded. “He was behind this change.”

Johnny Lind approached the table. “Hey Rosa, this must be a great sol for you!” he said.

“Yes, I think it’s a great sol for all of us, actually. This version of the plan is more practical, so it’s more likely to get passed.”

“Let’s hope that’s how the process works, anyway,” said Johnny. “I wonder how disappointed Will’s going to be.”

“Disappointed?” asked Alexandra. She shook her head. “Don’t you believe it.”

“But he wanted big reactors, right? And I thought the hearing really hurt him badly,” said Johnny.

“Johnny, he encouraged the hearing,” replied Alexandra, lowering her voice a bit. “And when the opposition against Project Odyssey grew strong, he’s the one who called us together to plan an alternative.”

“And you’ll read all about it in the New York Times in a few weeks,” added Rosa. She looked at Alexandra, and they both smiled.

“Have reporters been calling?” asked Lisa.

“Oh, yes,” replied Rosa.

Just then a small crowd of people began to enter the Patio. The interfaith service had just ended. Will, Ethel, and the kids came in as well. Rosa began to beckon him to come over vigorously. Will walked to the table.

“What’s new?”

“They just said on the news that NASA has announced a scale-back in Project Odyssey,” said Rosa. “No plutonium production on Mars, and flight reactors will be ten-tonne, two-megawatt models.”

Will smiled. “Fantastic! Sanity has won.”

“That’s exactly what we said,” added Alexandra, and she looked at Johnny.

“I think Columbus 8 has accomplished its greatest achievement,” exclaimed Will. “The rest is a down-hill roll. Alexandra, we should plan to move forward on the caravel full speed. These smaller, cheaper reactors will make Project Odyssey doable within a decade, I think.”

“Will they make enough power for VASIMR engines?” asked Johnny, skeptically.

“Yes, for cruise mode,” replied Alexandra. “Not for transplanetary injection; they’ll have to use chemical or nuclear for that.”

“So, we’re going to Jupiter?” asked Johnny.

Will nodded. “We’re going to Jupiter.”

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