Chapter 1: Book 1, How I Did it

At the time, people thought I was crazy and wanted to know, “Why would you do such a thing?” or, “What is the sense of building it?” I never answered the same way twice. Fact is, they didn’t deserve to hear the truth. The answer in itself was simple. Life sucked, and I had yet to meet anybody worth staying for.

People thought I was crazy because humans, as a whole, tend to be afraid of what they don’t understand. In this case, rocketry, more specifically, space travel. It is not something most people delve into or have the slightest exposure to, and so, people fear it. Ipso facto people assume it is difficult to understand. The truth is quite the opposite. Rocket science is simple stuff. Heck, the first anti-ship rocket was fired by the Chinese in 1264. They had land-based rockets long before that, some say as early as 969.

Rocket tech had come a long way since then. In 1961 the Russians built the world’s first fully operational nuclear-powered aircraft, the Tupolev Tu-95LAL. The program was cancelled with only one aircraft built because of the risk it posed to human life. The shielding wasn’t sufficient to protect bystanders in the event of a crash. This technology the Russians later used in their flights to Venus and then in their trips to Mars. Russian spacecraft were travelling over ten times faster than anything the west had simply because the Russians had nuclear engines, and everybody else was limited in their burn time by the amount of fuel they could carry.

Even in the 2030s, not just anybody could build a nuke. The problem was in purchasing the fissionable material. My saving grace was the fact the US didn’t have any significant border security in Alaska, and the Canadian’s didn’t even monitor the Alaskan border except on the highway crossings.

It was a simple matter of using the dark web to order some uranium from Russia, then picking it up by boat. When I landed in Prince Rupert, I claimed I was on a fishing expedition out of Campbell River. It was then just a matter of shipping it by truck to my farm.

I had bought an old farm with the largest silo I could find. That was where I built my rocket. I even dug into the ground to make the rocket bigger than the silo.

It didn’t take long to build. The hard part was figuring out how to construct the hydroponics plant so that it wouldn’t get wrecked with all the violent forces it would experience in takeoff. ROD (Reverse Osmosis Desalination) plants had progressed to the point where they could turn raw sewage into drinking water. Even oxygen scrubbers were efficient enough, given the amount of plant life I had onboard. I didn’t care that I would be spending the rest of my life alone. I was going to leave this cruel place behind.

There was no need to worry about getting my rocket certified. If it didn’t work, I would be dead. If it did work, I wouldn’t be coming back to pay the fines.

I remember my last day on Earth. There was nobody to say goodby to. I only had a couple friends, and I’d left them behind in Victoria, BC years earlier. How good of friends were they, really? Not one tried to stay in contact with me. It’s not like I was hiding.

That day, I slept in. I went for my last bike ride. It is the one thing I used to do to clear my head and get away from everything. People thought I was crazy because I would pedal for 100km or more every time I got on my bike. I did own a lot of bikes. It was January, so I used my recumbent trike. When the ride was over, It was supper time, and I went to Mr. Mike’s, my favourite steak house. They knew me well enough that they just asked if I wanted my usual. There wasn’t enough room on the rocket for meat, and it was to be my last steak, so I took my time to enjoy it.

Typically, I am too shy to flirt with a waitress. Besides, they get harassed all the time, so I like to think my leaving them alone is a way of showing respect. Since this was my last supper on Earth, I didn’t feel constrained and let the waitress know precisely what I felt about her. Sure, I was older than her dad, but she had served me many times over the years and new it wasn’t in my nature to be a prick. She took it in good humour and flirted back. I was happier than I had been in decades, scratch that. Given the weight lifted off my shoulders, knowing I was about to leave, I think it may have been the happiest I had ever been.

When I got back to the farm, I did some last-minute checks. I didn’t want to spend any time doing so in the morning. I don’t usually have a big breakfast, but my favourite food is meat, and I thought I would never get to eat it again, so I made a big breakfast. After that, all that remained was to remove the top of the silo and leave.

Leaving the atmosphere was a little rougher than I expected. It is a good thing I tend to overbuild things, or the ship would never have survived.

You know how astronauts always claim the Earth is breathtakingly beautiful? Well, it isn’t. There is so much debris that it isn’t funny. Humanity has been sending things up into space for 80 years and rarely have we brought any of it back. If a satellite became obsolete, we left it where it was, and a new one was sent up. Just think, the GPS system alone, requires 105 satellites so it can cover the entire globe. This doesn’t count any spares or decommissioned satellites. Add them all up and that is more than 450 GPS satellites in orbit in 2035. Then every major country has at least as many communications, and military satellites. The poles weren’t too bad. Defunct satellites tend to migrate to the equilateral region.