SSE
Copyright© 2013 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 3: The Mission
For the first time in a while, it seemed like Jake slept. It wasn’t the hasty retreat from pain, it wasn’t wrapping a cocoon of darkness around himself ... afterwards, it just felt like a good night’s sleep.
“If anyone is there, I’d appreciate the date and time,” he spoke in his mind.
A voice spoke right up. “It’s oh-six-thirty, Mr. Primare,” a perky female voice. “May the eighth.”
“Thank you, Miss. What is your name?”
“My name is Sylvia Marshall, sir. You can think of me, at least for now, as the mission communications individual. You talk to me, I talk to you, and mediate for you with the external world. That’s not to say that you won’t be talking to others as well, but I’m the goalie, so to speak.”
“Thank you, Miss Marshall. It is Miss, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Someplace around, at some point in time, there’s supposed to be someone here from NASA to explain the mission in detail. Could you pass along a message to him that anytime is good for me?”
“Yes, sir. He should be awake now; give him an hour or so, and he’ll brief you fully.”
“You can say ‘Give him an hour or so for breakfast’ and not offend me, Miss Marshall.”
“Sir, my boss told me to avoid things like that.”
“Miss Marshall, I am what I am. Last night I was wishing I could lean back in my chair and lace my hands behind my head — that’s my favorite position to think. It’s not ever going to happen again. I either adjust to things like that or I’ll go crazy. Me, I don’t intend to go crazy.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll tell him.”
A while later, there was another voice. “Mr. Primare, I’m Richard Phillips; feel free to call me Dick. I’m here from NASA to brief you on the Phoenix project — America’s return to space.”
“Let ‘er rip!” Jake told him.
“The mission is the most ambitious project ever taken by mankind.”
“The plan consists of four Space Shuttle launches and a dozen Delta Heavy rocket launches to the International Space Station, as well as a number of Dragon launches.
“We no longer need to haul ISS structural materials to orbit, so we have free rein with shuttle payloads. We will use three missions with specially modified shuttle main fuel tanks. These have been modified so that they have their own engines and can continue on to orbit. There, they’ll link up with the mission hardware about twenty-five miles from the ISS.
“What we will do is convert one of those fuel tanks to be the main structure for the Phoenix mission, while the one of the others will contain special fuel for an ionic engine, and the second will contain about half as much liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as they normally would on the ground.
“One of the Delta launches will carry a small nuclear-electric generator to orbit; four launches will carry more ionic fuel for the shuttle external fuel tank. Six Delta launches will be without other payload, delivering liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for those tanks. Those lifts will be the last on the schedule, all within a few days of each other from Vandenburg and Kennedy both.”
He audibly chuckled. “Traveling with that nuclear reactor is about four tons of aluminized mylar that we will inflate to a diameter of about two hundred meters ... that will be the sunscreen for the fuel tanks. We’re hoping we can keep the temperature down, and thus not have as much to worry about boil-off of the LO2 and LH2.
“The main module is going to have a true menagerie of instruments. Perhaps as many as twenty-five major experiments, including a two-meter telescope and two half-meter scopes. There are four EV’s, which is what we call our ‘Excursion Vehicles.’ Those can be operated remotely from the mission and will have sufficient delta V to land on Mars, Europa, or Enceladus. The current plan is to expend one vehicle at each of those bodies and use the fourth to explore asteroids and the two Martian moons.
“There will be tons of computer equipment, literally. Some of the most advanced hardware anywhere. There will be nearly fifteen terabytes of fast memory, another twenty-five petabytes of slower Cruzer disk-class memory, and then there are the two jukeboxes. That memory, Mr. Primare, is unmatched anywhere on Earth.
“For many years, we’ve been faced with the problem that much of our research these days creates massive amounts of data. A few years ago, an Israeli company developed a data disk, roughly the same size as a DVD or Blu-ray disk, but holding a petabyte of data — a thousand terabytes. Then they shifted to blue lasers, and that went to fifty petabytes of data in a single disk, roughly 12 centimeters in diameter.
“DARPA spent some money, not really that much, and produced some of those disks, only instead of being 12 centimeters in diameter, they were thirty. The area goes up by the square of the radius, so if you more than double the diameter, you increase the amount of data the disk can hold by six and a quarter times. One of those platters, Mr. Primare, can hold nearly five hundred petabytes of data. The vehicle will have two jukeboxes, each with one thousand disks. That is a million petabytes of data, Mr. Primare.”
Jake would have whistled if he had lips to whistle and lungs to expel the air. “That’s a lot of petabytes, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. The CPU is an array of 1056 very fast processors, with terabytes of cache memory and some very, very good multiprocessor optimizations. It will be the largest computer on the planet — until it leaves.” The fellow chuckled at his own wit.
“The current mission plan is to leave the ISS firing the main engines. With the delta V we’ll have, we will be able to make Mars in just 180 days. We have no idea how long we’ll want to stay there, but there is a very large number of things we could learn, particularly if we had someone actually there, even if they remained in orbit and didn’t go down.
“We’re particularly interested in the Martian moons. It would be a big deal if there were still volatiles buried inside them that we could access.”
“Yes, it would,” Jake said. The NASA representative reminded Jake of a teenager explaining the wonders of his new skateboard, the one that had cost him dearly.
“After Mars we’d like to see you check out some of the larger asteroids ... most of those are in the inner belt, like Ceres. Ceres in particular is high on our list of priorities; it’s possible that the asteroid has accessible water. Finding water on Ceres would pay for your mission, all by itself. Currently there’s a probe on the way, but it won’t get there for a year. It should tell us whether or not we actually want to go there. Ceres has an escape velocity of only a half kilometer a second; that’s like eleven hundred miles an hour.
“After you look at the inner belt, there are a number of outer belt asteroids we’d like you to look at. It is possible that those are coated with organics and various ices, including water ice. Again, those are beyond doubt the most important raw materials we’re likely to need to explore the solar system.
“Jupiter. What can I say? We think the mission should go there, but frankly it’s not safe for a manned vehicle. The radiation belts are large and variable. While we would like an EV landing on Europa, if there’s water on Ceres it would probably be better to simply skip Europa and get a better picture of Ceres.
“After Jupiter is Saturn. Enceladus is smaller, even, than Ceres, with about 2/3’s the escape velocity. If we could drop an EV down one of those tiger-stripe chasms and see what we can see ... it might be the single greatest discovery in planetary science, ever.”
Jake smiled to himself when the fellow stopped talking. It was a little awkward, wasn’t it, when you didn’t want to face the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Jake had no idea how much, if any, emotion was in his voice. He could hear emotions in his head, but if a computer was translating letters of words he was thinking, odds were it was like reading a transcript. Still, he said as emotionlessly as he could, “Sir, I’m predisposed to agree. However, I have some modest stipulations first.”
“How modest, Mr. Primare?”
“Nothing much. I’m not an idiot; true, I’m not an aerospace engineer either. That said I’d like to have a voice in the design elements of what the mission will consist of and the hardware. A voice, mind you, not a veto. I’m aware of my limitations, but I’m sure that we can reach a consensus without too much difficulty.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” the NASA representative told him cautiously.
“Second, I want a full description of the work that will be done for each and every ‘modification’ you’re going to implement vis-à-vis myself. Again, I’m not asking for more than information at this point. Clearly, though, if the procedure is too risky I’d like to be able to say ‘No.’”
“We have been running on your living will, Mr. Primare. It would give our ethics people a great deal of comfort if we had your active, willing participation ... not to mention your informed consent.”
“That sounds good to me. I realize I’m in no position to sign a document, or for that matter even read one. But I would like a contract prepared describing my obligations to the government for this mission and the government’s obligations to me. And a general mission statement, a statement of goals and results hoped to be achieved. I would then verbally accept the agreement.
“If you were to have someone senior from the Administration, plus someone like a Federal District judge to witness it, that should take care of making it a proper contract.”
“Again, I’m sure we can work something like that out. A contract is actually a pretty good idea. That way everyone knows where the other parties are coming from.”
“Exactly. And, as far as I’m concerned, as soon as we get the contract finalized and witnessed, you can start on the vision and computer link modifications.”
“It will take a week or so, Mr. Primare, to prepare the document and arrange for acceptance. In the meantime, members of your medical team will explain what will be happening to you.” The other chuckled audibly. “You have to understand that no one listens to the details, as they tend to endlessly drone on. Not many are willing to sit and listen to the whole thing.”
“It’s not like I can change the channel,” Jake told the man dryly.
“Yes, sir.
“In addition, Mr. Primare, we’ll get some of the NASA project engineers in here, and they will go over the design in considerable detail with you. At least there, I can understand half of what they say.”
“That’s fine. Last, a point of information, Mr. Phillips. How much of this is going to be made public?”
The other cleared his throat. “You understand that this agreement is between you and NASA, in all important details? There is considerable doubt that the mission would go as planned if certain religious and ethical groups could file lawsuits enjoining us to stop. We’re confident that in the long run we would prevail, but those lawsuits might take years before the matter is resolved. There is a particularly good planetary alignment starting in eighteen months and seventeen days. We would rather like to launch in that window.
“Thus, for the time being, your participation and the nature of that participation are confidential. We don’t expect any leaks ... we have signed confidentiality agreements that would result in stiff fines and longish jail sentences if anyone did. Further, everyone working on the project believes in it.”
“That’s pretty much what I expected. Mr. Phillips, do you understand why I asked for Dr. Rattray-Taylor’s resignation?”
“I think I do now, sir.”
“Good. No matter what you might think of him, I got to know him very, very well in a very short period of time. While he is uncomfortable with the mission, he isn’t opposed to it, and is willing to defer to my wishes. Please, I would ask that no action be taken against him, unless or until he breaks the agreements he no doubt has signed.”
“I assure you, Mr. Primare, that no such action has been contemplated.”
“Sometimes people misunderstand the intent of those placed over them. It would be good, I think, to remind people about not preempting. If it got out, you can be sure that this mission would be canceled at once. Like you and the others at NASA, Mr. Phillips, this is something I very much want to do and I’m not concerned about the risk to myself anymore than if I was an astronaut contemplating those four shuttle missions.”
“I don’t see a problem with that, Mr. Primare. Let me go get things in motion here.”
“Thank you, Mr. Phillips.”
Jake returned to thinking in Armenian, but kept his thoughts in neutral. He had one surprise left in store for them — aside from the larger one — and he wanted it to be a surprise. It wasn’t really that big of a deal, and he was certain they were going to permit it, without quite understanding what they were giving away.
The NASA plan was, to put it mildly, amateurish in concept. He suspected that not all of those working on it were “in the know” about all of the details, and would balk if those details became public. It was typical of Washington hubris and its total disassociation with the American people.
But, the bottom line was that he wanted to do this. Aside from the fact it was a childhood dream, he realized that if he stayed the way he was now, he’d live his remaining days wondering what stupid mistake was going to kill him. He was pretty sure that within a year or two, tops, that fear would paralyze him and could well drive him insane.
The risks were no less in space, and, in fact, undoubtedly significantly greater. But, in space, it would be his mind against the universe. He wouldn’t mind losing to the universe — losing to a technician who fumbled something simple ... that was a much less appetizing fate.
These people were no doubt nice, they probably treated their dogs and cats with consideration, doted on their kids and grandkids ... but somehow they had a chink in their armor.
All he had to do to combat it though, was to use the tried and true stock-in-trade of magicians everywhere. Show them what they wanted to see and hear, and let them assume he was woefully ignorant and blind. All he could do was bide his time and wait for the right moment. The biggest near-term risk was going to be the small addition to the contract he would ask for at the last minute. It was really rather amusing.
He was already working on how to frame it so that they would never suspect anything beyond a simple statement of objective reality and the implications that logically followed from it. He would characterize it in such a way that they would be further misdirected. He wished he could have the physical satisfaction of shaking his head in mock sorrow. Or being a fly on the wall when they realized how badly they’d screwed up.
Three days later, he was told that the next day they would read the contract to him in the morning. It would be witnessed, and then in the afternoon, he would be anesthetized, and the work would commence. A day, he was told, of surgery, another couple of days of recovery.
The doctors had been clear. “It’s not a very complex procedure. We will install small inductive devices that will directly stimulate your visual cortex. These devices are external to your brain, although internal to your brain case. There is some risk from infection and not much else.
“As for the computer hookup, that’s even simpler. The connections already exist but need to be upgraded to handle a higher bandwidth. Think of the change as being between a twisted pair modem connection and a fiber optic link. The data rate we have now with you is about 20 megabits per second; the change will run that up to something close to a gigabyte per second — about 50 times faster.
“What we will do, once the post-op phase is complete, is turn on the video feed and let you get used to that. We have a video camera set up in the operations center that, with practice, we believe you will be able to manipulate in a fashion similar to your eyes ... that is, you’ll be able to twist your head left and right and up and down, and focus on nearby and more distant objects. You will have binocular vision as well.
“We expect that the difference in source will cause some acclimation issues at first. However, the visual cortex is amazingly adaptable. Did you know that we’ve done experiments where we put glasses on people that inverted the images their eyes see? And after a day or so, the visual cortex of the participants had adjusted to the reversal and after that, they saw the images ‘right-side up?’”
“I heard about those experiments back when I was in college,” Jake said neutrally.
Phillips had been right, though. Give the doctors an inch, and they filled his ears with jargon for two hours. In spite of the boredom, he stuck with it, filing as much away as possible for later.
Then it was the morning of the big day. The parties were introduced, including Federal Judge Norman Day, of the Fifth Federal Court District, South Florida division.
Jake listened patiently as the contract was read to him, having a mental checklist of things he wanted to be sure were there — and things he didn’t expect should be included. There weren’t any surprises, even when they described the itinerary, again leaving unsaid anything about what his schedule would be after Saturn.
When Phillips finished reading the legalese, he asked if Jake had any questions or wanted a portion read again.
“No,” Jake said after a second. “I understand it well enough, I don’t need to hear part or all of it again. I do have a tiny concern, one so small that I hesitate to mention it.” Mentally he crossed his fingers. For a change he didn’t wish he could do it physically, because it wouldn’t do to have them suspect it was anything important.
“I mean, any org chart I’ve ever seen has someone’s name, and then, right beneath the name, their job title. I think it would be useful if we could clarify my status with some sort of title.”
“Well, mission specialist, I suppose,” Phillips said, clearly unsure of his ground.
“Isn’t a mission specialist like the lowest status on a flight crew? I’d have every last person on the team telling me what to do.”
“You don’t have to worry about that, Mr. Primare,” Phillips said with more assurance. “The only person who will be authorized to give you direction would be myself, or someone who follows in my footsteps, although I assure you, that this opportunity comes along once in a lifetime and I have no intention of sharing it with anyone.”
“Won’t I be doing some of the piloting?” Jake asked in his most level tone. “Couldn’t I have something with pilot in the title?”
“Well, how about Chief Pilot?”
Jake warmed up inside. Now he was getting close! If he could only get Phillips to be the one to suggest it, it would be much better. “A chief with no Indians, sir.” Jake said lightly. “Perhaps something a little sexier.”
“How about command pilot?” Phillips offered.
Again, Jake found the natural dampening of his emotions a great help. “That sounds nice and sexy! Could we add that to the contract?”
“Sure, Judge, do you see any problems with a last-minute change like this?”
The judge laughed. “You’d be amazed at how many contracts come across my desk with last-minute changes. Sure, it’s harmless enough.”
“Okay, command pilot it is,” Jake told them. “I bet command pilots score with all of the hot babes.”
There were strained chuckles from the other end of the connection and that was it. A few minutes later, Phillips was back.
“Okay, Mr. Primare. They are working on the final preparations for the surgery now. We’ll tell you just before we put you under. You understand that there is always a risk?”
“Mr. Phillips, not to belabor the obvious, but when I looked up the ass-end of that jet engine and felt myself burning up, I expected to die. When I landed and felt my legs shatter, I hoped to God I’d die quickly. The pain, sir, from those events drove me just a little catatonic. I have no idea why the sensory depravation doesn’t drive me crazy. I mean, Mr. Phillips, the only thing in my world were a few whispers and my imagination.
“I can’t even pinch myself to see if I’m awake or asleep.”
“I just ... you’ve been very cooperative, Mr. Primare. We thought...”
“You thought I’d need more time to adjust and come to agree?” Jake asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Son, let me tell you something — you’re giving me the opportunity of a lifetime; one I never thought possible. Yeah, I doubt if I’d have taken the offer, knowing in advance what I’d have to go through, but right now, sir, I’m trying to make the best of a bad situation. Getting to do something like this — it’s stupendous. Not to mention, risks or not, it’s better than the certainty of death. So no, I haven’t had much trouble adjusting to things.”
He smiled to himself when they told him they were about to put him to sleep. How in the world could people be so blind? Didn’t they have any idea what the word “command” meant in terms of a manned vehicle? That the command pilot was the pilot in command; he (or she) was charged with the safety of the crew, passengers, and the vehicle and was authorized to take whatever measures that were necessary to keep the crew and vehicle safe. And he was going to do just that!
He started the countdown from thirty; to be honest, he rushed it, but still didn’t remember anything after reaching twenty-six.
There were no dreams, no seeming passage of time. One second he was awake and counting, and then he lost track. When he woke, for a few seconds he thought he’d lost track of the count, and started to verbalize the next number when he realized that the surgery was over and he was awake once again.
“I’m awake,” he announced to anyone listening.
“Welcome back, Mr. Primare.” This time it was a woman’s voice, and Jake recognized Sylvia Marshall.
“I thought you’d given up on me,” he told her.
“No, I got bumped by all the big wheels. One of the things that came from this is the recognition of the importance of my job and that, for the time being, I’m the person you’re supposed to communicate with.”
“That’s fine with me; there’s nothing worse for a project than mixed lines of communication.”
“Yes, sir. The whole process has been reviewed in the last few hours, and the team, if anything, is even more motivated than before. This project will work only if the whole concept of ‘zero defects’ is adhered to more so than at any other time in history. We all have a lot invested in this, sir. I know you have more of a stake than the rest of us combined, but I want you to know we’re behind you all the way.”
“Thank you, Miss Marshall.”
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