AMERICA ONE (44 page)

Carefully, rung by rung, he maneuvered backwards to the side of the craft and, he let his feet find the rungs going down to the ground; there were thirteen before he touched solid ground. Jonesy was filming him from one of the side portals and could only get the back of VIN’s space suit into the picture.

“One small step for a man, one giant leap for Asteroid Mining,” stated VIN and felt his feet touch the surface of the asteroid at the same time.

“What did ‘a man’ mean?”
asked Jonesy.

“That’s what Neil really said,” VIN replied. “He said ‘One small step for a man’ but nobody seemed to hear the extra letter ‘a’, and I’m sure it sounded better without it. So I’m saying this for Neil, he was one of my heroes, and I just added the Asteroid Mining thing. Are you getting this on camera?”

“Yep! Even with your speech now that you have stepped away from the craft. Do you want to say anything else, like hello to Santa Claus, or are you going to check out a perimeter and grab some rocks for our flag? Did you take the mallet?”

“No I forgot, but it looks pretty quiet out here.”

“There is no atmosphere, so no noise. It better be pretty quiet out there, partner.”

“Except for your crap!” replied VIN.

Jonesy kept the camera on his partner as he took a few steps to the darker less shiny area below the rim of the crater. At the same time he sent a message to earth stating that VIN was on the ground and that the gravity felt about seventy percent as strong as on earth.

VIN looked hard trying to see contrast on the ground. There was little difference between the grays on the surface, until his right foot connected with something. It was a loose round, roughly-shaped rock, about five inches across. He bent over and picked it up. It was heavy and he returned to the rear of the craft, forgetting the flag and telling Jonesy to open the cargo doors to the three rear compartments.

Jonesy did so, and VIN pushed hard to open the three-foot by three-foot aluminum door. It was pretty heavy.

Inside was the machine that would analyze the rock he was holding. The MMA, or Magnetic Metal Analyzer was on a table that slid out. The table was also aluminum, as was everything in this craft; it slid out of the door and VIN unfolded its two legs, placed them on the ground, locked them, and then let the three-foot high machine glide out on its small wheels. After he locked the machine into position, he asked Jonesy to turn it on from inside the cockpit. He could have done so himself, but the fingers of his suit were large and bulky, and it was easier for Jonesy to do it.

Every now and again, VIN checked behind him, expecting to see something creeping up on him, but nothing was there.

The machine began blinking at him. He couldn’t hear anything outside but slowly, one by one the twelve lights in a single row, the same lights he had practiced with in the Hangar, went from red, to orange, to green.

The rock was heavy and fit into the feeder-box mechanism; it worked much like a DVD player that closed when a disc was placed into it.

“This first rock is heavy, about the size of a baseball, and I have it in.”

“It seems to be reading it,”
replied Jonesy.
“It’s supposed to take thirty seconds.”

Exactly thirty seconds later the readout showed in the cockpit as well as on the front of the machine; first metal symbols and then the name and quantity of each metal. This piece of rock only had two metals.

“Hey, Jonesy, this rock looks like the rock Ryan wanted us to find more than any other.”

“Well, it states Pt78, native platinum, 92.1 percent; and Ir77, iridium, 6.8 percent. Partner, it looks like you just hit pay dirt with your landing, hitting a gold mine on the first try. Sorry, I mean platinum mine on your first try. Well done! I’m sure this whole asteroid could be a traveling platinum mine. I’ll send back the description to Ryan. See if there is more out there.”

For the next hour VIN walked around looking for rocks. Most were smaller than the first one, and he carried them back a couple at a time. Then he found one twice the size. It was heavy, he struggled to lift it and carry it to the detector. It just fit into the square slot and the readout seventy seconds later showed 89 percent platinum and 10.1 percent iridium. Again, no other metal showed up. VIN couldn’t figure out why there was a slight discrepancy in the amounts, but that wasn’t his job.

By the time three hours were up, his maximum allowance for spacewalking, he had collected and tested a couple of dozen rocks. As Jonesy had suggested correctly, this was native platinum; every test showed at least an 87 percent quantity of the noble metal, seconded by iridium. One smaller rock had shown a 3 percent amount of nickel ore with 8 percent of iridium, but the platinum was still in the 88 percent range.

VIN also had erected the flagpole; the lifeless flag just hung from the pole towards the asteroid’s surface and didn’t move. The recently collected rocks kept it from falling over.

Jonesy sealed the rear doors as a tired VIN climbed up the ladder, over the top of the space craft, entered the tube, closed the hatch and waited for Jonesy to pressurize him so that he could take a nap. Working on a piece of rock worth hundreds of trillions of dollars in heavy gravity was certainly darn hard work.

New Hydrogen Thrusters

Thirteen days before VIN’s landing on the asteroid, Ryan was happy. He had just received the good news that
Astermine One
had left
Ivan
and was on her way to DX2014. He went to Hangar Two to see the first load of aluminum panels about to be transferred over to Hangar Six to be lifted and placed into the shuttle’s hold. The next shuttle’s liftoff was only twelve hours away.

Refueling was complete; the meticulous solid-fuel refueling system took twenty-four hours. The two hybrid rockets on each side of the cargo bay were opened by cutting the last graphite weld that had sealed the fuel in the combustion chamber for the previous flight. It took a day just to cut one side open. Then the top half of the tanks were lifted off, the combustion chamber opened up, and solid cakes of black rocket fuel, specially molded to fit exactly into the combustion chamber, were placed in one by one. These solid fuel cakes, about three and a half feet long and on average a little over three tons each, were placed in very slowly before being pushed hard against each other. Thirty of these cakes fit into each side and the combustion chambers before they were closed and sealed. Finally, the tops of the rocket engines were replaced and, again, it took three graphite welders on each side twelve hours to seal the motors. The liquid rocket fuel would only be added at the last moment. Ryan had already purchased 150 tons of this specially made solid fuel, at $90,000 a ton.

Now the shuttle’s cargo could be loaded as the liquid rocket fuel in the hybrid rocket system would be fed into the shuttle just before launch. Once the cargo was loaded, which took an hour, the liquid hydrogen pumps needed eleven hours to fill the liquid fuel tanks with 2,840 gallons in each of the two ten-ton pressure vessels (tanks) in the forward area of the rocket motor, a cost to Ryan of $650 per gallon to manufacture. This added another $4 million to the fuel bill. In all, each lift cost $17.5 million for the first and second stage rides. In total, it took twenty million dollars to launch to get eight million dollars’ worth of aluminum panels into space.

The timing was a big gamble and Ryan needed
Astermine One
to return with some treasure. His three billion dollar investment was 70 percent used up; he had enough fuel for twenty-four more shuttle flights after this one, and then he would be out of money.

Ryan watched as an extra piece of 40-foot double-thick hangar wall was placed on top of the pile of eight independently sealed panels to hide the cargo from eyes watching their every move; the same tractor that towed the C-5 Galaxy in and out of its hangar, towed the long flat 42-foot trailer across the apron in the hot desert sun from Hangar Two and into the coolness of Hangar Six on the opposite side.

The covering piece of hangar was then removed by the crane, and the hangar’s heavy crane was placed over the cargo; when it was connected, the whole load was lifted carefully into the shuttle’s hold an inch at a time. The hangar piece was then returned to Hangar two on the trailer. To the eyes watching in space, if there were any, the trailer looked exactly as it had on its initial journey across the apron an hour or two earlier.

Next, the three automatic robotic spiders were placed into the hold, each in a canister. They would be turned on, connected to the first panel and operated from
Ivan
by Michael Pitt when he and Maggie got up there. Once they were underway, a computer included in the cargo controlled their operations.

Jonesy, Michael and Suzi were now all fully-trained spacewalkers, and all had trained with VIN throughout the learning phase. Michael would spacewalk, carrying each spider one by one, and placing them onto the first flat aluminum panel after he had opened the thin seal with a small knife. He would then connect a small magnet which would bond each spider to the panel.

Then Michael would get a second panel ready and move it into place slowly next to the first panel, the panels were locked at each end with the same type of device used on a convertible’s soft car roof. Like the human welders below them at the airfield, the robotic spiders would begin welding an extremely hot graphite compound to join the two panels together. Welding was an extremely slow process, each robot completing about one foot an hour, but the graphite compound was actually far stronger than the panels themselves; thick, black and square, the compound would be the actual frame of the completed cube. Seven of the panels on the first cube were slightly different. Two had outer hatches built into them where a complete docking port was to be added underneath, and five panels had sliding doors allowing foot traffic to pass through into the next cube, or to the corridors jutting out into space on three sides of the cube. These doors slid open sideways and were see-through. Each of the seven cubes would have two docking ports.

The first cube would need six sides, but each cube after that only needed five. The single wall between the cubes would be enough to protect the next cube if one was breached. The remaining panels, the six extra sides, would be the cubed Space Gas Station Ryan was planning to build.

Ryan’s mind came back to his watching the shuttle loading.

Finally, the last supplies for this shuttle flight, three canisters of food and one of water, and a couple of liquid hydrogen cylinders were loaded to make up an exact 4.1 ton load; when everything was tied down, the roof doors of the shuttle were closed and the inside sealed for the journey.

By the time Jonesy and VIN completed their first full travel day in
Astermine One
, Maggie was aiming the heavy shuttle into space with Kathy Pringle, her co-pilot, and two passengers, the Spider Technician, and Shuttle Pilot and Space Walker, Michael Pitt.

On time they met up with Penny Sullivan and co-pilot Suzi approaching them on their second orbit, one orbit before Penny would be low and slow enough to begin re-entry.

On the count of three one Cloaking Device was turned off and one was turned on. Nobody on earth knew or realized that there were two shuttles up there. Ryan’s plan was working well.

By the end of this flight a couple of days later, Ryan heard from NASA.

“Well done Ryan, your idea of lifting up radioactive waste material has been accepted by Washington. They are willing to sign a preliminary contract of ten flights at $21 million per 3-ton load.”

“What about my asking price of $25 million a load?” Ryan countered. “That doesn’t leave much money to run my establishment here in Nevada.”

“I understand that it is costing you twenty million for each launch, but they want to test your system with the first of your ten launches over twelve months. We, NASA, will supply the three-ton single-use only protective lead shield around the cargo of radioactive waste and which will protect your employees and pilots for up to twelve hours from the time it reaches your airfield.”

“As you are aware, Bill, we are still testing our shuttles and expect to do so until the first protective cargo arrives, as you said, in twelve months’ time. If we are not ready, we might need to still test your protective lead units with one or two filled with rock or soil, and see what happens when we get up there to release them. Bill, please make Washington understand that it takes time and practice to get these new types of space flights operative. Remind them how long it took NASA to get things right, and even when they were right, there were always snags and problems. I certainly don’t want one of my shuttles exploding in atmospheric flight, or even 100,000 feet above ground, spewing three tons of radio-active waste across the United States.”

“I will do my best, but you understand Washington, Ryan. They want to see results and fast.”

“Just ask them if they are going to hold me liable if they rush me, and one of my shuttles explodes and sends tons of radioactive waste through the walls of Capitol Hill.”

“That is my next topic, Ryan. They want you to move your entire operation to Florida. I was sure that idea would cross their minds. They don’t care if Europe gets the fallout from an exploding shuttle, but they don’t seem to want Washington as a potential target. They are very brave in Washington. I know what you are going to say, you can’t do all this in a year and move your whole operation. So, Ryan, I fudged the discussion and told them that your live shuttles full of waste could head out in a southeastern direction over Texas instead of the East Coast. This suggestion seems to have done the trick for the first contract of ten cargoes, and gives you more time to change your computer programs and prepare your move over to Cape Canaveral. So try a few liftoffs in this direction, they will be watching through the eyes of the National Security Agency. It was the only way to buy you time.”

Ryan thanked his friend. “Without NASA’s knowledge, Bill, I sent out a small unmanned space craft to the moon as a test last week. The mining craft that went up in one of the shuttle tests is fully automated and has a sweeper-type, rock collection system which can pick up any loose small rocks and return them to us on earth. Bill, I hope to have a ton or two of native platinum to sell in a few weeks, if the craft can transfer its cargo to my shuttle, which will return its cargo to earth during one of my orbital test flights.”