Dark Star Rising Second Edition (Pebbles in The Sky) (24 page)

Mike was the pilot of the United States Space Force Inter-Lunar Cargo Ship One.  USSF ILC-1 was the letters that were printed on the hull for anyone close enough to view the ship to see.  This was the prototype for a nuclear powered workhorse that would be used to transport cargo from low Earth orbit to Space Station Alpha, The Earth/Lunar Lagrange point, and also to Lunar orbit.  She had been assembled at Space Station Alpha over the past year.  He looked out the cockpit viewport where he could see Earth behind and below habitation ring A of the space station.  He would never get tired of the view up here.  Ten years ago, none of this would have been possible.  If someone had tried to build a Space Station Powered by a nuclear reactor or a nuclear powered space craft the eco-freaks would have gone into a frenzy.  It would have also been highly unlikely that Congress would have put up the funding for such an endeavor either.  It was crazy to think that it took potential extinction of the human race from rogue asteroids or comets to shut the freaks up and provide the funding to build all this.

It had taken two years to boost all the parts and equipment for Space Station Alpha into orbit and get it assembled.  The station consisted of a long hollow tube about five hundred feet long.  On one end was a docking module for various space craft and personnel shuttles that came and went on almost a daily basis now.  Adjacent to that were two rings with a nine hundred foot diameter that revolved in opposite directions so that they counteracted the torque and gyroscopic effect from its sister ring.  These were spun fast enough to create about one quarter Earth’s gravity inside the ring due to centrifugal force. The two rings were the habitation modules for the space station.

On the opposite side of the habitation rings from the docking module and attached to the center tube were the labs and cargo storage areas as well as some zero-g workshops.  Further down the tubes after those were the life support and computer centers, the storage tanks for oxygen, water, and the hydrogen fuel for visiting space craft.  At the very far end of the center tube was the Nuclear/Brayton Cycle Power plant.  This used a Nuclear Fission Reactor in conjunction with a closed cycle power plant.  It generated all the power for the space station with some deployable solar panels available for emergency backup.  All told about sixty people could be living on board the space station at any time. Space Station Alpha was the first step of a planned permanent presence in space.  It was here that components for the other ships such as the one they were about to test were brought and assembled. 

The ILC-1 was basically a space tug.  It was designed to mate with cargo modules and carry them from low Earth orbit to the space station, lunar orbit, or one of the Lagrange Points.  The ship was about two hundred feet long without any cargo modules attached to her.  The crew cabin was small, about twenty feet long with a diameter of about fifteen feet.  Behind the crew cabin was life support equipment, then about sixty feet of fuel tanks and at the far end the two nuclear reactors.  Like Space Station Alpha, the ILC used a Nuclear/Brayton cycle power plant to produce electricity.  It was her propulsion module that was unique though.  It had never been tested on a full scale space craft before today.  The rear most area of the ship consisted of a second, liquid gas moderated nuclear reactor that used hydrogen for fuel.  However, the hydrogen was not combusted with liquid oxygen as in a conventional rocket engine however.  When liquid hydrogen was introduced as a moderator into the reactor it caused the reactor to go prompt critical.  As the heated hydrogen left the reactor it flashed to a superheated gas in an expansion chamber and was exhausted through a large rocket nozzle at the back of the ship.  This gave the ship almost a full one half G of acceleration with designed cargo capacity of fifty tons gross mass.  Smaller conventional altitude jets gave axial and lateral control of the ship.

The engine design was inherently safe.  The propulsion reactor basically sat non-critical with any waste heat removed by radiators into space.  When a computer controlled valve opened and supplied liquid
hydrogen to the fission core it went critical and heated the fuel causing it to rapidly flash to a super-heated gas for propulsion.  When the fuel valve was shut by the flight computer or human control, the reactor went sub critical and simply shutdown.  It was actually a pretty simple and inherently safe design.  Since it used liquid hydrogen as fuel, the plan was to use ice mined on the moon to manufacture the hydrogen as well as oxygen for life support.  Bringing the fuel up from the moons gravity well was going to cost a fraction of the cost to bring it from Earth as was presently being done.  First though, the Lunar Space Station and the Lunar Base at the Lunar South Pole had to be established. All of that depended on a successful test of the ILC that was getting ready to happen today.

Mike finished going his checklist for the third time in the past two hours as Major Hank Jenkins did a somersault and landed in the co-pilot seat beside him.

Hank buckled in and gave a grin to Mike.  “Man, are you ready to make history?”

“I was ready two hours ago, all this hurry up and wait stuff sucks.  Only ten minutes left to go now.”

Mike flipped a microphone switch and called to his other two crew members.  “You guys have ten minutes.  Better get strapped in and ready for the ride.”  He flipped another switch and spoke “Alpha control, this is ILC-1.  All preflight checks are done and we have a green board.  Reactor one is at forty percent power and we are switching to internal power, and releasing the umbilicals.  Requesting permission to undock and maneuver clear of the station.”

“Roger that ILC-1, you are cleared for maneuvering.  You guys have a safe trip and see you back in four days,” came the reply over the radio.

Mike gave a thumbs up to Hank who flipped a switch that released the four magnetics grapples holding their ship to the construction scaffolding that extended from the space stations main tube.  Mike fired the ship’s maneuvering thrusters and the ILS-1 slowly floated away from the station.  They wanted to get to a safe distance of about five thousand meters before starting the nuclear propulsion reactor for the first time. 

Mike knew that down in Houston there was quite a crowd gathered for this first flight.  David Honstein, head of NASA, General Robert Seale, head of the USSF, as well as the President of the United States were all gathered there.  He hoped that it would be a good show
for them and did not turn into a funeral wake for him and his crew.  As they slowly drifted away from the station, Mike could see that all the viewports facing them on the space station were crowded with crewmembers watching them.  The scaffolding holding the almost complete ILS-2 on the opposite side of the station was empty of workers as a precaution until they left Earth orbit.

“Three thousand meters from station,” Hank informed him.  “About six minutes until we are clear to fire this baby up.”

At that moment the radio call system chimed and an unexpected but familiar voice came over it.  “Crew of the ILS-1, this is President Paula Montgomery here in Houston.  I wanted to tell you myself that all of us here in Houston as well as the entire nation are watching and praying for you.  What you are about to do has never been attempted and much of our planet’s future depends on the success of your voyage.  I wish you Godspeed and good luck.  We may be down here on Earth, but we are there with you in spirit, cheering you own.”

“Thank you Madam President, we won’t let you down,” Mike replied.

“Five hundred meters to ignition point,” stated Hank.  “Reactor two expansion chamber is open to space, fuel pumps are on line and pressure is steady, crossing five thousand meters in ten seconds.”

Mike flipped his internal radio back on. “Ok, men, let’s take this baby for a spin and see what she can do, standby for acceleration. Open injection valves for twenty five percent fuel flow on my mark.  Mark,” he said as he braced himself.

Hank punched in the orders on the flight control computer and the four fuel injection valves slowly opened.  The computer display started showing increasing flow rate.  “Propulsion reactor is going critical; temperature is at two hundred degrees centigrade and rising.”

Almost unnoticeable at first, a slight vibration started though out the ship.  The ship was noticeably moving away from the station at an increasing rate through Mike’s external view screens.  A faint blue/white glow could also be seen behind the ship beyond the exhaust nozzle when he looked at a rear view video camera.

“Core temperature is at four hundred degrees centigrade and rising, all systems green,” said Hank as he continued to monitor his displays.

Mike could feel the slowly building acceleration pushing him back into his seat.  His acceleration meter was reading about zero point
eight G.  “Slowly bring us up to fifty percent power,” Mike ordered.  As Hank slowly throttled the engine power up, the acceleration increased noticeably and the vibration continued to build. It was not a teeth rattling vibration like the rockets they rode up to orbit on, but a more subtle sense of immense power being released behind the rapidly accelerating ship.

“Core Temperature is at nine hundred degrees and still rising, all systems nominal.  I am showing one point eight nine G’s acceleration. At this power level, we need eleven point two minutes to reach projected mission velocity.”

Mike was rapidly checking over all his instruments.  He knew that four redundant computers were monitoring everything much more rapidly than he ever could and beaming that data back to mission control, but old habits were hard to break.

“Core temperature is about steadied out at eleven hundred degrees,” Hank informed him.

Mike knew the simulations had predicted about eleven hundred and twenty eight degrees so the reactor was running a little cooler than expected.”

“ILC-1, you are looking good, looking good, guys,” called Houston Control over the radio.

The G forces they were experiencing were definitely more than they had been exposed to since they had taken a shuttle up to the space station fifty days ago and Mike found he had to take slow labored breathes.

“Ten seconds to fuel cutoff,” Hank said.  “Four, three, two, one, cutoff.  All injection valves are indicating closed.  Core temperature is slowing dropping, deploying radiators.  Looks like that burn used about four percent of our fuel.  That is pretty much on the money as far as the simulators had calculated.”

The vibration had stopped.  The waste heat radiators had deployed and they were at zero-g again.  Mike thumbed his radio mike.  “Mission control, this is ILS-1.  We have reached projected mission velocity and are on trajectory to the moon.  We’ll see you guys back at Alpha in four days.” Releasing his radio mike button he could hear loud cheering in the back ground as mission control acknowledged him.

“Core temperature is continuing to drop.  Looks like it works as planned,” grinned Hank.  “Now let’s get something to eat.  I was too damn nervous to eat before we left.”  Hank released his straps and kicked out of his seat toward the back of the cabin.  One of the
specialists had turned on a music player and Mike could hear the old Pink Floyd classic, “Dark Side of the Moon,” playing in the back of the ship.

The future was looking bright to Mike as he turned his gaze out the view port to the dark of space.  Today, they were celebrating, but somewhere out there,  a interstellar visitor was coming and its trip through the solar system was going to cause all hell to break lose.  They still had twenty one more years to prepare for its arrival and they were going to need every bit of it.

Chapter 26

June 3
rd,
2023

Washington, DC

President Montgomery made her way to the situation room in the White House.  She had been awakened by her chief of staff and an emergency meeting of the Security Council had been called.  Elliot Dewey announced her presence as she walked in, but she motioned for every one there to remain seated.  So far, she just had General Robert Preston, NSA director and General Frank Dieter, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the room.  She turned to the White House aide that was leaving the room.  “Bring me a coffee; make it black and strong please.”   She took her seat as the Secret Service agent at the door shut it.  “Ok, gentlemen, what the hell is going on?”

“It looks like the Russians are making their move for some warm water ports Madam President.  We have been expecting this for some time.  The Russians have been massing almost seventy five percent of their armor and mechanized infantry divisions just north of the border with Georgia and Azerbaijan for about two months now.  At seven am local time there this morning they crossed the border into both.  From what intelligence we have on the ground, there has been no resistance to their incursion.  Obviously, the governments of both Georgia and Azerbaijan had been aware of the plans.”