Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (12 page)

Abby softly slapped her hand on the
table. “Well, we’re still here. You want to tell us the rest?”

“Okay.” He took a deep breath and
forced it out, “I was counting on Gabe to validate what I’m about to propose.
But, for the time being, without our astronautics expert you’ll just have to
take my word for it.”

Jeff got up, walked to one corner of the room and
began writing on the dry erase board as he spoke, “There are lots of plans and
theories for a manned mission to Mars. NASA has ideas, the ‘Mars Direct’ plan
and Mars Society are full of ideas, and countless individuals have offered
proposals. All of them have some good ideas and, in my opinion, some not so
good ideas. Fact is, all the plans and ideas are complex, dangerous, expensive,
and take a long time. My plan involves picking and choosing from this
smorgasbord of original, and some not so original thinking and fundamentally
attempts to minimize all those factors. It begins with the choice of tested and
proven, off-the-shelf, commercially available technologies and procedures.
There is no ‘to be invented,’ or ‘we think this should work.’ And that –
essentially eliminating the need for research and development – combined with a
three-launch strategy involving slow, i.e., cheap, cargo transit, and fast,
that is, more comfortable, crew transit, will dramatically reduce the overall
cost. It took NASA more than five years and three billion dollars to put the
unmanned Mars Science Lab on the planet. My plan puts four of us on Mars and
gets us back for about the same price, and we will do it in less than four
years from drawing board to crew launch.”

For nearly three hours Jeff
explained the plan in detail, drawing diagrams, jotting down figures and
formulas and costs, working his way around the room, filling nearly every
square inch of the dry erase boards. Abby and Susan asked a few questions here
and there but mostly sat mesmerized as the enormous plan unfolded before them.

“And we splash down in the south Pacific, on or
about November 1, 2018, hopefully to be rescued courtesy of the United States
Navy, but we’ll see about that later.”

Abby sat shaking her head, “Wow.”
She scratched her head and thought for a minute. “You’re counting on a awful
lot of other folks getting onboard. Are you sure they will?”

“Of course I’m not sure. But I
think it all depends on the success of the first cargo launch. That will be the
proof of concept. If we can actually land our first packages on the planet and
demonstrate that all is working according to plan, I think the world will beat
a path to our front door, trying to get a piece of the action. And they’d be
foolish not to. If we can actually pull this off, the eventual publicity and
marketing will be…” he paused and laughed softly, “… earth shaking. No one will
want to be left behind.”

“Okay, that makes sense. But, what
about what Gabe said, that even NASA couldn’t do this in four years?”

“She’s right, they couldn’t, but
not because they don’t have the means. NASA has resources far greater than
mine, and they know a lot more than I do. But NASA has two huge problems.
First, it’s a giant government bureaucracy that, like all bureaucracies, moves
very slowly. Which, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. But it’s
also pulled in a hundred directions every day by conflicting agendas, many of
which are politically – and economically – driven. And, as a result of that,
NASA’s second problem is that it hasn’t the will or the mandate to go to Mars.
So they could do it, but they can’t and won’t. Thus, from a certain
perspective, Gabe is absolutely correct.”

“And what if the first launch
fails?” Susan asked.

“Well, that would depend upon how
it failed. If it’s a launch failure, we’ll plan on having a backup cargo
package ready for launch in the same window, and we simply try again. If, on
the other hand, the problem is on Mars – our stuff burns up on entry or
crashes, equipment fails to work, lands a thousand miles from our intended
site… whatever, then it’s almost certainly over. We’re done. We shake hands,
pat ourselves on the back for giving it the old college try, and you go back to
Internal Medicine, and Abby goes back to flying bizjets, and I, somewhat
poorer, find a job teaching 6
^th
graders why there is air.”

Just then the doorbell rang. Jeff
instinctively looked toward the ceiling, “Who could that be? I need to hang out
a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. Be right back. We’ll break for lunch in just a minute.
I know it’s been a long morning.”

He trotted up the stairs and down
the hall. As he turned the corner toward the front door he stopped in his
tracks as there, beyond the glass panes, stood Gabriel. He slowly opened the
door but said nothing.

Gabe stood motionless, staring at the ground, her
cheeks streaked with tears. “Swear to me you’re not just some eccentric
millionaire with delusions of grandeur and an ego the size of Montana, whose
real objective is just getting into the pants of a couple young women.”

Jeff smiled, “I swear it Gabe. With
my last breath I’d swear it.”

Jeff held the door open and Gabe
pulled herself together and came inside. “I guess I kind of lost it there.”

Jeff shook his head, “I don’t want
to hear any apologies from you. There’s nothing for you to apologize for.” He
pointed down the hall, “Now, the powder room is right there, go wash your
face.”

She mustered a tiny laugh, “I guess
I look a fright.”

“You look just fine. But, uh, you
could look a little better. Go.” He waited for her to freshen up a bit then led
her back down to the conference room. “I don’t think I’m the only one who’ll be
glad to see you.” In the room, Abby and Susan were up at the board discussing
something. “Hey, look who I found.”

“Gabe!” They both ran up and gave
her a hug. “You came back!”

“Yeah, I didn’t like the thought of
Jeff renting out my room.”

“Alright, break it up.” Jeff
motioned to the door, “How about some lunch?”

They began to file out the door but
Gabe stopped and slowly surveyed the data and drawings on the boards. Without a
word she walked to the corner where Jeff had begun and slowly moved along,
analyzing every mark as through interpreting some ancient hieroglyphics. Jeff,
Abby and Susan came back into the room and stood silently, watching her.

Gabe stopped and pointed at the
board, “A bent biconic lifting body? I thought you said, ‘tested and proven’?”

“Ah, yes. Well, mostly. The
aerodynamics on bent biconic lifting bodies are solid and they’ve been
adequately tested in wind tunnels. It should work. It just hasn’t been tried on
Mars.”

“Or anywhere else.”

“Yeah, well, let’s try it. We’ll
send one up with the first cargo launch and see what happens. If it works,
viola, tested and proven, and we’re in business.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“I’m out $100 million, we push the
schedule back 26 months and go back to the drawing board.”

“That’s rather cavalier of you.”

“It’s only money… at this point.”

“What’s the mass?”

“Oh, I dunno, full-up at
atmospheric entry, about 30 tons.”

“30 tons? The Mars Semi-Direct
proposal calls for 46 tons? Traveling awfully light, aren’t you?”

“No, there will probably be two,
maybe three of them.”

“60 to 90 tons? What are you
taking? The Bank of England?”

Jeff smiled. “No. The net payload is only about 30
tons, but it’ll take a whole lot more to land it. I don’t think it’s practical,
maybe not even feasible, to land 50 tons on Mars in one chunk, given current
technology. So what we do is use the lifting body simply as an aeroshell. Once
it’s slowed to around mach two, we blow off the heat shield and aeroshell,
break it apart into a dozen landing packages and set them all down separately
just like the MSL or MERs.”

Abby and Susan quietly went back to their seats at
the table and listened intently to Jeff and Gabe’s back and forth exchange.

Gabe stared at the board silently
for a minute. “Huh. I’ll be damned. That’s not an entirely bad idea. Now why
didn’t somebody think of that before?”

Jeff smiled, “Beats me.”

“So how do you plan on getting it
there? There’s no launch vehicle available that can put that much mass into a
Mars transfer trajectory.”

“Multiple launches, assemble it in
low Earth orbit, then boost it on its way.”

She glanced over her shoulder at
him, “You planning on doing the assembly yourself?”

“Nah. We’ll use a remote
auto-docking system. They’ve come of age.”

“That’s still going to require an
awful lot of thrust.”

“Yep. I figure a couple Centaur-3s
and about 50 tons of fuel ought to do it.”

“50 tons of fuel?!” Abby gasped.
“Didn’t you just say the ship only weighs 30 tons?”

“That’s right.”

“80 tons gives us just 30 tons of
payload? That’s crazy.”

Jeff laughed, “Yeah, and that’s
just the tip of the iceberg.”

Abby whistled through her teeth, “I
had no idea.”

Jeff smiled at her, “And that, my
dear, is why it’s so difficult and costs so much.”

Gabe glanced at him, “And why
nobody’s done it.”

He returned her glance, “Yet.”

“Okay, so assemble in orbit, and
you’re going to launch a Centaur-3 as a payload?”

“Yep.”

“What a waste.”

“No argument, but what’s the
alternative? There’s no other way. There are no super-heavy lift vehicles
available. We’ve got the Falcon, Atlas V and Delta IV heavies, and that’s
pretty much it. The big boys – Saturn V, Ares V, shuttle – have either gone the
way of the dodo or are vaporware. If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears.”

Gabe scratched her head and thought
for a minute. “A few years back, Lockheed published a proposal to use a Centaur
as part of a lunar lander, proposing to land the whole thing, with some kind of
hab on the front.”

“Yeah, I remember reading about
that. Weren’t they just going to use it as a fuel tank? The idea didn’t make
much sense to me.”

“Yeah, but also remember that Skylab was
essentially just a modified unused S-IVB left over from Apollo.”

“Ah, okay, I see where you’re
going, but go ahead.”

“So, why not make use of the empty
Centaur by landing it on Mars – they’re not heavy – and use it as a habitat?”

“Um, well, we could certainly take
a look at it but, as I see it, the problem is, though a Centaur is arguably the
greatest booster stage ever made, as a ready-to-occupy habitat it, uh… sucks.
The effort and material required to make it habitable would be enormous. And
the weight savings – the only reason to do it – is not that great, just a few
tons.”

“I’m just thinking out loud.”

“Well you go right on thinking out
loud, don’t let me stop you. There are no bad ideas and I’m perfectly willing
to hear every last one of them.”

“How many payload packages do you
plan on putting down?”

“I have no clue. 20, 30, 40,
something like that. I was hoping to hire a Ph.D. in aeronautics to figure that
out.”

Gabe nodded and laughed. “Uh huh.
You do know they’re not all going to make it?”

Jeff was smiling. He now knew she
was the right choice. “Probably not. So we build in some redundancy.”

Gabe shook her head. “Just out of
idle curiosity, what’s the total launch mass of all this?”

“Who knows? Between payload,
landers, boosters and fuel, jeez, I dunno, maybe a million pounds.”

Gabe’s jaw dropped. “A million
pounds? That would take 20 launches! There aren’t that many heavy lifters
available.”

“Well, there might be if we can
corner the global market for the next four years.”

“Good luck with that.”

“But there is another possibility –
Jupiters.”

“Jupiters? They’re still just
conceptual.”

“Yeah, but there’s nothing special
about them. Direct 2.0 calculated a four-year development timeline, and we’ve
got four years. The shuttle’s dead and there’s God only knows how many leftover
parts lying around. All we would have to do is get the government to release
their surplus junk and museum pieces and get somebody to build ‘em.”

“What’s a Jupiter?” Susan asked.

Jeff turned to her and smiled. “A
great big rocket. They’re based on the Space Shuttle; uses the same external
fuel tank and solid rocket boosters – SRBs – but moves the engines to the
bottom of the fuel tank and the payload up top in a conventional inline
configuration. All the parts are tried and tested, man-rated, and have been
flying for 30 years. Like I said, it’s just a matter of building them. The
Jupiter-130 will lift around 140,000 pounds into low Earth orbit, more than
double the current top heavy lifter, a Falcon Heavy, and the Jupiter-246 will
lift over 200,000 pounds. Further, the 246 has a big second stage, not unlike
the S-IVB third stage used on the old Apollo-era Saturn V, but a lot bigger.
That can be used to boost us into Mars trajectory and eliminate the need for
all those Centaurs.”

Abby whistled under her breath.

“Yes, but I’m not buying it,” Gabe
said. “You couldn’t possibly build and test fly the thing in four years.”

Jeff smirked. “Maybe, maybe not.
But who said anything about testing it? We build it and we go.”

“You’re going to launch in an
un-tested rocket? Are you crazy?”

“Well, I wasn’t planning on riding
the thing, there are plenty of man-rated vehicles around now. We’ll use it, or
them, for cargo.”

“And if it, or them, don’t work?”

“Then I’m out another couple
hundred million and take what’s left and go lie on a beach in Bermuda, and
y’all are back in the unemployment line. Gabe, that’s the only way this can
work. It’s the only way it’s affordable. No frills. No years of engineering
design, testing and redesign – we haven’t the time or money. If we need
something new, we design it, build it, and fly it. If it works, great. If it
doesn’t we call it quits and find something else to do.”