Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (80 page)

“Over here is our information
suite. It provides us with communications, navigation, and life support systems
status. Most of these comm units are just remote heads as the actual
communications equipment is in the command module that is docked on the aft end
of the Sundancer. We do have a couple transceivers here in the Sundancer, but
they’re primarily backups. We have antennas on the command module, the EDS, and
the Sundancer. Abby and I went outside – performed an EVA – a couple days ago
to set up the Sundancer’s hi-gain antenna, which is our biggest, and the one
we’re using right now. We also set up our telescope, which we use for
sightseeing and navigation, it being far easier and more powerful than the
telescope in the command module’s guidance and navigation suite. We can also
access the CM’s sextant and navigation computer from here so we don’t have to
climb into the CM to do our navigation. On this display, for example, you can
see our transfer orbits, both from the perspective of Earth to Mars, and within
the solar system, along with a whole bunch of orbital parameters, distances,
times, and the like,” he chuckled, “all of which only Gabe understands. Also,
as you can see, we have a widescreen TV, along with literally thousands of
films and videos to watch. We also have an online library, which is quite substantial.

“Over here is one of the
Sundancer’s three windows. Shall we take a peek outside?” Jeff pulled over to
the window and looked out. “Alright, there you are, space is about a foot away.
Except for stars there’s not much to see. If you’re familiar with your
constellations you’ll notice
Hercules
down there on the lower right,
Draco
above and to the left, and above and left of it,
Ursa Minor
. And at the
end of the Little Bear’s tail is Polaris, the North Star.

“Alright. On the other side of this
central wall are the four bedrooms, two above the truss and two below. I’ll
take you into my room. There are no doors in the walls, everything is accessed
through the truss.” Jeff pulled through an opening into the truss, and glanced
in both directions. “Okay, now we’re inside the truss and, as you can see, it’s
basically just a narrow tunnel with ventilation ducts and water and drain pipes
and electrical conduit, and a little room to move around, but not much.”

He pulled on into his bedroom.
“Okay, here’s my little room. There are doors inside each to close off the
room, and we usually close them whenever we’re going to be in here for a
lengthy period, particularly when we sleep, to create a good ventilation
pattern in the room. As you can see, the room’s not very big. They’re shaped
like a quarter slice of cake: two 90-degree walls, joined by a quarter-circle
wall, with flat walls on either side. The volume of each bedroom is just about
400 cubic feet. In a typical house with eight-foot ceilings, that would encompass
a floor area of about 50 square feet. Say, about seven by seven feet. Back
home, my closet is bigger than that, a lot bigger. Accommodations are pretty
sparse: desk, chair, bed, computer, a couple lights, some fans, clothes
cabinet, and… well that’s about it. You’ll notice that all our chairs have
seatbelts. It’s not because we need them as you would in a car, they just help
to keep us put. The force generated by something as simple as writing or typing
is sufficient to push us away from the desk, and that’s a little annoying. So,
the seatbelts simply keep you in the chair.”

He turned toward the bed. “I said
earlier that sleeping in microgravity was kind of difficult. Here’s something
we’ve done to make it a little easier. Our beds consist of a foam mattress and
a pillow that stays attached to the bottom sheet with a couple Velcro strips.
Then there’s an upper sheet and blanket, if one wants it – we keep the
temperature inside at about 72ºF – and that is all covered with a lightweight
jersey-like over-sheet that is somewhat elastic, and it is snugged up around
everything else. So, when you crawl into bed, the jersey over-sheet pulls you
into the mattress and pillow. It feels kind of like a little gravity. It’s not
really, but you sort of have the sensation of a regular bed. Um, it helps. It’s
certainly a lot better than just floating around somewhere. Now you’ll also
notice that the head of the bed is butted up against the truss and there’s an
air vent right there. That’s the ventilation exhaust vent for the room. Air
enters the room through a couple vents in the wall from the commons. The reason
for this is that, as I mentioned earlier, without gravity warm air doesn’t
rise, because there is no ‘up’. So the air that one exhales tends to just cloud
around your head, and it doesn’t take long for you to find yourself lying there
in a cloud of your own exhaled carbon dioxide. And then you wake up gasping for
air and with a nasty headache owing to oxygen deprivation. This ventilation
arrangement eliminates that problem.

“Okay, that’s a bedroom, such as it
is. Let’s drift back through the truss here to our Utility Room.” Jeff pulled
through the truss and dropped into the Utility Room. “This is the aft section
of the Sundancer. Behind us is the aft airlock to which the CSM is docked. In
here are the bathroom, laundry, our exercise equipment, and some storage. The
bathroom is a self-contained unit that contains a shower, sink, and unisex
toilet, and, like the dishwasher and kitchen sink, contains fans that direct the
water and other materials in and out. Same thing goes for our washing machine.
But our clothes dryer works pretty much like the one you have at home.
Storage-wise, we keep a lot of spare parts in here, along with consumables
other than food – toiletries, toothpaste, shampoo, toilet paper, spare clothes,
that kind of thing. There’s also some ventilation equipment in here.

“Alright, I’m gonna open a couple
hatches in the airlock and get into the command module. While I’m doing that,
Gabe is going to give you an external view from one of our cameras. Gabe?”

“Roger. The image you’re seeing now
is from our ‘A’ camera. Not including the telescope, we have eight external
cameras – of varying types and capabilities – located on the ends of each of
the Sundancer’s eight solar panels. This is a true color standard video camera.
We also have cameras that image all the way from the ultraviolet to infrared
spectrums. You can see the Sundancer below, with its four forward solar arrays.
And, forward of it, the storage module and EDS, with its four auxiliary solar
arrays. I have the video gain turned way down so that you can see detail on the
daylight side of the ship. That’s why you can’t see many stars. Okay, now I’m
going to pan around to the aft end, and we’ll have a look at what’s back there.
Okay, there we go. There’s the CSM, the command/service module, which Jeff is
now squeezing into. Are you there yet?”

Jeff opened the outer hatch and
dropped into the tunnel. “Yeah, just about. Why don’t you center on the
starboard rendezvous window and zoom in.”

“Roger.”

He pulled into the crew compartment
and up to the rendezvous window, looked out and waved.

“Got you,” said Gabe.

“Alright. You’re all now looking at
me through one of the CM rendezvous, or docking, windows from out in space. I
guess that makes you astronauts. Welcome to the club. Gabe, why don’t you pass
video back to me, and see if you can find Earth.”

“I think I can do that.”

“Roger that. Okay, we’re now in the
command module. This is where we were when we launched, and where we’ll be
sitting whenever we make a main engine burn.” Jeff slowly panned around the CM.
“As you can see, it’s pretty cramped, and filled with buttons, switches,
display panels, and a bunch of other stuff. If any of you have seen the movie,
Apollo
13
, this may look a little familiar. This is in fact an Apollo era CSM,
though it’s been completely overhauled and, uh, substantially updated. The
biggest difference you’re likely to notice is the glass panel cockpit. That’s
all new. This flight system was modeled after the cockpit of a Boeing 737, as
was the Space Shuttle. And, having worked in both the Apollo simulator, and
ours, this is a heck of a lot easier to fly. The seats, from left to right, are
pilot, command, and engineer/navigator. And down below… there… surgeon. That’s
Sue’s rabbit hole. The command seat, mine, is folded, for now, giving us easy
access to the aft storage compartment. Below the instrument panel, that little
cubbyhole is the navigational position. That’s where the sextant is. During the
Apollo missions, that’s where they did all their navigation. Gabe has it a
little easier now, as this guidance and navigation suite is connected to the
Sundancer’s G&N suite via a data link, and she can navigate from the
comfort of the Sundancer’s commons. As the Apollo lunar missions typically
lasted eight to twelve days, and we’ll be out here for seven months – twice – a
little more convenience is highly desirable, and very welcome.

“Of this entire ship, this command
module is the only part that will be returning to Earth with us. The EDS and
storage module up forward will be jettisoned prior to entry into Mars orbit,
and the Sundancer and service module will be jettisoned prior to Earth
re-entry. Other than that, the only thing coming back will be the Mars ascent
vehicle containing samples; that is, rocks that we hope to collect while on the
planet. And that part belongs to NASA and JPL. Well, that’s about all there is
to see in here. Gabe? You find Earth yet?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Okay, well, why don’t you take
over and show the folks back home what it looks like, while I try and find my
way back.”

“Alright. If you get lost, just
holler, and we’ll send out the St. Bernard.”

Jeff chuckled. “Right.”

“Okay. What you are seeing now is
an image of the starfield directly behind us, and it should appear almost
exactly as it would if you were here and outside the ship. That’s the sun in
the lower left. Earth is directly in the center, though you can’t see it. To
the left is the constellation
Pisces
, at the lower center is
Andromeda
,
and to the right is
Cassiopeia
. I’m going to overlay a planetarium
image… there. This is simply a computer generated graphic of the constellations
and major celestial bodies so you can see where everything is. This image may
appear upside down to some of you. Our ship rotates on its axis at about three
revolutions per hour to maintain even heating from the sun’s rays. At present,
this camera is on what you might call the ‘bottom’ of the ship, relative to the
conventional image of the solar ecliptic, so the picture looks backwards. Now
I’ll zoom in on Earth. There you are. That’s about all we can see without the
telescope. From here, Earth appears only about half the diameter of the moon as
seen from Earth, and we can see only the night side of both Earth and the moon,
with just the slightest hint of the morning terminator. Okay, now let’s see if
we can do a bit better. There we go. This is from our 14” Schmidt-Cassegrain
telescope at full magnification – nearly 500 power. That looks like dawn over
western Australia. We enjoy looking at this. It’s comforting to know Earth is
still there, even though it’s approaching two million miles distance. I’m
afraid that’s it. That’s all there is. We should have a somewhat better view in
five or six months as we approach Mars, and Earth has moved around to the other
side of the sun.”

Jeff pulled into the commons. Gabe
switched back to the interior camera and they all gathered in their original
seats.

“Well,” said Jeff, “I think that’s
about all the time we have, for now. I’m sorry we couldn’t get to all of your
questions, but time and distance being what they are… Be sure and checkout our
website, GreyAerospace.com, and look us up on Twitter and Facebook and all
those other Internet places that I don’t know anything about.” He grinned.
“Feel free to post questions and mission control in Newport will forward some
of them to us now and then and we’ll try and get you an answer. We all hope you
found it interesting, and even educational, and, uh, keep in touch.
Ares
out.”

Gabe killed the video feed. “Well, that was fun.”

“Yeah, I thought it went pretty
well. I’m gonna guess that Abby’s little nap will be a news highlight.”

Abby chuckled, “Great.”

Gabe groaned, “If you’d done that
with me, I would have barfed.”

Jeff nodded, smiling. “Uh… yeah.
That was on my mind.”

Thursday, June 23,
2016 (T plus 93 days)

FLIGHT, “
Ares
, Newport,
midcourse correction PAD follows.”

Jeff and Abby got ready to write,
Gabe just listened. Jeff glanced at her. “You sure you don’t want to write this
down?”

She just smiled and shook her head.

FLIGHT, “
Ares
, this is
Newport. SPS/G&N; mass 160149; pitch and yaw trim, plus 0.83 minus 0.20;
UTC ignition 14:00:00; plus 0047.9, minus 0001.2, plus 0071.8; roll 279, pitch
4, yaw 17; Delta-V
_T
86.4, burn duration 69, Delta-V
_C
81.9; sextant star 36, 212.3, 32.0; GDC align per your last fix; no ullage.
Read back, over.”

As Abby read back the PAD, Jeff leaned to Gabe.
“That sound right?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“What about the GDC stars and alignment?”

“Like she said, per our last fix.
We’re here, they’re not. We already verified the GDC alignment. Relax, this is
the easy part.”

“What’s the hard part?”

“Waiting for the engine to light.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“We miss Mars by 179,000 kilometers
and spend the rest of eternity lost in space.”

Jeff frowned. “Um, that would be
bad.”

Gabe cast him a nervous grin.
“Yeah.”

“Okay then, let’s try not to do
that.”

“Right.”

While Jeff waited for the readback
confirmation from Newport he twiddled his thumbs.