Back to the Moon-ARC

Ross and Barbara Owen, the AA for Space Flight, were thumbing through the book, making notes, when Stetson’s call came in. Stetson was among the very few to have Ross’s cell-phone number. But Stetson was NASA’s front man for the current generation. He was the new Captain Kirk.

“Calvin, we can save these people.” Ross noted the sound of absolute certainty in Stetson’s voice.

“Save them? How?” replied Ross. “Bill, are you serious?”

“Their message says they have air for another seven or eight days. For all practical purposes, that was yesterday. We’re three days away from launch. It’ll take three days for us to get to the Moon, leaving them with one day to spare. Maybe two, if we’re lucky.”

“Wait a minute, Bill,” Ross said. “Let me put you on the speaker. Barbara is here with me.” Ross leaned forward, touched the speaker-phone button, and motioned for Owen to listen also.

“Go ahead, Bill.”

“Hi, Barbara.”

“Hi, Bill.”

“We can save them.” Stetson began to explain. “If we can find out where they are on the surface, and it looks like the Dreamscape crew did that for us for the most part, we can land there. Altair was intentionally overdesigned so we could land anywhere, anytime. That was one of the ways NASA originally sold the program. Apollo could only land near the equator—like we were planning to do on this trip. But we don’t have to. We launch with enough fuel to do one of the missions we weren’t planning to do for another few years. We can land anywhere on the Moon, as long as we know where to land before we launch.”

“Wait a minute,” Ross said. “Bill, you know I’m a politician, not a rocket scientist. Please explain why we’ve got to know before you go.”

“It takes energy, and in our case, propellant, to change an orbit from being around the equator to being in a circle around the lunar poles. The same is true on the Earth. That’s why it’s easier to place satellites in geostationary orbit when we launch from the equator than when we launch from the Kennedy Space Center. You can get there from Kennedy, but it takes more fuel. You’ve got to crank your circular orbit down from 28.5 degrees to zero degrees, and that takes fuel. Now, if we need to land at the lunar south pole, then we need to launch at a time that minimizes the amount of fuel we need to burn in order to get there, and that’s most easily accomplished if the rocket that originally puts us into space does part of the job. There is simply not enough fuel on the lander to do it by itself. Are you with me?”

“Yes, I think so.” Ross didn’t understand the details, but he did understand the overall concept. And he was certain Stetson and the other rocket scientists did understand it.

“Okay. Now, once I get there, I can land the Altair near their crash site, and we can cram them into the lander’s ascent stage and bring them home.”

“Bill.” This time Barbara spoke up. “There isn’t room on the ascent stage for your crew and their crew. Not only isn’t there room, but the combined weight will be more than can be lifted from the surface with the Altair’s engine —not enough thrust and probably not enough propellant even if there were.”

“The rocket science part we understand, Barbara,” Stetson said. “My crew won’t be with me. This is a rescue mission, and I’ll be going alone. That way we can fit all four of the Chinese in the ascent stage with me. We don’t need to bring back any rocks, and that will save weight. And we can probably offload all of the science hardware— saving even more weight.”

Ross didn’t know if the plan was feasible; he would let his engineers tell him that. But he did know that this was just the kind of thing that, if successful, would be his ticket within the administration. And it might save some lives on the way. But more importantly, it would make him, NASA, the astronauts, and the space program heroes. Heroes got money and, more importantly, votes.

“Barbara, what do you think?”

“Well, I don’t know. It sounds like it might work. But we’ll have to run the numbers.”

“Trust me, Barbara,” Stetson said. “Hell, I ran the numbers! This will work. But we have to know where they are, and right now the Chinese aren’t even admitting that the people Space Excursions talked to are theirs. It’s my guess that the Chinese aren’t sure exactly where they are. If we take their data and run it through a fine-tooth comb and a supercomputer, we’ll have the crash position located close enough to do the job. We’re taking the rover anyway, so if I miss them by a few miles, then I can go get them.”

“Okay. I get it, Bill.” Ross leaned toward the speakerphone, took a deep breath, and almost too eagerly replied, “Bill, you and Barbara get a team together and see if this will really work. Use whomever you need from Johnson, Kennedy, and Marshall. I’ll carry this to the Vice President as an option, but he’ll want to know yesterday whether or not we can really do it. That means I want to know for sure by tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. And I don’t like the idea of you going it alone. You’re taking a copilot with you.”

“Okay. I’ll have to pick the right crew member, then. And we’ll have to figure out something on the Altair that we can toss overboard to make up for the extra passenger.”

“Do that. By eight a.m.”

“Will do.” Stetson wasn’t quite finished. “Calvin. We must know exactly where they crashed. And that means the Chinese need to play ball yesterday. It takes time to run trajectories, and we need to know so we can tweak our launch window—before I launch. If we had their orbital-telemetry data that we could add in with the Space Excursions data, it would make life easier.”

“I’ll tell the Vice President,” Ross said.

Chapter 18

The obscenely cheery voice of the news announcer blared from the alarm clock at exactly 5:00 a.m. the next morning, awakening Stetson from the three hours of sleep he had allowed himself the night before. “Good morning, Space Coast! It’s time to get that pot of coffee brewing and for your five-day forecast.”

Stetson groaned, rolled over, and quickly turned down the volume on the old-fashioned clock radio beside his bed. He’d been up until almost two o’clock meeting with Menendez, Chow, and Leonard, as well as a hastily assembled team of engineers from three NASA field centers. They were discussing all the options that might allow