“I’m Sylvia Contreras,” she said. “Legal consultant. I’ve been trying to get approval for our tower but have been running into problems since it’s so unusual. That’s why we’re coming to you. We’re going to need help to get something pushed through Virginia’s system since the tower doesn’t fit into the scope of the existing regulatory framework.”
“Ah,” Agnos said. He decided he didn’t need to introduce himself to the young man or woman since it sounded like Contreras was the heavy lifter of the group. “Let’s sit down,” he said waving to the comfortable furniture grouping. “You can tell me all about it.” As everyone was settling into seats, he asked, “What’s so unusual about this tower you want to build?” So far, he’d heard it wasn’t actually a building, rather an industrial tower that they hoped to build to an extreme height. Something to do with rockets, but from what he’d heard, not hugely different from a radio tower. It sounded like it would be somewhat of an eyesore, but it was supposed to be out in a rural area so he didn’t imagine very many voters would care.
They all looked at the young Asian woman. She stood and told her phone to throw images up on the room’s biggest screen. First was a map of eastern Virginia. She indicated a spot on the map, southeast of Richmond, and a little west of Norfolk. “Staze bought some land here that’d been contaminated by toxic waste. We’re in the process of remediating the toxins. It’d been zoned industrial since it could no longer be used for farming, which fits our needs well. What we’re hoping to do is build a tower here that can be used to launch satellites and spacecraft, usually in a southwesterly direction.”
“Wait a minute,” Agnos said. “I assume you’re talkin’ about rockets?”
She nodded, “Yes, sir.”
“Now I’ve never been to a launch down in Florida or Texas, but I know enough to be aware they make a hell of a lot of noise and that the exhaust comin’ out of those rockets isn’t benign. Some of it’s toxic and all of it’s at least polluting.” He narrowed his eyes at the map. “If you’re taking off to the southeast, your rockets’ll be flying over the Great Dismal Swamp which is a National Wildlife Refuge. Even if the state allows it, I’ll bet the wildlife people will take a dim view of your rockets goin’ overhead.”
“Um,” the young woman glanced at the young black man rather than any of the more senior people in her group. This made Agnos think the young guy was their techno-nerd. The black guy gave her a nod and she turned back to Agnos. “The tower will be several miles high before it starts over the swamp, and the rocket engines won’t start firing until the craft’s gone off the top of the tower. Because of the distance and a lack of air density, no one on the ground will be able to hear them. Even so, the rockets will be burning hydrogen and oxygen, so their exhaust will be completely nontoxic, that is, it’ll be water.”
“‘A lack of air density?’ How tall’s this tower going to be?”
“At least a hundred kilometers. Um, that’s sixty-two miles.”
Agnos blinked and looked over at Erin Brock. She looked stunned. Jack Stanley merely looked surprised. Agnos turned back to the young lady, “Excuse me, honey, I assume you know that, at present, the tallest building in the world is only a little over one kilometer high, right?”
“Yes, sir. We’re not talking about a building though. It’s going to be an industrial tower. And when they built the Jedda Tower, they didn’t have Stade, which is far stronger than steel. We expect that once architects wake up to the possibilities arising from Stade’s properties, they’ll build much higher than Jedda.”
She went on to explain that the tower would start as a tripod ten miles on a side. She brought up an artist’s rendering of this but the limbs of the tower were so slender relative to their length that they couldn’t be seen on images of the entire tower unless they were highlighted. She had a rendering of them at night when they’d be lighted to warn aircraft. On that image they were visible—barely. She said they still needed to buy land for the bases of the other two limbs of the tripod. Here she brought back the map, with large circles designating acceptable locations. From the apex of the tripod, the limb that started on the land they already owned was going to keep going up to a total of two-hundred kilometers, at the thirty-degree angle it started at, eventually reaching an altitude of a hundred kilometers. This was totally invisible on the rendering unless it was highlighted. She said the rockets would be loaded onto the tower down at their base west of Norfolk and they’d be accelerated up the tower using electric motors. The actual motors would be located a mile up the tower so people on the ground wouldn’t hear them. The rocket engines wouldn’t fire until the spacecraft shot off the top of the tower, already beyond the “edge of space” and traveling at close to 9,000 miles per hour.
Staggered by this vision, Agnos said, “The FAA won’t let you build a tower that high will it?”
“No, sir. We’re hoping you can help influence them into making an exception.”
“And… why would the state of Virginia want you to build this massive tower here? Want
