Back to the Moon-ARC

Chapter 15

“This is it!” Paul Gesling said into the camera that transmitted his image from the cockpit of the Dreamscape to the five passengers strapped into their seats behind him in the crew cabin. “In a few days, you’ll be the first people since the Apollo astronauts to go to the Moon and back. I know the training has sometimes been less than fun, but what we’re about to do will make history and give you something to tell your grandchildren about. You are going to get your money’s worth—and then some!”

Not wanting to be distracted from his preflight checklist any longer, Gesling turned back to the forward view screen and instrument panel. With the press of a virtual button on the touch screen, he turned off his audio but left the video feed on. Gary Childers insisted that the paying customers have a chance to see what the hired help was up to in all stages of the mission.

The Dreamscape was certainly living up to its name. Perched on the Nevada desert runway like a large and beautiful bird, it was about to take flight. The engines were running, producing the telltale heat exhaust, causing the air behind the vehicle to distort light in unusual ways, making objects appear to ripple in the heat of the mid-day sun. Crisscrossing orange and red plasma streams poured into a billowing exhaust cloud of puffy white steam. Emblazoned on the front of the spaceship was its name, the corporate emblem of Space Excursions, and a big American flag. Gary Childers was in business to make money, but he was also a proud American.

Within the vehicle, hundreds of sensors were measuring electrical current in numerous subsystems, fluid temperatures, and the mechanical status of anything and everything that had to move or rotate in order for Dreamscape to make its upcoming voyage.

As the passengers waited anxiously in their seats, the shrill whine of the jet engines increased in volume as one of the last preflight tests was run to completion.

Gesling was pleased. So far, all systems were operating as they should, and the launch countdown was proceeding on schedule. In just another few minutes, he would ease off the brakes, throttle up, and begin the journey down the runway. Piece of cake, he thought to himself.

Now it was time for Gesling to examine the crew in the last of his preflight checklists. This checklist was not one that the FAA required; rather, it was one Gary Childers mandated. First, he was to look over the vital signs of each passenger, as relayed to the display to his left inside the cockpit. From here he could monitor their heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, and virtually every other organ in their bodies. Each had been benchmarked against their physiological profiles during training, and the current results were meticulously compared with their earlier results by the onboard computer. If any were out of the anticipated bounds for this, the real thing, then Gesling was authorized to have them removed from the vehicle. The Moon was nearly a quarter million miles away from the nearest hospital, and under no circumstances could the health of any passenger jeopardize the mission (or its profitability and good press coverage).

The second part of the Childers Checklist was highly subjective. Paul was to look over the faces of each passenger and determine if any looked like they were about to panic or faint. Again, this could be cause for removal—but Paul knew that if he exercised this option and the passenger turned out to be okay, his future piloting opportunities with Space Excursions would be limited indeed.

The Dreamscape was designed with seats much like those of a commercial jet. There was one pilot seat up front in the middle of the cockpit. Behind the pilot seat was the “aisle,” and on either side was one seat. Each passenger therefore had an aisle and a window. The seats were numbered in rows and lettered for the side of the aisle they were on. Seats 1A and 2A were on the left side of the aisle. Seats 1B, 2B, and 3B were on the right. Where seat 3A would have been was where the docking/boarding hatch was located. And behind seat 3B was the bathroom and storage-container wall. Each of the seats was designed for full reclining to allow for sleeping on the long lunar flights. But at present all the seats were upright and filled with occupants.

Paul looked at Matt Thibodeau in seat 1A. The arrogant SOB looked calm enough. He was in his seat, glancing around the cabin, out the window, and then down at the status screen on the back of the chair in front of his seat. If it weren’t for the pressure suit, he would look like any other bored businessman taking an airplane flight to some other city for a business meeting. Gesling didn’t much like Thibodeau, but there was no obvious reason to remove him.

Next, he glanced at Maquita Singer, the millionaire owner of South Africa’s Singer Luxury Hotels, who sat in seat 1B. She was definitely nervous, her eyes darting around the cabin, not remaining on any one spot for more than a few seconds. Paul examined her vital signs again and saw that they were elevated but absolutely normal for someone about to accelerate from a dead stop to over twenty-four thousand miles per hour, leave the bounds of Earth’s gravity for the first time in their life, travel nearly a quarter million miles through deadly vacuum to orbit the Moon, and then travel back to land here in the desert. No, this wasn’t to be a normal day in the boardroom of a luxury-hotel chain.

Paul rolled his eyes when he looked at Sharik Mbanta in seat 2A. Mbanta was staring to his left, across the aisle, directly at Singer. The man who tried to bed every woman on the training staff apparently wasn’t thinking about going to the Moon. To Paul, he looked like he was thinking about how he could join the “More Than A Mile High” Club with Ms. Singer. Aloud, Gesling muttered, “I can’t believe this guy.” But his vital signs were also normal, and Paul really had no firm basis for ejecting him from the flight—other than extreme dislike.

Bridget Wells in seat 2B looked as cool as she had in all phases of the training that led up to this moment. She was blond with only a little gray, in her mid-fifties, and in excellent physical condition. A mother of two from Marshalltown, Iowa, she looked like just about every other soccer mom one might expect to run into at the supermarket. By looking at her, one would think there was no way she could come up with the money to pay for a trip to the Moon, but Paul did know and understand why she had so eagerly paid millions to have a seat on Dreamscape. She was a believer.

During training, Bridget had told Gesling her story. She was born a couple of years before Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon and had no memory of watching it happen—she was too young. When Bridget was about twelve, she discovered science fiction and became hooked. She read all the classic science fiction writers, including Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov. She didn’t have a math aptitude, so she didn’t go down an engineering path for a career in the space business. But she never lost her interest. She had written more than eight screenplays for science fiction movies that had turned out to be blockbusters. It was from these movies that she had earned her millionaire status. Early in her training she told Paul of watching the NASA TV channel for hours at a time, wishing that she were the one in space. Dreamscape gave her the chance to live her dream and aboard her she sat, grinning like a kid in a candy store, ready to go to the Moon. All her vital signs were normal, and Paul was hoping that she, more than all the others, would have the trip of a lifetime.

Finally, there was Dr. John Graves. Graves, too, was in his mid-fifties, but he was not nearly as trim and fit as Bridget, nor, for that matter, as any other passenger. In fact, he almost didn’t get to fly due to his weight. If he hadn’t lost the required forty pounds, someone else would be sitting here rather than him. Even so, no one would say he looked “fit and trim.” Graves was an engineer and vice president at a major computer company, and, like Bridget Wells, he was a believer. The big difference between him and Ms. Wells, other than his sex and overall physical condition, was his attitude. Graves treated the flight as something he deserved. Though he was never quite rude, Gesling knew that in Graves’s eyes he was merely the bus driver. Graves sat stiffly in his chair, his body rigid and his head unmoving as if afraid the Dreamscape would suddenly take off with acceleration sufficient to rip it off his shoulders. His vital signs were elevated, but still within the bounds of what the flight computer considered normal for a passenger at this point of the trip.

Gesling made note that the passenger assessments were complete and focused back on the prelaunch checklist and the status screens. He told his flight controller that Dreamscape was ready for takeoff.

The United States Federal Aviation Administration had long-since cleared the sky for miles around the Nevada Spaceport. Otherwise, there would have been the inevitable stray airplane or errant news reporter wanting to cover the Dreamscape’s flight from too close to the launch site.

Thousands of spectators were present, filling the highways around the spaceport. Reminiscent of the earliest of the rocket flights of the 1960s, the mood among those gathered to watch the launch was akin to that of groupies at a rock concert or hard-core partiers. And party they did. This was a big day for anyone who ever thought they might want to go into space. Dreamscape was about to take five everyday people (aside from the fact that they were rich enough to pay for the flight) to the Moon. For many, this was the unfulfilled promise of Apollo and NASA, and it was about to happen for real.

“Okay, we’re going around the horn,” Paul announced over the intercom. “I want a thumbs-up, a smile, and your name and status just like we’ve trained.” Paul toggled the screen to show five sections. Each split-screen section had a corresponding seat number and occupant name above it.

“Seat 1A, status?”

“Matt Thibodeau is A-OK!”

“Seat 1B, status?”

“Maquita Singer is A-OK!”

“Seat 2A, status?”

“Sharik Mbanta is A-OK!”

“Seat 2B, status?”

“Bridget Wells is A-OK!”

“Seat 3B, status?”

“John Graves is A-OK!”

“Roger that. Dreamscape crew is good to go.” Paul gave them all the green light and returned the thumbs-up and smile. “Control, our checklist is clear, and we are all systems go.”

“Roger that, Dreamscape. All systems are go for launch.”

In addition to the space enthusiasts, the Honda minivan was back, antenna deployed, positioned to monitor the Dreamscape launch from its chosen observation post fifteen miles away—the occupants doing their jobs for their country. That didn’t stop them from also reveling in the moment, for they, too, harbored an interest in going to space. Watching Dreamscape start to roll down the runway was just as exciting for them as it was for all those at or near the spaceport. They just wanted to make sure that there was enough data captured for their countrymen to someday duplicate the feat.

The acceleration pushed Paul back into the webbing that secured him to his seat. He could feel the skin on his cheekbones being pulled back toward his ears. He could hear his heartbeat and feel the kick to his abdomen as the Dreamscape’s scramjet engaged at a little over twenty thousand feet. The whine of the engines was only momentarily loud before the cabin’s active soundproofing kicked in and diminished it to something just short of a deafening dull roar.

Just a few feet away from Gesling and the five passengers, Dreamscape’s engines began running in ramjet mode, with the airflow into the engine traveling at something less than the speed of sound. As velocity increased, so did the speed of the air coming into the engines.

All systems were working as they should, and Paul saw no warning lights. He watched the Dreamscape’s velocity steadily increase from Mach 1 to Mach 2, and, in just a few short seconds, to Mach 3, then 4. At Mach 8 the engine switched from ramjet to scramjet mode as the air flowing into the engine’s inlet became self-sustaining at hypersonic velocities. Now the vehicle was truly hauling ass and accelerating toward its top airspeed of Mach 12.

While Gesling was focused on the vehicle, the passengers were taking note that the Earth now appeared to be rather small, with noticeable curvature. The “ah ha!” moment came first to Maquita Singer, and she couldn’t help but voice her observation, “It’s a planet after all. Where are the borders? It’s just one planet. This is truly amazing!” Her comment elicited a grunt from Thibodeau and a nod from Dr. Graves.

“It’s called the overview effect,” Bridget Wells commented knowingly. “Since the sixties, many astronauts independently made the same observation once they got up here. There’ve been books written about it—I read them all doing research for the last television series I was writing for.”

Another grunt came from Thibodeau.

Gesling and all the passengers felt the hard slap of the first stage separating. The scramjet first stage had done its job and propelled the Dreamscape to twelve times the speed of sound. It was now time for it to fly back to the landing site for refurbishment and repair.

A fraction of a second later, the upper-stage rocket motor ignited, once again pushing everyone back sharply into their seats. The rocket continued accelerating the Dreamscape as it left the last remnants of Earth’s atmosphere and entered interplanetary space.

The passengers, now astronauts, stared out their windows at the spherical blue Earth beneath them. The thin haze that was the atmosphere enveloped the globe, and sunlight glinted off the now-useless wings on the right side of Dreamscape. Above them was pure darkness until their eyes grew accustomed to it and they were then able to see the stars.

Gesling saw all this, and more. But he didn’t have time to appreciate the beauty and grandeur. He had a job to do. So far there were no warning lights, and all systems appeared to be working as designed. A few minutes into the checklist, the onboard Global Positioning System locked on to four satellites, the inertial-navigation unit spun up, and the exterior star trackers started mapping their orientation. The amalgam of the three systems input data into the ship’s computer, which in turn calculated Dreamscape’s exact orbital position and orientation with respect to the Earth and space.

“GPS acquired,” Gesling said. “Computer: nav-lock to depot.” He didn’t often use the computer’s voice-recognition program, but in this case he made an exception. A few moments later, projected on the heads-up display as if written by a ghostly unseen companion, the trajectory the computer plotted between his current location and the nearly co-orbital refueling station appeared before him. Relieved, Gesling spoke to his ground controllers. “I’ve got the trajectory to the depot plotted and am about to engage. We’re right where we’re supposed to be, and we should rendezvous in less than three orbits.”

“Roger that, Dreamscape.”

“Control, we’re ready for OOB in forty-five.”

“Roger that, Dreamscape. Clock shows OOB on schedule.”

“Warning, prepare for orbital orientation burn.” The Bitchin’ Betty’s voice chimed throughout the little spacecraft. “In three, two, one.”

The thrusters fired, rolling and pitching the ship over to the upside-down-and-backward flight configuration. The ship jostled a bit and then settled down as the thrusters halted the ship in just the right position so that the occupants could get a really good view of the Earth from their side and overhead windows.

Only then did Gesling have time to check on his passengers’ physical status. He glanced to his side at the cabin view screen and pretty much saw what he expected. Thibodeau had opened his visor and was puking his guts out into the low-pressure barf bag attached to his seat. The low-airflow suction attached to the bottom of the bag kept the liquid from floating around the cabin as the system pulled it into the onboard sewage tank.

Maquita Singer and Sharik Mbanta were both green at the gills, and hearing Thibodeau lose his lunch was about to send them over the edge also. Space sickness was very common, and almost everyone going into space experienced it. There was no good reason for one person to get sick and another not. It just happened. Gesling was pleased that Thibodeau was among those afflicted.

Bridget Wells and the stuffy Dr. Graves were unaffected. They glanced somewhat nervously at their stricken colleagues and then promptly looked back out the windows.

Gesling assessed the urgency of the situation and decided that it wasn’t too bad. Their training had prepared them for space sickness, and it appeared that they had paid attention to that lesson.

“Matt, Sharik, and Maquita, I would recommend you do your best to reset your inner ear with the exercise we trained on. If you need meds, let me know.” Paul did his job. He looked at the five-sectioned monitor reporting on each of the crew members. Those who were sick began shaking their heads madly, to reset the balance system in their inner ears. Astronauts had learned that trick from watching cats fall out of trees—or at least that was the story Paul had heard. “We’re going around the horn. If you can make it, I want a verbal and a thumbs-up.”

“Matt?”

“Uhm, good, gulp,” he groaned from around the barf bag and gave a thumbs-up.

“Maquita?”

“Good.” She gave a thumbs-up and seemed to be locking her jaws to keep from being sick again.

“Sharik?”

“A-OK,” he got out before having to cover with the barf bag again. He did manage a thumbs-up.

“Bridget?”

“A-OK, Paul.” Paul smiled as she gave her thumbs-up. The woman was a trooper.

“John?”

“A-OK, Paul.”

“Alright, good. Bridget, you can start bringing the telescope online at your leisure,” Paul told the occupant of seat 2B. After all, running the telescope was her job.

“Roger that, Paul. Bringing the ISR package online.” Paul could see the icon for the system turn from red to green and could tell that it was being handled.

A few hours later, Thibodeau was still recovering while Wells and Graves were busily eating a snack and looking at the really awesome imagery coming through the telescope system as well as looking out the windows. Singer and Mbanta were drinking and playing with their water. Without gravity, any spilled water formed nearly perfect spheres and floated like little planets around those who were attempting to drink. Any of the foods or liquids not captured by the crew would hopefully be filtered and captured with the air-handling system. Drops of water or foodstuff might prove a problem if they were to seep into some of the ship’s critical circuitry, but the ship was designed with sealed components to prevent just that from happening.

One by one the crew unstrapped and began bouncing around the cabin from wall to wall, chasing food globules and generally enjoying their weightlessness. For the most part the nausea had subsided—for the most part. Thibodeau still looked a little pale around the edges. To Gesling and the ground crew, who were watching the antics in the passenger cabin on closed-circuit television, they looked like a bunch of kids on the playground. But Paul had to admit that he had done the exact same thing on his first mission into microgravity. In fact, as far as he could tell, all the astronauts throughout history had done similar antics.

Paul believed they were all thoroughly enjoying their ride and was planning to remark to Childers that their customers were definitely getting their money’s worth and the trip to the Moon hadn’t yet even begun.

“Alright, everyone, strap in and prepare for docking with the refueling station.” Paul waited until all the crew safety-restraint icons showed locked and in place before he toggled the automated docking-alignment thrusters routine. The thrusters fired and reoriented the ship so that it was still flying upside down, but now nose first.

“Extending refueling probe,” he said as he tapped the controls. The probe extended from just under the nose of the little spacecraft to a point about twenty feet out in front of it.

“Control, this is Dreamscape. We’ve got the tanker’s drogue in the crosshairs. Lidar shows we are right on target at three thousand feet and closing.”

“Roger that, Paul. Telemetry tracking is good.”

“Cycling the pumps and prop-tankage cryo.”

“All systems look good to us, Paul. We show one thousand feet.”

“Roger that, Control. Nine hundred seventy feet and closing. Still in the crosshairs.” Paul gently placed his hand around the stick and prepared for the hand-off of the automated system’s control of the ship’s flight control. The smaller microthrusters on the end of the flexible probe tube were still on auto. The pilot would roughly guide the ship into the “basket” or “funnel” of the drogue on the refueling spacecraft. But the sensors would maneuver the end of the probe for precise corrections.

“Dreamscape has control of the probe and closing at five hundred feet.”

“Roger that, Dreamscape. Looking good and go for refuel.”

“Contact in ten seconds.” Paul could feel sweat beading on his forehead, but he didn’t have time to wipe it away. He maintained his focus as he guided the little proboscis into the refueling portal. Boom and drogue was how pilots had refueled aircraft for decades, and Paul had thousands of hours of practice in aircraft and several thousand hours in the simulator. He’d also actually docked with the refueling tank once during the orbital test flight. It was all well rehearsed, but he was still nervous as hell.

The boom clicked into place in the drogue, and the flex hose oscillated up and down slightly as the thrusters of the Dreamscape matched orbital velocity with the tank ship perfectly. The tube continued to jiggle only slightly.

“Bingo! We’re hooked up and ready for refueling.”

Gesling leaned back and took a moment to wipe his forehead with the back of his hand. He also let out a sigh of relief. One slight misjudgment on his part could have damaged the system and not allowed them to refuel—that would have ended the mission and sent them all home. A slightly worse than “slight” misjudgment could have sent a mechanical vibration down the tube that could buckle the tube and rupture the tank—that would have ended the mission in a fireball, and nobody would have made it home.

“Dreamscape, we show flow at one hundred gallons per minute nominal.”

“Roger that, Control. We’re refueling, and all systems are in the green.”

Paul checked the crew’s vitals and faces. They were all fine and appeared to be having the times of their lives.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have now passed through nine hundred eighty thousand feet, so feel free to unbuckle yourselves and move about the cabin.” He added a little chuckle at the end to keep the mood light. Why not let them have their fun while the Dreamscape refilled its tanks at the orbiting depot to which it was now attached?

Maquita performed her mission then, which was to use external cameras to video all docking and landing procedures throughout the mission. She sat at her seat guiding the external cameras via the touch-screen panel at her station.

After the Dreamscape’s tanks were full, Gesling set about the undocking process to detach from the depot and take up station a few kilometers away for the “night.” He and the passengers would close the covers on their windows, darken the interior of Dreamscape, and try to get eight hours of sleep. He doubted that many would be able to sleep, but they’d been awake for almost eighteen hours and definitely needed a rest.

At Space Excursions’ Nevada Spaceport, Gary Childers was jubilant. After the press conference, he granted no less than eight one-on-one interviews with various media outlets and was basking in the free and positive news coverage. Childers knew the value of free publicity, and he was definitely getting more than he had imagined possible. The Dreamscape and her passengers were in space and getting ready to go to the Moon.

In just a few hours, Gesling would awaken the passengers, run through his final checklist, and ignite the rocket engine that would take the Dreamscape out of Earth orbit and toward the Moon. The trip to the Moon would take a little more than three days.

Childers knew that once the main engine fired, they would be committed. The trajectory they would fly was called “free return” for a very good reason. Like Apollo 13, but hopefully without the peril, the spacecraft would fly by and around the Moon one time, not going into orbit, but rather looping behind the Moon and then coasting back to Earth. The main engine would fire again when the Dreamscape was ready to brake and again be captured into Earth orbit—after completing its historic journey around the Moon. The next flight, assuming there would be customers for it, would fire braking thrusters and enter orbit around the Moon. But that was the future. At the moment a “free return” was still a groundbreaking accomplishment for private industry.

Childers wasn’t nervous about this aspect of the trip. He would only get nervous after Gesling brought the ship back to Earth orbit and prepared for landing. Getting from orbit to the ground was the part that haunted Childers. He remembered the Columbia space shuttle accident—he was at the Kennedy Space Center when STS-107 was supposed to land, and he would never forget the look on the faces of the ground crew when the ship didn’t appear on schedule and they realized something must have gone horribly wrong. Their faces still haunted him, and the vision of his beloved Dreamscape breaking up high in the atmosphere was his nightmare. He was confident in his ship, his team, and in Paul Gesling—but he wouldn’t really relax until the ship was safely home and the passengers giving their own interviews on all the news networks.

At his home in Houston, Bill Stetson watched the interview with Gary Childers as he sipped a cold Long Island iced tea. Sitting with his wife, during their last evening together before he was to leave for Florida, Stetson, too, was jubilant.

“That man ought to be running NASA,” said Stetson.

Terry, his wife of twenty-two years, looked up from the image of Gary Childers centered on their television screen, placed her head in the crook of Stetson’s outstretched arm, and said simply, “Oh?”

“He’s got what most managers at NASA lost years ago—guts. This man risked his personal fortune to start a company and do something that even most governments couldn’t do. He’s sending people to the Moon. Now, granted, he’s not landing, and that’s a damned sight harder. But he is sending people to the Moon. If we had more leaders like him, I’d be going to Mars next week instead of the Moon.”

“And how long would that take you away from me?” she asked.

“Well, about three years.”

“I see,” she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste and snuggling a little closer to her husband. “Bill Stetson, you will not be away from me for three years. Having you gone for a month will be too long as it is.” She looked him in the eyes and moved her head forward until her lips were only a few inches from his.

“The kids won’t be back for another two hours. Fred and Linda took them out to get dessert, and that means we have this great big house all to ourselves until they get back.…” Her voice trailed off.

“Hmm. Well, Mrs. Stetson, whatever shall we do to keep ourselves occupied while the kids are away?”

Inching her way still closer to the husband she was about to lose for a month, the man who was about to be separated from her by a quarter of a million miles, she replied, “We’ll think of something.”

“Mission control, this is Stetson.” He leaned in and kissed his wife softly but quickly. “We are go for launch.”