Back to the Moon-ARC

Chapter 17

This was one press briefing for which Caroline O’Conner hadn’t prepared Gary Childers. They had the speech ready for a fully successful mission. They had a speech ready for a disaster. In fact, they had five different speeches ready in case the worst happened and Dreamscape didn’t make it back to Earth. They didn’t have one prepared for telling the world that they’d discovered stranded Chinese astronauts calling for help from the surface of the Moon.

The hastily assembled press corps was expecting one of the five prepared speeches. It was, after all, too soon to declare the voyage a success, since the Dreamscape was still at the Moon and wouldn’t be home for another few days.

“Hello.” Childers began speaking. “A little over an hour ago, the pilot of the Dreamscape, Captain Paul Gesling, took the ship around the far side of the Moon and into radio blackout. The mass of the Moon blocked all radio transmissions to and from Earth. At this time, the Dreamscape picked up an SOS from the surface of the Moon.” He paused.

The assembled press was truly surprised. Not a sound was uttered—other than one chuckle from a reporter who thought it was a joke—as they expectantly waited for Gary Childers to continue.

“The SOS apparently originated from the crew of a Chinese expedition that crash-landed on the Moon about a week ago. We know there are four of them, but we don’t know how they came to crash. All we know is that during the radio blackout, they, whoever they are, used a very low-power radio transmitter to signal Dreamscape and ask for help.”

The men and women of the press corps quickly regained their composure. A few were already texting or twittering the information to their newsrooms, while others were preparing follow-up questions.

“Ahem.” Gary Childers was not yet finished. “Captain Gesling spoke briefly with one of the Chinese, a woman, and she told him that they had enough air to last at least another eight days. The onboard telescope was able to zoom in on their crash site due to some amazing work by the crew of the Dreamscape. Who said they are space tourists? Those people are astronauts, if you ask me! And we have images of the crash site that will be available soon.

“We sent the information off to NASA and have no idea what they intend to do with it. I’m not even sure they knew we sent it. That is all I know. We weren’t sure whom to call, and, given the urgency of the situation, we thought it best to let the world know about the crisis—so those that need to know can learn about it as soon as possible. That’s why I’m here. And to be honest with you, I never expected I’d be up here saying anything remotely like this.”

The reporter from ABC, recognizable to any space advocate as the “voice of all things space” from his almost cheerleading-like coverage of NASA and space flight in general, got the first question. “You’re sure they are Chinese? Are you telling us that the Chinese test flight that launched recently wasn’t a test flight but a real flight?”

“No, I’m not telling you that. You and I might infer that the Chinese actually launched people on their purported test flight, but I don’t know any such thing. The woman told Paul they were Chinese. She called her ship Harmony. And no, I am not sure they are Chinese. I suggest you ask the Chinese about that.”

“Mr. Childers!” shouted a CNN reporter. “Can your ship render any sort of aid?”

“Unfortunately not. And it’s not my decision. Dreamscape is firmly in the hands of Newtonian physics and on its way back home. The ship’s trajectory took it around the Moon, and now she’s headed back toward the Earth. There isn’t enough fuel on the ship to change course, and she isn’t designed to land anywhere except here. That is, unfortunately, reality. I truly wish it weren’t so. I would very much like to help these people. Perhaps merely detecting their signal was more help than we realize. I hope so.”

“Mr. Childers!” The CNN reporter followed up with another question. “I assume you recorded the conversation. Can we hear it?”

“Absolutely. In fact, I’m being told through my earbud that the imagery data is ready now as well. Ms. O’Conner, please play the audio recording and post up the images.”

Caroline started playing back the compressed recording on cue. The assembled media mob listened, spellbound, until the last burst of static. The images of the crashed Chinese spaceship cycled through on the large monitor behind him.

“We will provide a digital copy of the recording to everyone. Next question?”

“Mr. Childers!”

“Yes, Jason?” Gary pointed at the Fox News reporter.

“If they have been up there for a week already, why haven’t the Chinese told us about it?”

“I guess you should ask the Chinese about that, but the implications disgust me to the very core.”

The press was full of additional questions, but Gary Childers and Caroline O’Conner had only limited answers. The audio and imagery were all they had to offer.

“Bill! Bill! Get in here. You’ve gotta hear this!” It was the voice of Helen Menendez calling Stetson to the break room.

Stetson was in the hallway talking to Anthony Chow about the timeline of the second sortie that was planned for day three of their lunar mission. Chow’s title was mission specialist, and that meant he and Helen were responsible for conducting the science operations while they were on the Moon. Stetson was learning of a small change that Chow wanted to make that would potentially shorten their time on the surface by as much as an hour. Given the urgency in Menendez’s voice, the discussion would have to wait.

Stetson and Chow hurried down the hallway of the hotel-like building that housed them in the last few days before their historic launch. While they weren’t isolated to the extent that the previous lunar-mission crews had experienced fifty years before, as much as possible they were still kept away from most sources of potential illness—other people. And, more importantly, they were kept away from the press.

Though it was a minor annoyance, Stetson fully supported the quasi-quarantine. He was known for saying that he didn’t want to miss his chance of going to the Moon due to “a case of the damned measles” or, worse, “foot-in-mouth disease.”

They entered the spartanly furnished break room just as the news commentator on the television began playing the Dreamscape’s recording.

“Emergency! Please help!…STATIC SOS! This is the crew of the Chinese exploration ship Harmony calling for help! We’ve crashed and are…STATIC crew of the Harmony calling mumble mumble crashed and we need assistance!…STATIC. You do hear us! We’re the crew of the Chinese exploration ship Harmony. We crash-landed seven days mumble mumble mumble air for another eight, maybe mumble days mumble mumble only this low-power transmitter and mumble mumble home STATIC.”

“Son of a bitch!” Stetson was the first to react. “You’ve got to be kidding me! The Chinese crashed on the Moon?” His mind was racing. His first thoughts were uncharitable toward those who had beaten him to the Moon. Getting there had driven his career, and his life, since he was a little boy listening to Gene Cernan say those final words before he and his crew left the Moon for home.

Only after he cursed them did he start thinking of how scared they must be—trapped on an airless world, waiting on their air supply to run out. He stood in silence, weighing the magnitude of the crisis with his personal sense of purpose.

Charles Leonard, the last of Stetson’s crew, came into the break room and stood between Menendez and Chow as the television newscaster continued. “This is breaking news, and as yet there has been no reaction from the Chinese government or ours. What will the United States do in light of this new development? We will bring you up-to-the-minute information as we know it.”

“That sucks” was Leonard’s first comment after hearing the news. “They got all the way to the Moon, and now they’re going to die there. I bet you they cancel our flight. You?”

Stetson didn’t react. He’d had the very same thoughts shortly after hearing the news, but he quickly put them aside as counterproductive if not distastefully selfish. After all, there were humans about to die up there. Stetson’s mind was racing, and he already had a plan that, if successful, would mean that most, if not all, of the trapped Chinese would get to see once again the blue sky of Earth. And they’d owe the United States space program their lives!

Calvin Ross wasn’t accustomed to being summoned to the White House. Sure, he’d met the President there before his appointment, but all his other interactions with the administration had come through bureaucratic means—memos, budget blueprints, and a few phone calls from the White House Office of Management and Budget. This was a first, and it came just fifteen minutes after Ross had learned of the stranded Chinese. He had a desktop-computer application that tracked certain keywords such as NASA, space, Moon, etc. It was through an Internet alert that he became aware of the Harmony crew and their imminent death. He’d hardly had time to ponder the news before the call came to his BlackBerry and he was informed that a driver would be picking him up in three hours for a meeting with the Vice President and, perhaps, with the President himself.

Ross ran his fingers through his hair and picked up his cell phone to call his Associate Administrator for Space Flight. This AA was responsible for all of NASA’s flights that involved sending people to space. There was a separate AA for robotic science missions, and another for aeronautics research. If anyone would know what was going on or if NASA could do anything to help, it would be this AA.

“The Chinese government denies this outrageous story about any of our taikonauts being stranded on the Moon. Our recent mission was a robotic rehearsal for our planned campaign of scientific exploration of the Moon and nothing more. Any story that contradicts these facts is simply not true.”

The American lunar crew, minus Stetson, heard the vehement denial of the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations at the same time the rest of the country did—barely two hours after the news story broke.

“The video and audio all check out.” Leonard spoke, his voice full of derision. “Sure, the guys over at Space Excursions made this all up as a publicity stunt. I know Paul Gesling, and he would not be party to any such thing. No, the Chinese ambassador is lying.”

“What would they have to gain by lying?” Menendez responded.

“Stupidity,” Leonard said. “Honor. Plain and simple. They only want to report success and not failure. They want the world to know that they are the next superpower, and you can’t do that if you fail in something like this. Going to the Moon is the real deal, and if they have to admit they weren’t up to the job, then they lose face. Unfortunately, it may mean that some brave people are going to die up there—and they won’t get recognized as heroes by their own government, who are too afraid to admit they even exist.”

“Craziness.” Chow, visibly shaken added, “They’re up there, alone, running out of air, stranded a quarter of a million miles from home. I doubt they’ve been able to eat anything, either. If they are trapped in their suits, as this imagery suggests they might be, then they have to keep them on to survive.”

“Yeah, and better them than us,” Leonard responded.

“Oh my God!” Chow, reliving his own personal nightmare in the privacy of his thoughts, could only nod his head.

Stetson called Calvin Ross as he was preparing for his upcoming meeting with the Vice President. Ross had a data book in his safe that described the entire Chinese rocket program in some detail. The files were classified top secret, meaning that not only were they a secret important to immediate national security, but no foreign nationals could be made aware of their contents even if they had the appropriate clearance level. Some of the data contained therein had been gathered using techniques that might be compromised if the contents were made known beyond only those Americans with a true “need to know.”

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.