Orbit

Chapter 4

The administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration stares in abject disgust at the U.S. senator from Massachusetts, wondering if the inane slip in his last question is the result of a momentary distraction, or the pickling of too many brain cells from too many years of excessive drinking.

Geoff Shear loves being the head of NASA, but he hates like hell having to deal with the worst of the hypocrites on the Hill—senators and congressmen who convince the public that they support the space program while behind closed doors trying to emasculate it.

He scoots a bit closer to the microphone, letting the full force of the senator’s embarrassing mistake impress itself on the rest of the subcommittee and the media. The man is apparently unaware of what he’s said, and his staff seems equally confused.

“Senator,” Geoff begins, forcing a puzzled look on his face, “I’m sorry, but I may have missed something. I’m singularly unaware of any U.S. policy that supports funding the goal of eventual human colonization of Venus. If I’d known, I would have recommended against it—especially since the surface temperature on Venus is hot enough to melt lead.”

Good! he thinks. The senator looks befuddled as a horrified staff member rushes forward to whisper the right information in his ear. The aging liberal jerks his head around, wholly disbelieving, then grasps what he’s done to himself and that the NASA administrator has gleefully added to the embarrassment.

“I, ah, think you know very well, Mr. Shear, that I meant Mars, when I said Venus by mistake. I meant Mars. Of course we’re not going to go to Venus.”

“Only taking you at your word, Senator,” Geoff replies. “I thought I could do that safely.” Take that, you duplicitous SOB, Geoff thinks to himself as the senator mumbles a retort and returns to his staff’s list of questions. It’s the tiniest of paybacks for the senator’s leading a fight to all but scuttle NASA’s budget, but it feels good. No, it feels damn good, and he doesn’t need the windbag anyway. The senator is part of the disloyal minority now, his opposition to NASA programs essentially impotent.

Geoff all but sleepwalks through the remainder of the hearing, the thrust of the opposition’s efforts completely blunted. His budget figures are correct, and he is not, he tells them, going to stop turning to the media to complain about Congress every time it cuts down the space program.

The subcommittee’s Democrats and a few of the Republicans make it known that they are shocked and offended at the administrator’s defiant tone, but it’s obvious the media doesn’t care, and the opposition’s artificial outrage ends abruptly.

Geoff gathers his papers and stands confidently, knowing that the President approves of his pugnacious tactics. Even better is knowing that his methods are having the desired effect and putting unsupportive lawmakers in a corner.

“Eventually,” Geoff tells the two staff members who’ve shepherded him to the hearing, “those who vote no are going to have to do so in front of the same constituents who have listened to them praise every launch and every success NASA has ever had.”

Confidence is good, Geoff thinks, making sure the expression on his face mirrors serene self-assurance.

But minutes later when he’s alone and in the backseat of his chauffeured government car, he catches himself once again wondering how much longer he can continue using the Joseph Goebbels method, the big lie, presenting mediocre NASA programs as grand “accomplishments.” He can’t be the only one who sees that the world’s preeminent space agency is dying.

No question that NASA’s record over the past decade is wimpy at best: No return to the moon, a manned mission to Mars about to be scuttled in the wake of the Russian space agency’s impending mission to the red planet, the man-in-a-can excuse for an international space station still an expensive facade, the space shuttle replacement program in deep and probably terminal trouble, and a growing, dangerous feeling on the part of the American public that private corporations can do space better and cheaper than a huge, hidebound government bureaucracy.

And then there’s Richard DiFazio’s ASA and DiFazio’s personal campaign to undermine NASA at every turn. Bad enough that the fabled Burt Rutan—admittedly an aeronautical genius—always referred to NASA as “Nay Say,” but DiFazio has made a career out of embarrassing Geoff Shear. What’s worse, the public believes him.

The fact that DiFazio is probably right about privatizing space is immaterial. It’s Shear’s mission to keep NASA funded, alive, and relevant in the public eye, regardless. But there are times he wishes the job of NASA administrator brought with it a license to kill. No question who’d be first on his list. In too many ways, winning the private versus public battle has become his personal war.

Welcome to my life! he thinks, acutely aware that the agency is living on the edge and no more than one accident or scandal away from programmatic oblivion.

His driver swings smoothly into Washington’s afternoon traffic, heading back toward NASA Headquarters at 300 E Street SW as Geoff pulls out a sheaf of briefing papers he has yet to study, recognizing the top one immediately as the one thing he does not want to see.

Especially today.

Dammit to hell!

He’s known for weeks that if Newsweek decides to disregard the warnings from NASA’s friends and run a particularly hated article as a cover piece, the damage will be cruel. And now here it is, as bad as he expected, it’s pseudo-question begging its own conclusion:

CAN NASA COMPETE WITH PRIVATE SPACEFLIGHT COMPANIES? How the pioneering space agency is losing the battle for relevance and cost-efficiency.

He scans the four pages of verbiage before yanking out his cell phone and punching the speed dial for his secretary and instructing her to pull in his department heads for a war council. DiFazio has to be behind this one, too. The rag will hit the stands in four days, and he’ll need a preemptive strike to defuse what they’ve written.

His headquarters slides into view and the car stops, but he isn’t ready, and the driver knows better than to ask. He imagines the man now waiting for the magic phrase. “Okay, Billy,” he’ll say, and the chauffeur will get out and rush back to open his door. For now, though, he can sit in silence and think.

And what he’s thinking is disturbing. The whole nightmarish subject is out of his control, but there it is, still in his head, the same image that dawned like a revelation while he was fly-fishing in Colorado just two weeks ago.

What if, he’d thought then, one of their shoe-box, slapped-together, backyard, two-bit excuses for a spacecraft goes down? What if American Space Adventures—what a stupid name for a supposedly professional organization—has an accident and loses one of their only two pretend-a-shuttles? Their stock would crater and their business dry up, and the world would have graphic confirmation that the extreme dangers of spaceflight simply must be left to the might and wisdom of the U.S. government.

No, no. To hell with convincing the world. All he needs to do is convince Congress.

Standing in the middle of that peaceful stream, he’d let an attack of conscience bring him up short, a moment of uncertainty, the horror of someone actually learning his terrible thoughts. My God, of course he didn’t really want anyone to die just to convince Congress to fund NASA! The corrective edit had coursed through his mind and it had distracted him long enough to miss hooking the trout who’d picked that exact moment to nibble on one of his best flies.

But he had no control over a private spacecraft. It wasn’t, after all, a wish, merely an observation, and one that made him very squeamish. Moral compunction thus satisfied, he’d yanked the line hard enough on the next nibble to hook a fat rainbow and flip the startled fish completely out of the water with the same motion.

Geoff Shear looks around, aware that he’s been lost in thought. The staff will be waiting for him upstairs.

If a private spacecraft goes down, he’ll need to be ready, he’ll need the right things to say, words already drafted and rehearsed with the right statistics to cite. Maybe he should even be ready to recommend that Congress put stringent restrictions on anyone but NASA attempting spaceflight?

No. That would anger the President.

The White House is too committed to the free market. No, if the worst happens, Geoff concludes, NASA will simply be there in sorrow to sympathize, and then soldier on for all mankind.

The last line to his favorite Robert Frost poem springs to mind, a phrase he’s driven himself with for years: “But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."

He leans forward, sorry to lose the solitude.

“Okay, Billy.”