John Ringo - Von Neumann’s War

John pulled up a PowerPoint slide file and opened it. He scrolled through the slides to the second stage portion.

“Here is the standard RL10B-2.” John grabbed the tankage portion with the copy tool, then pasted it into a new slide. He then duplicated the tank. “I want to take two tanks and cut one end off each and then just weld the damned things together. Oh, there would have to be some adjustments to the cryo pipes, a little bit of structural integrity support, and stuff like that, but it should work.” He finished creating the image on the PowerPoint slide.

“I knew it was simple. Why don’t we just do it,” Roger said rather than asking.

“I’m telling you, Rog, without you telling them that they would be free of reprisal if the thing fails, Boeing isn’t going to even consider it. It took us most of the first week to convince them to add the extra strap-on hardpoints. It wasn’t like we really were using duct tape and Bondo!” John shook his head in disgust and threw up his hands.

“John, get started. I’m going back to the office to take care of this. You catch a cab back to the hotel.” Roger knew John could see that he was angry and that somebody was about to get a good old-fashioned southern ass chewin’ .

“I don’t give a good Goddamn, Charlie. If John says he wants it done, then by God do it. We ain’t worried about political fallout here, we’re worried about the future of the freakin’ human race for crying out loud… un huh… no… no… uh… no… GODDAMNITALLTOHELL Charlie I said NO! If I have to fly to D.C. and get more horsepower behind my decision I’ll leave today and you’ll be looking for a new fucking job tomorrow. You hear what I’m telling you?” Roger had had enough of the corporate risk-averse culture that was holding back the program. The bean counters at the top of the culture were a larger impediment to the development of the program than the immense technical requirements and compressed schedule. Roger was irate and working on about a day and a half of sleep in the last month. It felt good to vent on these bean counting assholes a little , he thought to himself.

“All right then… yes, okay. Well, Charlie I appreciate you getting this done. And I don’t want to have this conversation again. I want John Fisher to have a blank check and a rubber stamp approval with y’all from now on. We do not have the time to have this conversation over and over every time somebody points out that we’re jumping all over the process. Yep, Ronny’ll back me up on this.” Back me up on this, Ronny. “… I’ll pick up the other line and call him right this minute if it’ll help you… No. Okay then.” Roger sat down in his chair and exhaled loudly.

“Okay, Charlie, thanks for your help. Hey listen, we’re doing great stuff here and don’t forget that part of it. Okay then.” Roger hung up the phone and screamed at the top of his lungs for about three minutes. Then he opened up his telescope modeling program on his laptop and went back to work.

Dr. Reynolds, Dr. Powell, Davis, Dr. Ronny Guerrero, General Riggs, NASA MSFC Director Dr. Byron and the President’s science advisor sat in the VIP bunker at the east coast launch facility at CCAFS with several Boeing and Lockheed Martin higher-ups, USAF 45th Space Wing Program support manager, and other upper echelon contractors and members of the Neighborhood Watch program.

Dr. John Fisher burst into the bunker VIP support room with two hours to spare before launch. He was obviously flustered; multiple beads of sweat had formed on his forehead, and his usually well-combed hair was in disarray. The sweat could have been from stress but maybe not — after all, it was a beautiful August day in sunny Florida, which meant hotter than hell.

John pulled a laptop out of locked double bags, and set it down on the conference table and plugged it into the portable projector he also pulled out of the bags. “This Machine is Approved Top Secret/Neighborhood Watch” was stamped on the front and back of the laptop and the projector.

“Sorry I’m late. There were some last minute hold procedures that I was tending to,” he said.

“That’s quite all right, John,” Roger told him.

“Yes, Dr. Fisher, just as long as we don’t miss the big show,” the science advisor to the President responded. George Fines pointed out the window at the rocket on the pad. “I can’t wait to hear you explain that behemoth to us.”

Roger looked out the window across the lake to the launchpad. The fact that they could discuss Special Access Top Secret in a room with a window and people milling around outside in the hallway was a sign of the times. Things were changing in the old ways of doing things. Time and urgency didn’t allow for all of the slow security protocols to be followed, so new ones were used in the interim and they were all approved by the Office of the President of the United States of America. Otherwise, some of them would never get past standard security personnel.

John clicked open the slideshow on his laptop and hit the magical keystroke combination that made the projector understand the computer and start displaying the laptop’s screen on the big screen at the end of the conference table on the south wall of the VIP bunker support room.

“Okay. I think that’s it.” He clicked a few more buttons, scrolled to the slideshow and began.

“Well, in order to get Percival to the planet Mars in as short a period of time possible, Dr. Tom Powell developed a strawman design for a launch vehicle. The Modified Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle out there on the SLC-37 CCAFS launch pad is the resultant product of his original design. It’s mostly the same as he originally suggested.” John paused and cleared his throat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “It’s hot today,” he muttered.

“That’s right, John,” Tom interrupted. “You fellas did a good job and built the rocket I had in mind almost to a T or at least as near as makes no difference.”

“Uh, okay.” John nodded to Tom and continued. “Dr. Fines, as you may or may not be aware of the typical Delta IV Heavy configuration, this is a modified version of that. This rocket has even heavier capability than the Heavy. The rocket consists of the main common booster core (CBC) tube with a Rocketdyne RS-68 liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen (LO 2/LH 2) rocket motor base with a thrust vector control nozzle in the middle that can supply up to 650,000 pounds of thrust and 410 seconds of specific impulse. These CBCs were built in Decatur, Alabama, at the Boeing Delta IV rocket plant and they had to be modified slightly, but I’ll get to that in a minute.” John moved through the slides quickly.

“On either side of the central CBC tube is another CBC tube assembly strapped on. Each of these CBCs has a modified upper stage fairing atop and their engines should produce the same thrust characteristics as the central CBC. This portion of the rocket is the standard Delta IV Heavy that you may have seen before.” He paused and noticed that Ronny was nodding in acknowledgement.

“Now, in order to increase the throw weight of the launch vehicle and therefore the mission spacecraft velocity, eight Alliant Techsystems graphite-epoxy GEM-60 solid rocket strap-on boosters are also attached at the base of each of the three larger CBC tubes of the Boeing-built rocket. As you can see from the slide — or better yet from out the window — there are three of these boosters attached to each of the side CBCs: one at zero, ninety degrees and minus ninety degrees. Two solid boosters are placed on either side of the central CBC at ninety and minus ninety degree locations. The GEM-60 strap-ons enable the launch vehicle to accommodate a much larger spacecraft payload than the standard Delta IV Heavy, much larger.” Roger cleared his throat and nodded that he was going to interrupt.