John Varley - Red Thunder

“It’s Holly,” Jubal said, a bit more calmly.

[132] “That’s right,” I said. “Do you know her?” Not too tough to believe, what with his cousin Travis having been an astronaut.

“Where she at? She at de station?”

“No, like it says there at the bottom, she’s aboard the Ares Seven .”

“What dis Ares Seven?”

“The Mars ship, Jubal,” I said. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”

“Don’ watch TV, me,” he said, with a frown. Jubal didn’t follow current events at all, if he could help it. He turned up the volume.

“-and we’d like to thank all of you for giving us so much of your valuable time. Captain Bernardo Aquino, First Officer Katisha Smith, Brin Marston, M.D., and mission specialists Doctors Holly Oakley, Cliff Raddison, Lee Welles, and Dmitri Vasarov. America’s Ares Seven astronauts. Good luck, and Godspeed, all of you!”

There was a pause of fifteen full seconds as the astronauts hung there stupidly, smiles frozen on their faces, while the radio signal went out to the Ares Seven and came back at the speed of light. Television stations had taken to adding a countdown clock in a corner window so people didn’t become too impatient, but it didn’t help much. This was going to be the last live interview. From then on reporters would ask their questions all at once and the astronauts would answer them the same way, and it would be turned into a standard Q amp;A by tape editing.

… 0.03… 0.02… 0.01… “It was our pleasure, and thank you,” Captain Aquino answered, and the seven of them waved for a few seconds before we were returned to the show, which was 60 Minutes, I think.

“So, you know that woman, Jubal?” Aunt Maria asked him.

“Oh, my, used to know her real good, me. She de mother a Travis’s two sweet daughters. She Travis’s ex-wife, she is.”

THAT WAS THEend of Monopoly for that night.

I think we were all amazed and delighted to have a connection to the Mars mission, however tenuous. We wanted to know more about her, but we didn’t get much. It was too painful for Jubal, for he was [133] endlessly loyal to Travis and yet liked Holly and the children enormously.

Jubal wanted to know everything there was to know about the Mars mission. That mostly fell to Dak and me, as our girlfriends and parents were not nearly so interested or informed on the subject as we were.

But where to begin? It was as much a political story as a scientific one, just like Apollo, and Project Mercury before that. Back then it was the Russians.

“Today it’s the Chinese we wanted to beat,” I said.

“Good luck,” Dak snorted.

THE CHINESE HADbeen developing a space exploration program for the last decade. Russia’s once grand space program had been reduced from lack of money to a few station components here and there, and those arrived late and underfunded, often as not. In addition to the U.S. and Russia, a few other nations were in the lucrative satellite-launching business, including Japan, France, Brazil, and Indonesia. Analysts assumed China would find its place in that group.

They had developed a type of vehicle known in the space business as a Big Dumb Booster, something NASA critics had been advocating for forty years or more. The Russians had had a BDB practically from the start, the Energia . The idea behind the BDB was easy to state: Make it big, and make it simple. It was much cheaper to put heavy payloads into orbit with a BDB than with a manned space vehicle like the old Shuttle or the VStar. Manned vehicles had to devote a huge amount of mass to life support facilities. The level of safety required for a manned launch was an order of magnitude higher than for an unmanned one, and all that was costly.

The Chinese BDB did put big satellites in orbit. Then, in a surprise that did not quite rival the launch of Sputnik One in the 1950s, the Chinese lofted a small space station and a crew of three.

Not too long after that, they sent out three Mars probes. Two of them landed safely on Mars. They were “pathfinder” ships, carrying the supplies needed for a long stay on Mars. Then came the Heavenly Harmony, [134] a manned ship taking the minimum-fuel Hohmann orbit path to Mars, and once more Americans went nuts.

THERE ARE Athousand paths to Mars, but they all must take into account some inconvenient facts.

First, all ways to Mars start off in the same direction. Before you even fire up your rocket, you are already traveling at 66,700 miles per hour, Earth’s orbital speed. To go in the other direction you would first have to kill that speed. So rule number one is: You go with the flow.

You must always bear in mind that Mars and Earth move at different speeds in their orbits, and Mars is farther away from the sun. You must accelerate out of Earth’s orbit, and then bear in mind that every second of the way the sun’s gravity will be slowing you down.

The third thing to remember is that you can’t aim at Mars when you fire your rockets. You have to aim at where Mars will be when you get there. It’s like a hunter leading a bird when he pulls the trigger.

Then there comes the toughest of all the tough things about going to Mars. You can’t just set down on the Red Planet, scoop up some rocks, snap a few pictures, and then take off and head for home the next day. Because of fuel limitations and the movements of the two planets, all proposed trips to Mars involve a waiting period while the planets move back into a position where a flight between them is economically possible. With the Hohmann orbit the Chinese supply ships had used, the wait was over a year.

A human needs three pounds of food, seven pounds of water, and two pounds of oxygen every day. All round trips to Mars that we can currently envision take well over a year. A crew of seven would consume thirty thousand pounds of food, water, and oxygen in a year, and that doesn’t include water for bathing and brushing your teeth. All that weight must be put into Earth orbit, and then accelerated to a speed sufficient to reach the orbit of Mars. It takes a lot of fuel.

On your way to Mars, you had better be prepared to fix any broken thing with what you’ve got, because Triple-A won’t be along any time soon to give you a jump start.

Out there, you’re on your own.

[135] “THE CHINESE TOOKwhat most folks believe is the most sensible route to Mars,” Dak said. “You send unmanned ships first, by the slow but cheap path. Takes a year to get there. You send your astronauts along with just enough food, water, and air to get there. Then they use the stuff that went ahead of them. They figure to make their own fuel from the carbon dioxide in the Martian air. The Chinese are well on their way now. How long is it, Manny? Six months?”

“About that.”

“But what ’bout de Americans?” Jubal asked. “Dey be gonna get dere fust?”

Dak snorted.

“No way. People think if our guys just step on the gas pedal a little harder we could pass the commie ba-… bad guys, but it don’t work that way. The Chinese will hit Mars in six months, and either make a real big crater or come down soft. Our guys and gals will get there about two weeks later. End of story. The first foot on Mars will be a Chinese foot, dead or alive. Dammit.”

Dak looked like he wanted to bite his tongue, but Jubal took no notice of the swearing. He was staring off into space, his mind occupied with calculations I doubted I’d ever be able to follow. Then he focused again.

“De Americans, dey swingin’ by Venus, no?”

“Yes,” I said. Wondering how he deduced that. “They swing by Venus and get a free boost from the gravity well there. They get to Mars, and then they only have to wait about a month before they can launch and return the ship to Earth. Our guys will be back before the Chinese.”