McNally bowed his head again.
The Assistant Administrator said, “A lot of the MOD’s load will fall on their Flight Design and Dynamics division.”
McNally bowed.
“So. In a hundred days you expect them to carry through a flight design analysis leading to the development of flight design ground rules, develop the guidance, navigation and control software as well as design and construct any new hardware required, rig the MCC and the SMS’s for the flight in question, come up with performance analyses for the ascent, orbit manoeuvring, payload deployment, proximity operations — with rookie specialists carrying out EVA — plan the descent and landing phases, create new in-flight programmes for SPOC and develop integrated checklists for all of this. In a hundred days.”
“Maximum.”
The Engineer scratched his head. “What payload accommodation category are we talking about? Dedicated, standard, mid-deck?”
“We’ll be launching Vesta plus IUS plus four or five tons.”
“Jesus. Dedicated.”
The Assistant Administrator attempted reason. “Okay Jim, since we’re in Wonderland, we may as well take a broad-brush look at Alex’s Item Three, the hardware timescale. Look at the performance milestones for Cassini, starting say from the moment the Huygens probe was delivered. It took three months to test and integrate the probe with the spacecraft, right? Another four for JPL to integrate and test all the instrumentation. The probe was in our space simulators for another seven months. Then after it was delivered at Kennedy it took another six months to complete integration with the Titan/Centaur launch vehicle. If I’ve counted my fingers right that’s twenty months. And you’re looking for the same progress in three. Let’s inject some realism into this, Jim.”
McNally brushed the monstrous problems aside. “Look at Clementine One. From concept to system design was three months. Acquisition planning overlapped with that. Sure it was another year for the systems engineering and test, but the Europeans have done most of that work for us already. We had the spacecraft integrated with the ground subsystems in a couple of months. Look, the only thing that matters is the integration of Vesta with the launch vehicle, a standard Air Force IUS which will go up with the Shuttle. All it needs is a launch vehicle adaptor. We can do it in three months.”
The game below was getting noisy. McNally added, “For reasons of security I want to confine this to Johnson and Canaveral.”
“Where is this Vesta headed?” the Chief Engineer wanted to know.
“I don’t know.”
The Assistant Administrator laughed outright. McNally had now crossed the boundary from the preposterous to the insane. The Chief Engineer tried to keep his voice level, but it had an angry quiver to it. “Jim, I’d like you to explain something to me. How are we supposed to plan a mission if we don’t know where we’re going?”
McNally opened his mouth to reply, but the Deputy cut in. His eyes were icy: “Alex is right. What do I tell my MOD? With no destination, what is there for them to plan?”
“They plan for a high-speed, maximum precision flyby of an as yet unspecified interplanetary target, using the onboard radars for last-minute course correction.”
“You’ll never get off with this, Jim,” said the Chief Engineer. “MOD will refuse to issue a commit-to-flight certificate. Or somebody will trigger the yellow light system and force an internal review. And rightly so. This could be shaping up to another Atlantis disaster.”
“The responsibility for technical readiness is yours. I expect you, and your Safety and Mission Assurance Office, to deliver.”
“Jim, you’re asking me to send up half-trained astronauts on a string and sealing wax lash-up. I won’t do it. I won’t be responsible for the deaths of five or six people and the loss of a Shuttle.” The Chief Engineer stood up. “You’re forcing me to resign.”
McNally looked the engineer squarely in the eye. “Some guys who look like telephone engineers will be fixing your office phone shortly. That’s so the phone call you’re about to receive from the President of the United States is secure. That call will have three consequences. First, you’ll find out what this is about. Second, you’ll wish you hadn’t. And third, you’ll make the deadline if it kills you and I mean that in its literal sense. Similar calls will be going to Art and Jackie this afternoon. Until these calls are made, I have no authorization to tell you what this is about.”
If McNally had slapped the Engineer, the effect could hardly have been more startling. The man stared, amazed. He seemed to have lost the power of speech.
The Assistant Administrator recovered first. “If some major disaster happened at Byurkan, and Vesta had to catch a gravity assist window, that could justify our stepping in to help with a crash programme. Either that or a target of opportunity. It would have to be a joker, like a new comet. There would be no case to trigger a yellow light; they’re usually for cost overruns anyway. Which is it, Jim? Is Byurkan about to have a big disaster, or does some comet have to be intercepted real soon?”
That’s the trouble with these Princeton types. Too damn smart. McNally tried to adopt a poker face.
The Engineer had recovered sufficiently to talk. He sat down again and stared at the AA. “But a hundred-day timescale?”
McNally glanced at his watch. Eight hours. If Webb doesn’t deliver… Unconsciously, his mouth twisted in tension.
A whistle blew. The grandmother, red-faced, was waving her arms around. The sharp squeaking of trainers on wood came to a stop. An outburst of youthful cheering was followed by a tribal chant: the girls’ team had won.
The Engineer asked, “What instrumentation will be on board?”
McNally tried not to smile. Knowledge of the instrumentation would provide a strong clue to the nature of the mission. He finished his Coke. “A spectrometer for inflight target analysis. A short-pulsed laser for ranging: eight bursts a second and it only weighs a kilo. A high-resolution camera with a light CCD coupled to the laser. The setup has ranging accuracy of one metre and believe me we’re going to need it. There will be a military package on board.”
“You said this is a flyby?”
“A flyby. No slowdown, no soft landing. Vesta will do what it’s going to do on the hoof. The ranging is coupled to some megasmart electronics, and the probe will have to carry out some very sophisticated decision-making in maybe 0.1 of a second.”
The Engineer stared up at the high wooden ceiling. Finally he said, “I see resemblances to the Galileo project. JPL handled the overall project and Ames managed the probe system. So why not use the experience gained at Pasadena and Mountain View? Maybe we could even use the Galileo flight plans as a template. I’ll bring over key people from the JPL flight design team and get them working with our MOD. Get me your Mission Specialists right away and I’ll throw them into our flotation tanks on their first day. The moment you can specify their tasks I’ll configure the Mission Simulators. If you can get clearance to bring a few Vesta people over… and a target would be useful, Jim, when you’re ready to give me it.”
Engineers. Always finding obstacles until they smell a challenge. I’m not on top of these guys for nothing. McNally smirked.