Andrew Mayne
Orbital
Dedicated to my parents.
Preface
All of the technology described in this book is either currently being tested on the launch pad or in advance stages of development.
This is a story of the very near future.
One
Dead Drop
So, uh, I think I have a bullet lodged into my ribs. My air supply is going to give out at any moment. I have a nuclear bomb strapped to my back and my re-entry vehicle is basically a rubber raft that’s never been tested with human cargo. On the plus side, this really is probably the most baller way anyone could possibly die. So there’s that.
Of course, if this inflatable heat shield catches fire and I burn up like a Nazi robbing the Ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark as I hit the atmosphere at 20,000 miles an hour, nobody is going to be talking about the totally awesome way I bought it.
Nope. They’ll be worried about the several kilos of plutonium dispersed into the atmosphere forming a vapor trail a hundred miles long, potentially creating the worst human-caused natural disaster since…um…hell. Maybe this one will take the number one slot.
You could say that today is going to be filled with a lot of firsts.
Focus, David. You’re being a little bit of drama queen. You don’t know if the bullet is actually in you or grazed the inside of your spacesuit. Besides, since you shoved that tire plug in there, you’ve hardly felt a thing.
Second, you’ve got plenty of air to last until you make landfall — okay statistically speaking, sea-fall. So, you’ll either become a radioactive cloud or taking in a deep breath of fresh air before you drown.
Third, it’s not like the nuclear bomb can blow up. You threw away the trigger. If anything could set it off, you’d already be dead.
Fourth, they tested this inflatable heat shield dozens of times with crash dummies. And four out of ten times they didn’t come back to Earth melted. That’s almost fifty percent, which means I have exactly a hundred percent chance of either living…or dying.
And fifth, if you really care what happens to the world after you make the ultimate sacrifice, chances are the plutonium will just form a thick metal ball inside its casing and sink to the bottom of the ocean where it’ll be a bit of a radiation hazard, but nothing that’ll kill people — unless you count mer-people.
You got this.
“David? How are you doing?” says a voice from thousands of miles away.
Laney Washburn was a space blogger just twenty-four hours ago when I showed up at her house and she got recruited for a mad mission to steal a nuclear bomb from a Russian space station. This was after I had escaped from there once already and gone on a little international crime spree as I tried to keep one step ahead of Russian MiGs, assassination squads and some US intelligence agency double agents that thought it would be fun to drop me out of a helicopter. Fun times.
“Laney, I’m doing fantastic,” I reply.
“You’ll get through this. In about five minutes you’re going to start feeling some resistance as the atmosphere gets thicker.”
“What? Did I sound sarcastic? No seriously. I think I’m totally at peace with whatever happens.”
“Great. But we’re going to see you through this. I’m going to put Captain Baylor back.”
“No…don’t go, Laney. I want you to be the one to talk me through this.”
“David, I’m not qualified.”
“Yes, you are. If there’s something important they have to tell me, you can do it.”
“Well…your telemetry looks good for re-entry.”
“But…”
“Er…we don’t know the weight of the nuclear device and our tracking on you is a little imprecise.”
“So you have no idea where I’m going to land…”
“Uh…maybe Australia…ish?”
“That’s not so bad.”
“Or the Philippines.”
“Okay. I’ve never met a Filipino I didn’t like.”
“Um…Indonesia?”
“That’s where they have the islands with Komodo dragons?”
“Yes…”
“Okay. I can manage one of those.”
“You’ll probably land in the water though.”
“Right. Sharks. At least I have a raft.”
“Actually, you’ll need to bail out and use the parachute in the pouch.”
“Uh, yeah. I was wondering what this lumpy thing was. I’m going to put it on now.”
“Good idea.”
Of course I knew that. I just want the room full of people down there to feel a little bit of the excitement I’m going through.
I have to swing the nuclear device to the front of my spacesuit in order to get the parachute on my back. Fortunately there are all kinds of harnesses and straps to hold onto. Originally designed for a space-based SEAL team, they thought of most of everything.
It’s too bad my ride up here — a bullet-shaped stealth capsule — didn’t have its own heat shield. At least then I could ride back down inside something that I could pretend was giving me an extra layer of protection.
Since it was covered in a special material designed to absorb light and radio frequencies, it was the exact opposite of a heat shield and had to be abandoned. It was also really, really small. At least here I’m out in the open air…um, vacuum.
“We’re going to lose contact with you at some point as you re-enter since your radio won’t make it past the ionizing atmosphere around you.”
“Yeah…about that. How do we know I won’t burn up like a potato in a microwave?”
“Technically they just explode.”
“Right. Stupid question.”
“And the stealth suit you’re wearing has a higher heat resistance than iCosmos ones.”
iCosmos was the company I worked for until I stole not one, but two of their spacecraft. Technically the first one was more of a detour and the second I kind of sort of had permission.
Where does space end and the atmosphere begin? I can tell you definitively; right about now.
The trick with re-entry is slowing your speed from about 20,000 miles an hour to a more manageable Mach 1 or 2 where you can parachute to safety.
The reason spacecraft burn up in the atmosphere and you don’t go in for a leisurely stroll, is all about velocity. If you’re moving thousands of miles an hour you’re bumping into lots and lots of air molecules creating friction.
Too much friction and you’ll burn up whatever it is that you’re riding back down to Earth inside — and ultimately yourself. This is what happened to the Space Shuttle Columbia. A damaged heating tile let a super hot jet of air inside the wing that destroyed everything in seconds.
No fancy tiles for me. Right now I’m strapped to an inflatable round disc that looks suspiciously like something you’d find at a redneck pool party.
It’s starting to vibrate as I begin to skim the upper atmosphere. This means it’s time to keep my head down and choose a god to pray to.
“David? How are you doing?”
“Would you stop asking me that?”
“Sorry. They just want to make sure you’re okay. Alright, that’s dumb now that I think about it. How about you tell me a story?”
“Want to hear about the first time I flew?”
Two
Catching Air
I was ten years-old the first time I really flew. I’d been in airplanes before and would take the stick of one a few years later when an ex-Top Gun instructor let me hitch a ride. But the first time I remember the feeling of being aloft, soaring through the sky of my own accord, was when I took a home-built soap box racer down a hill and over a ramp.
I made the cart using lawnmower wheels, two-by-fours and a seat from a bass boat. To steer it, I used a piece of rope tied to either end of the front axle that pivoted on a bolt I drilled through the wood.