Catherine Holt immediately found herself called upon to redeem her promise to her husband to support his interplanetary plans, for the tremendous interest aroused by the project infallibly induced would-be participants and contributors to seek access to the leader by the domestic route. A California State Trooper was stationed outside the modest house on Emerald Bay to ward off the crowd of strange inventors who besieged its gates.
Public relations requirements, however, indicated that inaccessibility, or at least the reputation of it, be avoided at all costs, so Catherine found herself interviewing a strange assortment of people ranging from gentle mystics to astrologers. The local postman brought daily a heavy sack of mail from which Catherine selected such letters as appeared to her to be true personal correspondence and forwarded the rest to Holt's office where they were processed by an especially engaged battery of secretaries and typists.
The reaction of Congress to the President's message was anything but uniform, for the appropriation requested was two billion dollars and there were implications that this might not suffice. Many of the Representatives felt grave doubts as to the wisdom of devoting so great a sum to a project which, in their opinions, could contribute nothing immediate to a cure of the economic unbalance which was the main concern of every session of the World Legislature.
The past war had severely strained the resources of every country on Earth, united though they now were after finally building an enduring peace. Even the victors had strained their financial means to the breaking point, for they had been forced not only to repair their own war damage, but had also endeavored to succor the vanquished so that the heart-rending suffering among them might not break out into renewed unrest. The most strenuous efforts were being made all around the globe to establish a universal peace economy such as had not been known for more than two generations. And it was to taxpayers burdened with such an enormous load that the request was in the end directed — a request for billions with which to carry out a project of questionable value and of equally questionable technical feasibility!
The Congress appointed a special committee to study the matter and chose Senator Perucci, an Italian, as its chairman. Perucci was a physicist of note and had won the Nobel Prize for his epoch-making work on cosmic rays. Although he was now devoted to statesmanship, it was well known that no basic scientific error in the plan would escape his critical eye and caustic tongue.
Under his direction, the "Mars Committee" decided on a series of public hearings at which they would question those concerned with the management of the enterprise. Unless these men could give satisfying answers to every question, the appropriation would fail of the necessary votes in committee and never reach the floor.
Bruce Spencer was the first man called. His it was to defend the technical aspect of the planning and to report on the construction of the space ships for Operation Mars. He entered the committee room with a briefcase in one hand and a huge roll of drawings in the other. The witness stand was crowded with microphones. Reporters and spectators occupied every available space. At the long conference table sat the nine committee members with Senator Perucci at their head. He greeted Spencer heartily and invited him to display whatever material he had brought.
Spencer unrolled a large drawing and fastened it to a display board convenient to the witness stand. Brusquely and without preamble, as was his wont, he began. "Gentlemen," his deep voice rumbled, "here in the middle of the drawing is the Sun. The outer circle represents the orbit of Mars, the inner one that of the Earth. You all know that the Earth requires a year, 365 days, to circle the Sun. It requires a certain speed to do this. It can easily be determined, since we know that we are 149V6 million kilometers from the Sun. That speed has been computed as 29.8 kilometers per second. The orbit being curved, we may say that the Earth is in a continuous turn. This means that centrifugal force is generated, just as happens to you when you make a turn in your car. This force tends to urge the Earth away from the Sun, exactly in the same manner as you are forced outwards within your car. But the Sun also exerts a gravitational force upon the Earth which balances the centrifugal force to which I have just referred. This makes the Earth's path around the Sun a smooth, even circle.
"The same applies in principle to Mars, but its orbit is longer and its velocity along it is much lower, namely 24.1 kilometers per second. Hence it takes 687 days for a complete circle around the Sun, and this is the length of the Martian year.
"If you'll examine the drawing, you'll note that the orbit of Mars is not exactly circular. Here, at this point, Mars is evidently closer to the Sun than when at a point diametrically opposed to it. Doubtless you will desire an explanation of how this comes to be. As I told you, orbital centrifugal force and solar gravity are everywhere equal for the Earth, but this does not hold absolutely in the case of Mars. Take this point where Mars is remotest from the Sun. We call this point his "aphelion." Solar gravitation here exceeds centrifugal force because Mars' orbital velocity is lowest at this point. Hence
Mars increases its speed towards the Sun. But it cannot move directly towards the Sun, being prevented from so doing by its orbital velocity. Mars, therefore, falls, as it were, around the Sun in curvilinear fashion and approaches closest at this point, called "perihelion," which is diametrically opposed to the aphelion. Now its orbital velocity has been considerably increased by this free fall. Therefore, at perihelion, centrifugal force exceeds solar gravitation and the planet begins to recede from the Sun. But there has been no dissipation of energy during the fall, so Mars is compelled to return to his point of origin, the aphelion.
"The whole procedure is a sort of oscillation, somewhat like that of a swing. There, at aphelion, when potential energy is greatest, kinetic energy is least, and vice versa.
"Far back in the middle ages, an astronomer named Johannes Kepler proved that these planetary orbits are elliptical. Hence the expression "Kepler ellipses." The center of attraction is always located in one of the foci of a Kepler ellipse. In the case of the solar system, it is the Sun. The foci are so close together in the Earth's ellipse that the latter is, to all intents and purposes, a circle. But Mars' orbit is markedly eccentric, as you've been shown.
"Gentlemen, it is Kepler's elliptical orbits that point out how we may journey from one planet to another.
"Let us assume that we could increase the orbital speed of the Earth at some arbitrary point of her orbit. That would increase the centrifugal force with which it would recede from the Sun. If we could increase Earth's orbital speed from 29.8 kilometers per second to 32.83, that is, by 3.03, she would intercept Mars's orbit after one-half a revolution along such an ellipse around the Sun.
"While we cannot do this with the entire Earth, it is quite possible to do so with a minute portion of it. A modern rocket ship finds it no great problem in attaining 3.03 kilometers per second, and such a ship may be considered as that minute portion.
"There's yet another factor which bears vitally upon the practicability of this kind of rocket voyage. I shall now cover it.
"So far, we have discussed the flight path of a ship enroute to Mars only as it is related to the solar system. But if we think of ourselves as looking at a rocket from some point on the Sun, and desire to increase its speed by 3.03 kilometers per second above the speed of the Earth, we must first overcome Earth's gravitation in order to do so. This is a much more difficult task.
"If we want to accelerate it enough to let it come to a standstill at the point where terrestrial gravitation has, to all intents and purposes, become zero, we must give it an initial velocity of 11.18 kilometers per second, an enormous figure. And if it is to depart from the Earth's gravitational field with a residual velocity of 3.03 km/sec, the initial velocity would have to be even higher, namely 11.6 km/sec. This is beyond our capabilities at this stage of development.