“What?”
“Wanderlust.”
Rosenberg said, “Being an astronaut on this mission won’t be just another job, a line on your resume. This will be about going somewhere, where nobody else has ever been. Making a difference. What the job used to be about.”
White laughed. “That,” he said, “and glory, and fast cars, and the women.
“I get it,” Siobhan Libet said. “This isn’t Apollo. It’s a Mayflower option.”
“Maybe,” Barbara Fahy murmured. “The Mayflower colonists went because they had to. They did it because they couldn’t find a place to fit, at home.”
Marcus White grunted. “There sure as hell has been little enough room on Earth for astronauts, since 1972.”
Rosenberg said, “The costs don’t have to defeat us. We don’t need any massive technical development. We use chemical propulsion, existing technology wherever possible. For instance, the Space Station hab module for the journey shelter.”
Benacerraf nodded confirmation of that. “The thing’s been sitting in a hangar at Boeing, intact, since 1999. It wouldn’t take much modification…”
Rosenberg said, “You’d wrap a cut-down Shuttle orbiter around it. With the hab module in the cargo bay, you’d use the orbiter’s OMS and RCS for course corrections, and the main engines for the interplanetary injections.”
Angel and White exchanged glances.
White said, “A Shuttle orbiter to Saturn? Well, why the hell not? It’s the nearest thing to a spaceship we got.” He turned to Rosenberg, grinning. “You know, I love the way you think.”
Angel said, “How are you going to get a Space Station hab module down to the surface of Titan?”
“Easy,” Rosenberg said, chewing. “Titan has a thick atmosphere, and a low gravity. You’d glide the hab module down, inside your Shuttle orbiter. Which is why you’d take the orbiter. The aerosurfaces would need some modification, but—”
“Holy shit,” Libet said. “You’ve worked this out. You’re serious, aren’t you, kid?”
Angel said, “Okay, so this is just a mind game, right? A bull session. Maybe you’re right, Rosenberg. Maybe you could do that quickly and cheaply. But not if you wanted a man-rated system.
Siobhan Libet said, “But we aren’t talking about the kind of assured safety we have in the current program, Bill. We know this whole thing would be risky as hell.”
Bill Angel said curtly, “I’m talking about some kind of entry profile that would actually be survivable.”
“It wouldn’t have to be,” Rosenberg said.
Marcus White groaned and helped himself to some more wine. “Oh, shit,” he said. “He has another idea.”
“Send the orbiter down to Titan unmanned,” Rosenberg said. Then it can land as hard as you like.”
“And what about the crew?” Angel said.
“All you need is a couple of simple man-rated entry capsules,” Rosenberg said. “Remember, we aren’t talking about any kind of ascent-to-orbit capability; it’s a one-way trip.” He grinned. “You still aren’t thinking big enough, Bill.”
“And you,” Angel snapped back, “are talking out of your ass. An entry capsule like that is still a billion-dollar development. We just don’t have that kind of resource.”
Rosenberg looked flustered, and Benacerraf realized that for the first time he didn’t have an answer.
She felt an immense sadness descend on her. Is it possible that this is the hole that destroys the proposal? That, after all, it ends here?
How sad. It was a beautiful dream, while it lasted.
They argued for a while, about requirements and likely costs. It started to get heated, with gestures illustrated by pointed chopsticks. Barbara Fahy held her hands up, palms outward. “Hold it,” she said. “I hate to say it, but I think I have a solution.”
Benacerraf frowned. “Tell me.”
Fahy looked around the table. “We use the most advanced entry capsules we ever built. Apollo Command Modules.”
Marcus White was laughing. “Oh, man. That is outrageous. Just fucking outrageous. It’s beautiful. Man, I love it.”
Fahy said, “All you’d have to do is refurbish the interior, maybe fix up the heatshield, reconfigure for a Titan entry profile.”
Benacerraf said, “Marcus, where’s the old Apollo hardware now?”
White was trying to be serious, but grins kept busting out over his face. “There were three series of Command Modules: boilerplates, Block Is and Block IIs. The Block IIs flew all the manned missions; they contained most of the post-fire modifications. The Block IIs is what you’d want to use.” He closed his eyes. “As I recall, Rockwell built twenty-five Block II CMs in all. Okay. Of those twenty-five ships, eleven flew on the Apollo Moon program. Three more flew manned Skylab missions, and one flew on ASTP. Fifteen, right?”
“Where are they?” Benacerraf asked. “Museums? Could we refurbish an Apollo that’s already been flown?”
Angel frowned. “I don’t see how. Those things were pretty much beat up by the time they were recovered. You got the ablation of the heatshield, thermal stresses throughout the structure, salt-water damage from the ocean recovery. The heatshield alone would be a hell of a reconstruction job.”
Benacerraf said, “Marcus, what happened to the ten spares? Do you remember?”
“I sure do,” he said ruefully. “Since they symbolized my career, as it went down the toilet, I followed the fate of those Moon ships with close interest.” He closed his eyes. “They used four for various tests: thermal vacuum and pogo, acoustic, pad checkout. And another three for Skylab tests. They pretty much took those babies apart, for the purposes of the tests.”
“That leaves three,” Angel said evenly.
“Yeah. First you got a Skylab backup. It sat on the pad on top of a Saturn IB as a rescue capability, through the whole Skylab program. And then there were two Moon-trip Apollos, never flown. ‘Requirement deleted.’ Three man-rated spacecraft, never flown, just mothballed.”
Benacerraf felt herself smile. “Maybe we’re about to undelete those requirements.”
There was another moment of silence.
Then they started to talk at once. “Where are those CMs?”
“All in storage at JSC, or Downey.”
“Three CMs. Two flight birds and one test vehicle, for verifying the redesign and refurbishment.”
“The electronics should be easy. Those old clunky guidance computers they had took up so much damned room. All that core rope and shit…”
Benacerraf let it run on.
It’s coming together, she thought. She felt a core of excitement gather in her gut.
Angel, still drinking hard, was doodling spacecraft configurations and shapes on a smoothed-out paper napkin. “Okay,” he said. “If we’re going to do this one-way shot, we ought to get away with a fuel load, in Earth orbit, of one and a half million pounds. And of that, around two hundred thousand pounds would be hauled out to Saturn for braking there.”
“That,” said Benacerraf, “is less than a single Shuttle External Tank.”
“Yeah,” White growled. “But you’re still looking at a couple of dozen Shuttle flights to put it up there.”
Siobhan Libet said, “But you wouldn’t need to use the full Shuttle system. You’re not carrying crew, except on one final flight to orbit.”
Benacerraf prompted, “So what do we do instead?”
“Shuttle-C,” said Libet promptly. “A stripped-down cargo-carrying variant of the Shuttle system. The payload capacity would be raised to a hundred and seventy thousand pounds.”
Mott nodded. “But the Shuttle-C is an expendable variant. Essentially you’d be using up the orbiter fleet.”