“Uh, Dr. Reynolds, I’m Carla Watts from Zeiss. I have a question.”
“Yes, Carla?” Roger breathed an inaudible sigh to himself. He knew that he had to take and answer the questions. But they took time.
“Does the primary have to be a build from super lightweight like other space optics?” She paused for a second, removed her glasses, and rubbed her nose. “Or could we hog one out of a heavy piece of glass or Zerodur or something. I mean, the reason I ask this is that, there might be big blanks lying around in this aperture diameter range that could be ground out. That would be a lot quicker than building the lattice, filling, baking and all the rest.”
“What would that do to our mass budget?” Roger asked.
“Well,” Carla screwed up her faced in thought for a moment. “It might as much as double it. But, and this sounds like a critical but, it would decrease build time by at least a factor of two, maybe more.”
“Okay. Let’s keep this idea on the table as an option. During the break could you call around and see if you could locate such blanks?”
“Sure. I think I know where there might even be one with a hole already in the center for a Schmidt-Cassegrain design.”
“Good, thanks. Back to the cruise phase: the ops guys will train the telescope pointing algorithms on Mars early on so that the pointing and tracking closed loop software will have learned to minimize the pointing jitter by the time it gets to Mars.
“The final phase will be the approach and the detailed recon phase. Since we don’t plan to orbit Mars, our goal is to collect data from a few months out and right up until the spacecraft passes by the planet and views it from the other side. We’re open to clever ideas about how to extend the mission operation lifetime, but we have yet to come up with anything brilliant in that regard. The spacecraft will pass by Mars at about fifteen kilometers per second, so close approach dwell time will not be very long. During the final phase, Percival will point its active science instruments, such as the lidar, at Mars. During the active part of the recon phase we’ll implement an alternate beam path through the primary telescope objective with a lidar system. Hopefully, we can gather some sub-meter three-dimensional imagery from the laser imaging and ranging system. We intend to take the old canceled and mothballed NASA SPARCLE program’s lidar instruments, dust them off, and update them.”
“Dr. Reynolds,” Fisher said, sighing and holding up his hand.
“Go,” Roger said, shaking his head.
“SPARCLE’s not off-the-shelf and has never been successfully tested,” Fisher pointed out. “What if it’s a dud?”
“Then it’s a dud,” Roger said. “If we have active recon, that would be good. If we don’t, we can live with it. Continuing…” he muttered, looking down at his notes.
“Although we’ll have had months to keep the batteries charged, just in case, we might as well also try and keep the solar arrays continuously tracking the Sun. I originally considered the use of radioisotope thermal generators, but haven’t found any available on such short notice. We could buy some plutonium from the Russians, but that might tip our hand and the nuclear power nuts would probably hear about it, increasing the media presence of the launch. So, solar power it is, again, unless somebody comes up with something brilliant in its place.
“It’s our plan that Percival will continue to keep its science instruments pointed at Mars with it in the center of the field of view. We’ll use the positions of Phobos and Deimos as part of our GN C knowledge. The positions of the two moons along with star tracker information should give us extremely detailed attitude determination capability. Once Mars is larger than the field of view of the main telescope system we’ll use star trackers for attitude determination and we’ll slew the main telescope objective side-to-side via the AD CS system in order to capture images of various targets outside the field of view. We’ll maintain this operation as long as the probe is in range of Mars. Again, if anybody has any clever and lightweight ideas that can be done quickly to increase mission operations time, please let us know.”
And the briefing went on.
The meetings lasted from eight-thirty each morning until past midnight each of the three days. By the end of the third day a very detailed spacecraft mission architecture and design were completed. Details of the WBS and the task team leaders were complete and each of the hundred or so attendees of the meeting left with multimillion dollar subcontracts and a list of near impossible action items to be completed by middle of the following week. All said and done, the Neighborhood Watch executive committee — which consisted of the DDNRO, the commanding general of the Redstone Arsenal, the director of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, and the project scientist, Roger — were tired — very tired — but they were also pleased with their progress. The DDNRO had to brief the President by Monday and so the executive committee worked through the weekend developing the presentation for the President’s Daily Brief. Guerrero planned to deliver it in person. Roger planned to take a nap.
Chapter 6
Charlotte could hear her mom’s angry voice through the walls of her room. She tried to surf the Internet and ignore the boisterous argument from downstairs, but it wasn’t helping. It was obvious to Charlotte that it was her dad on the phone — only he could make her mother that angry. Charlotte continued to ignore the heated phone conversation between her parents. To keep her mind off them she visited her usual favorite websites: the Space Telescope Science Institute, the MAPUG site, the SETI League, Kazaa, then the University of Colorado’s Athletic Department. Charlotte had hopes of getting a softball scholarship someday, but she was afraid that if she didn’t grow a few more inches during her junior and senior years in high school she wouldn’t be tall enough to be scholarship competitive. She then clicked through the physics department’s site and gave up. The noise was just too much.
“What do you mean it’s okay to miss a few days of school! Don’t you realize she’s worried about keeping up her grades for a scholarship and that finals are at the end of the month? No, you probably don’t because you never come around, do you?” her mother screamed into the phone. Charlotte could image in her mind’s eye her mother tapping her left foot and resting her right fist on her hip.
Charlotte’s instant messenger dinged at her.
Hello AstroGirl39, what’s up! The message was from Tina.
Hey DingBat101! My mom and dad are at it again! she typed.
600 miles wasn’t far ’nuf for those 2, huh : ).
“Damnit, John! You just can’t show up like that and expect her to drop everything just for you. She has a life of her own you know.”
Yeah, lots a luv between ’em. Charlotte shook her head as she typed.
Yeah, that’s how my parents were just after the divorce. It gets better.
How r u? Charlotte typed.
Got my braces adjusted today, so my mouth hurts. It looks like soup for a few days. Tina replied.
Sorry.
No big. U r lucky you got straight teeth.
Yeah.
Got news on the Michael situation!
Yes? Charlotte typed reluctantly but anxiously.