“Whew,” he sighed. Relieved, he resumed scanning the status reports. To himself, he asked, Am I ready for this? Do I need to see a counselor? Will the dream ever go away? Another part of himself answered sinlengly, Suck it up, wussy. Give up a trip to the Moon? What, am I nuts?!
Thirty minutes later, the command was given and the Altair’s four liquid-hydrogen and oxygen engines fired for the second time, slowing the twenty-two-ton lander and causing it to move closer to the lunar surface. The onboard radar and extensive lunar-terrain maps were correlated and cross-checked as the lander began its descent.
The landing site for this practice run was to be near the lunar south pole, though not nearly as close to the Aitkin Basin as was thought to be the leading candidate for the next flight—the one with people aboard—the one that would be his.
The descent to the surface would take only twelve minutes, and to those in mission control and in all the conference rooms throughout NASA it would seem like hours. Since 2004, tens of thousands of engineers had been working for this moment, and most were now glued to their televisions and computer monitors, holding their collective breath.
“Landing in three minutes,” came the voice from mission control. All the chatter in the conference room now died down to nothing—all would be listening for the proverbial pin to drop.
“Landing in two minutes.” Still no one in the room with Chow spoke.
“Landing in sixty seconds.”
With that, Chow averted his eyes from the big-screen monitors at the front of the room and scanned the faces of those in the room with him. He had always been more interested in human emotions than machines. Though he’d always been fascinated by all things space, he’d never considered the traditional engineering fields. They were all about the toys—he wanted to understand the people that went to space. He was eager to experience the Moon and not worry so much about how he was to get there.
Menendez’s eyes were fixed on her own screen, and she seemed totally oblivious to the images coming back from near the lunar surface being returned by the Altair’s imaging system.
Though many others in the room were similarly transfixed by the raw data, most had now placed their attention squarely on the monitors as the lunar surface loomed closer and closer, yet a quarter million miles away.
“Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.…We have touchdown!”
The room remained silent for another minute as all who had held their breath released it and erupted in smiles. Spontaneous applause broke out and then almost everyone in the room stood up so that they could clap even louder.
“Alright!” Chow heard one of his colleagues a few chairs to his right proclaim. “America’s back on the Moon. No more boring robotic landers and ridiculous rovers. By God, we’re going to put boots in that dirt!”
Chow smiled and nodded in agreement but was lost in his own thoughts at the moment—his boot steps would be among the first ones back there. His feet would be on the Moon sometime within the next year. The bad dream didn’t even cross his mind.…
Chapter 6
“Paul, come in.” Gary Childers sat back and propped his feet up on his desk. The Bluetooth earbud on his left ear was blinking. Gary touched the side of the apparatus and motioned for him to wait a second and to have a seat. Paul Gesling looked around the office and saw the video-teleconference monitor was on. The familiar red hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and ever-cheerful face of Caroline O’Conner was smiling back at him from the other side of the digital screen. He smiled and waved back.
“Hi, Paul. Looking forward to seeing you two out here tomorrow,” she said.
“Right. I’m taking my trainer out this afternoon and should fly in sometime tonight.” Paul sat down and angled his chair where he could see both Gary and Caroline. Caroline was the media-relations liaison, public-relations expert, and general all-around marketing guru for Space Excursions. “What’s this about?”
“Not sure. He called this a bit ago, but my BlackBerry doesn’t show a subject for the meeting.” She shrugged.
“Okay. I guess we wait.” Paul turned and watched Childers, who was rocking back and forth in his chair and talking a mile a minute about buying something short. Paul guessed there was a broker on the other end. Finally, Childers tapped his earbud and hung up the phone.
“Paul, glad I caught you before you left for the airport.” Paul grunted and nodded. “Caroline, is everything set up for the press conference tomorrow?”
“Yes, sir. No hitches as far as I can tell.”
“Very good. We need to talk about our demeanor tomorrow. Not sure if you two have had time to watch, but NASA just did the automated landing on the lunar surface.” Gary looked over at Paul and then at Caroline. Paul guessed it was to judge his reaction. As far as Paul was concerned, he didn’t really care. If he had sixteen billion dollars a year, he was certain that he could land a pickup truck, a marching band, a full-fledged circus, and a swimming pool equipped with synchronized swimmers right in the middle of the Sea of Tranquility. He wasn’t that impressed. Apparently, his expression showed it.
“That right there, Paul. That expression! You can’t make that face when NASA and the Moon missions are brought up.” Childers didn’t frown at him, but he didn’t smile, either.
“I understand what this is about,” Caroline said. “We’ve talked about this, Paul. No matter how you feel about NASA and how they are performing their mission, we must show unified and enthusiastic support for it. We cannot afford to look like naysayers, pessimists, or anti-space in any way. It will hurt us and everything we’ve worked for.”
“What? I wouldn’t say anything.”
“Paul, just stop. We’re not accosting you for your opinion.” Gary held up his hand and started in. “Hell, I agree with you. The best success NASA has had since Apollo has been unmanned. Oh, sure, the shuttles were successful, at flying up and down and round and round in low Earth orbit. The public doesn’t really care, or we’d still have shuttles. And all these stupid little robotic controlled rovers rolling around on Mars? Give me a break.”
“Gary,” Caroline said, “The Pathfinder/Sojourner was a great public relations success for NASA. We studied it in graduate school. The thing had over a million hits a day to the mission Web site for the first couple of weeks.”
“Nonsense.” Gary laughed.
“It is a fact, Gary. You can look that up.”
“Oh, hell, I know it is a fact. The nonsense part is that the million hits meant a damned thing. How many kids are in the public-school system in the U.S.? Hmm? Do you know that statistic?” Gary tapped his knuckles on his desk when he asked.
“Uh, no, Gary. I don’t.” Caroline looked perplexed, as if she didn’t see the relevance.
“Well, I do. I’ve studied this industry long and hard. The public doesn’t give a damn about the robot rovers. The so-called success was due to every science teacher in every public school having the fifty-four million students in the U.S. log on to the Web and write a homework essay about it. That is how the thing got so many hits. And clearly, less than one fiftieth of the students managed to do this. But the fact that the hits lasted a couple weeks probably accounts for a lot of them.” Gary wrapped his knuckles against the desk with each point he made.
“I agree with Gary on this. And look where they chose to land!” Paul finally joined in. “They landed in the desert, for God’s sake. You know what the official NASA mission description for the rover mission was? Rhetorical question. Don’t answer. I can tick them off one at a time. Let’s see…Number one, to prove that the development of faster, better, and cheaper spacecraft is possible for a cost under one hundred and fifty million dollars. Number two, to show that it is possible to send a load of scientific instruments to another planet with a simple system and at one fifteenth the cost of the Viking missions. Those damned things were just under a billion dollars back in the seventies. And number three, to demonstrate NASA’s commitment to low-cost planetary exploration by finishing the mission with a total cost of under like three hundred million dollars or so, I forget the exact number. Oh, and that was including the launch vehicle and mission operations. Do you see anything exciting in that? Oh, and by the way, land in the desert so there will be no way that anything exciting will be found.”