“Jim, I wish them all the best. The Chinese haven’t even sent anyone to fly by the Moon and an American company is about to go. That means not only NASA will beat them there. A bunch of lunatic, freewheeling, money-hungry capitalists will get there ahead of them, too! I’m all for it. God bless America!” Stetson said, very animated.
“Bill, the press is all over this. You really need to read the blogs more often. They’re all about how this guy Childers is going to the Moon for a fraction of what it cost us—and the taxpayer—and how we should just turn over all of NASA to private industry.”
“And, you know, sometimes I think they’re right. This whole thing has taken too long. We should have been there years ago!” Bill replied. Stetson could tell it was time for his friend to get agitated. These two had this discussion, or one very similar to it, at least five times a month. It wasn’t boring; they loved it. But before, it was just hypothetical. This time real people were about to fly in real rocket ships to the Moon. One ship was going to carry tourists on a joyride around the Moon. The other was going to carry scientists to its surface. And the latter was much more complicated, and expensive, than the former.
“Jim, we’ve had this discussion before. What they’re doing is a piece of cake compared to going to the surface. You and I both know that. Don’t sell them short, though. It is still dangerous as all get-out.”
“Bill, yes, we know that. But the public doesn’t!” England was emphatic. “Sometimes I wonder why we care so much.”
Stetson was unprepared for that one, but it did ratchet down the emotion and the volume of the discussion. Everyone involved in the space business, government or private, had probably asked themselves that same question at one time or another. Some asked it many times. “Why do I care about it so much?” For Stetson, the answer was simple. Because it was there, and that meant that someone, and it might as well be him, needed to go “there” and explore.
He knew how Childers would answer, if he’d been on the phone and asked the question. Stetson was confident that Childers would talk about how there was money to be made on the Moon and how he was going to be the one to make it.
Not realizing he was mumbling out loud as his thoughts once again wandered, Stetson said, “You can’t argue with that.” He was, of course, talking about Childers’s likely motivation for going to the Moon, though England had no way of know that.
“Huh? What’s that you said?” asked England.
“It was nothing. Spaced out on you for a second. I wonder why we do care so much sometimes.”
Gesling heard the news just after he crash-landed the Dreamscape in the Nevada desert. During this latest simulation, the vehicle experienced a complete loss of pressure during reentry, followed by a premature deployment of the landing gear—at twenty thousand feet. The result was a pretty messy landing, without gear, at the Nevada Spaceport. The passenger cabin remained in one piece, and the sensors indicated that at no time did the g-forces cross the line into “fatal.” If this had been real life, and not a simulation, Space Excursions would have been very glad they had a good team of lawyers.
As Gesling extricated himself from the pilot’s chair, which was not an easy task for someone of his height, he heard the voice of Caroline O’Conner chatting on her cell phone just outside the Dreamscape simulator. She was fairly excited and asking whomever she was speaking with to e-mail her the complete details of whatever they were discussing. He liked Caroline, not in a romantic sort of way, but as a friend and overall decent person to be around. He always looked forward to spending more time with her. Perhaps he was beginning to enjoy her company too much.…
“Paul!” He was roused from his musings by her voice calling his name. As he hesitated to respond, she raised her voice. “Paul! Over here! You’ll want to know about this.”
Gesling was finally free of the harness holding him and his bulky pressure suit to the pilot’s chair. Though he couldn’t yet exit the simulator because of the numerous to-do items remaining on his checklist, he did motion for Caroline to step inside.
“Hey, Caroline. What’s up?”
“The Chinese just launched their complete lunar system. They’re conducting a robotic test run end-to-end. The news is saying this means they may be on the Moon within a couple of months.”
“Are they flying a Dreamscape?” asked Gesling, sarcasm dripping from every word.
“Ha!” O’Conner cocked her head backward and looked down her nose at Gesling, which was difficult since he was easily eight inches taller than she. “No, they aren’t yet flying a Dreamscape. But the Moon is going to be crowded these next few weeks. The Chinese test flight began today. We launch next week, and NASA is supposed to fly the week after that. We haven’t been to the Moon in half a century, and now everyone will be going—within a few weeks of each other. We couldn’t have planned it this way if we’d tried. Gary is gonna be ecstatic!”
Gesling was hearing her words, but for some reason he was distracted by the way she raised her right eyebrow as she looked “down” at him in her best schoolteacher manner. It really accented her green eyes and high cheekbones. Before long, he wasn’t even hearing her words anymore.
“…Lunar surface trips for Space Excursions.” Caroline paused, wondering why there had been no reaction from Paul. “Paul? Are you in there?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry about that. I was just thinking about the simulation,” he lied. “What did you say?”
“Sometimes I wonder about you!” was her first reaction. She then said, “Gary told me this morning that he’s signed a deal with investors to begin our own lunar-landing effort. He’s going to announce it after you return from the Moon. I think he wants to tell you himself, so please don’t let on that I already told you.”
Gesling was not totally surprised; he and Childers had spoken several times about what the next step would be for Space Excursions. He just hadn’t expected it to come so soon. He at first thought he should bolt to Childers’s office and give him every opportunity to break the news. Then he remembered the post-simulation checklist and procedures. But even that took second place to finishing the conversation with Caroline. Yes, he would definitely have to make more time for talking with her.
The U.S. military took notice of what the Chinese were doing as well. Before the media knew of the launch, the U.S. Space Command was already on top of it. Headquartered at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, Space Command had been informed in advance of the Chinese plans and had the appropriate air and space assets in place to monitor all aspects of the launch and its early flight. Thanks to excellent human intelligence from within the China National Space Administration, American intelligence and the U.S. Space Command were watching as the Chinese version of the American Ares V lifted off from central China on its way to the Moon.
Pictures taken from the Pentagon’s low Earth-orbit spacecraft could literally read the lettering on the side of the rocket as it passed on its way to Trans-Lunar Injection. Additional spacecraft in geostationary orbit were retargeted to make similar observations as the vehicle accelerated away from the Earth. The launch was flawless.