“Alright, everyone, strap in and prepare for docking with the refueling station.” Paul waited until all the crew safety-restraint icons showed locked and in place before he toggled the automated docking-alignment thrusters routine. The thrusters fired and reoriented the ship so that it was still flying upside down, but now nose first.
“Extending refueling probe,” he said as he tapped the controls. The probe extended from just under the nose of the little spacecraft to a point about twenty feet out in front of it.
“Control, this is Dreamscape. We’ve got the tanker’s drogue in the crosshairs. Lidar shows we are right on target at three thousand feet and closing.”
“Roger that, Paul. Telemetry tracking is good.”
“Cycling the pumps and prop-tankage cryo.”
“All systems look good to us, Paul. We show one thousand feet.”
“Roger that, Control. Nine hundred seventy feet and closing. Still in the crosshairs.” Paul gently placed his hand around the stick and prepared for the hand-off of the automated system’s control of the ship’s flight control. The smaller microthrusters on the end of the flexible probe tube were still on auto. The pilot would roughly guide the ship into the “basket” or “funnel” of the drogue on the refueling spacecraft. But the sensors would maneuver the end of the probe for precise corrections.
“Dreamscape has control of the probe and closing at five hundred feet.”
“Roger that, Dreamscape. Looking good and go for refuel.”
“Contact in ten seconds.” Paul could feel sweat beading on his forehead, but he didn’t have time to wipe it away. He maintained his focus as he guided the little proboscis into the refueling portal. Boom and drogue was how pilots had refueled aircraft for decades, and Paul had thousands of hours of practice in aircraft and several thousand hours in the simulator. He’d also actually docked with the refueling tank once during the orbital test flight. It was all well rehearsed, but he was still nervous as hell.
The boom clicked into place in the drogue, and the flex hose oscillated up and down slightly as the thrusters of the Dreamscape matched orbital velocity with the tank ship perfectly. The tube continued to jiggle only slightly.
“Bingo! We’re hooked up and ready for refueling.”
Gesling leaned back and took a moment to wipe his forehead with the back of his hand. He also let out a sigh of relief. One slight misjudgment on his part could have damaged the system and not allowed them to refuel—that would have ended the mission and sent them all home. A slightly worse than “slight” misjudgment could have sent a mechanical vibration down the tube that could buckle the tube and rupture the tank—that would have ended the mission in a fireball, and nobody would have made it home.
“Dreamscape, we show flow at one hundred gallons per minute nominal.”
“Roger that, Control. We’re refueling, and all systems are in the green.”
Paul checked the crew’s vitals and faces. They were all fine and appeared to be having the times of their lives.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have now passed through nine hundred eighty thousand feet, so feel free to unbuckle yourselves and move about the cabin.” He added a little chuckle at the end to keep the mood light. Why not let them have their fun while the Dreamscape refilled its tanks at the orbiting depot to which it was now attached?
Maquita performed her mission then, which was to use external cameras to video all docking and landing procedures throughout the mission. She sat at her seat guiding the external cameras via the touch-screen panel at her station.
After the Dreamscape’s tanks were full, Gesling set about the undocking process to detach from the depot and take up station a few kilometers away for the “night.” He and the passengers would close the covers on their windows, darken the interior of Dreamscape, and try to get eight hours of sleep. He doubted that many would be able to sleep, but they’d been awake for almost eighteen hours and definitely needed a rest.
At Space Excursions’ Nevada Spaceport, Gary Childers was jubilant. After the press conference, he granted no less than eight one-on-one interviews with various media outlets and was basking in the free and positive news coverage. Childers knew the value of free publicity, and he was definitely getting more than he had imagined possible. The Dreamscape and her passengers were in space and getting ready to go to the Moon.
In just a few hours, Gesling would awaken the passengers, run through his final checklist, and ignite the rocket engine that would take the Dreamscape out of Earth orbit and toward the Moon. The trip to the Moon would take a little more than three days.
Childers knew that once the main engine fired, they would be committed. The trajectory they would fly was called “free return” for a very good reason. Like Apollo 13, but hopefully without the peril, the spacecraft would fly by and around the Moon one time, not going into orbit, but rather looping behind the Moon and then coasting back to Earth. The main engine would fire again when the Dreamscape was ready to brake and again be captured into Earth orbit—after completing its historic journey around the Moon. The next flight, assuming there would be customers for it, would fire braking thrusters and enter orbit around the Moon. But that was the future. At the moment a “free return” was still a groundbreaking accomplishment for private industry.
Childers wasn’t nervous about this aspect of the trip. He would only get nervous after Gesling brought the ship back to Earth orbit and prepared for landing. Getting from orbit to the ground was the part that haunted Childers. He remembered the Columbia space shuttle accident—he was at the Kennedy Space Center when STS-107 was supposed to land, and he would never forget the look on the faces of the ground crew when the ship didn’t appear on schedule and they realized something must have gone horribly wrong. Their faces still haunted him, and the vision of his beloved Dreamscape breaking up high in the atmosphere was his nightmare. He was confident in his ship, his team, and in Paul Gesling—but he wouldn’t really relax until the ship was safely home and the passengers giving their own interviews on all the news networks.
At his home in Houston, Bill Stetson watched the interview with Gary Childers as he sipped a cold Long Island iced tea. Sitting with his wife, during their last evening together before he was to leave for Florida, Stetson, too, was jubilant.
“That man ought to be running NASA,” said Stetson.
Terry, his wife of twenty-two years, looked up from the image of Gary Childers centered on their television screen, placed her head in the crook of Stetson’s outstretched arm, and said simply, “Oh?”
“He’s got what most managers at NASA lost years ago—guts. This man risked his personal fortune to start a company and do something that even most governments couldn’t do. He’s sending people to the Moon. Now, granted, he’s not landing, and that’s a damned sight harder. But he is sending people to the Moon. If we had more leaders like him, I’d be going to Mars next week instead of the Moon.”
“And how long would that take you away from me?” she asked.
“Well, about three years.”
“I see,” she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste and snuggling a little closer to her husband. “Bill Stetson, you will not be away from me for three years. Having you gone for a month will be too long as it is.” She looked him in the eyes and moved her head forward until her lips were only a few inches from his.
“The kids won’t be back for another two hours. Fred and Linda took them out to get dessert, and that means we have this great big house all to ourselves until they get back.…” Her voice trailed off.