“Could they bail out at high altitude and parachute to safety?” another engineer in the room asked.
“Unlikely they would be in the right physical and mental state to accomplish such a thing. Who knows what kind of shape they’ll be in when we find them?” the NASA Chief Engineer said.
“Wait.” Stetson stopped them. “We don’t have to bring them all down.”
“What?” Ross asked.
“We won’t all have to reenter in Orion. The plan we came up with last night is to transfer two or all of the Chinese passengers to the International Space Station before we come home.”
If their microphones hadn’t been muted, Stetson was sure he would have heard several engineers listening on the line pass out in their seats.
“Look. We’re supposed to do a direct entry when we come home from the Moon in Orion. We leave the Moon and come screaming home, going directly into the Earth’s atmosphere, using the atmospheric friction to slow down enough to pop our parachutes and get us to a dead stop. But we don’t have to.”
“Huh?” Ross’s voice on the speakerphone sounded perplexed. “I don’t understand.”
“Just like in Apollo, we’ve designed Orion with a safe-abort maneuver in case something goes wrong on the trip home and the ship cannot reenter immediately. It’s called aerocapture. We’ve never done it, but it should be relatively easy to do. Apollo was designed to do it, and so are we.”
“Wait, wait, Bill.” Ross, with a little agitation now apparent in his response, said again, “I don’t understand.”
“Of course.” This time, Rowan answered the question. “Aerocapture. Instead of coming straight into the atmosphere and landing, with aerocapture you skim into the upper atmosphere just enough to slow down and enter orbit. It’s sort of like skimming a rock on the surface of a pond. The capsule will dip into the atmosphere to slow it just enough to enter orbit. It can fire its retrorockets later to de-orbit and come home. But how will you get to the Space Station? It is at the wrong inclination.”
“We thought of that,” Bill said. “With aerocapture you can slow down and change your orbital inclination. We can aerocapture into an orbit that matches up with the station. Orion’s been used to take astronauts to the station since the late teens. The docking hardware we use to mate with the lunar lander is the same hardware that is used when Orion carries astronauts to the station. We aerocapture, dock with the station, off-load our extra passengers, and then come home. I’ve got some engineers at Langley plotting the aerocapture maneuver right now.”
“That leaves one big question,” a nameless voice from among those listening on the telecon interjected. “How do they get home? The ones on the station, I mean.”
“Well,” said Stetson, “I haven’t figured that one out yet. But there’s plenty of air and water on the space station to keep them comfortable until we do.”
“And, if some of them need medical attention, then they can come down in Orion. In that case, Bill and I will stay on ISS,” Anthony Chow added. Bill liked the comment because it showed they had options.
The ten-second silence that followed seemed like an eternity to Bill Stetson. He’d given it his best shot, and now it was up to the NASA Administrator to give it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
“Bill, okay. I’ll tell the Vice President that we can do it. Make it happen.”
If this had been a videoconference, Bill Stetson might not have smiled. But since he was only in the presence of his friends and crewmates, that big Texas grin was painted from ear to ear.
“Yes, sir!” came through loud and clear.
Minutes later, the crew broke quarantine to meet face-to-face with the lead engineers who were going to make what modifications could be done on the launchpad, with only two days remaining until launch. And they had to go to the Altair simulator and practice taking it apart in spacesuits. The engineers had to have some specialty tools rapidly prototyped during the process. Fortunately, NASA astronauts and engineers had been learning how to do maintenance and construction in space for the last two decades as they had built the ISS and maintained it. Kluging tools for new jobs was old hat for them.
Gary Childers wanted to break the news to Gesling and his customers personally. He heard the news of the planned NASA rescue while he was at his desk, perusing once again the sponsorship agreements that would allow him to begin building his own lunar lander.
The media had been talking about a special announcement from the President being forthcoming, and when it was finally on the television, Gary Childers was watching.
The President, looking calm and in control as he did when he spoke to the nation about his plans for fixing the looming fiscal crisis, stood in front of the lectern in the White House briefing room with NASA Administrator Ross at his side.
He said, “I spoke directly with the President of China and made the offer to have NASA’s upcoming flight to the Moon be a rescue mission. He accepted our offer, and now we, and the world, need to pray for the stranded astronauts and for the success of our planned rescue attempt. I’m going to turn it over to Mr. Calvin Ross, Administrator of NASA, to provide the details.”
Childers listened to enough of the details to get at least some understanding of what was planned and then keyed in the access code on his workstation that would allow him to speak directly with the Dreamscape.
“Paul. This is Gary. How are things up there?” Childers asked.
“Mr. Childers. Thanks for asking. I think your passengers are having the time of their lives—or they would be, if they weren’t thinking about those trapped Chinese astronauts. It’s a mixture of elation and sadness up here. But I don’t believe anyone will ask for a refund.” Gesling sounded like he was trying to put the best possible face on what had become of their interplanetary vacation.
“Well, put me on the speaker. I have news.”
“Go ahead.”
“Hello!” Gary Childers greeted his customers, still about a hundred thousand miles from home. “I have good news. NASA is going to attempt to rescue the stranded Chinese astronauts that you found on your trip. It sounds risky, and it may not be successful, but if it weren’t for you and the flight of the Dreamscape, these people would surely be dead and their deaths unknown until some future explorers found their bodies. The Chinese and the world owe you a word of thanks. Your vacation may have just saved the lives of four astronauts.”
“Gary, thanks for telling us. You’ve got six smiling faces up here.”
“Tell them I’m smiling, too. See you soon,” Childers said.
Gary leaned back in his chair. He meant every damned word of what he’d said. He had just gotten the best publicity anyone could have imagined and perhaps saved some lives to boot. With that, Gary Childers was both a happy businessman and an elated human being. And he did have a big smile on his face to prove it.
Chapter 19
Not since Apollo 13 had so many NASA engineers been working with such urgency. Every room Stetson passed on his way to briefing room 1A was full of people pouring over printouts and busily making calculations on their laptop computers. Normally, with launch only two days away, all the analysis would have been completed long ago—checked and rechecked weeks before. Now, with so many changes in the flight, many analyses were being performed for the first time. This wasn’t in any of the simulations, so there was no backup plan to pull out and follow. This one was being created on the fly.