Space Station Freedom By 1979 and the launch of the Ares 9 mission, the USSR had put six Salyut space stations in orbit. With the discovery of the Serpo engine, and its requirement for a five million ton anchoring mass, the US found it too needed some form of permanently-manned space presence, preferably one with access to Near-Earth Asteroids. In 1982, Skylab was boosted out to the L5 point, and then in the five years following it was used as a base to build a larger and more permanent space station. Space Station Freedom is currently home to eight NASA astronauts on six-month tours of duty.
Thomas O Paine The third interstellar spacecraft built by the US, and named for the NASA administrator, 1968 to 1981, who was instrumental in seeing the Ares programme to completion. The Thomas O Paine uses as its anchoring mass the conjoined asteroids 1566 Icarus and 1950 DA. It performed its first flight in 1994 to Epsilon Eridani.
Zond 1 to 3 These three launches were unmanned tests of the Zond mission hardware: the N1 launch vehicle, Soyuz 7K-L3 LOK and LK. They did not leave Low Earth Orbit.
Zond 4 An unmanned test of the Soyuz 7K-L3 LOK, which saw the spacecraft orbit the Moon and return safely to Earth. Launched 2 March 1968.
Zond 5 A repeat of the Zond 4 flight, but this time the spacecraft contained animal specimens — turtles and insects. They were returned safely to Earth. Launched 15 September 1968.
Zond 6 A manned test of the Zond spacecraft, with both a Soyuz 7K-L3 Lunniy Orbitalny Korabl and a docked Lunniy Korabl. The mission had been intended to be a world first, putting men in lunar orbit, but Apollo 8 beat the Soviets to it in December 1968. No attempt was made to undock the LK while in orbit about the Moon, and a scheduled EVA to test the procedure by which a cosmonaut transferred from the LOK to the lunar lander was aborted after problems with Filipchenko’s Krechet-94 spacesuit. Crew: Anatoly Vasilyevich Filipchenko and Alexei Stanislavovich Yeliseyev. Launched 21 February 1969.
Zond 7 The fourth Soviet lunar mission, and the first to land a man on the surface of the Moon, at Mare Fecunditatis. Crew: Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov and Nikolay Nikolayevich Rukavishnikov. Callsigns: Soyuz 7K-L3 LOK Rodina, LK Zarya. Launched 3 July 1969, landed on Moon 7 July 1969. Duration on lunar surface 25h 9m 17s.
Zond 8 The fifth and last Soviet lunar mission, to Le Monnier, a crater in Mare Serenitatis. The Soviet cosmonauts were military pilots and engineers, not scientists, and unlike the US programme, science had never been an objective for the Soviets in their race to put a man on the Moon. Zond 8 demonstrated that Leonov’s achievement was repeatable and that the USSR had the capability to land someone on the lunar surface on demand. Once that point had been proven, the Soviet space programme turned its attention to space stations in Low Earth Orbit. Crew: Pavel Ivanovich Belyayev and Oleg Grigoryevich Makarov. Callsigns: Soyuz 7K-L3 LOK Ural, LK Znamya. Launched 12 November 1969, landed on Moon 15 November 1969. Duration on lunar surface 23h 56m 41s.
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From the hilltop, Inge Visser and Peter Overmyer look down on a field of rockets. A circular area of the plain below them, five kilometres in diameter, is filled with boosters held upright by one-shot gantries. Each launch vehicle has two LOX/kerosene stages, and two solid fuel boosters strapped to its sides.
It has taken ten years to build the two hundred rockets.
We’ve got five more coming online next week, says Overmyer. His voice is muffled by his breathing mask.
Visser asks, Is it enough?
Overmyer nods, and adds, Eight people per module. Should be.
There are just under two thousand of them on this moon of Iota Draconis b, one hundred and three light years from Earth. Visser and Overmyer were born here, members of the colony’s fourth generation. People have been on this moon for one hundred years, mining the surface for metals, lanthanides and non-metals, and sending it all back to Earth.
Visser and Overmyer turn from the field of rockets and descend the hill towards the brightly-coloured prefab buildings of the colony. The gas giant this moon orbits sits above the horizon, a brown banded globe too large to cover with a clenched fist. Beyond it, Iota Draconis itself approaches one edge, a disc of roiling red and yellow, close enough for prominences to be visible. It has almost twice the mass of Earth’s Sun, and twelve times the radius. Soon it will disappear behind Iota Draconis b, and eclipse-night will fall. Later, as the moon rotates, and Iota Draconis reappears, it will be true-night. Visser and Overmyer are used to days with two nights. It is all they know.
They have never been to Earth and will never be allowed to do so. They don’t mind. Neither would be able to cope with Earth’s eight billion population. The thought of so many people scares them in a way their imminent departure does not.
Despite being born, growing up and entering adulthood on this lifeless moon, it has never really felt like a home. Everything is temporary since everything will be lost when they depart. Much of the colony is automated, the mining equipment all robotic. The fabbers were brought to Iota Draconis b from the previous colony on an exoplanet orbiting Tau Boötis, and they have already been sent ahead to their new home, 79 Ceti, 127 light years from Earth. Overmyer and Visser are quite excited at the prospect of setting up a fresh colony on a new exoplanet.
In nine months’ time, there will be a great celebration, a week-long party. Afterwards, everyone will work towards the departure. People will be assigned modules and launch dates. A fleet of Serpo cyclers will arrive in orbit and, over a period of weeks, move the entire population to 79 Ceti. Visser and Overmyer will be among the last to leave.
This is what humanity does now, moves from exoplanet to exoplanet, exploiting each one for an Earth now entering a post-scarcity age. There are twelve such colonies, connected to the Earth—but not to each other—by a fleet of FTL Serpo cyclers, ferrying the raw materials for the industries of humanity’s home world. The colonies hop and skip from lifeless world to lifeless world—all worlds are lifeless—each time moving further and further away from Earth, each time being allowed to stay just a little bit longer on their new home. This is the only way to exploit the riches of the universe, settling worlds and then moving on before the information of their arrival, carried by photons at lightspeed, reaches Earth. They ride the wavefront, trapped within successive quantum states, adrift from the cosmos of the people back in the Solar System.
This is why they will never meet aliens. Engineered quantum spacetime is the only way to circumvent the speed of light restriction… but it also means they can never interact with the universe observed by Earth.
Yet they know there is life out there somewhere. They have evidence it exists, and they found it on the first alien world they visited…
One hundred fifty million miles from Earth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
_Ahearne, Joe & Christopher Riley, directors: SPACE ODYSSEY: VOYAGE TO THE PLANETS (2004, Impossible Pictures)
_Baxter, Stephen: VOYAGE (1996, Voyager, 0-00-224616-3)