Titan. Stephen Baxter
Benacerraf said, ‘Marcus, what happened to the ten spares? Do you remember?’
‘I sure do,’ he said ruefully. ‘Since they symbolized my career, as it went down the toilet, I followed the fate of those Moon ships with close interest.’ He closed his eyes. ‘They used four for various tests: thermal vacuum and pogo, acoustic, pad checkout. And another three for Skylab tests. They pretty much took those babies apart, for the purposes of the tests.’
‘That leaves three,’ Angel said evenly.
‘Yeah. First you got a Skylab backup. It sat on the pad on top of a Saturn IB as a rescue capability, through the whole Skylab program. And then there were two Moon-trip Apollos, never flown. “Requirement deleted”. Three man-rated spacecraft, never flown, just mothballed.’
Benacerraf felt herself smile. ‘Maybe we’re about to undelete those requirements.’
There was another moment of silence.
Then they started to talk at once. ‘Where are those CMs?’ ‘All in storage at JSC, or Downey.’ ‘Three CMs. Two flight birds and one test vehicle, for verifying the redesign and refurbishment.’ ‘The electronics should be easy. Those old clunky guidance computers they had took up so much damned room. All that core rope and shit …’
Benacerraf let it run on.
It’s coming together, she thought. She felt a core of excitement gather in her gut.
Angel, still drinking hard, was doodling spacecraft configurations and shapes on a smoothed-out paper napkin. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘If we’re going to do this one-way shot, we ought to get away with a fuel load, in Earth orbit, of one and a half million pounds. And of that, around two hundred thousand pounds would be hauled out to Saturn for braking there.’
‘That,’ said Benacerraf, ‘is less than a single Shuttle External Tank.’
‘Yeah,’ White growled. ‘But you’re still looking at a couple of dozen Shuttle flights to put it up there.’
Siobhan Libet said, ‘But you wouldn’t need to use the full Shuttle system. You’re not carrying crew, except on one final flight to orbit.’
Benacerraf prompted, ‘So what do we do instead?’
‘Shuttle-C,’ said Libet promptly. ‘A stripped-down cargo-carrying variant of the Shuttle system. The payload capacity would be raised to a hundred and seventy thousand pounds.’
Mott nodded. ‘But the Shuttle-C is an expendable variant. Essentially you’d be using up the orbiter fleet.’
‘But that doesn’t matter,’ Libet said.
‘She’s right,’ White said. ‘Nicola, we’re working to different rules now. The damn things wouldn’t fly again anyhow. It’s a choice of putting them to work one last time, or stick ’em out in the rain as monuments.’
‘Okay. But even so this is only a partial solution,’ Angel said. ‘We have three orbiters left: Endeavour, Atlantis, Discovery. You’d want to retain one for the final crew launch, so you’re left with two Shuttle-C launches. That would only account for a quarter, maybe, of the total mass in LEO for Titan.’
Libet said, ‘There were two more pre-flight orbiters.’
‘Yes,’ said Benacerraf. ‘Enterprise and Pathfinder. Now, what the hell happened to them?’ She went to a bookcase, and searched through her yellowing Shuttle training materials. ‘Here we go. “Shuttle Orbiter Enterprise: Orbiter Vehicle-101. Enterprise, the first Space Shuttle orbiter, was originally to be named Constitution, for the Bicentennial. However, Star Trek viewers started a write-in campaign urging the White House to rename the vehicle to Enterprise… blah blah … OV – 101 was rolled out of Rockwell’s Air Force Plant 42, Site I –”’
White shrugged. ‘They used Enterprise for the approach and landing tests. Then they decided it would cost too much to upgrade Enterprise for spaceflight. Tough on all those propeller-head Star Trek fans. So they stripped her. She’s a museum piece now.’
Libet asked, ‘What about Pathfinder?’
Benacerraf dug through her documents. “‘The Pathfinder Shuttle Test Article … Pathfinder is a seventy-five ton orbiter simulator that was created to work out the procedures for moving and handling the Shuttle. It was a steel structure roughly the size, weight and shape of an orbiter … Pathfinder was returned to Marshall and now is on permanent display at the Alabama Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville –”’
Libet said, ‘I imagine Pathfinder would be a lot more problematic to adapt for Shuttle-C than Enterprise, or the flight orbiters. But if we can do it –’
‘Then,’ Barbara Fahy said, ‘you’d have four Shuttle-Cs. But they still aren’t enough.’
‘No.’ Angel scratched numbers quickly on his napkin. ‘We still need twice the carrying capacity. What else?’
‘The Energiya,’ Rosenberg said. ‘The old Soviet heavy-lift booster. How about that? What was its lifting capacity?’
‘Three hundred thousand pounds to LEO,’ Angel said.
‘So,’ Rosenberg said, ‘two or three Energiya launches –’
‘I don’t think it would work,’ Siobhan Libet said. ‘I’m sorry.’ Benacerraf could see she was genuinely regretful. ‘I was shown around the Energiya facilities at Tyuratam when I was training for Soyuz Station return. Actually the Energiya facility was built on the site of their old N – 1 launch facility, the Soviets’ attempt at a lunar-mission heavy-lift booster. The Russians have killed it. The integration hall is – spectral. Full of mothballed strap-on boosters, tanks, engines, other Energiya components, pretty much deteriorated; I don’t think it could be refurbished.’
‘Damn waste of time and money,’ White said. ‘I once saw one of their Shuttle flight models. They’ve set it up in Gorky Park, for kids to play at being astronauts.’
Angel blew out his cheeks. ‘So we’re stuck again. What else?’
‘We could go to the Air Force,’ Siobhan Libet said. ‘Use their heavy-lift boosters, the new Delta IVs.’
Benacerraf shook her head. ‘We could try an approach, but they wouldn’t buy it. Believe me, I’ve seen enough politics since Columbia. The USAF will hinder us, not cooperate. Anyhow, Delta can’t lift more than forty thousand pounds to LEO. The number of launches required would be prohibitive.’
‘Then we’re screwed,’ Angel said. He threw his pen down on the table, and crumpled up his napkin.
But Marcus White was grinning. He scratched his cheek; the stubble made a rasping noise against his fingernails. ‘Lawn ornaments,’ he said.
Angel, his arms folded, looked at him. ‘What?’
‘You know, there are NASA centers with Moon rockets lying around on their driveways, for dumb fucking kids to gawp at. JSC, Kennedy, Michoud, Marshall. Now, what if –’
‘You’re kidding,’ Angel said.
‘I’m only talking about refurbishing the existing flight hardware, and a few test engines, not reviving the whole damn production line. All you’d have to do is bring the things in from the rain, scrape off the moss, give them a fresh lick of paint … I know they have some engines in bonded storage, down at Michoud. And I’ll bet there are still a few of those old bastards around who worked on the original development in the 1960s.’
Barbara Fahy frowned. ‘I guess it could be done. The old launch complexes at the Cape, 39-A and 39-B, are still operational. They were adapted for Shuttle.’
‘Then they can be unadapted,’ White snapped back.
Angel was figuring. ‘So to complement our four Shuttle-C launches, and allowing a margin