Titan. Stephen Baxter

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Titan - Stephen Baxter

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Everyone but Marcus White opted to use chopsticks.

      Benacerraf, looking around at the ring of relaxed, candlelit faces, felt pleased. There was a warm, friendly, domestic atmosphere here; they were seven humans, rooted to the Earth, enjoying a shared ritual that dated back to the emergence of humanity.

      Her purpose, tonight, was to try to build this group into a team, who would have to work together to achieve something no other humans had attempted – and, if, impossibly, this proposal came to fruition, some of whom might soon depart the Earth forever.

      She still hadn’t decided whether to put her weight behind this dumb-ass Titan proposal. Up to now, it had just been a hobby, something to take her mind off the hierarchy of Flight Readiness Review records from STS – 143. The reaction of the group, tonight, could decide that.

      They started talking about Titan again.

      Nicola Mott said, ‘Let me go through this again. From the top. You’re seriously suggesting that we send a manned mission. That we travel one way, to colonize Titan.’

      ‘Why not?’ Rosenberg said. ‘Maybe we’re done with dipping our toes in the water and running.’

      ‘Like with Apollo,’ Marcus White said heavily.

      ‘Like with Apollo.’

      Rosenberg said, ‘Look, the whole point of this proposal is that we’re going to prove that a colony on Titan would be viable. More than that: it would soon become an actual economic asset to the United States, to Earth. How are we going to do that, if we aren’t prepared to put ourselves on the line, give up a few home comforts?’ He sounded irritated, frustrated at his inability to communicate, their inability to see. ‘We go out there to stay for years, we build a home, we survive until a retrieval capability is put together. We cannibalize the ship that carries us, turn it into surface shelters. We use ISRU, as Siobhan says. We make Titan such an attractive place that resupply and retrieval missions have to follow.’

      Marcus White said, ‘ “We”, Rosenberg?’

      ‘Yes.’ He looked uncomfortable, the candlelight shining from his glasses. ‘If there’s a ship going to Titan, I want to be on it. I’m best qualified. Isn’t that what this is all about?’

      White grinned. ‘Hell, yes. I’d go myself.’

      In the silence that followed, the others stared at him.

      ‘When I walked on that lava plain south of Copernicus, with Tom Lamb, I sure as hell never figured I’d only get the one shot at it. There would have been an extended-Apollo program, with lunar orbital missions, and long-stay shelters hauled up by dual-launched Saturn Vs, and all the rest. And then more: flyby flights to Venus and Mars, the space station, permanent colonies on the Moon, eventually landing flights to Mars itself …

      ‘But the whole damn thing shut down, even before Armstrong stepped out at Tranquillity.’ He put down his drink, and the fingers of his big hands knitted together, restless. ‘I must have talked about my Moon trip a thousand times. Ten thousand. And the one thing I’ve never managed to put over is how it feels not to be able to get back. Ever.’ He grinned at Benacerraf, embarrassed, uneasy. ‘They should shoot us poor fucking Moonwalkers in the head. Anyhow, it won’t be me. I realize that. Christ, I’m seventy-four years old, already. I’m a grandpa three times over. But I’ll tell you, I’d just like to see one more guy lift off out of the gravity well and go someplace – plant Old Glory on one more moon – before the last of us sad old Apollo geezers dies of old age.’

      ‘And,’ Mott pressed, ‘if we don’t succeed? – if Earth doesn’t jump for the bait? If we set out, and they just let the space facilities rust? What then?’

      Marcus White leaned toward Mott over the table. ‘The question for you is, having heard that – would you go?’

      Mott thought for a moment. She opened her mouth.

      But, Benacerraf noted, she didn’t immediately say no.

      White leaned back. ‘You know, they used to ask us a question like that, during our interviews for the Astronaut Office. Marcus, would you submit to a two-year journey to Mars? Suppose I tell you that the chances of surviving the trip are one in two. Do you go? Absolutely not, said I. One in ten, maybe.’ He looked at Mott. ‘I got it right. The point was partly to see how dumb I was, how foolhardy. But also to find out if I had it in me.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Wanderlust.’

      Rosenberg said, ‘Being an astronaut on this mission won’t be just another job, a line on your résumé. This will be about going somewhere, where nobody else has ever been. Making a difference. What the job used to be about.’

      White laughed. ‘That,’ he said, ‘and glory, and fast cars, and the women.’

      ‘I get it,’ Siobhan Libet said. ‘This isn’t Apollo. It’s a Mayflower option.’

      ‘Maybe,’ Barbara Fahy murmured. ‘The Mayflower colonists went because they had to. They did it because they couldn’t find a place to fit, at home.’

      Marcus White grunted. ‘There sure as hell has been little enough room on Earth for astronauts, since 1972.’

      Rosenberg said, ‘The costs don’t have to defeat us. We don’t need any massive technical development. We use chemical propulsion, existing technology wherever possible. For instance, the Space Station hab module for the journey shelter.’

      Benacerraf nodded confirmation of that. ‘The thing’s been sitting in a hangar at Boeing, intact, since 1999. It wouldn’t take much modification …’

      Rosenberg said, ‘You’d wrap a cut-down Shuttle orbiter around it. With the hab module in the cargo bay, you’d use the orbiter’s OMS and RCS for course corrections, and the main engines for the interplanetary injections.’

      Angel and White exchanged glances.

      White said, ‘A Shuttle orbiter to Saturn? Well, why the hell not? It’s the nearest thing to a spaceship we got.’ He turned to Rosenberg, grinning. ‘You know, I love the way you think.’

      Angel said, ‘How are you going to get a Space Station hab module down to the surface of Titan?’

      ‘Easy,’ Rosenberg said, chewing. ‘Titan has a thick atmosphere, and a low gravity. You’d glide the hab module down, inside your Shuttle orbiter. Which is why you’d take the orbiter. The aerosurfaces would need some modification, but –’

      ‘Holy shit,’ Libet said. ‘You’ve worked this out. You’re serious, aren’t you, kid?’

      Angel said, ‘Okay, so this is just a mind game, right? A bull session. Maybe you’re right, Rosenberg. Maybe you could do that quickly and cheaply. But not if you wanted a man-rated system.’

      Siobhan Libet said, ‘But we aren’t talking about the kind of assured safety we have in the current program, Bill. We know this whole thing would be risky as hell.’

      Bill Angel said curtly, ‘I’m talking about some kind of entry profile that would actually be survivable.’

      ‘It wouldn’t have to be,’ Rosenberg said.

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