Red Hope (6 page)

“Um, I came down with the flu right before the launch,
so I was replaced. We had a backup understudy program for that kind of
unexpected event. Somebody was always in the wings waiting.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“How do I feel about missing out on a shuttle mission?
Well, I was tragically disappointed.”

“Okay, if you got sick again, would you still notify
NASA personnel?”

She hesitated and didn’t look him in the eye.

“Yes, of course. I could never forgive myself for
knowingly endangering the mission. Especially a Mars mission.”

Clipboard Man took some notes, then put his pencil
behind his ear. The cameraman opened the door and called for Adam. He came back
in and fell into his chair. Molly stood up, looking tired, and wandered
outside.

Adam laughingly said, “Okay Clipboard Man. Ask away.”

“I see that you were on a space shuttle mission once
back in 2008. Your wife Connie was in a car accident while you were up in
orbit. Tell me how you handled that stress.”

Adam stared at him in wonderment.

“How do you know about the accident?”

Clipboard Man saw his surprised look. He leaned toward
Adam and replied, “I read about it in your book. It was a very interesting
story.”

“Ah yes, well you must’ve been the only person who
bought that book. You know it just reached three millionth place on Amazon’s
best seller list? But, yes, as you say, that’s true. My wife Connie was in a
bad car accident during my shuttle mission; actually while I was performing an
eight-hour spacewalk.”

Adam paused to collect his thoughts.

“My crew decided not to tell me about it until I got
back inside the shuttle. It was serious and she still has to walk with leg
braces and sometimes with balancing crutches; kind of like short crutches that
only come up to the elbow. No running or any quick movements.”

“Well, Adam, do you think you could be on a mission
lasting many months and deal with that level of stress again?”

“I’ll ask her to avoid being hit by a drunk driver…
again
.”

Everybody laughed except Adam.

“I’d be fine. Connie is a very strong woman. She
fights that impairment every day. She still manages to take care of our kids
while I go on empty book tours and give speeches to half-empty audiences at
conferences. Life has been a little stressful since the space shuttle was
cancelled.”

Clipboard Man interrupted, “We’re getting that same
message from a lot of your coworkers.”

The Cameraman pushed the button to stop recording
while Clipboard Man was writing down more notes. He paused long enough to look
up at Adam.

“Okay, I think that’s enough. You and Molly did well.
There’s a bus at the other end of this line of trailers. It’ll take you back to
your hotel. You can leave now. Remember, don’t tell anybody about today. We’ll
be in touch.”

“Got it,” replied Adam.

He picked up his helmet and water bottle and walked
out through the door. It slammed shut under the heavy spring. He saw Molly
standing down in the trailer’s shadow drinking her water.

As he descended the staircase, Adam remarked, “They
said we both did well and we can get on the bus to go home.”

“Do you think we’ll be the chosen ones?” she
questioned.

“You? Maybe. Me? Not a chance.”

The two astronauts walked through the dusty red soil
to the bus. Their interview was over and it was time to go home.

The director of NASA sat in a black limo at the entrance gate to Sunset
Beach State Park. He’d flown into Silicon Valley an hour earlier and drove down
to meet Keller Murch at the entrepreneur’s ocean-side house. Chris was excited
to discuss the MM10 rocket-powered space ship idea. He followed Keller’s
directions and ended up at this park entry booth located at the top of a cliff
overlooking a beach and the Pacific Ocean. Anybody wanting access to the beach
had to go through the booth and pay a fee. The only exception was for people
who lived in the beach houses spread out along the coastline here.

The park attendant leaned out of her Dutch door to
collect the entrance fee. Chris rolled down the window and told the park worker,
“
Four nine four Las Viento Drive
.”

Only six words. The park worker smiled and said, “Good
morning sir, have a nice day.” That was it. No ID required. No fee collected.
Chris had said the secret code just like Keller told him. The park worker
opened the gate and the limo disappeared down a steep winding road toward the ocean.

When he reached the bottom of the hill, the limo was
just below a towering cliff with houses perched at the very top. They looked
like little baby birds about to fall. As Chris was driven down the road, to his
right was a beautiful white sand beach leading to the Monterey Bay inlet of the
Pacific Ocean.

On a map the bay looked like a seaborne giant had
punched in the coastline. As the wealth in Silicon Valley bulged, it washed down
and over the Santa Cruz Mountains starting in Los Gatos, flowing through Scotts
Valley and settling here on the Monterey Bay. Chris’s limo continued driving
past the beach visitors, the campers, and the tents. The smell from the eucalyptus
trees invaded the car.

After nearly a mile he arrived at an enormous steel paneled
gate that enveloped the entire road. Something important was hidden behind this
giant barrier. The limo pulled up to the keypad. Chris lowered his window and typed
in the code: 2MURCHMONEY. The motorized gate made a grinding sound as it slid
wide open. What Chris saw made him stop blinking.

Beyond the gate was a stretch of enormous beach houses
elaborately built out of rare woods and even rarer fortunes. As he drove down
the lane, he ogled the Ferrari’s, Porsches, and even a refurbished red Ford
Model T.

Near a cedar-clad beach house, the limo had to stop as
a woman in a bikini hopped out of a Porsche and nearly floated across the road in
front of them. She smiled at them and waved, looking as happy as a product of
unimaginable privilege should be.

The road eventually dead ended into an enormous three-story
beach house with a classic green Ford Mustang parked casually in front of it. The
house had a spiral staircase that went up around a marble swordfish sculpture.
The stairs ended at a redwood front door on the second floor.

On the bottom level was an enormous garage with the
doors wide open. Instead of being filled with fine Italian sports cars, it
contained machinery, shop equipment, and arcade games. It all seemed very out
of place for this neighborhood.
Aside from the
limo, the only other car in sight was Keller Murch’s Mustang.

A shower of sparks flew out from behind a tall red tool
box in the garage. Chris climbed out of the limo and asked the driver to wait
for him. He walked toward the garage and spoke loudly, “Hello?  Mr. Murch?”

The sparks stopped and a head popped out from behind
the toolbox. The floating head said, “Oh hey, you must be Mr. Tankovitch. I’d
shake your hand, but I’m covered in grease. I think Keller is expecting you.
He’s upstairs. Go on up over there, by the swordfish sculpture.”

"Okay, thank you," said Chris.

He walked up the spiral stairs and knocked on the door.
It opened immediately. The bright smile of Keller Murch greeted Chris. He was
carrying a large pile of books, but still managed to reach out and shake the
NASA director’s hand.

“Thanks for coming all this way! Please, come on in.
Watch your step, the natural slate floor is a bit of a tripping hazard. Hey, so
how was Arizona?”

“Warm and dusty.”

“Hah, I bet,” said Keller.

He led Chris to his office at the back of the house. Ironically
it had no view of the ocean. Instead it had a view of the vertical wall of dirt
behind the house. Chris saw some clods of dirt falling down and hoped today
would not be the day for the cliff to let go and bury the house.

Keller set the books down on his desk.

“Follow me, I have something to show you,” said Keller
as he walked quickly toward the front of the house where the sound of ocean
waves got louder. As Chris walked down the hallway, he saw an enormous
panoramic stretch of windows overlooking the Pacific Ocean. He saw cresting
waves in every direction.

“That’s an awesome view you’ve got,” admired Chris.

“No, no, that’s not what I wanted to show you. Look
over by the sofa,” Keller said while pointing toward the living room.

Hovering over the coffee table was a model of the MM10-powered
hover ship. Chris thought it looked like the nose cone of a typical NASA rocket
straight out of the 1960’s. However, it was just floating there with the sound
of a pressurized air leak coming from it.

Keller grinned and said, “That’s a model of what I’d
like to talk with you about. My company built a revolutionary rocket engine
that uses very little fuel and runs for a long time. I’ve had that little model
running all morning; hovering right there.”

Keller recognized the look of awe on Chris's face and
continued to sell the concept, “It’s like magic, isn’t it?”

Chris approached the levitating model, got down on one
knee and removed his glasses so he could take a closer look. All it had on the
bottom were four rocket nozzles that were wavering back and forth in some
attempt to stabilize the vehicle. It also had fins sticking out the top, but
those were barely moving. Chris’s face suddenly formed a huge smile of childish
amazement. He put his hand under the rockets to see if he could feel the
exhaust. All he felt were small, but powerful, jets of air.

“How does it work?” asked Chris without looking away.

“Well, do you know how normal rocket engines work?”
quizzed Keller.

“Yes, of course. It’s the old ‘throwing rocks from a canoe’
idea,” said Chris while still focused on the hovering model.

“That’s right. The idea behind a rocket engine is to
push on something in one direction and thanks to Sir Isaac Newton, you get
pushed in the other direction. It’s like sitting in a canoe and throwing heavy
rocks out of it. You and your canoe get pushed in the opposite direction of the
rocks,” Keller summarized.

Chris completed Keller’s explanation by saying “Yes,
and all a rocket engine does is push tiny gas particles out the nozzle really
fast to get the same effect. But that doesn’t explain
this
. It doesn’t
feel like you’re pushing out a lot of air at all.”

Keller smiled at the obvious technical confusion. He
leaned in and said, “That’s the billion dollar question and that’s why you’re
here today. There is more to that canoe analogy. As you mentioned, you can either
throw heavy rocks slowly or light rocks quickly. My company has developed a
rocket engine that takes it one step further. We throw incredibly small
particles out very fast; roughly a thousand times faster than a standard rocket
engine. So we barely have to use any of our
rock storage
so to speak.
For the same amount of rocket fuel as a traditional engine, I can get a decent
amount of thrust and run it for days, if not weeks.”

Chris looked puzzled. He gave a skeptical look toward
Keller and asked, “But the air coming out isn’t very warm. It’s not burning
like a regular rocket engine.”

“That’s right. Nothing is burning. Each motor contains
the most powerful superconducting magnets in the world. The gas is not burned.
Instead, it’s first turned into pure ionized plasma through a patented
technique. Then we pump electricity through it and the magnets push it out the
nozzle at ultra-high speed.”

Chris interrupted, “Wait, you use magnets to
push
it out?”

“Yes. In every high school science class they teach
you that moving a
copper wire
near a
magnet
causes electricity to
flow through the wire. That’s how a generator works, right? Well, it works in
reverse too. If you pump electricity through a wire while it’s
sitting
near
a magnet, it causes the wire to move. Or
seawater
or
ionized gas
or whatever you’re using to conduct the electricity instead of a wire.”

Chris questioned, “You mean like magneto-hydrodynamic
propulsion? The so-called
MHD thrusters
? I thought those were all
fiction.”

Keller shrugged his shoulders and said, “No, the
theory is real. It works. In our case, we’re using a
plasma gas
instead
of
hydro
though, so we call them MPD’s instead of MHD’s. Granted, it’s
not strong enough to make a sixty ton army tank fly, but certainly strong
enough to push a tin-can NASA crew capsule through space for a long time. And
it’s a heck of a lot more powerful than any of the existing ion thrusters NASA
is using right now.”

Keller plopped down on the sofa after that explanation.
He took a big breath and then continued his hard sell.

“We have a full-flying prototype. It’s so easy to fly
even I can handle it. My guys have told me that this could easily be scaled up
for a trip to Mars. With a long constant acceleration, you could get to the Red
Planet in about four or five weeks. And the astronauts wouldn’t suffer from
zero gravity effects along the way. It is truly the ideal solution to your
problem.”

Keller paused before hammering home his final point.

“The worst part of any vacation is getting there,
right? I’m solving that problem for you.”

Chris stood up and wandered over to a piano bench to
sit down. He was shaking his head in disbelief.

Keller stood up again. He confessed, “I was going to
sell this technology to a Russian contractor, but when I saw the president at
the press conference with his laughable time table, I had to refocus this
technology on the American efforts. Think of it as my attempt to keep our
country from looking like a fool.”

Chris was scratching his chin trying to find the right
things to ask. “I have so many questions. How much does it cost? How long would
it take to modify it for space travel? Do you have a factory?”

“I will answer these questions in due time. We’ll head
up to our headquarters later on and you can meet my engineers.”

Keller was interrupted by the sound of soda cans being
opened from a doorway at the far end of the living room. A bikini-clad brunette
walked out of the kitchen carrying a plate of food and two Cokes. Chris’s jaw
dropped at the sight of this mystery woman. She put the plate down on the piano
and placed the drinks on coasters. On the plate were cucumber slice sandwiches
with some organic tomato sauce. It seemed perfectly Californian. Chris wanted
to ask Keller if beach houses were stocked full-time with beautiful women.

“It must be lunch time,” said Keller.

He realized an introduction was in order.

“Chris, this is my assistant Lydia. Hey Lydia, this is
Chris Tankovitch. He runs NASA and he’s going to make me famous.”

Lydia winked at Chris and said, “That’s nice. I’ll
just let you boys get back to your rocket talk. Oh by the way Keller, somebody
named Tatyana called and left a voicemail for you. She sounded Russian and
terrifying.”

"Delete it," commanded Keller.

She walked away and Chris tried not to notice. His
mind eventually wandered back to the ship floating above the coffee table.

“Mr. Murch, are these motors strong enough to launch
us off of Earth and up into orbit?”

Keller swiveled his head side to side.

“No. These rockets aren’t strong enough to launch any
vehicle up into orbit from Earth or Mars. However, once in orbit, these MM10
motors would be engaged and give a nice gentle push all the way to Mars; that
would greatly accelerate your vehicle. Your travel time will drop by an order
of magnitude.”

Chris shook his head in disbelief; it was just too
good to be true.

He peered at Keller and asked, “What’s the catch?”

Keller let out a big belly laugh and answered, “There
is no catch.” He started to walk toward the kitchen and stopped. Keller turned
around with a smile on his face.

“Well, there is one
tiny
catch. I will build
these rocket motors and maybe even the crew capsules themselves for your Mars
program. And I will only markup the cost by one thousand percent. Given your
impossible timeframe, I think you’ll agree that’s a bargain. However, I will
only do this for you if you guarantee that I am on the
first
trip to
Mars.”

Ocean mist billowed through the open windows and
settled on Chris's glasses. He looked over at Keller through his fogged lenses
and said, “You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Murch. I’ll see what I can do. We have
a lot of work ahead of us and very little time.”