Beyond Sol

Prologue AZ

Earth, Florida, House 728, Sinkore Ave, 2116, July 23rd.

I set down my NASA mug on my island counter, watching my two children eat. My kindergartener and my 2nd grader sat at the table, guzzling down their macaroni. My kindergartener looked up at me for a moment, dirty blonde hair in a mess around her head, rounded face, wearing a blue polkadot dress.
    "Dadda." She said to get my attention. "Are you leaving?" She noticed my black suitcase on the counter across from the island, arrays of cupboards above, drawers below.
    "Erm. For a little." I leaned on the counter, hand supporting my oval head, brown medium length hair clinging to my forehead, black striking NF hat glistening in the setting sunlight outside. My black, blue sleeved hoodie very loosely hanging on to my body, casual black sweatpants hanging out.
"How long?" My second grader asked.
"Well Oscar, that's up to the tooth fairy." I said in an attempt to ease the loss for the two. Truth was; I won't be back for a very, very long time. A decade, atleast. Four years, a year, four years. I hadn't told them I was embarking on a dangerous mission.
The Beyond Sol program was like a miracle to me. Look I'll explain: Humanity was always supposed to drop in population drastically, but it never did. We tried our best to move to other planets, yet our efforts went down in vain, instead spreading our problem. So, a bunch of smart people gathered into a room and decided...drumroll please.
Are you? You better be.
Find a new solar system. A place, beyond Sol. I know, incredibly hard to figure out. NASA set their sights on Alpha Centauri, two possible worlds of habitability. Seven people, seven daredevils. Conveniently, they figured they would choose youngsters, the people who take the most risks. It was the largest mission ever funded, the most important ever. I'll give you a roster;
Carter Allan, Commander. (Me, woohoo!)
Muhammed Quinzy, Pilot.
Elizabeth Kinks, Weapons Specialist. (Or Eliza for short.)
Amelia Sinamel, Exobiology Specialist.
James Mell, Physics Specialist.
Emily Laanker, Cargo Specialist.
Braeden Ghan, Engineer.
Just the bunch of us hey? I walked over to the other counter with my backpack lying on it. I unzipped it, pulling out a small, black folder titled BEYOND SOL DEPARTURE STUFF in messy handwriting with a grey sharpie. The unusually long mission paired with the stupidly large budget, gave us a ten pound weight limit. Crazy, I know.
"What if you don't come back?" Anna, my kindergartener asked.
"Well, why would you think I wouldn't come back?" I remarked, pulling out five sheets of paper from my folder, setting them on the counter.
"You are super super super nervas!" She giggled, pushing her bowl away. She grabbed her crayon a few inches away from her, drawing on the black countertop.
"You're right. I'll be back, don't worry." I didn't promise it, because it might not be one I can keep. "Momma will take care of you." I organised the five papers, laying them out in a two top three bottom configuration. First things first, The Spectrum. It was and is the largest ship ever constructed.
Built in orbit, it's a one-fifty metre long ship, consisting of two artificial gravity rings, with about thirty metre clearance between each side of the rings, 10 metres apart. A long, cylindrical hull approximately 2 metres wide, runs all the way down to a box like structure. A hangar. Twenty metres long by 10 tall, (yes for your ape brain, it stretches five below the main hull and five above,) it hosts four fighter jets made for the mission.
TFA-75's have three purposes.
Transport.
Fighter.
Attack.
A cross mix between the old F/A-18's, F-22's and F-35's, it's found to be one of the world's most advanced jets. Underneath the main hangar bay is a rover bay, four rovers with optimal space to dick around with guns.
What?
Just behind the hangar is an identical 'box,' just an engineering bay. Thorium/Caliornium based fuel reactor, hard drive computers, and a shitload of shipping containers. I guess a near decade mission takes a lot of resources. Going behind that is the good ol' propulsion module. About ten metres long, it hosts four nuclear engines that feed off gaseous uranium. For the confused chemists, the gas is fed through a very, very small fuel line, where it's ignited just behind the small to non-existent engine bells.
Gas lights, explodes, and according to Newton's third law of motion, the explosion reacts against the Spectrum, and in turn creates thrust. Perk is, it requries so little oxygen the onboard breathing tanks can feed both us and the engines. Along with the nuclear engines comes Ion, solar arrays that deploy in-transit gather energy for the cryogenic pods just behind Ring 2 (which is the closer of the two to the hangar and engineering bays, separated by two modules,) and the Ion's.
Now comes the twist, inside the Storage one module (which lies behind the glass module greenhouse and the bridge, who I'll explain in a later chapter,) lies a nose gear. Inside the hangar, rear landing gear. Coated on the whole belly of the ship is 120 thousand carbon-carbon panels.
The Spectrum can land.
The Spectrum holds the record for the largest orbiting laboratory, largest aircraft, largest spacecraft, largest everything.
Moving onto the next sheet, flight course. The Spectrum would cover nearly forty two trillion kilometres of uncharted space, using an experimental 'warp' drive. I mock warp as it sounds like something from a fantasy movie. The Spectrum would first launch from Earth in two weeks, and beeline for Martian airspace where the Martian colonies reside, duh, what, you expect them to live on Triton? Some do.
After a quick pit stop on the Martian Space Centre of Blackcrow island (separated by a sea to the state of Crissco, the two busiest tourist attractions for the rich fucks who are able to visit the colonies,) the ship would travel past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and finally Neptune.
Aerobrake in Neptune's atmosphere to land on Triton for one final resupply, then vanish for nine years. Oh shit, my math was off, sorta. According to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, time slows down the faster you go. At the Spectrums 99.9999% light speed, that equates to what, twenty times slower than the time around it.
Four years travel time...three months. Here's a chart:
Spectrum's travel time: Four years to Neptune, 3 months to Alpha Centauri, one year spent there, 3 months back. (Skipping past planets directly to Martian Space port, Blackcrow.) Total time spent is five years.
Earth travel time: Four years to Neptune, four years to Alpha Centauri, one year spent, four years back. Total elapsed time is 13 years. Physics likes to screw you over sometimes. Equate for length contraction, give Spectrum six years, including screwing around.
I packed the sheets back into the black folder, tucking it into my black backpack. Black is pretty consistent with me, you'll notice that. I zipped it up, walking back over to the island counter. "All done?" I collected the two bowls, stretching over to grab them. I set them down in the sink, sighing.
"I love you daddy." Oscar leaned back in his raised leather chair, turning his lips into duck lips.
"I love you too little man, I love you too."