Solar Umbrella (Book 1)

Chapter 21: It Looks Like Home to me Alright

FOR THE NEXT five months, Parker lived out of a suitcase. He travelled between NASA bases, his parent's house, hotel rooms and boats in the Pacific. Ultimately, once planning was done, NASA had to wait until the space elevator was complete to have involvement again. Construction was primarily funded by private companies in exchange for time using the new creation. The construction would never have been completed without the giant corporations hoping to turn it into profit, so their payoff was taken very seriously by the would-be international team of governors, of which Parker would be a part of. The cost to move anything to space by liquid fuel rocket had reduced with reusable rockets, robot workers, fuel innovations and other efficiencies over the decades, but was still incredibly expensive. The use of the space elevator would cut costs exponentially, and the sooner companies were able to get personnel and materials in space, the sooner they would be able to recoup costs. As it turned out, Frank Williams, the man who had interviewed Parker for his job, would be leading the NASA team. Combined with a team from Russia, Europe, China and a rotating international member, the five governors would act like a court of sorts—debating and ruling by simple majority on who would get to use the elevator at which times. They would also determine what could and could not travel up and down the elevator and be responsible for the general upkeep and improvement of the elevator and bases at both ends. In exchange, the national space agencies would earn time of their own to accomplish their own goals.

The design was simple, despite the cost and design challenges that had taken decades. A weight at one end—in this case a floating base tethered to the ocean floor, connected to a weight at the other—a space station in orbit. Connecting the two weights is an incredibly strong cable, made of graphene, the only material able to withstand the massive tension put on the cable. The reason for the space elevator was simple. About ninety percent of the cost of sending something to space was escaping the gravity well of the Earth. The space elevator cut that cost so drastically, it opened up new doors in space exploration and commercialization. The base Parker would be mainly stationed at was in the Pacific right along the equator, although he hoped to travel up the cable to the station rotating along at the same speed as the Earth as well.

"Parker, I don't understand how things are going to travel up that cable, or why the station in space doesn't take off, or come crashing back to Earth," his mother asked him one day while he was on video calls with other members of the NASA team while sitting at her kitchen table.

He had a good explanation for this lined up, so he went right to it. "I remember once, I was tugging on a rope and the dog was pulling the other end," Parker explained. "I looked down, and a bug had landed on the rope. It started walking between us as we spun around. It was able to travel without issue because the dog and I were pulling the rope tight as we spun. If either of us let go, or stopped spinning, the bug would be sent flying, or be forced to go with the rope. If we kept going long enough, the bug could have travelled up and down the rope forever and flew away whenever it got to either end to go about its day." Parker smiled at his mother and titled his head slightly to see if she liked his explanation.

"Parker, we've never had a dog," she replied.

"It's like a metaphor or whatever Mom!"

"Okay, but when I watch the news, those ships coming back down look like a comet coming to crash. There's fire and smoke and it looks like an inferno," she frowned. "How are you going to avoid burning up when you go up and down on that rope all day? It just seems so dangerous."

Parker had heard this question before as well. The first time he had been asked about it, he felt really dumb because he had never even thought about it. He just thought back to all the movies he'd seen and books he read and trusted that you could go up and down a space elevator without issue. "Mom, ships and other things only ever burn up because of their incredible speed. The atmosphere itself isn't on fire all the time. It's just the friction of those ships coming back in so fast that causes all the fire. We'll be travelling at a much slower speed, so no need to worry!"

His mother notwithstanding, the space elevator had captured the imagination of the public in ways the Mars explorers had not been able to. The news regularly reported on construction delays, plans for new space stations that would take advantage of the elevator, expected profits for companies, potential exploration steps and beyond. Kids drew pictures of the tether and stations on their tablets when they were supposed to be learning about algebra or whatever kids did these days. People were interested in where this would go. The governors wanted to capture some of that enthusiasm and had tasked their teams to come up with ways to do just that. There was a popular competition that asked regular people to design the crawlers—the cars that would travel up and down the cable. They received millions of entries in different divisions—from children's creations in crayon to entries from scientists that had realistic, practical ideas. Parker and Alex had been talking for a few months and had an idea of their own. An idea that would take advantage of the international nature of their teams, the excitement of the public at large and hopefully lead to a better future for humanity.