e-Ghosts of Rogue Planet

Chapter 3

After a month of training, we were ready to launch. Delta-2B had been expanded and enhanced to complete the mission to a rogue planet and it was parked out in space a thousand meters away from the Hero-.2, NASA’s main space station. Both Kensington and General Gonzalez were present to send us off.

The General hugged his daughter and shook my hand. “You take good care of her,” he told me with a serious look.

“I will, sir,” I replied, trying not to look too intimidated.

“Don’t let these two love birds divert you from the mission goals,” he told James and Alisha.

They chuckled.

We each put our helmet on and made sure it was tightened to our suit collar. NASA technicians checked our suits to make sure they were ready for the trip over to Delta-2B by means of the motorized cable tram. We took turns standing on a tiny platform and hanging on to vertical cables as the system slowly propelled us over to the ship.

I looked down at a glorious view of the Earth miles below my feet and wondered if I would ever see it again. The swirling clouds covered a view of the Americas as the home planet slowly progressed into a terminator where a vast array of lights attested to human civilization’s presence.

Once safely in a side hatch of the ship, I waited patiently for the arrival of the others. I could only imagine what James and Alisha were going through being that this was their first time in space.

Once we were all aboard, I detached the tram cables and shut the hatch so that the chamber could be pressurized. When the pressure was nominal, we removed our helmets.

“Welcome to the cage,” I said. “Where there is no privacy.”

James and Alisha chuckled, but it had a nervous tenor.

We floated up to a hatch to a tunnel that led to the crew compartment, a giant wheel that slowly rotated to provide artificial gravity by means of centripetal force. We moved through the tunnel by using hand grabs and emerged through a hatch. We had to climb down a ladder to the floor of the crew compartment wheel.

We faced a good half hour’s work of removing our space suits and stashing them away in special lockers where robotic devices could maintain them. The lockers also cleansed them, eliminating any possible contamination.

When we were finished, we were only wearing underwear, but it was very well designed underwear, a special polymeric cloth that never wrinkled, bunched up or crawled up you know whare.

“Is this all we get to wear?” Alisha asked, looking rather perplexed.

“There’s clothing in lockers above our bunks,” Marie said. “Come on,” she said, gesturing. “Let’s check it out.”

“While you gals go check out the meager wardrobe, James and I will go to engineering and start the launch sequence,” I said.

“I thought we had to be in our space suits when we fire up the engines,” James said.

“We used to, but NASA finally realized that if something went wrong and the engines exploded, space suits would be superfluous.”

James frowned, but there was a hint of a smile on his lips. “That’s a heart warming thought.”

“It’s just another danger connected with space travel,” I said.

We arrived at the engineering station, which is where we can check the ship’s status. This area had been expanded to allow for four seats.

“COMA, what’s the launch status?”

“Launch will occur in ten minutes and thirty five seconds and counting, Ryan.”

I looked up at the gals, who were upside down on the other side of the wheel. “You only have ten minutes until launch,” I shouted.

“We’ll be there,” Marie yelled back.

“It’s going to take getting used to,” James said.

“What’s that?”

“Seeing someone upside down like that.”

“You’ll ignore it after a few weeks. COMA, display the engine status board.”

The main screen changed to display a panel of engineering data.”

James pointed to the screen. “Is the plasma supposed to be that hot?”

“These new MPDT-204 ion engines use nuclear power generators to get maximum thrust. They have to accelerate this ship to over one hundred and fifty thousand kilometers per hour within twenty four hours.”

“Will we feel that?” James asked.

“Yes, but it won’t be like the shuttle descent.”

James blew out a relived breath. “Thank goodness.”

Marie and Alisha returned wearing the usual white tee, shorts and flip-flops. They plopped down in the remaining two chairs.

We were still wearing our underwear.

“You boys are not properly dressed for this party,” Marie said with a teasing grin on her beautiful lips.

“Sorry,” I said. “We don’t have time to go change.” I looked at the screen. “Launch is in four minutes and change.”

“Shouldn’t we be wearing space suits?” Alisha asked.

“If the engines blow up, it wouldn’t matter,” I said.

That made the gals less inclined to tease us.

The engines fired on schedule, accompanied by a momentary reduction in power to the crew compartment. The lights went out and the screen flickered and then froze, but everything returned to normal after a few tense seconds.

The ship’s acceleration pushed us back in our seats. At first, it was not all that bad, but after a few minutes the intensity picked up, forcing our heads back against the seat restraints. A screaming noise echoed throughout the crew compartment and it quickly became annoyingly high pitched.

Ion propulsion has a relatively low specific thrust in the six-to-seven-thousand-second range. The Delta-2B engines are higher powered by a factor of two to three, and they have a much higher thrust in the thousand Newton range. The drawback is that they require gobs of electrical power, in the tens of thousands of kilowatt-hours. Using a nuclear power plant to generate this kind of energy represents a safety issue because of the danger of radiation.

After the first hour, the G-forces fell to a tolerable level, enough so that we could get up and walk around. James and I went to the lockers above our bunks and changed into white tees, shorts and flip-flops.

“I see that they’ve assigned me to the bunk that is next to the shower unit,” I said. “That means that I’ll get to watch everyone strip before bathing rather I want to or not.”

“I would think that you would like that,” James said.

“Yes, but after a while it gets annoying.”

He chuckled.

I didn’t think it was funny.