Rescue Mode Read online

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  I: Earth DepartureApril 5, 2031

  August 6, 2032

  March 30, 2033

  October 4, 2034

  October 31, 2032

  November 8, 2034

  January 4, 2035

  March 12, 2035

  March 17, 2035

  March 28, 2035

  March 28, 2035

  April 1, 2035

  April 4, 2035

  April 4, 2035

  April 4, 2035

  April 5, 2035

  April 5, 2035

  II: In TransitApril 5, 2035

  May 14, 2035

  May 17, 2035

  May 20, 2035

  May 24, 2035

  May 30, 2035

  June 2, 2035

  June 12, 2035

  June 12, 2035

  June 12, 2035

  June 14, 2035

  June 15, 2035

  June 24, 2035

  July 21, 2035

  III: CollisionJuly 21, 2035

  July 21, 2035

  July 21, 2035

  July 21, 2035

  July 21, 2035

  July 22, 2035

  July 22, 2035

  July 22, 2035

  July 22, 2035

  July 22, 2035

  July 23, 2035

  July 24, 2035

  July 24, 2035

  July 24, 2035

  July 25, 2035

  July 26, 2035

  July 28, 2035

  IV: Mars ApproachAugust 1, 2035

  August 12, 2035

  August 22, 2035

  September 4, 2035

  October 25, 2035

  October 26, 2035

  October 26, 2035

  October 26, 2035

  V: At MarsOctober 26, 2035

  October 28, 2035

  November 1, 2035

  November 1, 2035

  November 4, 2035

  November 4, 2035

  November 4, 2035

  November 4, 2035

  November 5, 2035

  November 5, 2035

  November 5, 2035

  VI: On MarsNovember 5, 2035

  November 5, 2035

  November 5, 2035

  November 6, 2035

  November 6, 2035

  November 7, 2035

  November 8, 2035

  November 8, 2035

  November 10, 2035

  November 15, 2035

  November 16, 2035

  November 17, 2035

  November 20, 2035

  November 21, 2035

  December 5, 2035

  December 7, 2035

  December 7, 2035

  December 8, 2035

  December 8, 2035

  December 9, 2035

  December 15, 2035

  December 17, 2035

  December 18, 2035

  December 18, 2035

  December 19, 2035

  December 19, 2035

  December 19, 2035

  December 19, 2035

  December 19, 2035

  December 20, 2035

  December 22, 2035

  December 23, 2035

  December 24, 2035

  December 25, 2035

  Rescue

  Mode

  BEN BOVA

  LES JOHNSON

  The first human mission to Mars meets with near-disaster when a meteoroid strikes the spacecraft, almost destroying it. The ship is too far from Earth to simply turn around and return home. The eight-person crew must ride their crippled ship to Mars while they desperately struggle to survive.

  On Earth, powerful political forces that oppose human spaceflight try to use the accident as proof that sending humans into space is too dangerous to continue. The whole human space flight program hangs in the balance. And if the astronauts can’t nurse their ship to Mars and back, the voyagers will become either the first Martian colonists—or the first humans to perish on another planet.

  Baen Books

  by Ben Bova

  Mars, Inc.: The Billionaires’ Club

  Laugh Lines

  The Watchmen

  The Exiles Trilogy

  Rescue Mode

  Baen Books

  by Les Johnson

  with Travis S. Taylor:

  Back to the Moon

  Edited by Les Johnson and Jack McDevitt

  Going Interstellar

  RESCUE MODE

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Ben Bova & Les Johnson

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Book

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4767-3647-1

  Cover art by Bob Eggleton

  First Baen printing, June 2014

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bova, Ben, 1932-

  Rescue mode / Ben Bova and Les Johnson.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-4767-3647-1 (hc)

  1. Astronauts--Fiction. 2. Mars (Planet)--Exploration--Fiction. I. Johnson, Les (Charles Les) II. Title.

  PS3552.O84R43 2014

  813'.54--dc23

  2014009923

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  DEDICATION

  To the first human being

  to set foot on the planet Mars.

  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Ulysses

  Foreword

  Les Johnson

  In 2012, NASA convened a workshop in Houston to “assess near-term mission concepts and longer-term foundations of program-level architectures for future robotic exploration of Mars.” The event, NASA’s Concepts and Approaches for Mars Exploration, was held at the Lunar and Planetary Institute and attended by several hundred scientists and engineers. Attendance was selective. Participants had to submit white papers describing some innovative or novel approach to Mars exploration that would either provide new science, save money or both. I submitted a white paper describing how solar sails could be used in support of a robotic Mars sample return mission and it was accepted for presentation at the workshop. I was thrilled. (My presentation is archived online at http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/marsconcepts2012/pdf/4103.pdf).

  During one of the plenary sessions in which all the participants were engaged, the age-old debate between advocates of future human exploration of Mars and those who believe that robots can explore more cheaply began to rage. And this was a venue in which it truly mattered. Being discussed as options for future robotic Mars missions were instruments that would help answer questions pertaining to future human missions—not fundamental science. If another human exploration-centric payload would be included on a future mission, then that would be one less science instrument on the flight. Payload space was at stake, and the funding that would be required to develop it.

  Sitting on the front row, in a chair reserved for him and marked simply, “Buzz,” was the second man to walk on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin. He had been quiet up to this point, but it was clear he could contain himself no longer. He stood up and waited on the room to notice and get quiet. It didn’t take long. Once he had everyone’s attention, he asked a question.

  “How many of you would sign up for a one
-way trip to Mars?”

  In an audience comprised of mostly scientists and engineers, more than half raised their hands. I noticed that some who raised their hands were previously arguing for sending only robotic science missions to Mars—and not humans. That was certainly unexpected. I kept my hands at my side.

  I was astounded at the response. Would these highly educated scientists really give up the blue sky and green grass of Earth to live forevermore in what amounts to a Winnebago on the fourth planet from the Sun? A good day on Mars is colder and more inhospitable than a bad day in Antarctica. Instant death would surely follow the first careless mistake and there would be no easy way to get help in an emergency. What were they thinking???

  Apparently they were thinking of why they had studied science, space science and engineering specifically, in the first place. The dream of walking on Mars is powerful; perhaps more powerful than the logic used to justify one type of space exploration over another. And only the words of a person who walked on another world could jolt this group out of their parochial mindset and remind them of the wonder that is space exploration.

  I later found out that most who didn’t raise their hands were like me. They would love to go to Mars but not on a one-way trip. I would go on a round trip to Mars and back in a heartbeat. I would take a calculated risk in order to experience Mars firsthand but I would definitely want to return to my family and friends, to my yearly trip to the North Carolina mountains and to the simple walks around the neighborhood that I take with my wife each day. Fortunately, no one is saying that a trip to Mars has to be one way. But even if it is, there are many people who would volunteer. Consider Mars One and Inspiration Mars.

  Mars One has the self-stated goal to “establish a permanent human settlement on Mars” by sending a habitat to the planet with people coming two years later, planning to remain permanently. Supplies would be sent from Earth to keep them alive until the colony becomes self-sufficient. They claim to be in discussions with several major aerospace companies and groups, including Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, and Thales Alenia Space.

  Their plan is ambitious, audacious, and incredibly risky. The technical issues aside, what’s interesting about Mars One has been the public’s response. They claim that over two hundred thousand people have applied to take this one-way journey. These people have said they would risk their lives to be the first colonists on Mars. How many of them are serious and would get on the rocket if the plan becomes a reality? No one knows. But I would bet the number won’t be zero. It might even be larger than the two hundred thousand they have today. If they actually can pull together the funding and support to make it happen, then more people will hear about it and possibly sign up. If and when launch day arrives, you can bet there will be people lining up at the door.

  Less ambitious but no less audacious is Inspiration Mars. Led by millionaire Dennis Tito, who spent eight days in space aboard the International Space Station, paying the Russians for the trip and becoming the first real space tourist, Inspiration Mars would like to use today’s technologies to send a man and a woman on a round-trip flight around Mars and back. The trip would last five hundred days and pass within 100 miles of the planet’s surface. What a vacation that would be!

  Is such a trip technically possible? Probably.

  Can he pull it off? Why not? All it will take is money to buy good engineering — and more than a little bit of luck.

  Would it change how we view deep space exploration and perhaps foster more ambitious future trips to the Martian surface? I certainly hope so and wish Mr. Tito all the success in the world!

  We have the technology now to get people to Mars and to bring them safely back to Earth.

  Mars awaits, and many of us are getting impatient.

  —Les Johnson*

  [email protected]

  www.lesjohnsonauthor.com

  *The opinions expressed herein are my own and do not represent NASA.

  I

  Earth

  Departure

  April 5, 2031

  Earth Departure Minus 4 Years

  14:40 Universal Time

  The Rock

  The rock was tiny, barely a foot in diameter, with a mass of less than thirty pounds. It had been orbiting the Sun for nearly fifteen million years in an elliptical path that took it roughly from the distance of Mars to a little closer to the Sun than the heat-blistered planet Mercury.

  It had been blasted off the surface of Mars by the impact of a much bigger meteoroid, the one that sent the famous Allen Hills Meteorite wandering through space until it crashed into the ice sheets of Earth’s Antarctica some fifteen thousand years ago.

  If the rock had reached Earth it would have never made it to the ground, but would have streaked across the night sky to burn up high in the atmosphere—a “falling star” to anyone who happened to notice its demise.

  But that didn’t happen. Instead, the rock continued on its long, looping trajectory, swinging through the vast, dark, silent emptiness.

  Interplanetary space is not completely empty, of course. There were thousands of other meteoroids created by that single Mars impact so long ago. And millions more engendered by other impacts with different planets and the smaller bodies of the main Asteroid Belt, out beyond the orbit of Mars. They all quietly orbited the Sun, but they were very far apart, most of them too small to be seen even by the finest scientific instruments of humankind.

  Looping around the Sun for millennia at an average velocity of 40,000 miles per hour, this rock was in a fairly stable orbit that would not bring it near Earth or any other planet for another ten million years. The chances of it hitting anything smaller than a planet were, well, astronomically small.

  But astronomically small is not the same as zero. And humans were already planning to send explorers across the gulf of space to the planet Mars.

  August 6, 2032

  Earth Departure Minus 32 Months

  18:08 Universal Time

  Spaceport America, New Mexico

  Steven Treadway stood in the baking desert heat, a microphone embedded in the stylish pin on his short-sleeved shirt. He gestured toward the twelve-story-tall rocket that stood on its steel launch stand, gleaming in the bright sunshine of a cloudless summer morning.

  “This is the first of ten rocket boosters that will carry components of the Mars-bound Arrow spacecraft into a low orbit around the Earth,” he was saying. The pin-mike picked up his words clearly.

  “Over the next six months the Arrow will be put together in Earth orbit, then its crew of four men and four women will board the spacecraft and head off to Mars.”

  In the morning’s heat, Treadway had dispensed with his usual studio “uniform” of crisp white shirt with navy blue trousers, and stood in an open-necked polo shirt and whipcord slacks. He was a handsome man, with finely chiseled features and cobalt-blue eyes. The latter were the gift of his parents, the former the product of cosmetic surgery.

  This Mars program was Treadway’s path to the top of his profession. Basically a science reporter, he had fought with every ounce of determination and cunning in him to have NASA select him as the one news media person who would “travel” with the astronauts all the way to Mars—without leaving the safety of Earth, thanks to virtual reality technology and the new three-dimensional TV system that the network was pushing so hard. And it didn’t hurt that Treadway’s cousin was a senator . . .

  When they land on Mars, he thought, I’ll be with them. Everybody around the world will watch me standing on the red planet. In 3D.

  His voice deep and reassuring, Treadway continued, “The flight to Mars will take one hundred seventy-eight days—almost six months—and then the two astronauts and six scientists will spend thirty days on the surface of the red planet—the first human beings to set foot on Mars. During that thirty days, they will perhaps confirm the discovery that so rocked the world just six years ago when China’s Haoqi robotic sample return mission found evidence of organic
chemicals in the Martian soil. We may finally be on the verge of answering the question, ‘are we alone in the universe?’”

  Behind Treadway, technicians were at work up on the launch platform. A half-dozen white SUVs were parked around it. The rocket booster towered over them all.

  “And I’ll be going to Mars with them,” Treadway said, with a dazzling smile. “Not physically, but through the wonders of three-dimensional virtual reality, I’ll be digitally embedded with the crew, so I can report to you every day from the Arrow spacecraft.”

  “T MINUS TEN MINUTES,” blared the loudspeakers set around the launch stand.

  Technicians began to climb down the steel stairs and clamber into the waiting SUVs.

  “The final minutes of the countdown have started,” Treadway said into his mike. “Time for this reporter to go to the visitor center and interview some of the notables who have come to witness this historic moment.”

  “T MINUS FIVE MINUTES.”

  Inside the air-conditioned visitor’s center, Treadway was standing between the two astronauts of the Mars crew. The center was crowded with luminaries: the governor of New Mexico, the head of NASA, several senators and congressmen, other dignitaries and glitterati, including two major Hollywood stars and a handful of pop musicians.

  Coming up through the news media ranks as a science reporter, opportunities to meet with political luminaries such as this were microscopically small for Treadway. This Mars program is my ticket to the big leagues, he told himself, envisioning a new virtual reality global news series, with him as the immersive host, saturating the worldnet with viewership and downloads exceeding even the latest soft-porn reality shows.