Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (8 page)

Washington:

The office of the President’s Advisor on Science and Technology was not secure, at least not to the standard Secretary Anderson thought necessary. So Al had been forced to use a smaller, more secure, room on the third floor of the executive office building. He’d been assured that his regular office would be done before the day was out, but since there was no time to waste, urgency outweighed comfort.

Fortunately, three of the attendees of this meeting were not physically present. Only he and Dr. Anthony were forced to endure the tight space. The others had the advantage of sitting at their regular desks. Three screens sat at the end of the table, each displaying a different face, while Carter and Al shared a wide-angle camera,
in a closet.

Joshua Lange, the Director of NASA Operations was on the right screen, the window behind him showing a bright Houston sky. General Victor Marquez of Space Command was in the middle, and the Air Force’s top weapons expert, Dr. Ward Danielson had logged in from a place called Camp Mars, Utah.

Lange was a former astronaut and held NASA’s top seat. He’d worked his way up the ranks to become the administrative head of the agency. Tight and focused, he still looked like a recruiting poster for the Astronaut Corps, with just enough grey in his hair to give his face a bit of wisdom.

General Marquez, who was about the same age as Lange, made the Director look soft by comparison. The General was all edges with a look that said he was only business. His intensity was intimidating, even through a camera.

Dr. Danielson on the other hand, was anything but focused-looking. He sat chewing a nail, looking like a curly haired beaver gnawing on a log. His skin hung in soft folds and his eyes bulged out of doughy cheeks. Somehow though, he managed to convey the idea that he was above this meeting, and that his importance should be self-evident to everyone.

Calling the meeting to order Dr. Stanley said, “Thank you for joining us gentlemen. I assume you’ve read the background information?”

Marquez and Lange nodded. Danielson snorted, “Of course.” Al raised an eyebrow and Carter struggled to hide a grin.

“Our objective is to construct a framework for Project Hammerthrow,” Dr. Stanley continued. “I understand it’s too early to flesh out any details, but we need to determine the scope of our efforts. I’d like to begin by letting Dr. Anthony give you an overview of the mission requirements.”

“What I discussed with the President,” Carter said, “is deploying a group of warheads that can be spaced out along the asteroid’s path to incrementally change its trajectory enough to avoid impact.”

“Why go to all that work?” Danielson asked. “We should blow it up and be done with it.”

“If we were to do that,” Carter explained, “we’d end up with a cluster of fragments that would be harder to stop."

“We know the Chinese are working on a forced helium-cycle warhead,” Danielson said. “Our research shows that we should be able to produce detonations in the 1000 gigaton range. That would be more than sufficient to leave no debris.”

“The Chinese are substantially ahead of us in their development of those technologies,” Marquez said, “and as far as I know, they have yet to conduct a test.”

“Helium-cycle warheads?” Carter asked.

“By stimulating He3 under the right conditions, it’s theoretically possible to induce a helium-fusion reaction that would be orders of magnitude larger than a hydrogen bomb,” Danielson said.

“I think it’d be prudent to keep ourselves limited to technology we know,” Dr. Stanley said.

“We know it will work if we have sufficient He3,” Danielson said.

“I doubt President Hutton would be willing to wager the survival of humanity on experimental technology,” Marquez said.

“What about a conventional warhead?” Danielson sidestepped. “We’ve gotten into the ten to twenty gig—“

“Perhaps you misunderstood,” Al Stanley cut in. “The President has signed off on the deflection plan. Other options are off the table.”

“But—"

“I endorsed you for this meeting because you’re a weapons design expert,” General Marquez said. “Do I have to point out that you’re not the only one we have?"

Danielson sputtered and sat back, splotches of pink seeped into his otherwise gray skin as his blood pressure shot up.

“If I may ask a question,” Marquez said. “The United States and Russia deployed multiple warhead ICBM’s during the Cold War. These missiles could place several warheads within a quarter mile of discrete targets. This sounds like what you’re describing to me.”

“Possibly,” Carter said. “Are they still in use?”

“No,” Danielson said, still pouting. “We decommissioned them more than a decade ago.”

“At least we’ve conceptually got something there,” the General said, scribbling notes on his desk top.

“Depending on what we can determine about the asteroid’s composition, we’re going to need upwards of twenty-five pairs of warheads,” Dr. Stanley said.

“Assuming that it’s a homogenous nickel-iron body and not a pile of loose gravel,” Dr. Anthony said. “The most critical factor is how close to the asteroid we can detonate. If we can be sure we’ll place all of them within five hundred meters of its surface—“

“Let me get this straight,” Joshua Lange interrupted. “You expect to launch a swarm of individually controlled missiles to an asteroid,
out in deep space
and get them all to hit a five hundred meter window?”

“Precisely,” Carter said.

“Actually, if we assume several warheads per missile—“ Marquez said.

“Regardless, that’d still be at least fifty warheads individually targeting at the same time,” Lange said. “We’ve had enough trouble getting two Mars rovers down to the surface within a few hours of each other."

“We routinely track over 20,000 satellites at Space Command,” Marquez said.

“But you only control a few at once, and they’re a damn sight closer to Earth, so you’ve got no propagation delay,” the NASA Director said.

“It’s also likely that subsequent missiles will have to be redirected as they approach,” Carter added. “This asteroid is spinning on two axes. It’s oblong and irregular shaped. If we range from the center of gravity of the asteroid, we’re going to have some impulses go off closer to the surface than others. This will affect the deflection rate substantially.”

“And risk shattering it?” Al asked.

“Potentially,” Carter said.

“Which is another reason to vaporize it,” Danielson said. “There’s no risk of miscalculation.”

Marquez sighed. “Doctor, we are following orders."

“I think the President needs to have other opinions to choose from,” the weapons designer said. “She’s basing this solely on the recommendations of one man. No offense, Dr. Anthony.”

“That’s her right,” Marquez said. “She trusts Dr. Anthony’s expertise. You will either work on Hammerthrow as it is defined, or I will bring in your replacement.”

“Yes, General,” he said through clenched teeth.

“For the sake of discussion,” Marquez said, “What is the velocity of this asteroid?"

“At its closest approach we’re talking about a Delta-V of twenty-eight miles per second, give or take a bit,” Carter said.

“Then we have another problem,” the General said. “There are no military boosters that can get into that neighborhood. The best we can do with anything we’ve got, especially with a heavy payload, is around five to six."

“How heavy is a nuclear warhead?” Carter asked.

“A multiple target warhead?” the General asked. “I can’t even guess, but it will be heavy.”

“The SLS is the only system that could get that kind of payload to escape velocity,” Lange said. “And from there to twenty-eight miles per second is still a reach. Not to mention that we can’t possibly have enough of them built before the end of next year.”

“We’ve got ample booster capacity to LEO,” Marquez said. “Perhaps we could assemble the missiles in orbit and integrate a departure stage there."

“Orbital assembly?” Joshua asked. “That’s a slow process without having a platform.” He sat forward, his face growing large in the monitor. “You’re not suggesting that we use the ISS for this?”

“I hadn’t gotten that far in my thinking,” Marquez said, “but that would be an ideal solution.”

“The hell it would,” Lange said.

“I agree with the General,” Dr. Stanley said. “We could send up components, and have NASA put it together. That’d give us the ability to start launching generic hardware and fuel before we’ve finalized the design.”

“Alpha is not tooled for that type of work. It’s a research laboratory, not a fabrication platform,” Lange said.

“I understand that,” Al said. “Could we send up military personnel to assist?”

“Absolutely no way. Working in microgravity is not something that can be done by amateurs,” he said.

“We do have personnel trained for the environment,” Marquez said. “We have two squadrons of TAV pilots.”

“Just because you can teach someone to not puke in their space suit, doesn’t mean they’re trained to do construction work there,” Lange said.

“Excuse me, what’s a TAV?” Carter asked.

“Trans Atmospheric Vehicle. He’s talking about the F-28 Starhawk,” Dr. Stanley said. “It’s a small space plane the Air Force doesn’t officially have."

“I understand you have some reservations,” Marquez said, “but I’m sure we can provide manpower and expertise to work with your people."

“I won’t sign off on this,” Lange said. “The potential risk would be unacceptable.”

“The risk in not doing it is certain,” Carter said.

“There have to be other options,” the Director said. “Some of that old Star Wars hardware is still operating. I know those ABM lasers were pretty rugged.”

“Lasers?” Carter jumped in. “A powerful enough laser could create a steam jet on the asteroid surface to deflect the asteroid."

“Steam jet?” Marquez asked. “That implies thermal energy. The lasers in the SDI satellites are X-ray. They were designed to cut up a missile’s electronics like a Ginsu knife, but I seriously doubt they’d wok-fry your asteroid.”

“That makes sense,” Carter said, shaking his head. “Better penetration of the atmosphere.”

“What about lasers, though?” Lange said. “Could we build something here that would make the steam jet approach workable?”

“The problem would be to deliver enough of the beam’s energy to the target after passing through a hundred miles of atmosphere first,” the astronomer said.

“So that rules out beam weapons,” Dr. Stanley said.

“That isn’t entirely true,” Danielson said, looking at Marquez for permission before he said anything.

“Go ahead Doctor,” the General said.

“We’ve been experimenting with a way to bring about quantum detonation in non-reactive matter by stimulating it with a high frequency beam,” he said. “It’s worked well in the lab but we’re a few months from being able to demonstrate a practical model.”

“How have you managed to keep the beam from reacting with the atmosphere?” Carter asked.

“We haven’t,” Danielson conceded. “But it works well in a vacuum.”

“Which brings us back to the idea that it’d have to be built in space,” Al said.

“There isn’t room on the station. We’ve got nineteen people up there now. Three crew, and sixteen scientists,” Lange said.

“We’ll have to bring them down,” Dr. Stanley said.

“This isn’t like calling a cab,” Lange said. “It’ll take two shuttles just to transport that many astronauts down. We’re looking at ten weeks, minimum."

“Ten weeks?” Carter asked.

“At least. We’re running an average of forty-two days between missions,” he explained. “We’ve only got six Shuttle II’s in the fleet, and a tight thirty week R-and-R on each one. The best we can do is a one-month rotation between flights if we don’t have anything that snags us. We’ve also got one crew module we could get mounted on an SLS booster and launched in six weeks or so."

“That would be unacceptable,” Al said, watching Carter slip from shock to exasperation.

“It’s the best we can do,” Lange said. “The risks in pushing any faster are too high to take without lives on the line.”

“But lives
are
on the line,” Carter said. “Billions of them."

***

Stormhaven:

“The interface is operational,” Mica said. “I am ready to initialize reprogramming at your command.”

Daryl Creswell had never been a religious man, but watching the floor of the assembly line he felt moved to prayer. Ever since he’d arrived at Stormhaven, he’d been in charge of programming the fabrication robots that made almost everything the community used. For the last several months, the main line and most of its feeders had been dedicated to the components that went into the
Dancing Star
and her sister ships.

Now that Colton had set the goal of producing enough of these transports to build a survival colony on the moon, he knew it was time to pass control of the line to Mica. Although the computer hadn’t been designed to run the lines, it had proven capable of almost any task it had been assigned. From a computer’s perspective there was no difference between modeling global climate change, and telling robotic assemblers how to do their job. It was all numbers, and when it came to that, Mica had no equal.