Benacerraf prompted, “So what do we do instead?”
“Shuttle-C,” said Libet promptly. “A stripped-down cargo-carrying variant of the Shuttle system. The payload capacity would be raised to a hundred and seventy thousand pounds.”
Mott nodded. “But the Shuttle-C is an expendable variant. Essentially you’d be using up the orbiter fleet.”
“But that doesn’t matter,” Libet said.
“She’s right,” White said. “Nicola, we’re working to different rules now. The damn things wouldn’t fly again anyhow. It’s a choice of putting them to work one last time, or stick ’em out in the rain as monuments.”
“Okay. But even so this is only a partial solution,” Angel said. “We have three orbiters left: Endeavour, Atlantis, Discovery. You’d want to retain one for the final crew launch, so you’re left with two Shuttle-C launches. That would only account for a quarter, maybe, of the total mass in LEO for Titan.”
Libet said, “There were two more pre-flight orbiters.”
“Yes,” said Benacerraf. “Enterprise and Pathfinder, Now, what the hell happened to them?” She went to a bookcase, and searched through her yellowing Shuttle training materials, “Here we go. ‘Shuttle Orbiter Enterprise: Orbiter Vehicle-101. Enterprise, the first Space Shuttle orbiter, was originally to be named Constitution, for the Bicentennial. However, Star Trek viewers started a write-in campaign urging the White House to rename the vehicle to Enterprise… blah blah… OV-101 was rolled out of Rockwell’s Air Force Plant 41, Site 1—’ ”
White shrugged. “They used Enterprise for the approach and landing tests. Then they decided it would cost too much to upgrade Enterprise for spaceflight. Tough on all those propeller-head Star Trek fans. So they stripped her. She’s a museum piece now.”
Libet asked, “What about Pathfinder?”
Benacerraf dug through her documents. “ ‘The Pathfinder Shuttle Test Article… Pathfinder is a seventy-five ton orbiter simulator that was created to work out the procedures for moving and handling the Shuttle. It was a steel structure roughly the size, weight and shape of an orbiter… Pathfinder was returned to Marshall and now is on permanent display at the Alabama Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville—’ ”
Libet said, “I imagine Pathfinder would be a lot more problematic to adapt for Shuttle-C than Enterprise, or the flight orbiters. But if we can do it—”
“Then,” Barbara Fahy said, “you’d have four Shuttle-Cs. But they still aren’t enough.”
“No.” Angel scratched numbers quickly on his napkin. “We still need twice the carrying capacity. What else?”
“The Energiya,” Rosenberg said. “The old Soviet heavy-lift booster. How about that? What was its lifting capacity?”
Three hundred thousand pounds to LEO,” Angel said.
“So,” Rosenberg said, “two or three Energiya launches—”
“I don’t think it would work,” Siobhan Libet said. “I’m sorry.” Benacerraf could see she was genuinely regretful. “I was shown around the Energiya facilities at Tyuratam when I was training for Soyuz Station return. Actually the Energiya facility was built on the site of their old N-1 launch facility, the Soviets’ attempt at a lunar-mission heavy-lift booster. The Russians have killed it. The integration hall is — spectral. Full of mothballed strap-on boosters, tanks, engines, other Energiya components, pretty much deteriorated; I don’t think it could be refurbished.”
“Damn waste of time and money,” White said. “I once saw one of their Shuttle flight models. They’ve set it up in Gorky Park, for kids to play at being astronauts.”
Angel blew out his cheeks. “So we’re stuck again. What else?”
“We could go to the Air Force,” Siobhan Libet said. “Use their heavy-lift boosters, the new Delta IVs.”
Benacerraf shook her head. “We could try an approach, but they wouldn’t buy it. Believe me, I’ve seen enough politics since Columbia. The USAF will hinder us, not cooperate. Anyhow, Delta can’t lift more than forty thousand pounds to LEO. The number of launches required would be prohibitive.”
“Then we’re screwed,” Angel said. He threw his pen down on the table, and crumpled up his napkin.
But Marcus White was grinning. He scratched his cheek; the stubble made a rasping noise against his fingernails. “Lawn ornaments,” he said.
Angel, his arms folded, looked at him. “What?”
“You know, there are NASA centers with Moon rockets lying around on their driveways, for dumb fucking kids to gawp at. JSC, Kennedy, Michoud, Marshall. Now, what if—”
“You’re kidding,” Angel said.
“I’m only talking about refurbishing the existing flight hardware, and a few test engines, not reviving the whole damn production line. All you’d have to do is bring the things in from the rain, scrape off the moss, give them a fresh lick of paint… I know they have some engines in bonded storage, down at Michoud. And I’ll bet there are still a few of those old bastards around who worked on the original development in the 1960s.”
Barbara Fahy frowned. “I guess it could be done. The old launch complexes at the Cape, 39-A and 39-B, are still operational. They were adapted for Shuttle.”
“Then they can be unadapted,” White snapped back.
Angel was figuring. “So to complement our four Shuttle-C launches, and allowing a margin for boiloff, assembly equipment — we’d need four launches.”
“And four birds,” White said, “is what we got, lying around.” He counted on his fingers. “There are two operational articles — AS-514 and -515, from the deleted Moon flights — at JSC and Michoud. Then you have two test articles, AS-500D and -500T, at Marshall and Kennedy. I guess bringing them up to specification would be more of a challenge, but I bet it could be done.” White looked triumphant, somehow vindicated, Benacerraf thought. “I’d love to see those birds fired off at last, after all these years. The idea of those spaceships just lying around in the rain has always bugged me…”
“And if we can do that,” Angel said, “then it’s feasible. We have enough heavy-lift capability.” He looked at Rosenberg and laughed. “Good grief, Rosenberg. I think we’ve done it; we’ve found a way to close the design.”
Libet looked confused, as this talk swirled around her. “What are you talking about?”
Mott took her hand and squeezed it gently. “Saturn Vs,” she said. “They’re talking about flying Saturn Vs again…”
“Oh,” said Libet. “Oh, my God.”
They talked on, debating details and approaches, as the candles burned steadily down.
The one topic they never approached — as if skirting around it was the risk.
If the risk of not returning from an Apollo flight had been something like one in ten — and most engineers agreed the risk on Shuttle was around one in a hundred — and given the distances and the extent of this venture outside of the experience base and the difficulty of maintaining political will behind a project spanning so many years — what was the risk of not returning from Titan?
A lot worse than fifty-fifty, Benacerraf thought. Each of them, here, was signing up for Russian roulette, with the barrels loaded against them. And each of them had to know that.
But they were prepared to go anyhow. They all had to be crazy, by any conventional definition.
They were a motley crew, Benacerraf thought: Rosenberg the dreamer, Fahy the tough, wounded engineer, Angel the burned-up, goal-oriented drinker, White the stranded Moonwalker, Libet and Mott younger, enigmatic, but still, she sensed, touched with the wanderlust. And herself: determined to do something with the rest of her life other than just survive Columbia.
Flawed people, all of them. And not one of them had anything to live for that was more meaningful than dreams of a jaunt to Titan.