Blinding Fear (16 page)

The view switched from the Fox anchor to a long, skirted table on a stage with a large NASA banner behind it. An older man and younger woman were just taking their seats. For a few moments they carefully positioned their microphones and name plaques. Then the woman spoke. “Good afternoon. I’m Stephanie Willis, NASA Media Affairs Director. Thank you all for coming on such short notice. With me is David Franklin, NASA Deputy Administrator. We decided to meet with you today to put to rest some of the unfounded rumors that have been swirling in the press. I’ll read a short statement and then we’ll take a few questions.” She looked down at a sheet of paper in front of her and began to read, “Today, at 8:33 a.m. local time, a Russian Progress M28-M booster rocket with a Soyuz supply capsule, lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The purpose of the mission was to supply the ISS with extra quantities of food, water, medical equipment and other supplies. This was done for a recently planned, long-duration ISS expedition that will further study the human body’s response to micro-gravity. That expedition, composed of six astronauts and cosmonauts, three men and women, will be launched sometime in the next few weeks. The over-arching purpose of all of this will be to continue preparations for a manned, three-year trip to Mars and back. Naturally, we will keep you apprised of the details as they become available. We’ll take some questions now.”

As the NASA conference room erupted with questions, Herc reached up and turned down the volume. “I don’t buy it,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“ISS missions are planned months, if not years, in advance. The scheduling is known by anybody who wants to know way in advance. If there was anything new in the works, I’d’ve know about it. It’s one of the important things I make a point of doing every day—given what we’re doing here—monitor the information flow into and out of NASA and the European Space Agency. I watch their TV channels, read their on-line bulletins and announcements, just keep my ear to the space-related ground. I haven’t seen or heard anything about this.”

“So what do you think is going on?”

“Haven’t got a clue.” He looked concerned. “I think I’ll place a few calls to my friends on the inside. Maybe call in a few favors.”

“You sound like me with my confidential sources. How’d you get yours?”

“I was the pilot and mission commander on three NASA shuttle missions in 2010. All of them were for delivering modules and other equipment to the ISS. I even had some extravehicular time.”

“So you were floating around at the end of a tether, 200 miles above the Earth, fixing something?”

“I wasn’t really supposed to but one time the guy who
was
supposed to got sick, so I took over. Luckily, I had some EVA training. I’ve kept in frequent contact with some of my friends who are still there.”

“Now I see one of the reasons Kay hired you.”

“In all honesty, I liked it there. But if you’ll pardon the cliche, he really did make me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“You’re getting more interesting by the minute. Why don’t you tell me a little more about your background.”

“Let’s see......I retired from the Air Force in ’07 as a colonel and then went to work for NASA. After a couple years I applied for and got into the shuttle pilot program.”

“Wait a minute. You retired from the Air Force as a colonel? And you were in for what...20 years? That’s pretty quick promotions from what I’ve heard.”

He looked at her again with those piercing blue eyes. “There you go again, surprising me with what you know about the military. Yeah, I was fortunate. But I also worked my butt off.”

“What about wife and family?”

“Never had any time, although I’d have to say I was probably way too picky. Every time a good woman came around I worked hard trying to find something wrong with her.”

“Sounds like me and men. We should form a club. We’ll be charter members.” Claire smiled wryly and locked eyes with Herc. She felt the heat flood into her face but didn’t look away. She could see he was wondering as much as she was about what was happening.

Herc broke the brief silence. “How did we get from space shuttles to bad dating habits?”

“Sorry. My fault, I guess.”

“I’d call it mutual. Why don’t we get back on the 50-cent tour I’m supposed to be giving you.”

“Good idea.”

He led the way back outside where the two hopped into his cart.

As they drove toward the massive hangar in the distance, Herc provided additional details on many of the other buildings and their purposes—sounding to Claire like a tour guide in New York City.

Within a minute or so they reached one of the ten-story walls of Hangar One. He pushed the button on a standard remote control. A door that looked like it belonged on a normal garage rolled up, providing entry. As he drove into the soaring interior, Claire was stunned by the sight of an enormous, multi-engine jet aircraft towering above her. She just sat for a few minutes trying to take it all in. As were all the other aircraft in Seok’s fleet, it was painted in navy blue and yellow. She could see every part of it had been carefully polished.

Herc got out and allowed her to just look. Finally, he said, “It’s an Antonov-225 Mriya. And yes, it is the largest aircraft in the world.”

“Bigger than an Airbus A-380?”

“When comparing most measurements, yes. It’s nearly as long as a football field with twin vertical stabilizers and six turbo-fan engines, each producing nearly 58,000 pounds of thrust. Its wingspan is 290 feet. It has 32 wheels, weighs up to 1.4 million pounds at takeoff; max internal payload of a little over 550,000 pounds; external payload of 460,000 pounds; service ceiling of 45,000 feet; normal crew of 6, although we’ve cut it down to two for our purposes.” He paused, then added, “Isn’t it beautiful!”

“Absolutely! It’s astonishing! Where did you get it?”

“We bought it from the Russians. Back in the late 80s they built one of them to take their Buran space shuttle back and forth across the country; the same way we had a converted 747 carry our space shuttle from California back to Florida. The Russians started to build another 225 but cancelled the order when the only Buran was destroyed when a hangar collapsed on top of it. Eventually, the first 225 went into private, commercial service carrying ultra-large loads around the world where the only way to get them there was by air. It’s still doing so today.”

“So...wait. This is that aircraft?”

“No. Actually, what you see here is the second one. It was about 65% complete when they shut the program down. They just sort of froze it in that condition—put it in mothballs if you will—keeping all the parts they needed to complete the assembly if a buyer came along. Kay did, bought it for about $150 million and they completed it, although they did add some very specific modifications for our purposes. One of those was increasing the service ceiling and speed by boosting the thrust of the engines. For a few more millions the Russians also provided pilot and crew training.”

Claire got out and walked past the huge, bulbous nose that was facing the rear of the hangar where they had parked the golf cart.

Herc watched as she approached the massive tires and under-carriage system that allowed the plane to land and take off safely. “Earlier you asked how we could get lots of tourists into space on a regular basis.” He spread his arms upward. “This is how.”

She thought for a moment. “I think I’ve heard of this kind of thing. You use the 225 to ferry an orbital spacecraft as high as you can and release it. Then it uses its own internal rocket engines to boost it into orbit. When the trip is done, it uses just enough fuel to drop out of orbit. When it gets into the atmosphere it glides back and I’ll bet lands on one of those long runways of yours. With a system like this you save lots of weight that would normally be fuel. With the savings you can transport more passengers.”

“Very good! It also means the passenger transport craft can be smaller and less costly.”

“So where is it?”

“It’s on the other side of the 225. Let’s drive over to it in the cart.”

They got back in and a few moments later pulled up to another, yet very different aircraft sitting on its landing gear. It was reminiscent of the NASA space shuttle orbiter although smaller and with a number of other major differences. Its nose was stubbier, middle fatter and had a curious large blister on top. It had the same black ceramic heat shield tiles on the bottom, leading edges of the wings and on the nose, while from those points up the rest of the skin was all white metal. The pilot’s windshield was smaller than the space shuttle and there were four, round portholes on each side of the upper portion of what she guessed was the passenger compartment. As she got out to walk around, Herc provided additional details.

“As you’ve probably noticed it’s smaller than the orbital vehicles I flew in—about 35%. It’s 80 feet long with a wingspan of 45 feet. Its rocket engines are more powerful and efficient, with increased burn time in about 40% smaller space. We call it the Spacerider. It only needs one pilot because of cutting-edge autopilot technology we developed. It will hold six passengers comfortably.”

“What’s the big blister on top all about?”

“It’s part of the combined crew access and ISS docking system. They’re clamshell doors. When crew and passengers need to get into or out of it, or when we dock with the ISS, they retract and an airlock tube extends.”

“Did you buy it from the Russians, too?”

“No. We got it right here in the states, from Boeing. They have a contract with the Air Force to make the X-37B. It’s a semi-secret, pilotless orbital vehicle that’s about one-third the size of what you see here. For a substantial fee they agreed to upscale that orbiter. Again, they made major additions and changes to meet our needs.”

“So how high does the 225 need to be before it releases the Spacerider?”

“About 40,000. Normally, the AN-225 service ceiling is around 35,000. That’s one of the reasons we had the Russians beef up its performance parameters. Every extra foot it gets above sea-level is one less foot the Spacerider will have to rocket through with its own engines.”

“Do you know how to fly both planes?”

“Yeah. I took the complete training regimen and I’m fully certified on both. I’ll personally instruct anyone else we hire to fly them.”

“So when do all those billionaires get into space in the Spacerider, piggybacking on the 225?”

“We’re probably a year away, nine months if we’re lucky. The main obstacles are regulatory and bad old-fashioned red tape. There are multiple federal agencies with tons of paperwork that must be precisely filled out. In addition, each agency has several layers of bureaucrats, each of whom must personally review our plans and sign off on them. And of course, you’ve got politicians on both sides of the aisle who from the beginning demanded hearings on the safety and efficacy of all this. There are even some ‘green’ organizations threatening lawsuits if we don’t get environmental impact studies done. As you can imagine, we’ve got a dedicated staff that handles nothing but that garbage.”

Before Claire could ask another question, she heard Herc’s cell phone ring.

“Sorry. I should’ve turned the stupid thing off.” He looked at the screen and frowned. “Think I’d better take this one.”

He turned his back and walked away. But in the quietness of the hangar Claire could still hear most of what he was saying.

“Hello?....Yeah, that’s me........What!?.......When!?........How bad is he?.......Oh, my God!.........I don’t know, I’m pretty busy right now and.........He asked for me?....There’s no one else?........Okay, I’ll see what I can do to break away...No problem....Bye.”

He turned around and walked back toward Claire. As he did she suddenly realized if they parted now she’d probably never see him again. The call he’d taken sounded like a medical emergency about a close friend. There was no telling how long he’d stay at the hospital or what might happen after that. She’d only planned on staying another day, with much of that time devoted to further interviews with Kayode. In addition, she’d hired a local photographer while she was still in New York. She was scheduled to meet with the next morning.

Every now and then she would get intuitive hunches about people or situations or story ideas that would prove to be valuable. And she was getting one now. She needed to stay with Herc, even if it meant upsetting her carefully planned schedule. As she probed deeper—and with as much honesty as she could muster—she uncovered another, more personal, motivation: Herc was an attractive, intriguing man she wanted to be around some more. She quickly made what was either an impulsive, bad decision or the best one of her life.

“I’m really sorry, Claire. I’ve got an emergency,” Herc said as he neared her. “A friend of mine’s in the ER at a hospital in Lubbock. For some reason he asked for me. I gotta go. I’ll take you back to your house before I leave. Why don’t we.....”

Before he could say anything more she blurted out, “Herc, I should be the one to apologize for what I’m about to ask you. But.....and I know this is inappropriate, but.....would you mind if I came along?”

He looked at her with a mixture of confusion and surprise. For a few seconds she could see him trying to understand her request, weighing it against the urgency of the moment. “I.....uh.....I don’t know. I guess it might not be a problem; as long as you don’t mind hanging around a hospital with not much to do. Then again......maybe we could talk some more about space tourism on the way there; maybe in the waiting room. I don’t know.....”

“If you think I’d get in the way or something.....I’m sorry.....maybe it’s just a harebrained idea.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” He paused again. She could see him trying to form the correct way to say what was coming next.

She held her breath.

“Quite honestly, I was looking forward to spending some more time with you and I know you’re only going to be here a little while longer......so.....I guess it’ll work.” He looked at her with a hint of a smile.

She smiled in return, exhaling, feeling much better about things. “Sometimes in the midst of a crisis it helps to have a friend to share things with. Maybe I can be that friend.”