Chapter 9
To The Moon Alice
The Vitex airship hovered slowly over the landing pad of Chimborazo Spaceport in Ecuador, it's white airframe gleaming in the early morning sunlight like an oversized Horseshoe Crab. It gently touched down alongside a number of other company airships which formed the International Space Consortium. The consortium had been formed not long after Doctor John Smith arrived in "Pete's World", and Alan Bond had invited him to the preliminary test firing of their Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine.
John had seen that Bond and his team at Reaction Engines Limited, understood the complexities and difficulties of building such an engine, and so he had shared with them the benefit of his considerable experience. On John's recommendation, Pete Tyler had signed up Vitex and Cybus Industries to the project. Other entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, Henry van Statten, Richard Branson and Alan Sugar quickly followed suit, with other companies joining the consortium to get a share of this new and potentially lucrative market.
The Tyler and Smith families, walked from under the bulk of the airship and looked into the distance at the snow capped peak of the extinct volcano of Chimborazo. It rose one and a half miles above the surrounding landscape, and they could make out the thin strip of the three mile long magnetic levitation track which ran up the western slope, representing the culmination of all those years of hard work.
'So that's it then?' Rose said. 'The path, or should I say track to the stars.'
'Well, to the Moon for now,' John said with a smile. 'But yeah, this is mankind's first steps into a larger universe.'
'Y'know, it's like I said to Jack,' said Rose as they walked towards the terminal building. 'This is SO excitin'. Even if we have been to other worlds and galaxies in the TARDIS, travellin' in the blink of an eye.'
'Inaugural trips always are,' Pete told her. 'And this is something we've done ourselves. Okay we had help from John, but he didn't give it to us. He let us work it out for ourselves, only helping us to avoid the pitfalls that would have cost time, money and lives.'
'All I'm hoping is that this zero gravity don't make me throw up,' Jackie said, dampening the air of anticipation.
'It's not zero gravity Jackie, it's micro grav . . .' John saw the look she was giving him and decided to stop talking.
'You'll be fine Mum,' Rose told her. 'Floatin' around is the best part.'
'Yeah. I can't wait to get in the fun room,' Eyulf told them, and all the children agreed.
They passed through "check-in", and met the other families in the plush reception area, along with news reporters and their camera crews, whilst their luggage was loaded onto the space plane. Of course, there was only one name they could choose for the space plane, and that was Enterprise.
A young woman in a Branson-Galactic uniform entered the reception area. 'Ladies and gentlemen. If you would like to make your way to the embarkation lounge . . .'
The one hundred passengers followed her out of the reception area, through the embarkation lounge, and into the boarding tunnel that led to the plush interior of the Enterprise cabin. Eyulf had a window seat, with his sister Juleshka next to him, and their mother Rose taking the aisle seat. John took the aisle seat opposite Rose, and had his son Jason and his brother-in-law Tony next to him. Pete and Jackie took seats behind Rose.
A man and a woman entered the cabin, wearing military style flight suits, and the man addressed the passengers.
'Good morning ladies, gentlemen, and young people. I'm captain Dave Mackay, chief pilot for Branson-Galactic, and this is my copilot, Nicola Pecile.'
'Morning Dave, Nicky,' Branson called from his seat at the front.'
Mackay smiled. 'Morning boss. Now, I know this is the inaugural flight for the passenger service, but we have flown the Enterprise many times on supply flights to the Lunar Conveyor, which we will be rendezvousing with when we achieve orbit. This passenger cabin has been "plugged" into fuselage where the cargo module normally sits.'
Pecile spoke next. 'We've already run through most of the pre launch checklist. It's just the hatch seals and pressure checks left, so make yourselves comfortable and we'll let you know when we are ready to roll.'
The pilots went through onto the flight deck, and there was a buzz of excitement and expectation in the cabin. Media screens on the back of the seats were displaying an animation of how the launch system worked. There was also a menu for passengers to select their own media, and the kids had already selected some of their favourite programs.
Ten minutes later, the seat harness sign "bonged" and the attendants demonstrated how to clip the shoulder and lap straps into the central locking disk, helping people who were having difficulties. Once the attendants were seated, there was a gentle, silent sensation of movement as the magnetic levitation track of the mass driver started to move the Enterprise forwards.
The cabin then started to tilt backwards as they climbed up the side of the mountain to the summit, achieving a velocity of six hundred and eighty miles an hour. Mackay ignited the jet phase of the Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine, and the delta winged space plane left the sled behind as it soared into the sky.
Observers on the ground saw a hole appear in the thin, wispy clouds around the summit as the wake of the pressure wave blew a "smoke ring" through them, followed shortly afterwards by the muffled rumble of a sonic boom as the ship broke the sound barrier.
'Whoo hoo!' the children on board exclaimed as the added thrust pushed them into their seats. The adventurous adults had big grins on their faces, whilst the less adventurous members had looks of apprehension and concern.
At an altitude of seventeen miles, the Enterprise passed Mach five, and the air breathing, jet engine phase of the launch was powered down. Oxygen from the onboard tanks was fed to the engines, and it seamlessly became a conventional rocket engine, boosting the Enterprise up to its orbital velocity.
['Ladies, gentlemen, and particularly for this bit, young people; we have achieved orbit and the engines will cut off. Please feel free to leave your seat and have some fun,'] Mackay announced.
Suddenly, people felt the pressure of acceleration disappear, and the only thing holding them in their seats were their harnesses. Before any of the adults had hit the central disk and released the straps, children were floating overhead, laughing and giggling as they improvised a game of tag.
Rose glided gracefully out of her seat, and using her gymnastic skills, maneuvered herself around the cabin. She helped the less experienced and coordinated passengers to find their space legs and enjoy the sensation of flying.
'Come on Mum. Have a go, you'll love it,' she said, holding out her hand.
Jackie raised a disbelieving eyebrow. But seeing her daughter's enthusiastic grin, and her son-in-law and grandchildren tumbling around the cabin, she unbuckled the harness and took her daughter's hand.
'Yay! Grandma. Have a go at this,' Eyulf called out, as he tucked into a forward roll that sent him barrelling down the aisle into the arms of his father.
Jackie chuckled at her grandson's enthusiasm. 'Maybe I'll just drift about a bit before I try that, eh.'
For the next hour, as the Enterprise approached its rendezvous point with the ship that would take them to the Moon, the passengers enjoyed all sorts of high jinks with various sweets, chocolates and any other items they could find, being launched across the cabin. The news crew on board were getting great footage of the rich and famous behaving like children at a play park, similar to trainee astronauts in the "vomit comet".
['Ladies and gentlemen, please return to your seats and fasten your harnesses. We will be performing a series of maneuvers that will put us into the correct orientation to dock with the Lunar Conveyor,'] Mackay announced.
'Awww,' the younger passengers moaned, along with a few of the adults. But they made their way back to their seats and strapped in. Soon after, they felt themselves being pulled to the left, and then the right, and then rolling through ninety degrees. On the media screens, they could see a live feed from an external camera which showed a dot of light slowly getting bigger.
['The flight crew thought you'd appreciate a little music as we make our approach to the Lunar Conveyor,'] Mackay announced over the intercom.
As the dot resolved into a slowly rotating, wheel shaped object, the strains of "On the Beautiful Blue Danube" filled the cabin. The Lunar Conveyor, or "Wagon Wheel" as it had been dubbed by the press, was inspired by the space station in the Stanley Kubrick film "2001, A Space Odyssey", except it only had one wheel. It was on a five day elliptical orbit around the Earth and the Moon, and gave the space planes a piggyback ride.
Once it was realised that the Space Plane would make achieving orbit cheaper, aerospace engineers started working on the Lunar Conveyor, adding four "spokes" and building a habitat ring that would rotate and simulate gravity. Teams of astronaut engineers had lived in cabins on the ends of the "spokes" to complete the wheel of the Conveyor.
Whilst the Conveyor was being built, a factory unit had been sent to Peary Base which contained a number of molding panels. A lightweight Kevlar-like web material was placed in the molds, and moon dust was sifted over the top. A bonding resin was then injected into the closed mold, and individual construction panels were produced to build a new tourist resort in the Sea of Tranquility.
As the Enterprise approached the Conveyor, it was completing one anticlockwise roll every sixty one seconds to match the rotation at its centre. On the screens, it gave the illusion that the centre of the Wagon Wheel was stationary, and at the edges of the field of view, the stars could be seen rotating clockwise. As they got closer to the Conveyer, they could appreciate the nine hundred feet of the wheels diameter.
Something that wasn't on the space station in the film, was a platform protruding from the docking bay entrance. This was a magnetic deceleration platform, which would capture the Enterprise and slow it down as it entered the rectangular docking bay. As Rose looked past her children and out of the window, she could see an observation window go by where people were sitting at control desks. Some were oriented to the floor, whilst others were on the ceiling. She saw one individual floating down the centre of the room.
The passengers felt a gentle "clump" as the Enterprise docked with the airlock portal. There was a "thrubbing" noise and a hiss as air pumps pressurised the airlock. On the door control panel, a red light turned green and the screen displayed the words "airlock pressurised". Wearing Velcro soled shoes, one of the flight attendants walked across the ceiling to the door, turned the inset handle and pulled the door inwards. It was hinged so that once it had cleared the hatch, it turned and rested against the dividing bulkhead wall between the cabin and the flightdeck.
Mackay and Pecile floated through the door from the flightdeck as a middle aged man in a white naval uniform stepped through the hatchway and smiled at the passengers. 'Good morning everyone. My name is Jonathan Archer, acting captain of the Lunar Conveyor. Welcome aboard.' The passengers broke into spontaneous applause as Mackay and Archer shook hands.
A flight attendant addressed the passengers. 'If you would all follow me, I will lead you to the main reception area where you can check in.' She saw passengers float up to the overhead lockers. 'Your hand luggage will be collected by the hospitality staff and taken to your apartments so that you can enjoy the experience of floating to the elevators.'
'Oh, that's all right then,' Jackie said as she floated out of her seat. 'It's good service around here innit?'
People used the seatbacks to move themselves forward to the hatchway, and passed through into a cylindrical, padded corridor which contained handholds along its length. Because everyone was in free fall, it could have been a corridor, a chimney or a well, as there was no up or down.
They drifted out of the corridor into a square, padded room with horizontal lighting panels recessed into the walls. As people just hung in the air, there was the slightest hint of centrifugal force from the wall opposite, which made the wall a floor, and the lighting panels vertical. One of the walls had three sliding doors recessed into it which gave access the the hydraulic elevator carriages.
The passengers spent some time drifting around the room, having fun as they had in the Enterprise. John got Eyulf, Juleshka and Jason to tuck themselves into balls and then pushed them tumbling across the room to be caught by Rose, Pete and Jackie. Rose and Juleshka then held hands and performed some synchronised aerobatics using their gymnastic skills.
Once again there were disappointed "awwws" as the elevators "dinged" and the flight attendants directed the passengers into the cylindrical carriages.
'As the carriage descends towards the habitat ring, you will experience an increase in centrifugal force,' their attendant explained. 'Please take hold of the handrail and keep your feet on the floor of the car to avoid injury.'
John and Rose held the handrails and grabbed their children's ankles and arms to gently bring them off the ceiling and down to what would become the floor. As the carriage descended, there was an initial sensation of being pulled to the ceiling, followed by freefall, and then a gradual increasing of gravity.
When the doors of the lift carriages opened, they were stunned to see a spacious reception area which looked very similar to the one at Torchwood Tower. The floors and walls were a polished marble effect material, with low glass tables, comfortable chairs and couches dotted around them.
The lifts formed a column in the centre of the reception area, which ran up the middle of one of the four "spokes" of the wheel. Guests were stepping out of the other carriages and looking around in wonder. Fifty feet to the left of the lifts was the forward bulkhead wall, which had a series of large windows showing the rotating starfield and half-Moon beyond. Fifty feet to the right of the lifts was the aft bulkhead wall, showing a half-Earth. In front of them, in the anti-spinward direction were two large reception desks with a wide passageway between them, the floor of which gently curved upwards out of sight.
'Hah! This is just as I envisioned it,' a man with a Spanish accent declared.
'Who's that?' Rose asked.
'Spanish architect, artist and engineer, Santiago Calatrava,' Pete told her. 'And that's his wife Eilissa, with his two sons I think.'
John leaned towards Rose. 'After the engineers had designed and built the exterior structure of the Conveyor, they commissioned Santiago to design the interior structure.'
'He's done a good job,' said Jackie as they moved towards the reception desks.
A young woman behind the desk gave them a warm smile. 'Good afternoon. Welcome aboard the Lunar Conveyor.'
'Thank you,' Rose said, returning her smile.
'Dr and Mrs Smith, you and your family are in apartment fifteen A,' the receptionist said, recognising them from the television documentary and handing them a key card. 'And Mr and Mrs Tyler, you and your son are in fifteen B opposite.'
'Thank you,' Pete said as he took his key card.
'The apartments are spinward,' she explained, pointing past the column of lifts. 'You may wish to stretch your legs and walk, or you can wait for one of the automated buggies that circuit the habitat ring. There's one every five minutes or so.'
'That's all right love,' Jackie said. 'After all that flyin' about, it's nice to get me feet on the ground.'
The young lady laughed with her. 'Haven't got your space legs yet then? I hope that doesn't spoil your enjoyment of the facilities, and I hope you enjoy your stay.'
'Thanks love. I'm certainly goin' to give it a go,' Jackie told her.