5 — The Moon Rocks
Thursday, May 14th, 4:12 PM
Watching as the Antonov Mriya cargo plane, with the Buran shuttle on its back, bank for its final approach at London Heathrow was awe inspiring, Thomas thought. The Antonov was a massive plane, easily the biggest airplane currently in use. It was accompanied by two Harrier escort jets.
Only the Hughes Hercules H4 "Spruce Goose" was larger, and that was only by a meter or two. However, the Spruce Goose — made of birchwood, despite its name — had only flown once. That was an impromptu decision of the pilot, Hughes, during a taxi-test. It never went higher than seventy feet, and lasted only a minute before landing, but it did prove it could fly.
Which made the eight-hour flight of the Antonov carrying the twenty-two-ton Buran even more impressive as an accomplishment.
The airport authorities had suspended all other landings and take-offs for a fifteen-minute window. They didn't want any distractions for the pilots of the plane during its approach and taxi off the main runway. A bay in one of the airport's maintenance hangers was prepped and waiting for the shuttle's refurbishing and upgrading. Despite being a "civilian" project, the military was in sharp evidence, providing security and keeping the curious at a distance.
After landing, it took three cranes to lift the Buran so the Antonov could be towed from underneath it. It was another three hours before the shuttle was safely ensconced in its bay.
The day after tomorrow, the Antonov would return home to pick up the cockpit training module for transport to the European Astronaut Centre near Cologne, Germany. The EAC was, of course, the European version of NASA for astronaut selection, training, and support.
In the meantime, the Antonov would take the limelight as its technicians and engineers checked the plane for problems this evening. Tomorrow, they would be more than happy to give tours of the inside to the enthusiastic crowd. The Soviet political system might be in disarray, but the engineering on display was world-class — and they wanted to brag.
As for the Buran?
Thomas almost pitied the poor technician tasked with relabelling the Buran's instruments in both Russian and English. A simple, but tedious job, requiring the dismantling of the entire cockpit.
Not so tedious would be upgrading the eight downward positioned thrusters on the space plane to match the rear engines' eighty-eight-hundred kg-force power. With those in place, vertical landing and take-off on the moon would be child's play for a Harrier pilot. Unfortunately, that would require some major modifications to the nose and back-plane assembly. Assisting with that, however, would be the use of impervius charms to allow much lighter and smaller nozzles on the engines.
With the use of featherlight charms to cut the shuttle's weight/mass to a quarter of normal when fully loaded, they could even manage vertical landings and take-offs on Earth, if they had to do so. But they wanted to keep that particular possibility a secret, for a while. Just pretending the engines had the lift capacity for a lunar landing was pushing the believability point for many people.
Also, the number of rear engines would be increased to six.
The rest of the forty-six Reaction Control System engines would be left alone. Simplifying things, however, was that unlike the yanks' shuttle, all of the Buran's engines fed off the same fuel tanks.
With luck, the first trial earth-to-orbit-and-back would be in July. Then the mission to the moon in late August.
The Space Race was about to get a kick in the pants.
And Britain would lead the way.
Thomas was elated to have been the one selected to assist in this project. His first love had been space and rocketry — until his Hogwarts letter had arrived. Being summarily frozen out of the wizarding world after graduation by pure-blood bigots had left a sour taste in his mouth. Doubly so when he realized he was drastically under-qualified, education-wise, for anything but the most menial of jobs with only a record of his primary years. Two years of hard study had gotten him his secondary years covered, and his necessary General Certificates of Secondary Education with excellent grades.
While he didn't have a Uni degree to make it into a more direct role in the BNSC, even being peripherally associated with it as a low-level repair technician in the Royal Air Force had been nice. Not surprisingly, he had an outstanding record of always being able to repair something in record time.
When word had creeped over to him that the government was looking for a few people with "special" talents, he had waited a few months before stepping forward. He had been more than a little surprised to discover that his "special" knowledge brought an instant transfer and promotion. His unique knowledge of airplanes had brought him to this project.
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Later that night, close to one in the morning, he slowly walked around the shuttle's bay. It was one of two bays in the building. Currently, he was outside, and casting a light don't-notice-this spell every few feet on the walls, and every visible window and door, surrounding the Buran's bay. Only specially authorized personnel would not be affected — they had to wear a special, barcoded badge for entry. He added an alert spell to the windows and doors. He would know if anyone tried to sneak in.
Once he completed that chore, he entered the other bay and did the same to the temporary wall, and doors, it shared with the Buran's bay.
It would keep the curious from trying to evade the guards patrolling the building, and sneaking in to see the shuttle. The journalists were being especially nosy. His superiors didn't want anyone not read into the project to notice things they shouldn't.
The rest of his night, until nine and with a break for dinner, he spent examining the shuttle under the watchful eyes of the soldiers guarding it. A light confundus prevented them from noticing the reparos he cast to bring the shuttle's exterior into near-new condition. Tomorrow, he would repeat the magical repairs on the inside. The following day, the Russian engineers coming as passengers in the Antonov, would tackle the chore of refurbishing and retrofitting the space plane with the British technicians.
One chore would be lowering the height of the wings' landing gear to barely above the pavement while increasing the length of the nose's gear. At the moment, the shuttle had a distinct downward slant from its tail to its nose, not a good attitude for taking off from a runway.
It was his job for the next few months to make sure the Russian engineers didn't "notice" the magical items that were being installed. It wasn't that terrible a problem, in truth. The British engineers could do enough hand-waving and fast-talking to cover the reduced-in-size heavy-duty engines that would replace the original RSCs, and the impervious spells on the smaller nozzles that would prevent their degradation in use. The big problem would be concealing that the tanks that formerly held 7.5 tonnes of propellant that now could hold over 2,000 tonnes. Hopefully, they wouldn't notice that until the shuttle was actually fuelled.
Even then, it should be simple to keep them distracted.
The trickiest part would be the featherlight spell. Normally that was an on-or-off spell, unless the wizard was constantly monitoring it. Thomas had heard that they were building a "special technology" box that would be adjustable on-the-fly, so to say. It would take a team of wizards to overlay the actual spell on the shuttle, but the box would make it variable from no-change all the way to reducing the shuttle to only a tonne. There was no need to worry about accidentally making the plane lighter than air, though. The spell would only counter to a set lower-percentage of whatever the space plane massed.
The tentative plan for that was to do it two days before the engines were tested.
Portkeys worked to the moon; they now knew.
A special habitat was being built for the shuttle to carry that they would leave on the moon. With an airlock and indoor portkey target, to and from the moon would be just an afternoon's jaunt. A target would be placed outside for larger deliveries that didn't need to worry about being in a vacuum.
The eggheads were arguing over whether the small moon-base should be placed at the north or south pole. Lunar axial precession was small enough that a solar panel on the highest peak in either location would give them non-stop power. It would only cost a few million pounds sterling instead of the hundreds of millions it would cost to cart everything to the moon. Not even a small nuclear reactor would be cheaper.
Both locations would give access to the "dark" side of the moon, away from the radio interference of the Earth.
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Monday, June 15th, Monday 7:48PM
Thirty-eight thousand tiles. Thirty. Eight. Thousand. Tiles.
He was soo sick of this.
Thomas stared at the side of the shuttle in front of him. They had thought that applying an impervius charm would be simple. It meant they wouldn't have to worry about damaged tiles due to impacts, heat, friction, or any other force of nature or man. The spell made something repel substances and outside forces. The tiles, for all intents and purposes, would be indestructible.
Ha!
It might have been simple if the tiles weren't designed to be easily replaced.
Set an impervius on wall? Easy! It has a window? Apply a second impervius to that! Oh, a door? Another impervius. Why separate charms? Because they were separate items! They were designed to be separate.
Otherwise, if you set an impervius on a wall with a door, the door wouldn't open. You needed to use force to push or pull the door in regards to the wall. The wall was impervius . . . and the door would be included in that!
So, here he was, assigned with nine other Special Technology officers going over the shuttle, charming each individual tile. And it was exhausting. None of them could do more than a hundred of the charms without nearly reaching magical exhaustion — which only took about two hours for each of them. Then they needed a night's sleep to recharge their magic.
Thirty-nine days. Eight weeks, with the weekends off. They'd been at it for two weeks, and had six weeks to go
On the other hand, he did notice on Friday he had managed a hundred and five tiles before he had had to quit. Exercising your magic to the limit was beneficial. Tedious, but beneficial in the long run.
For the other nine wizards, it was easy. Officially, they were performing an in-depth maintenance check on the tiles. They came in at the end of a normal six-hour shift at their other duties, then spent the last two here in the hanger casting the impervius charm. They disguised their wands by slipping them inside a "probe" with a meter on it, and wore special googles that let them see which tiles had already been charmed.
For Thomas it was more complicated.
He had been assigned to fly on the shuttle for both the test flight and the moon flight. His superiors wanted a wizard on the crew as backup in case something went wrong. The crew would have emergency portkeys if something went disastrously wrong, but if it was something that could easily be handled by a wizard, why abandon the ship for a minor issue?
Which meant he spent eight hours a day in Cologne, Germany, in the EAC undergoing the same training the other astronauts were going through. At the end of the day, he apparated to Calais, France, took the Ferry to Dover, then portkeyed to the shuttle hanger. As soon as he arrived, he went to work on the shuttle for his two-hour shift. Then collapsed into bed by nine.
At six the next morning, he returned to Cologne and had breakfast with the other astronauts.
A gruelling day, to say the least. However, he would end up knowing the shuttle better than anyone else going on the shuttle. Which wasn't a bad thing, now was it? After all, he was now a Flight Specialist Engineer.
He grinned.
He was going to space!
He was going to the Moon!
A life-long fantasy, one he had abandoned when he got his Hogwarts letter for another fantasy — magic.
And now he had both!
He realized he was giggling madly when he noticed the soldiers patrolling inside the hanger giving him odd glances. It probably didn't help that he was here so late in the evening, instead of during the day.
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Wednesday, July 29th, 11:00 AM
Major Thomas stood with Administrator David Williams and Director General Arthur Pryor as they watched the Buran being towed out of its hanger — they were keeping the name unchanged as part of the seventy-million Pounds Sterling deal with the Russians.
Today was the first big test of their modifications to the engines on the space plane. The avionics had been tested inside the hanger the previous week. The plane's remote controls appeared to be perfectly integrated with the plane's new capabilities. At least, as far as responsiveness. How it would perform under power was to be tested today in the U-shaped engine-test-run pen opposite the hangers.
The press was in heavy attendance, with several reporters almost run over by the various other pieces of equipment being manoeuvred around at the same time.
Under each of the wheels of the craft were special wheeled "platforms" that supported hydraulics group-programmed to lift five-sixths of the shuttle's weight, to a maximum height of one meter. The concept, as the information specialist had explained to the reporters, was that they could test the effectiveness of the new "vertical flight" engines this way. If the engines could lift the shuttle's effective weight of one-sixth normal, then they would be sufficient to handle landing on the moon.
What they were actually testing was the effectiveness of the featherlight spell on the craft when used with its control module. They would then test the various new RCS nozzles for their effectiveness in "flying" the shuttle around inside the "pen." Flight Commander Oscar Baker and his co-pilot, Pilot-Cosmonaut Vicktor Mikhailovich Afanasyev, formerly a Soviet Air Force Major, would be testing their abilities in "flying" the craft while it "hovered."
No one was worried about that last part. Being both former Air Force pilots, with Baker being a Harrier pilot, this was more of a familiarization routine.
In truth, the avionics computer would be doing the "hard" work. The two pilots' contribution would be more in the line of deciding general directions to move the plane in the test-run area, not manually adjusting the fuel flows to each nozzle.
The test was . . . loud.
And very successful.
Not a single non-magical twigged to the fact that the shuttle had had its weight magically reduced.
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Wednesday, August 5th, 1:00PM
It hadn't really sunk in that he was going into space until Flight Commander Baker released the brakes and space plane began to roll down the runway.
Up until that moment, he had been too involved in watching the instruments in his dashboard, and his magical spells, to notice them being pushed-back from the hanger, firing up the rear rockets, and taxiing to their take-off position. Unfortunately, there wasn't a window beside his Flight Engineer's seat on the right side of the cockpit. His seat was behind and to the right of the co-pilot, Pilot-Cosmonaut Vicktor, and that worthy's seat hid the front windshield quite well. It was also a step lower. The only windows he could see out of were the overheads, which provided him only a sight of the clear sky.
He sank back into his seat as the shuttle accelerated, and decided he would be adding a camera-like charm to the hull, with the display beside him. There was certainly the clear wall space. It would be easy to write the addition off as some of the "special technology" from the Equestrians — a tiny camera and lightweight paper-thin screen. Then place another beside the chair behind and to the left of the pilot, in which was seated the Mission Specialist, Cosmonaut Yelena Vladimirovna Kondakova. She was a brown-eyed brunette with a wicked sense of humour.
In fact, perhaps he should put in a score of them, giving views from every angle out of the space plane? It would be a simple matter to have a tile echo the view from its position, much like a magical mirror could do.
He didn't need a window, though, to know that practically the entire runway was lined with journalists. This would be the first joint British-Russian flight of a space plane, taking off from the ground, going to orbit, and returning.
Once again, Heathrow's normal operations had been placed on a fifteen-minute hold while the Buran used runway 09L/27R. At three thousand and nine hundred metres, it was the longest runway in Britain. They didn't need that much room for their take-off, as the Antonov had. They needed only one thousand metres in their current configuration — that is, an empty payload bay. When they carried the Lunar Base Module, they would need more, about two thousand metres.
He could feel the surge as first the nose gear, then the wings' gear left the tarmac. The Buran lifted off the runway and he slid deeper into his seat as the plane angled up to gain altitude faster. A few moments later, he felt the craft tilt slightly to his right to correct their flight path to a more southernly direction from east to put them in an equatorial orientation when they left the atmosphere.
The Buran was now under remote control, just as it had been in 1989. Commander Baker was keeping an eagle eye on instruments, and hands and feet on the controls, just in case there was an emergency. For this trip into space, they were all passengers.
Their course temporarily put them over the channel and away from populated areas. The landing-gear indicators went from green-locked-down to yellow for in-transit. A few moments later, there was clunk and the green landing-gear locked-up lights came on in his dashboard as the other indicator shut off. Following that was another thud, more felt than heard, as the light for the landing-doors-closed changed from red to green.
So far, so good. Everything that was supposed to be green, was green, and everything that was supposed to red, was red.
The engines throttled back to keep their air-speed below Mach One — they didn't want a sonic boom to disturb Britain's French neighbours. Once they were high enough, the engines would once more be pushed to maximum thrust. They would remain there until the Buran reached its assigned altitude and orbit.
If it weren't for the knowledge that they were headed for space, Thomas would almost have been bored. It was only that they didn't level off at 10,500 metres, as most planes did, that was different from commercial air travel. It was a smooth and steady climb.
Twenty-eight minutes after take-off, they were in orbit.
It. Was. Glorious.
"This is not possible," Vicktor said disbelievingly. "The fuel tanks are not big enough."
Thomas could see Yelena nodding her head. He was prepared for this, though. His wand was taped to his arm, with the tip coming through a special valve in his spacesuit at the wrist. He cast two quick confundus charms. Thank Merlin, the space suits they all wore were no more an impediment to the charm than a heavy coat was.
"Don't forget," Thomas said, "We've adapted some of the Equestrian technology to get better performance out of our engines."
He couldn't see the Russian co-pilot, but Yelena had a slightly confused expression as she nodded.
Then it was on to the minor tasks they need to perform — primarily taking pictures and putting the various capabilities of the shuttle to the test. Opening and closing the cargo doors, checking the airlocks to both the cargo bay and for EVA, testing the performance of the cargo bay manipulator arm, putting the different RCS engines through their paces, using the microwave for a quick hot coffee, and, in general, making sure everything on-board worked the way it should. Every cabinet was opened and closed, every access port opened and checked, even the on-board toilet was given a test by the crew.
Too soon, it seemed to Thomas, they had to make ready to return to Earth.
After buckling back into his chair, Thomas jokingly said, "If they had loaded the Lunar Base Module, I'd suggest we make a side-trip to the moon."
There were several sighs, and a murmured "Da!"
Then the RCS engines went into action and they were on their way home.
As the Buran rolled onto Heathrow's taxiway, Thomas heaved a heavy sigh, sad the mission had been so short.
Tomorrow and the next day, the technicians would give the space plane a thorough examination. With such a flawless flight, and the perfect score he knew the technicians would give the plane, the moon mission would be scheduled as soon as the Lunar Base Module was completed.
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Thursday, August 20th, 5:00AM
It was Thursday, one day before the last quarter of the moon, but the sun wasn't up yet. Not for another forty-five minutes
The Buran had just been towed out of its hanger, and Thomas was nearly beside himself in excitement and anxiety. This was it, their mission to the moon. The addition of the four viewscreens was much appreciated by the crew. They now had the ability to look anywhere around the craft, fourteen cameras, at the twist of a knob. Linking them in sets of two would even give recordings stereo views in all six directions. Five cameras at the tip of each wing, three at the nose — one forward and one to each side — and one at the back.
His and Yelena's viewscreens were permanently on, but the Oscar's and Vicktor's viewscreens were more akin to a heads-up display that could overlay their windshields if needed.
The take-off was simple, a duplicate of the original, as soon as they cleared the runway, the ship barely had to change its eastward heading, just its attack angle. Unlike the yanks had done in the seventies, this was a direct shot to the moon, no orbiting the earth first.
He got to watch the ground steadily drop away, and the sky slowly change from blue to purple to black. This time, though, they had the cameras running, giving them a complete recording of their take-off and journey to space. They were actually recording from the tips of both wings and the tail-fin. The wing-tip cameras would provide a unique three-dimensional view of their take-off from both directions.
It was more than passingly strange, and fascinating, to watch the Earth slowly dwindle in the wing camera he was viewing from. They were moving fast enough, already, to see the Earth getting smaller by the second.
When they returned home, the space shuttle would be examined, and upgraded with what they had learned. The next time the Buran flew, it would be to deliver some new Russian satellites, and recover a few of the old ones that were now defunct. With unlimited fuel, there was basically no reason not to start removing some of the junk remaining in space. That was especially true of the satellites in high geosynchronous orbits, there were at least half-a-dozen he had heard about. Then there were the satellites that were in elliptical orbits, going from low-to-high and back.
The advantage to that was they would be clearing up orbital positions for new satellites. Not to mention salvaging rare materials for recycling.
But that was the future.
It was a boring flight. Monitoring his instruments took very little effort. He almost wished he could play a movie to alleviate the boredom. The only tasks for Yelena and himself were to monitor the recorders and make sure there were no issues — and to switch the feeds when appropriate.
Their flight path was almost ruler straight once they left the atmosphere. The main engines fired non-stop, accelerating them for just shy of one-hundred-and-five minutes, one-and-three-quarters of an hour. That put them halfway to the moon, 200,000 kilometres from Earth.
This was the turnover point, where the ship rotated to point the main engines towards the moon. Although it was fun to get out of his seat and stretch in zero-gravity, it didn't provide much excitement. The pre-programmed computer took care of everything, perfectly.
Then came a hundred and five minutes of deceleration that left them almost stationary compared to the moon, only a few kilometres above the south-pole surface. From there, they began a slow drift downwards to touchdown — a vertical landing, of course.
The anticipation as they closed in on the moon made him almost giddy. He was pleased to note that he wasn't he only one, although the other three did a better job of hiding their excitement. The suppressed excitement echoed from the communications systems at BNSC and ESA.
The landing was as smooth as silk. Like clockwork, the RCS thrusters fired in the proper sequence as the main engines severely cut back and the space plane began to drop to the surface. At three hundred metres, the shuttle transitioned from a vertical, on-its-tail, position to horizontal. The RCS down motors fired up and gently began lowering them as the wheels came out of their respective housings.
At the same time, the bottom facing cameras came on to present the pilot and co-pilot with a view of the ground below them. The lights in the wheel-wells were more than adequate in providing the illumination needed to eliminate any shadows.
Fortunately, unlike the first yank landing on the moon, the Baker didn't have to take last-second control to prevent landing on a boulder and crashing to the surface. Instead, they settled gently to the ground and the engines shutdown.
The silence after so many hours of the thrusters left his ears ringing.
"Yes!" he loudly exclaimed, pumping his right arm.
Almost immediately, Oscar said, "Lady and gentlemen, welcome to the Moon!"
Now came the fun parts of the mission. Fun, but tedious, once they got over the excitement of being on the moon and jumping around a bit.
The next sixteen hours were carefully choreographed.
Soil samples were taken from many different locations, a seismometer was set up, a surface magnetometer, a solar wind spectrometer, an atmospheric composition detector, a lunar interior heat-flow detector, and finally, a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. These were similar to experiments that had been deployed by the yanks' Apollo missions decades ago, most of which were no longer operational. The data from these new, and more sensitive, experiments would be compared to the previous sets for discrepancies and new data. The scientists hoped for a deeper understanding of the physical processes on the Moon.
They also took extensive photographs, and gathered and tagged any rocks or soil samples that looked interesting. The definition for both was rather nebulous. Their goal was to bring back approximately hundred and eighty-two kilos of material, or four hundred and one pounds. One hundred pounds each for the ESA, U.K., and Russia. Equestria would get one hundred and one pounds, because this couldn't have happened without their contacting the British government last summer.
Why they might be interested in Earth's moon rocks was a question for which he had no answers.
The soil and rock samples would tell them how different the Lunar pole sections were from the equatorial sections explored by the yanks. Whether they were different or not would answer many questions about the formation of the moon and how it had changed over the billions of years it had existed. Naturally, as in most experiments, the results would probably raise more questions than they answered.
It didn't sound like a lot when listed, but placing each experiment took time, and several required pieces to be buried in the soil. While they were placing these various items, they were scouting for a good spot for Lunar Habitat Module.
Their final decision for the Modules placement, with help from the ESA, was about two kilometres away, at the base of a tall peak in a crater wall. The peak would be the mount for their solar panels. Moving the Buran that short a distance, no more than a brief hop, was easy.
By the time final lift-off arrived, they were all looking forward to the nap they could take on the way back.
The space plane inserted itself into a twelve-hour elliptical orbit around the Earth. It went from a low of five hundred kilometres to a high of forty thousand — a Molniya orbit. Once a day, the low was over England and gave any trained wizard a short window of about ten minutes to apparate to the craft. Portkeys, of course, would work at any time.
"Does everyone have their translocator ready?" Thomas asked, as he looked at the other three. The ship was on stand-by now, a low-power mode that kept the ship barely about five degrees above Centigrade zero. This would be a test of the how well the ship would perform over an extended time in space, and how long it would take to make it habitable when it returned to service.
The translocators were, of course, actually portkeys with an activation knob. They were in a small box that had to be opened, the knob inside twisted, and then firmly pressed. An awkward procedure when wearing spacesuit gloves. Deliberately so, in fact, to prevent accidental activation.
Their hoard of Lunar soil and rocks in its sealed steel box had already been sent down with a separate "translocator." It had used a mechanical timer to trigger it.
All four were suit-sealed at this point, and on the lower deck under the command deck.
"Just like the tests at the EAC, this'll drop us into a pool. Oscar goes first, Yelena goes second in thirty seconds, Vicktor third, and I'll go last. Right?" They nodded. As the expert on the Special Technology, Thomas was in command.
"Buran to Ground Control," Thomas said, hitting the ship's transmit toggle on the wall. "First translocation in five seconds. Five. Four. Three. Two. One."
Oscar twisted and pushed the portkey control on his waistbelt, and disappeared.
"Ground Control to Buran, Flight Commander Baker has arrived."
The other two disappeared on schedule.
While he was waiting for his "translocation," Thomas quickly cast a don't-notice-this on the shuttle. They didn't want any spy satellites getting a closer look, not just yet, at least. Nor did they want a satellite to drop off a tracking package of any kind.
Later, after the performance test, they would cancel the spell, and then remotely fly the shuttle home and prepare it for its next mission.
Next year summer, the Buran would land on Mars.
If things continued at the current pace, it wasn't impossible that in ten years the Buran would arrive in the Alpha Centauri system.
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