The Martian: Lewis' Interview
My muse does love to have fun. This is a combination of movie and novel, and came about when I read Heinlein's Expanded Universe, Vol. 1 & 2. It's a plea to the short-sighted millions who still don't realise how much Apollo impacted everyday life. They might, if NASA's PR department ever gets its act together.
And if the Apollo deniers ever get a clue and realise: Guys, we DID go to the Moon. There are any number of ways of proving it. Your absurd beliefs are on a par with the Flat Earth Theory (BTW: It's not!). Seriously, close to HALF A MILLION PEOPLE contributed to Apollo. If it were faked, do you seriously think that NOT ONE PERSON out of ALL THOSE PEOPLE wouldn't have blown the whistle?! A conspiracy involving HALF A MILLION PEOPLE? Is that even POSSIBLE?!
The studio of Spaceflight Today
A month after the Hermes crew arrives home
To applause, the host of Spaceflight Today took the stage. The show was conceived by a canny NASA PRO (not Annie Montrose, but her subordinate) to raise public awareness in light of the Hermes mission. It was a lamentable truth that the American public still didn't think Apollo was anything other than a PR stunt and/or a Cold War thing, often saying so on Meta and X.
They missed the irony that those very platforms would've been impossible, or at least several years in the future, without Apollo.
Except for the three deaths in Apollo 1 (and on the launch pad at that, not in flight), the mission had been a resounding success, achieving its goal within a decade as JFK had said it would (a close thing, to be sure, but still). It proved Man could survive in space, travel in space, even visit a new world. The spin-offs were many: CAT scans, ultrasound, Velcro, GPS, communication satellites - and, of course, computers which didn't take up a whole room and which didn't require a major power source.
Peoples' lives (not the least of which was Robert Heinlein's) were saved by Apollo spin-offs. The Internet in its current form would not be possible without Apollo, the initial robustness built into it c/o ARPANET notwithstanding. Hurricane warnings? Weather satellites. GPS? Satellites again. Both had also saved lives - and in the former case, untold billions of dollars/pounds/rubles/yen/whatever currency you used. And these would not have been invented and launched without Apollo.
As a general rule (pointed out by Heinlein), if a device contains miniature electronics, it's an Apollo spin-off. People used Apollo-derived tech every day - and didn't realise it. "The expense!" critics have cried. If you consider an average of less than 5 cents per day per person an expense, then yes.
More than that is spent every year on weapons we hope will never be used than was spent on the whole of Apollo. A bigger white elephant has never existed. Apollo has paid for itself umpteen times over.
But owing to NASA's formerly shoddy PR department, people just didn't realise it.
Hence Spaceflight Today, created in the wake of a new determination to wake people up.
Hermes and this show together revolutionised spaceflight PR. For the first time NASA now had several qualified astronaut candidates, and so did a number of privately-funded concerns. Especially among the young - the future - it was proving very popular. For the first time since Apollo, when schoolkids were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, many were now answering, "An astronaut". To them, it no longer seemed so much of a dream, if a botanist could go all the way to Mars.
Even the 'handicapped' kids were getting in on it. No legs? In zero-G, no problem. Artificial arms? Alter them to use tools. One kid with an artificial arm and no legs (he'd survived meningitis) pointed out, "I have lower mass, which is cheaper to boost, and I need less oxygen, food and water. I might need a special suit, but with no legs it might be cheaper too. As astronauts go, I'm a bargain. Spaceflight is the one profession above all in which my condition just doesn't matter."
Alvin Lee also had a genius-level intellect, which, as he pointed out, could hardly hurt. One or two of NASA's recruiters were nodding thoughtfully. "If nothing else," Annie noted cynically, "it'd be a major PR boost to take on a differently-abled kid. Could raise NASA's public profile."
Only her closest friends and colleagues knew her cynicism was mainly an act, self-defence against a world which still didn't favour women in such positions, though progress was being made.
Annie really was passionate about NASA. She had denounced Teddy when he'd refused to consider the Rich Purnell plan. She'd thought Mitch would be angry enough to pop him one, and in fact she'd honestly hoped he would.
She wanted NASA to take Alvin on. He would, she believed and hoped, point the way to the future. It was Heinlein who (indirectly, via The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress) suggested staffing, say, a moonbase with paraplegics, amputees, people with heart conditions. All of these would find living in one-sixth gee much easier.
Okay, she mused, you'd need to adapt equipment. But when something must be done, an engineer will find a way to do it. Mark proved that on Mars.
As a NASA staff member, she was entitled to take a front-row seat to watch the show, and did so.
It might have been said that Oscar Wildman was a showman, and indeed this was true. He was also a hard-headed intellect who'd studied engineering at MIT. He'd done his homework when the show's requirement for a front man (or woman, NASA insisted on that) came up. He knew the entire history of the space programme, good and bad. He was known for not shying away from the awkward questions, and was a good, fairly-minded devil's advocate for NASA.
Thus there was no deflecting him with science; like Tricia McMillan in Mostly Harmless, he gave such condescension more spin on it than the questioner could cope with.
And like Alvin, he was legless - and again like Alvin, who'd been that way since he was four (Oscar was 15 when an accident had taken his legs - and he would never have been in danger if he hadn't acted to save a little girl's life), he'd never let that stop him.
He'd actually started a fight once with a heckler who'd mocked him for having no legs. It had gone to court, but the judge was sympathetic - and admired his courage. "You remind me of Jake Sully," she'd joked. The incident raised a massive sympathy vote - and indirectly influenced Annie and Teddy to take him on. Neither had ever had cause to regret it.
He was (or would have been) tall, with greying hair, quite conventionally handsome. His widely-spaced eyes were a bright blue. He had a photogenic smile, which he used to good effect. "Hello, and welcome to Spaceflight Today. Tonight we have a very special guest, the former commander of the Hermes mission. Please give it up for Melissa Lewis!"
There was applause as Melissa came on set, smiling, and shook his hand. "Please don't get up," she kidded.
He took it in the intended spirit and laughed as she sat next to him.
"Well, Melissa, former commander of Hermes. You're retired now?"
She nodded. "Still keeping fit and busy, and spending time with my family. I'm a NASA consultant now. And," she smiled, "though Mark Watney might be distressed to hear this, I'm keeping up my collection of '70s memorabilia!"
It was a standing NASA joke that Mark's first words on being rescued were "You have terrible taste in music!" It had become an Internet trope and a T-shirt logo. Mark had one. As a gesture of rebellion, so did Melissa.
Oscar smiled. "Abba was/were a class act, to be sure. I'm quite fond myself. So, Hermes. People are saying the mission was a failure. Care to comment?"
Melissa nodded. "I certainly will. It depends on how we define 'failure'. In the sense that we were supposed to establish the first true long-term base on Mars, our premature departure was a failure. Fair enough. But it taught us so much. For a start, Mark Watney proved beyond doubt that Man can live on Mars, and can grow food there. That was a question the Hermes crew intended to answer, and he did.
"It taught us lessons about the durability of both hardware and crew - going all those extra, unplanned days." She smiled ruefully. "It also taught us how easy it is to make a bomb, when most of our training, especially Vogel's, is about not making one."
NASA had also, she carefully did not say, learned lessons about computer security - computers had never been required to be secure because a) it was expensive (as always), and b) it had never occurred to anyone that a crew might need to override a safety measure. After Hermes and the still-secret mutiny, procedures had been tightened up...including warning Beth Johannsen, "Don't do that again. Ever."
"All in all," she concluded, "I believe a lot more was gained than lost."
"The Chinese might argue that," he countered. "It cost them the booster for the Taiyang Shen. There was also the expense of the Iris probe - which underwent catastrophic failure en route. Hundreds of millions of dollars...for one man."
"True," she quietly conceded. "But again I can raise rebuttal points. First:
"In gratitude for the assistance of the CNSA in supplying the booster, the Chinese gained something they might never have had otherwise: a Chinese astronaut - a taikonaut, if you will - on Mars, as part of the planned Ares 5 mission.
"Second, the Rich Purnell Manoeuvre involved gravity assist, which had never been used before as the prime feature of a manned mission. Unmanned, yes, such as the Voyager probes. Using the Earth's gravity to slingshot Hermes was a lot cheaper and cost-effective.
"Third, Mark brought back with him some invaluable knowledge of the practical aspects of life on Mars, which could not have been learned in simulation - and with his advice, NASA simulators are now being programmed to be as accurate as possible.
"Fourth," and now she looked sober, "valuable lessons were learned about spacesuit durability and systems redundancy - because as God is my judge, if I had known Mark was alive, if his suit telemetry had had a backup, even in a storm I would never have ordered the MAV -"
"For our viewers, that's Mars Ascent Vehicle," Oscar put in.
"- to launch. I would instead have tried Mark's idea of using guy ropes to hold the MAV upright; Rovers 1 and 2 would have been able to hold them tight and wait out the storm. In fact Mindy Park of NASA told me - a little sheepishly - that the storm blew itself out only eight minutes later. We needn't have abandoned Ares 3 after all. But," she finished grimly, "at the time I had no way of knowing that. To the best of my knowledge at that time, Mark was dead, and so I did what I had to do as the mission commander.
"Mark himself has insisted from the very first that I could not and cannot be blamed. He would've done the exact same thing himself with the knowledge he would've had. If anyone were entitled to lay blame it would be Mark and/or his parents, and they don't."
"It was a hard call," Oscar nodded soberly, "and -"
"Forgive me," Melissa interrupted, "but I have one more point."
"Sorry."
"Fifth and perhaps most importantly...yes, it was expensive. But how much is a human life worth? How many times have we seen rescues costing millions for a single human soul, against all the odds? Except for paper-pushers, no-one argues it. Even total strangers will pitch in and help. For what? Gratitude? Reward? Fame?
"No. They do it because it is the human thing to do." There was applause from the studio audience. "It may, possibly, be a racial weakness...or, as Heinlein suggested in Starship Troopers, it may be the unique strength that wins us the Galaxy.
"Once, a woman was trapped on a railway line, and about to be run over and killed. Her husband tried, as was only right and proper for a husband, to free her, to no avail. But a tramp, a total stranger, tried to help also - when he had nothing to gain by it. All three were killed. I put it to you that the husband and the tramp were heroes."
(Author's Note: True story. See Expanded Universe Vol. 1.)
"In the same spirit, everyone who contributed to Mark's rescue was a hero or heroine.
"Even the many millions who prayed for him and cheered us on were heroes in my opinion. They did nothing, except to raise our morale. The value of that cannot be measured.
"So was it expensive? Yes. But to my dying day I will assert: IT WAS WORTH IT."
This earned a standing ovation from the audience (in which, Oscar said later, he would've joined...if not for the obvious difficulty).
When the applause (eventually) died down, Oscar said, "Thank you, Melissa. You've raised some terrific points; I imagine Meta and X are exploding right now. You mentioned Mark aiding in programming simulators?"
"Yes," Melissa nodded. "No simulation prior to this had ever covered leaving one or more crew members behind - not alive, anyway. No-one could have envisaged such a thing ever coming about. Now, we know better. The simulators are being programmed accordingly. Even the most unlikely accident is being considered and trained for...and," she smiled wryly, "every suit contains a backup telemetry suite. We're not letting that happen again."
"There is one more unlikely scenario suggested by, of all people, certain Doctor Who fans," Oscar told her.
"I know," Melissa nodded again, "I've talked with them. You're referring to The Waters Of Mars."
"A superb story," Oscar agreed, "in which the commander of the mission, Captain Adelaide Brooke, orders the nuclear destruction of the first base on Mars, Bowie Base One. People have remarked on the resemblance between you and Adelaide in terms of personality and command style."
"Which I find flattering," Melissa smiled. "She was no-nonsense, devoted to the mission. She initiated Action Five because she truly believed there was no other choice. I hope I would've had her courage if such a scenario came true. As I hope Rick Martinez, the planned commander of Ares 5, will."
"Is it possible?" Oscar asked sharply. "Was the Hab so designed?"
"No," she said simply. "To the best of our knowledge there is no life, microbial or otherwise, on Mars. Thus such precautions, while I will admit they were considered at the design stage, were deemed unnecessary for our mission. Just as some precautions taken for Apollo proved to be unnecessary - the Moon does not, as was feared by some, harbour dangerous micro-organisms. Or any micro-organisms, for that matter."
"But by definition, Mars is an unknown world," Oscar pointed out. "Who can say what's possible? Taking such precautions as Action Five might, in fact, be prudent."
"It might," Melissa conceded, "but that's not my call and never was. It's highly unlikely we'll find anything like the Flood there."
"But not impossible?" Oscar's voice raised slightly.
"Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. So, yes, it might happen. But Rick is totally competent. If he weren't," she smiled, "I would never have groomed him as my successor. I trust him to cope with whatever the mission throws at him."
"And I think I can speak for the entire world," Oscar concluded, "in saying I wish him and his colleagues all the best on Ares 5. Melissa Lewis, thank you for coming."
"My pleasure," she smiled, "and for Mark, who I know is watching...everyone has their musical preferences. Mine is the '70s. Deal with it."
There was applause and laughter.
The reception
An hour later
Annie pigeonholed Melissa and said coolly, "Nice job. Makes mine easier."
Melissa sipped her Mai Tai. "Whatever helps."
"And not a word about the mutiny."
The older woman looked innocent. "What mutiny?"
Both chuckled ruefully.
THE END
"I need the emergency number for Vincent Kapoor. Yes, it's an emergency!"
In the face of overwhelming odds, I'm left with only one option: I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this.
I've got to make a lot more water. The good thing is, I know the recipe:
You take hydrogen, you add oxygen, and you burn. Now, I have hundreds of litres of unused hydrazine
at the MDV. If I run the hydrazine over an iridium catalyst, it'll separate into N2 and H2.
And then I just direct the hydrogen into a small area and burn it.
Luckily, in the history of humanity, nothing bad has ever happened from lighting hydrogen on fire.
I've been thinking about laws on Mars. There's an international treaty saying that no country
can lay claim to anything that's not on Earth. By another treaty, if you're not in any country's
territory, maritime law applies. So Mars is international waters. Now, NASA is an American non-military
organisation, it owns the Hab. But the second I walk outside I'm in international waters. So here's the cool
part: I'm about to leave for the Schiaparelli Crater where I'm going to commandeer the Ares 4 lander.
Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can't until I'm on board the Ares 4.
So I'm going to be taking a craft over in international waters without permission,
which by definition...makes me a pirate. Mark Watney: Space Pirate.
- The Martian