“Venk! We need to get going!”
Venkat could count the number of times Teddy had visited his office, rather than vice versa, on his fingers. The director of NASA only did it when he didn’t feel like waiting anymore for something he expected an hour ago, and never mind any countervailing conditions.
“I’m almost done with this response to Congresswoman Dubois,” Venkat replied, typing as fast as he could. “Her request hit my desk while I was showing the Ares III families into the conference room for their live video chat with Hermes. I couldn’t let it sit.” And that was while ignoring two dozen other calls for his attention. He knew Teddy had more, tons more, calls on his time; how had he broken away so cleanly?
“Mrs. Dubois is one of our strongest supporters on Capitol Hill,” Teddy said. “I’m sure she would understand if it took a couple of days for you to respond.”
“Teddy,” Venkat said, “the fact that she’s one of our strongest supporters is why I can’t let her wait. I want to keep her a supporter.”
“Venk, it’ll take just over an hour to get to Bush Intercontinental this time of day,” Teddy said. “And even with expedited boarding it’ll take half an hour to get to our seats. And the plane to Beijing takes off in two hours,” Teddy paused to look at his wristwatch, “and fourteen minutes. Where’s your bags?” Teddy had one large suitcase and one small carry-on bag in his hands.
“Suit for photo ops in suit carrier behind door,” Venkat said. “Other clothes and tablet in carry-on bag underneath.”
“Good.” Teddy didn’t dance impatiently in place, nor did he pace back and forth. The man had perfected the art of looking impatient and eager to go without moving a muscle, without allowing himself to look flustered or ruffled in any way.
Venkat cut short his encomiums on NASA and on the Congresswoman’s career to date, expressed regrets that her request could not be accommodated this close to the critical Hermes flyby of Earth, and sent the email. “There,” he said. “My deputy can deal with most of the other things on my desk.”
“The cab’s waiting downstairs,” Teddy said. “Let’s go.”
Rich Purnell had his own office. It was very small, and it didn’t have a shower or personal toilet like he’d requested, but it did have a bunk and a corner painted off on the carpet and a sign reading TRASH ZONE, as he’d requested, so that sanitation services would know the difference between what Rich was done with and what was still important. It also had its own coffee maker and a supply of disposable polystyrene cups, both of which were kept resupplied. Those had been requested by his coworkers, who were tired of going to the dollar store twice a month for new coffee mugs.
The lion’s share of the Watney Prize was going to be his, if it went to anybody. Director Sanders had approved it, but the announcement had been halted by Congress, where the oversight committees had protested that Purnell was ineligible by reason of being a NASA employee. The core of the argument- whether Rich being on vacation counted as “his own time” if he spent said vacation in his cubicle- showed no signs of being settled before the elections.
Rich didn’t care. He was content.
He hadn’t done either of the trajectories that sat displayed on his computer monitor. The Sleipnir 4 and 5 launch trajectories weren’t minor, though. Sleipnir 4 would launch first, from KSC, and enter into orbit, including a long adjustment burn to put the orbital plane in line with the trajectory of Hermes’s flyby. Sleipnir 5, launching from Jiuquan, had too much potential orbital inclination for such an adjustment, so it would launch direct, without an orbital insertion, with Sleipnir 4’s Hermes injection burn timed to match Jiuquan’s launch.
Each probe had about five percent surplus delta-V for corrections or in case of minor glitches during launch. After that they would be on maneuvering thrusters only, converging on Hermes roughly twenty-four hours after Hermes’s closest approach to Earth.
The numbers and simulations checked out. Rich added his name to the peer review approval list, signing off on this final revision of launch plans for the probes. This done, he reopened his simulations of the yet-to-be-modified Ares IV MAV, tweaking variables to see what could be done with the pony thrusters if used on different parts of the ship.
While he did this with his left hand, his right hand called up the delivery-food app on his phone, selecting a restaurant at random, confirming his favorite order for that restaurant, and placing the order, all without looking.
Nobody wished him hello. Nobody broke his chain of thought to ask his opinion on something. Nobody said it was five o’clock. Nobody sang happy birthday or passed around betting sheets about whatever Houston sports team was playing this time of year. No distractions of any kind. Food came, trash went, and Rich more or less did as he pleased.
The square peg was happy in its square hole.
For the first time in months, Mindy Park wasn’t steering Martian satellites or examining pixels on Martian photos. SatCom was too busy. Every pair of eyes and pair of hands were needed. Hermes was coming in hotter than anything in history that wasn’t a rock or an iceball, and it needed a clear path through Earth local space.
For the Rich Purnell maneuver to work, Hermes had to occupy a fairly narrow trajectory slot around Earth, picking up both momentum and a hard turn in-system in order to gain more speed from solar gravity. It would be allowed to maneuver around space debris if any was going to be in its path, and nine-tenths of SatCom was busy double-checking the orbits of the 275,183 bits of space junk larger than a pencil lead that NASA was tracking as of 8 AM that morning. (That didn’t count an equal number of smaller objects floating around up there, but beyond a certain point anything, even Hermes, had to take its chances.)
Hermes was allowed to dodge space junk, which couldn’t move of its own accord. Everything else had to move the hell out of the way, the farther the better. The remaining tenth of SatCom was reviewing forty-six active orbiting satellites (out of over 2400 active machines in Earth orbit) that had more than a 0.1% possibility of intercepting Hermes should something go badly wrong with the trajectory. Remaining thruster fuel on board was a factor; so was stability of orbit, urgency of continuous function of satellite, and potential intercept with other satellites in the course of moving one or the other out of Hermes’s way.
And then, of course, any satellites that had to be moved also had to be kept clear of the quarter-million ballistic bits of electronics-shredding crap that hadn’t had the good luck or sense to fall back to Earth and burn up in atmosphere. An injudicious orbital change to duck Hermes could send the satellite into a stray washer, a broken bit of Russian solar cell, or Mike Collins’s camera from his Gemini spacewalk, creating a debris field that Hermes might plow into, creating the long-anticipated, long-feared Kessler Syndrome event and, incidentally, dooming eleven people to horrible deaths.
It was a ton of work, and if Hermes stuck to its planned course within ten kilometers all of it would be absolutely unnecessary. But NASA couldn’t rely on “probably.” Every contingency had to be addressed, and time was running out.
The media would have to do without its spy-eye shots of Mark and his friends on their spacewalks. Mindy was busy, for once, doing the job she’d applied for. So was everyone else in the department; no gossip, no cake and cookies, no long coffee breaks. Blouses and skirts, shirts and slacks, had largely been replaced with T-shirts and sweats for maximum comfort instead of professionalism.
Occasionally a phone rang or a computer beeped for email received, usually someone from the Department of Defense providing updated data on space junk. Supervisors from four different departments walked the rows of desks, conferring quietly with the satellite herders, getting information and working slowly towards decisions on the fate of forty-six satellites.
But the loudest sound was, and remained, the clicking of mouse buttons and the clacking of keyboards.
Meanwhile, Hermes drew closer.
Sol 208:
Sol 209:
1+1=Red Alert!
Can't wait to see how this all goes wrong...
Just out of curiosity, what's the very good reason not to create some kind of huge pig-iron "snow plow", chuck it into a ball-of-twine orbit, and call it good? There must be a reason, or someone would have done such a thing. too expensive?
after all that i hope there pizza at the end of all this
8893048
The size is the main problem, but not the only one.
Space is crazy big so you would need a "snow plow" the size of a city to make even a small dent in the total amount of space junk there would be. Also problems with getting it into space and making it move, then getting it back down to earth or launching it out of the solar system.
None of these are easy to overcome problems, and as you guessed none of them are cheap.
Good luck with the buffer!
Two chapters in a row with the same ending line... Either somehing major is going to go wrong (inb4 they are accidentally teleported to Eques) or it is a big fat red herring
Random: In my head, Dragonfly is a he, and Venkat is a she. No matter how much I read and re-read, I can't change that feeling.
8893048
Good question. I'm no expert, but there's a lot of reasons why that wouldn't really work. There's the cost issue that you mentioned, but the big problem is really size. The size of the "snowplow" would be a factor, but I'm talking about the volume of space where low earth orbiting satellites live, it's mind-bogglingly massive. Imagine trying to drive a snowplow across the entire earth surface, only you'd have to do it hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of times because of altitude changes. Even going at thousands of miles per hour, that's a ton of ground to cover, not to mention all the extra fuel that would be required for orbital adjustments once it got started. This isn't helped by the fact that all of this space junk is moving at thousands of miles per hour. So not only do you need to catch it, you also have to be moving at a relative velocity such that it doesn't tear through your sled like a bullet. Essentially, if we had a few centuries worth of dedicated people we could probably do it, but it would be insanely complex and difficult. Since we haven't reached the point where it's a real problem yet, no one feels like footing the bill to get started.
Thruster packs, with self-recharging batteries, the sparkle drive and unknown quantities of food but unlimited life support does make some odd dV calculations.
But first they need to get there. And Hermes needs to get there. And they all have to live that long. The odds are still against them.
That reminds me, did they never remove those thruster pack batteries? Are they full now?
8893048
Also, aside from space being big, every time something whacks into it (which is after all the intent in this scenario) you're going to be unpredictably changing the course of this big snow plow and maybe knocking it out of orbit.
I'm actually liking Teddy better than I did in the movie or book, your version is much more dimensional. Nice work.
In order to pull, clear debris out of orbit, you dont want a chunk of metal because at orbital speeds it vapourises and causes more junk. What you want is foam, aerogel etc. Something that can change momentum slowly enough that the enregy release is handleable through the volume.
That, and Kessler Event can be looked at a neutron absorbtion, fission model and so solving it should only be doable by any country or company that has working warheads.
How much spare construction foam Hermes has to spray accross the front?
Something's definitely about to go almost, or completely, wrong. My prediction: the dimension-hopping ESA/CSP probe will suddenly appear in the Hermes flight path, inducing a massive panic on the ground and a near-miss in space. Either that, or someone will figure out this is a risk ahead of time, and Starlight will have a very urgent conversation with Horseton.
Cannot mention Kessler Syndrome without:
imgs.xkcd.com/comics/scary_names.png
8893048
The most important problem is the ratio of empty space to non empty space, a normal snow plow go through practically 100% snow, our space plow would go through practically 0% space junk. Pretty much you would need to lunch a return vehicle to every single large piece (thousands of them out there), and to every small one too (up million out there depending your lower size limit), and it takes just as much to bring it down as you spent on putting it up in energy (and the cost only went down just a bit.) Even worse, many of these bigger junks are unstable, without interference they will orbit for decades until finally falls back, but if a space plow tries to catch them, they may fall apart into a lots of tiny parts (starting the Kessler syndrome.)
8893048
Remember, space isn't a flat plane. So it's not like clearing all the trash off a road (a line), or even all the trash off a football field (a plane); instead, imagine that the air over a football field is full of floating soap bubbles, up to a height of several hundred feet, and you're trying to get rid of all those bubbles by driving golf balls through it. And if you don't hit those bubbles dead on, they'll just bounce off and make the problem worse.
that "Kessler Syndrome" reminded me of a scene in an online cartoon, "21st century fox", where someone was building a device with a big plow-like device on the front for cleaning up space junk. it had something like "Kevlar bubble-wrap" lining the plow to catch the junk with. (so it wouldn't bounce off)
8893130
thank you for reminding me of that comic
Okay... seriously, dude; you're scaring me with this repeated "Meanwhile, Hermes grew closer" thing.
Good luck with the buffer necromancy, though!
No distractions of any kind. Food came, trash went, and Rich more or less did as he pleased.
And this is how one takes proper care of their pet genius.
8892320
NDA, I can't discuss details.
I can say is that I may or may not have provided security for mines during labour disputes.
with=>without?
That last line is forboding.
SatCom is checking and/or moving 2400 satellites and trying to prevent Kessler Syndrome from ensuing in a playing field consisting of 275,183 objects? That is to say, adjusting orbits to widen the Hermes window, and then checking that those adjustments don't lead to an ablation cascade? Holy carp, I don't envy them that job
I mean, sure, it's doable, but WOW that's a hefty workload they've got there.
And for those unfamiliar with orbital mechanics, they can't simply pull a satellite out of it's orbit now and just put it back later, because every adjustment they make puts the satellite in a new orbit, which itself needs to be cleared of other orbiting stuff. In many cases, they'll have to try to return the satellites to their original orbital profile (which is gonna be a pain in the rear end), because some satellites are in specific orbits for specific reasons (like their mission requires a specific orbit, for example) but otherwise it won't be worth the effort of plotting maneuvers to put the satellites back where they started.
Haha! Not many know about that lost camera!
There was a film recently called Gravity that was essentially "This is Kessler syndrome and why it is bad."
8893096 Anything Hermes hits will impact at about 7mi/sec. That's going to blow through foam like tissue paper.
8893174 and also pet guinea pigs. No, wait. They take more human interaction.
8893102 First the good news. We found earth. Now the bad news. We wrecked their spacecraft while it was on a rescue mission.
8893048 Problem #1: A snow plow is a bad design- that's more or less like presenting a huge target to things going at up to five miles per second relative velocity and saying, "Come on if you think you're hard enough."
Problem #2: Say you've got a more sensible design, like a honeycomb catcher or maybe aerogel to capture flying junk. You still have to make an intercept at reasonable speed and vector to catch the thing without demolishing your ship and contributing to the problem. It's not impossible, but it's not going to be cheap on delta-V, either.
Problem #3: Who's going to pay for it? Businesses pay millions to put things in space. Nobody's come forward yet offering millions to bring things back.
8893083 I don't think they've removed the thruster packs yet. They have removed one of the batteries, a roughly ten pound brick that powers Mark's jerry-rigged pony comms so he can talk with their suits while on EVA.
8893245 No. They're only checking to see if they need to, want to, or even can move forty-six satellites- the forty-six that have a 0.1% or greater chance of being in Hermes's path when it blasts through at Ludicrous Speed. I don't know how fast, but except for that extrasolar asteroid that was spotted a few months back the highest relative speed of an asteroid or comet flying by or hitting Earth is about 35,000 MPH, or just under ten miles per second...
8893274 When I was a very little child I had a copy of all eight volumes of the Charlie Brown Dictionary, which had a lot of space race factoids like that in it. Of course, that was a lot closer to the events (born 1974).
8893048
Sounds like a problem that unicorns could solve, after diplomatic relations are opened up.
8893078
You need to watch the movie, to at least solve your Venkat problem.
I'd have more to say if I wasn't at work right now. I really hope someone edits what I recorded on SoundCloud...
8893048
In addition to all the problems pointed out by others, it turns out that using a space plow (or similar method) to deorbit space junk isn't our best choice given present or near-future technology; that would probably actually be using lasers, which would allow deorbiting small debris (~1 mm or less) via the Poynting–Robertson effect and could deorbit larger pieces of debris via direct braking from radiation pressure (sort of like an ion thruster engine or a solar sail, in reverse). Rotating bodies (which is probably most of them) would also be subject to the Yarkovsky effect, which could be exploited to speed up deorbiting timeframes. One of the main reasons this hasn't been done to date is probably the cost, but laser tech has progressed by leaps and bounds in the past couple of decades (perhaps most obvious in LED technology, especially hobbyist flashlights), with accompanying drops in cost, to the point that there is now at least one serious proposal for an interstellar mission using this technology for propulsion.
But it's getting closer together.
10 million years later
And it's getting closer together.
500 million years later
And it's getting closer toget-
BOOOM
IT'S A STAAAAAAAAAR!
The mere mention of Kessler Syndrome is enough to give folk nightmares.
One of those things folk doesn't want to think about, but folk really need to think about.
You could reference the movie "Gravity" in the author notes, since it is all about that syndrome. (despite being very scientifically inaccurate on how that would work)
8893295
And if you like anime, theres an entire series dedicated to the cleanup of space debris
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1d/Anime-planetes-dvd-cover1.jpg/220px-Anime-planetes-dvd-cover1.jpg
8893433
Sounds like a problem only very few magic users can solve. Like Twilight said, most unicorns are unable to do the kind of magic that would be needed for this.
I still hope it'd be NASA that picks the crew off that rock, rather than deus ex machina in form of Twilight's spark of genius.
Simply because NASA does mostly what it knows how to do, and does it well, and ESA steps into a completely new area of interdimensional travel.
8893048
It would have to be very dense not to just become more debris upon collsion with debris, yeah.
8893855
The historic launch site that was used for the moon missions, space shuttle missions, and is now in use by SpaceX: Kennedy Space Center
8893708
I think most can. You just need to put the unicorn in orbit.
To be fair, a 2009 study found that the density of space debris over the next 200 years is only estimated to increase by 30% even with continual launches and a few collision between objects per year. It did not take into account that most objects will have deorbited due to drag by then.
Kessler Syndrome only works in GEO, and than only incredibly slowly and very preventably. LEO just has way too much drag for any single serious debris generating event to significantly degrade safety.
8893704
If I understand the numbers of the design and weapons tests from WW2 correctly, a Habbakkuk could come blasting through a sugar cube debris field at up 100 km/s and come out the other side somewhat batterd but totally intact having lost only a couple metres of hull thickness. This is before you add in Hermese magnetically confined plasma radiation shielding which hopefully acts like Giottos Bumper Shield, letting it take a possible 1 gram hit at relative 60 km/s into 6 inches of kevlar after being disrupted into a plasma shotgun blast by the thin impactor shield up front.
Kessler Run
8893403
Yeah, problem 1 is a pain, but doable to solve.
Problem 2 is where you have your problem.
The concept of scale eludes many a person. Take a look at this image:
https://www.wral.com/-nasa-readies-sensor-to-study-orbital-debris/16493646/
The dots on those maps represent objects that can be as small as a washer or screw. The empty pixels between them represent DOZENS of MILES in low orbit, HUNDREDS of miles in the higher orbits. And everyone is zipping about at mach 30. Consider that at mach 6, the kinetic energy of an object is equal to its mass in TNT. This debris is going five times faster, and the kinetic energy formula uses an exponent.
So you're looking at hundreds of thousands of pieces of metal the size of your finger nails with the kinetic energy of an exploding hand grenade, flitting about in all directions, hundreds of miles apart.
And you want to CATCH that?
Basically that.
8893433
Bet Luna could do it in a few weeks if she had to... and not just wave a solar beam of a sledgehammer around trying to vaporize everything like Celestia, heh. Too bad they couldn't put deflection spells around stuff they want to save as a matter of standard procedure for future satellites and ships.
Still, the implications of combining magic and technology is both frightening and exciting. It would not surprise me in the least if some overachievers are already trying to do that in some lab on Earth while this worldwide rescue operation goes on. The ponies already indicated that Earth should have a magic field that we just can't tap in to. Yet.
It's hard to imagine anything going wrong that won't be a total party kill.
8894163 Eh, the implications of magic and technology aren't that ridiculous. We already see it because the ponies use magic and technology. In fact, to them, there's no distinction. It's like if you told us "Imagine what you could achieve with electricity and technology combined!"
8894737
*ahem*
Allow me some quick dictionary searches and paraphrasing for the sake of demonstration...
Technology: the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes
Science: The study of fundamental principles of our universe, and of interactions and behaviors of forces therein.
If you take a hot pan out of the oven with your bare hand, you will burn your hand. So, what do you do before you grab the pan? Put on a mitt, of course; you know that the mitt is made of material that conducts heat poorly, so you can hold the pan long enough to set it down on the stovetop.
Your knowledge of thermodynamics allows you to take advantage of materials and prevent injury by using a tool to make the task easier and safer. This is science and technology at work.
If a unicorn is doing the cooking, she can use magic, telekinesis, to simply levitate the pan, eliminating any possible conduction of heat to her body. The magic achieves the same result as the oven mitt. It is a natural tool, studied and employed for practical purpose. It is reliable and repeatable.
Magic = technology.
8893096
Please explain in greater detail what this neitron absorption fission model kepler event thing is?
Just send in the Megamaid.
Everyone's talking about space debris and I'm just waiting for Russell to become the princess of friendship
You mean ‘an’, not ‘a’.