"You"re right. It would take at least five years to resurrect the thermal nuclear reactor program, not to mention build another supply ship. But there"s another option, a quicker, non-reactor nuclear option. And it involves this place."
"What do you mean?"
"It sounds crazy, but this idea was cooked up by Dr. Edward Teller, so-called father of the H-bomb."
Heather frowned. "Wasn"t he responsible for Plowshare?"
"He was. But he was responsible for a lot of other ideas as well. This was an idea to use the power of a nuclear explosion in a peaceful way, exotic and unconventional, but in a manner that could benefit s.p.a.ce travel on a ma.s.sive scale."
"You"re not serious."
"Actually, I am. He had this idea to rocket tons of material into s.p.a.ce-and it just might work."
Heather looked skeptical. "Tons."
"The idea is to load an enormous amount of supplies-thousands of tons-onto a slab of high-strength metal, sitting on one of those ten-meter diameter mine shafts you see out in the NTS valley. Dr. Teller wanted to place a nuclear bomb at the bottom of the shaft, a mile or so below the surface, and fill the shaft with water."
"Water?" Heather looked as if she"d been following his explanation, but her eyes began to wander.
"Stay with me, ma"am. Once the nuclear bomb is detonated, most of the energy-fifty percent of it-would be absorbed by the water, which would be instantly converted into superheated steam. And voil, an incredibly energetic steam piston would push against the plate at the top of the mine shaft and accelerate it up ... so fast that the plate and supplies not only leave Earth"s gravitational pull, but if launched at the right instant, could impact Mars," he lowered his voice, "and provide enough food, water, and supplies for a crew to survive, until either a conventional rescue mission could be mounted, or until they generate enough in situ fuel to make it back home."
Heather stared down at the brown valley of dust. General Mitch.e.l.l couldn"t read any emotion in his boss"s expression, as her features were taut, unmoving. She spoke without turning. "You"re saying this Thunderwell is a nuclear-driven golf-shot that could impact Mars. A golf ball of water, food, and fuel. That we can shoot to my husband."
"Yes, ma"am-that"s the gist of it."
A moment pa.s.sed, then she turned to face him. "You have got to be kidding."
"No, ma"am. I"m dead serious."
"That"s crazy. How can anything get from one planet to another without a rocket? And just by shooting it into s.p.a.ce. Didn"t Jules Verne write about that?"
"Yes, he did-and he was on the right track. With enough initial velocity, it"s possible to shoot nearly anything to the Moon-or Mars, or anywhere else for that matter. The problem is that initial kick. Compressible objects, such as humans, would instantly turn to jelly after such an enormous acceleration. Living things just can"t withstand accelerations greater than eight or nine g"s, not to mention the nearly one hundred thousand g"s created by a nuclear-driven steam piston."
"It sounds crazy."
"It does. But we know this can work. We have proof."
"How?" Heather said. "I would have heard of this Thunderwell if it had worked."
Mitchel continued patiently. "Scientists have discovered meteorites in Antarctica originating from Mars. They were originally chunks of Martian rock, blown into s.p.a.ce by the collision of a huge meteor. Those craters on Mars were created by huge ma.s.ses, maybe asteroid-size rocks, hitting the surface and ejecting surface material into s.p.a.ce. And some of that ejecta left with enough velocity to make it all the way to Earth. Accelerated into s.p.a.ce just as Thunderwell could accelerate supplies to Mars."
Heather stared at the ma.s.sive drill bits. Rust pockmarked their silver-tinged faces. They looked like giant toys left abandoned in the desert. She spoke slowly. "So this nuclear steam piston, Thunderwell, kicks the supplies into s.p.a.ce. All the way to Mars."
"That"s right. The metal platform on top of the vertical shaft is accelerated up into the atmosphere tens of kilometers a second, with enough velocity-and if it"s correctly aimed-to reach Mars and hit the surface."
She shook her head. "Won"t the supplies be squashed?"
"Any food would have to be freeze-dried, but water and whatever fuel you might want to include wouldn"t be affected by the large acceleration; those are largely incompressible. For electronics and other equipment we"d use technology from the Defense Department"s penetrator program, bombs designed to withstand that type of acceleration can burrow through tens of meters of granite to destroy deeply buried targets. But anything we send would have to be able to withstand both the initial acceleration, as well as the impact on the Martian surface.
"We could have done this years ago. And it would have been far easier to hit the lunar surface, saturate it with supplies before establishing the first permanent human presence on the Moon. We could have saved billions on the s.p.a.ce program."
"If it was so easy, why didn"t we do it?"
Mitch.e.l.l looked incredulous. "Ma"am, it does mean setting off a nuclear explosion-a thermonuclear bomb that vents into the atmosphere." He set his mouth. "I suppose we could have done that in the fifties without any consequence. But today?" He shook his head. "It"s just not a career killer, it would create an international incident. It would mean breaking the international Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty-the one that the Senate is just about to ratify. And worse, it might result in possibly dismantling the nuclear nonproliferation regime." He hesitated, then spoke softly, "The plank that got your party elected and got you confirmed for this job..."
Heather brought her head up quickly. "Then why did you bring me here? Why did you shove this in my face? You could have just as well trotted in one of your national lab lackeys and given me a PowerPoint presentation on the options. Why did you do this?"
Mitch.e.l.l slowly nodded to himself. "You needed to see this place. You needed to experience for yourself the history, what people did when faced with a seemingly insurmountable foe during the Cold War, when they weighed consequences for themselves of what might happen if they didn"t do what they were doing.
"Those folks weren"t dumb. They knew what they were doing to the environment wasn"t benign." He took her elbow and turned her around to the north, looking over another vista. A giant hole created by a nuclear blast in the 1950s dominated the landscape, but he ignored the geological feature and instead pointed to a row of stadium bleachers. Faded by the sun, the wood was splintered. Green paint cracked off the seats onto the ground.
Mitch.e.l.l nodded at the sight. "They brought in crowds by the hundreds to witness the atomic blasts. It seems horrific now, but they knew that there was little radiological danger to the observers. They wouldn"t put congressmen and starlets in danger.
"It might have been decades ago, but they were just as smart as us, and they knew the significance of what they were doing-but they also knew there were long-term consequences. And it all came down to what was most important to them at the time. They had a choice: winning the Cold War-in their minds, preventing extinction-or saving the environment. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe it wasn"t an either/or situation. And maybe they could have done things differently. But the point is that they were absolutely convinced that their priorities were right, no matter what we think of their decisions today."
"So what"s your point, General?"
"The point is, that was then, and this is now. And you, Madam Administrator, have got to make the same decision for yourself: what are your priorities with all the risks involved?"
Mitch.e.l.l let go of her arm.
Heather was quiet for a long time. Wind whipped around them, blowing sand into their eyes. Her hair swirled around, but she paid it no attention. Sweeping her hair away as she turned, she whispered, "So you really think Thunderwell can get supplies to Mars?"
"With a well-designed nuclear device, a reinforced shaft, a robust plug, and by strapping the right amount of supplies on top of the plug in the correct places to ensure they don"t induce any unintended torques, waiting until the correct moment to launch, and of course covering it all by an ablative aerosh.e.l.l-"
Heather sharply held up a hand. "I trust you on the details. Will it work?"
A long moment pa.s.sed. "Yes, ma"am. I"d stake my life on it."
Small att.i.tude thrusters on the vessel"s port side sputtered in a sharp staccato. Neutral gas shot from the nozzles at a frequency so high it sounded like bacon sizzling.
Suddenly it stopped. Flexing metal creaked as the s.p.a.cecraft began to rotate. Stars wheeled around the exterior view screens excruciatingly slowly, mere milliradians at a time as the ma.s.sive ship rotated sluggishly about its center of ma.s.s.
Moments pa.s.sed, and the thrusters sputtered again, this time on the starboard side. As the craft slowed its rotation, a red sliver appeared on the side of the exterior view screen. The sliver increased in size to a crescent, slowly filling the screen. Within minutes, Mars dominated the view as the craft sighed to a stop.
It appeared as if the ship were pointed at the surface, destined to graze the planet on the side; but if their calculations were correct, they were precisely positioned to barely miss and instead delve deep into the Martian atmosphere. And once slowed by aerobraking, their craft would be flung into a highly elliptical orbit around Mars.
Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. Without her husband, Mark, she didn"t have anything to lose.
And Heather was glad she didn"t ask permission ahead of time.
Otherwise, the last-ditch rescue mission never would have been mounted. No matter how great the chance.
As an undersecretary of a major cabinet in the second term of the President"s administration, Heather had immense powers. And as long as she didn"t commit the nation to war, her verbal orders were quickly accomplished.
She slapped a "Sigma 80" Q SAR-special-access-required-program code on the secret Thunderwell project, swearing people to silence and threatening years of jail time if they broke the strict security measures. And with trillions of dollars being tossed around lowering the national debt, funding nondiscretionary spending, and supporting the conflict-de-jour, the percentage of Heather"s $12 billion nuclear enterprise budget that was diverted toward Thunderwell didn"t raise an eyebrow. After all, she was the one who had overseen the drawdown of the nuclear enterprise, and she was the Administration"s golden child.
The national weapon labs wheeled into action. Old geezers who hadn"t thought about underground nuclear tests since the last nuclear device popped off in 1991, before the Test Ban Treaty was put into effect, were wheeled into their emeritus offices to give advice to young bomb-designing whippersnappers-whose only experience setting off a nuclear device had been limited to ma.s.sive 3-D computer simulations on the world"s fastest-supercomputer of the day. Even then, they were limited to only calculating what size nuclear device and what other technical requirements would be needed to successfully pull off Thunderwell.
Three one-mile-deep shafts, each over ten meters in diameter and each at varying, precise angles to the surface, were simultaneously bored by the reserve crews who had been standing by at Mercury Site for years, the jump-off point in the Nevada Test Site. The elderly crews had been waiting for decades to swing into action in case the Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty had been lifted.
Two Los Alamos, and a third Lawrence Livermore candidate nuclear warhead were rocketed though the nuclear complex validation process, each undergoing a rigorous peer-review process to determine which device would create the precise nuclear conditions that would best enable a successful shot. They all knew they"d only have one chance.
Hydraulic and fluid experts, material scientists, and foundry executives converged on the Nevada Test Site to pound out the exact specifications for the ma.s.sive plate that would serve as a platform for the supplies. After sleepless hours and with input from the labs" nuclear experts, they finally settled on a hybrid design of using a ma.s.sive one-meter thick, thirty-meter-diameter stainless-steel plate that would hold the supplies, b.u.t.tressed by a t.i.tanium carbide plug inserted into the hole. There was simply not enough t.i.tanium available to build the plate, and a compromise of using steel from the sides of mothballed battleships satisfied the nuclear designers.
Sworn to secrecy, senior management from Safeway, King Soopers, Piggly Wiggly, and a half-dozen other national supermarket chains teamed with Defense Department commissary executives. They met with NASA representatives to determine which dehydrated food stock would best survive the incredible accelerations, exposure to vacuum, and long-term exposure to radiation for the total estimated flight time.
Armed convoys rolled day and night, transporting the three selected warheads from their military storage sites to the safety of the DAF-the Device a.s.sembly Facility-at the Nevada Test Site, minutes from where the shafts were being dug beneath the surface.
Heather herself signed off on the final requirements for ensuring a 50 percent chance of getting eleven kilotons of supplies to Mars: accelerating the plate and supplies to an escape velocity of over twelve kilometers per second drove the nuclear device to be over a half-megaton in energy-560 kilotons-or nearly thirty times larger than the weapon that devastated Hiroshima.
With her preparing an unsanctioned, half-megaton nuclear explosion, orders of magnitude greater than anything known in the last sixty years, she knew that the end of her career was the very last thing she had to worry about.
Simply because after this, successful or not, she would no longer have a career.
The manned portion of the mission was successful.
The crew vessel was aerocaptured by Mars and their periares dropped with each orbit, inching closer to the surface by atmospheric drag. At the velocity they"d approached Mars, their total elliptical orbit took nearly a week, and the only way to slow their speed was to drop deeper and deeper into the atmosphere. With only enough fuel to circularize their orbit, they prepared to extract themselves from the main craft and enter the spa.r.s.e Martian atmosphere with their landing module.
They"d finally arrived in orbit after the demise of the two ill-fated resupply vessels. And after successfully aerobraking they resumed full oxygen, needing their full faculties for the next phase of the mission. But with the odds so stacked against them, some of the crew silently wished they could attempt the landing with the joyful nonchalance brought on by a lack of oxygen ... that way they wouldn"t care one way or the other how things turned out.
In three months-the mean time for an urgent, clandestine national security activity to be noticed by Congress and the Executive branch-logistics for Thunderwell were green, ready to go. It was one of the nation"s most tightly guarded secrets, even keeping the Martian astronauts in the dark.
On the top floor of the DAF, NASA TV played from a silk-thin, wall-size screen hanging from the ceiling. Light-delayed pictures of the Mars astronauts splashed around the room, lighting up the walls. On the giant screen, Colonel Mark Lewis, commander of the first Mars mission, floated upside down as the networks streamed his upbeat words at the bottom of the display.
On the surface, everything seemed normal. There was no sense of tension in the astronaut"s broadcast, in the voice of the clipped, professional NASA narrator, or in the newscasters. In two days, America was landing on Mars with an international crew. After six months coasting in its Hohmann transfer orbit, the mother ship Discovery was going to release the Mars lander Hope, and for the first time in history, humans were going to land on the red planet.
But because of the failure of the two supply ships to Mars, Discovery didn"t have enough fuel or supplies for the return trip to Earth. The plan to rendezvous with the supply ships and bring the crew home would never be realized.
Millions of miles away, on the upper floor of the administrative area of the DAF, General Mitch.e.l.l met with a cadre of DOE, national lab, and military personnel. Although the conference room was not in close proximity to the half-megaton nuclear devices parked in secure vaults three stories below, no windows adorned the room-or any other area in the DAF. Three stories high and made of rebar-enforced, nuclear-pedigreed concrete, the DAF stood out like Ayers Rock in the Nevada desert.
General Mitch.e.l.l went around the room, going over his checklist in methodical fashion. "Device status?" The complex, intricately manufactured 560-kiloton nuclear weapon was reduced to being known as the device.
An Asian woman looked up from her laptop. "All three green. Final recommendations from the selection jury will be presented to you and Administrator Lewis next week."
Mitch.e.l.l moved to the next person sitting at the table. "The hole?"
"Infrastructure and diagnostics ready in the bore hole. Orthogonal tunnels for the strap-on science experiments are green."
"Water?"
"Green. Purification verified and ready to flood the tunnel."
Mitch.e.l.l nodded. "Plug?"
A skinny man in coveralls stood. "Yellow, because the plug"s not yet in place. But the last acoustic testing is complete-no flaws, General. The t.i.tanium carbide plug is being transported to the NTS on one of the old shuttle transport 747s and will be ready for insertion as soon as it arrives." He looked down at his notes. "The steel plate is on-site and ready to be moved over the hole and welded to the plug on notice."
Mitch.e.l.l turned to a woman wearing a King Soopers grocery jacket, the only person who seemed out of place in the government-dominated room. "Supplies."
"Packaged and prepositioned, ready to be moved once the plate is in place, General. I"ve got slightly over eleven kilotons, each having their position set within fractions of a centimeter, both horizontally and vertically. The final height will be forty-five meters, just under the surface of the aerosh.e.l.l. But you"ll have to pray we don"t go to war in the next six months. We"ve diverted all of USTRANSCOM"s strategic supplies for the next year."
Mitch.e.l.l grunted and turned to the next person. "Public affairs?"
Two thousand miles away to the east, General Mitch.e.l.l"s boss sat in front of a cla.s.sified Congressional special program"s oversight panel, defending the expenditure of millions of dollars of "black," or special-access, funds. During the hearing, she didn"t exactly lie-the Congress oversaw the nation"s SAP, or special access programs with keen oversight, and this sometimes appeared the only way that urgent, nationally important programs such as the B-2, the Corona spy satellite, and the Osama bin Laden special ops missions could be successfully run. So when asked point-blank if this black program Heather was conducting at the DAF would result in a new nuclear warhead, Heather could honestly say no-it would merely provide the nation with a new capability.
But it was a huge new capability, she began.
She spelled out that the new capability could launch huge quant.i.ties of supplies to the Moon and planets, and that it would open up a new era for s.p.a.ce travel. But in her mind that was mincing words-there was one catch to this huge new capability, and it wasn"t a small one.
When the committee looked at her quizzically, Heather drew in a breath and started explaining just what it took to accomplish that.
Heather"s G-650 greased to a landing on the ten-thousand-foot-long runway at the Nevada Test Site. The sleek white business jet looked out of place as it taxied past dusty metal sheds and squat, brown concrete buildings.
A black suburban with a Department of Energy license plate raced up to the jet as the G-650 pulled next to a metal staircase. As the engines whined down, Heather tapped down the stairs into the waiting staff car, her ear glued to her smartphone. Final arrangements were being coordinated back in Washington, and Heather received up-to-the-minute appraisals.
She"d briefed Congress"s special programs oversight committee just hours before at the closed meeting, speaking to two senior senators and representatives, representing both parties. When she fully revealed the capability and purpose of Thunderwell, the room went deathly silent.
But only for a few minutes.
After all the uproar, thank goodness only one Congressperson had violently objected, so she left the hearing unscathed.
It had been her plan all along to fully brief Congress on the ultimate purpose of Thunderwell: to build a nuclear-bomb-driven steam piston that would hurl over eleven kilotons of supplies to Mars. But she didn"t fully brief them until today, when the device was complete and ready to be used.
Now they knew. And as Heather"s car drove up to the NTS command post, the oversight committee was waiting to brief the President in the White House Situation Room. If she"d timed things right, she"d sit down at the control room"s console just as the cla.s.sified video-teleconference with the White House began.
General Mitch.e.l.l stood as Heather walked into the cool, dark command center. In the middle of a cl.u.s.ter of identically drab buildings, situated at the top of a barren hill, the command post"s interior had been dramatically updated from the last time it had been used in the early 1990s, when underground testing of nuclear weapons had started winding down. Since that time, non-nuclear and radioactive equation-of-state tests were conducted at the site, but those experiments did not rank high enough in priority to merit updating the old facility. The round-off error from the Thunderwell budget more than paid for the installation of new fiber-optic controls, oversized HDTV screens, and an updated multileveled command center.
Tens of windows were open on the HD displays, showing various camera shots throughout the test site: at the bottom of the hole, the 560-kiloton nuclear device, eerily sitting in crystal-clear, deionized water; an arm-thick bundle of fiber optics that spread out to the thousands of sensors-neutral and charged particle, X-ray, heat, optical, overpressure, density, temperature, laser, and RF imaging-that permeated the test site; the explosively driven blast doors situated near the surface, just under the t.i.tanium plug; orthogonal views of the ma.s.sive thirty-meter diameter, one-meter-thick steel plate sitting on top of the t.i.tanium plug; the forty-five-meter-high composite aerosh.e.l.l enveloping the plate, looking like a huge stubby nosecone jutting up from the desert floor; and several angles of the site viewed from a hundred meters to ten kilometers away. The ground surrounding the hole was deserted, void of movement.
A quiet hum of voices filled the command center, as if no one wanted to raise their voice as they ran through checklists.
Suddenly, the center screen blinked and a red list of tri-graphs appeared at the top of the display as the view focused on the President, surrounded by the Congressional oversight committee. The President looked shocked as two senators exchanged heated words.
Heather cleared her throat. "Mr. President, I a.s.sume you"ve been briefed-"