Pillar to the Sky (26 page)

It was, Franklin and his supporters declared, like a wanderer dying of thirst in the desert when just on the other side of the hill there was an oasis waiting to be tapped. Limitless energy from the sun constantly flowed around our planet; it was now time to use it and end our dependency on CO
2
fuels. The secrecy he had kept wrapped around this concept was at last falling aside as he judged they were far enough along to ensure public support and block the resistance that was to come from oil-producing nations.

What did not go smoothly was the increasing protest. Eva’s prophecy about Proxley had been on the mark. Suits had been filed that “Franklin’s Folly” would be an obstruction to space navigation, placing even the International Space Station in jeopardy, even though supporters in NASA pointed out that, if need be, the built-in maneuvering thrusters aboard the station could provide the necessary boost to steer safely clear when, it was now estimated, every eight months or so, it would pass within half a kilometer of the Pillar.

Calculations were run across every known object in orbit, from functional satellites to space debris from the thousands of launches that had taken place since 1957. When Gary and Eva were first presented with the analysis, all they could do was sit there, numb. Several hundred functional satellites were in low- to mid-range earth orbit, but so was space debris: factor against that an initial strand two millimeters wide, not yet shielded with Eva’s mesh (the final design would, at least on paper, include high-energy lasers drawing their power from the solar arrays to all but vaporize debris, along with a harmonic wave to oscillate the tower out of the way of impact as an object passed), and the odds were unsettling. Within a year they could expect at least one significant impact.

There was one thing they could not accurately calculate: the strength of the carbon nanotubing against the kinetic energy of an unknown object striking with a velocity of perhaps five miles per second or more. Tests were run, but the variables were the velocity of the impacting object and its mass and the diameter of the first strand when impacted. Within the first few weeks, a strike by an object weighing as little as ten grams traveling at eight kilometers a second would be catastrophic. But given enough time to spin a few dozen additional strands onto the first one, out to the first thousand kilometers from earth, and the odds of survival increased significantly. There were too many variables, though, and when Eva, at one meeting, finally just sat back, stared at the ceiling, and told the staff, “Learn to pray,” the room was silent.

But there was no turning back now, and Franklin, as their public persona, dodged the tough questions like an accomplished politician while continuing to sell the dream of the future. As to the threatened hearings and some attempt by the UN to block the tower, his response, though never “on the record,” was: “How many rogue nations, bent on evil, have been doing their chicanery right up to making nuclear weapons and the world did nothing? We in contrast are doing something that, once proven, all humanity—except those who wish to see the old collapsing economic system remain in place—will come to support.”

There had been several debris strikes in space on the shuttle during its 135-plus flights and total flight time far exceeding a year in orbit, as well as on the space station during its nearly twenty-plus-year record. One gouged a crater over a centimeter deep to the forward windshield of a shuttle, striking with a loud bang that echoed inside the crew compartment and giving everyone a scare. Analysis later indicated it was most likely a bolt, of all things, but if it had been ten times the mass, it might have penetrated and caused a catastrophic decompression. Only those who carefully followed the news about space flight were even aware of it. It was the type of thing that simply didn’t get a major press release. It did not ground the program, it came down to a calculation of risk aversion versus the benefits of building the space station, and NASA had kept its fleet flying … and replaced the nearly cracked windshield.

Franklin more openly compared this situation to that of the legendary Captain “Sully” Sullenberger. Bird strikes had been a reality of aviation since Wilbur and Orville. Every private pilot with enough hours under their lap belt had taken a deep gulp at least once on lifting off when a flock of ducks came soaring up out of a nearby marsh or lake. Every aviator learned that ducks and geese, unlike most other birds, will go for altitude when panicked—meaning they will come up under you where you can’t see them until that final split second before impact—and that could spell disaster, yet it did not stop pilots from flying. Commercial airlines regularly suffered bird strikes, but a total engine loss? God put Captain Sully on board that flight out of New York that day, Franklin would say with a smile, and they were designing the Pillar with that in mind. There would always be a Captain Sully on board and in control of the Pillar.

It was, Gary and Eva knew, an argument that did not hold much water until their second phase, when the actual commercial tower rather than the construction tower was in place. The ribbon design had evolved over the last few years: unlike the initial “strand” tower, the commercial tower in its final form would be a ribbon that could easily have additional layers stitched onto either side and could be made any width—a dozen meters or more—so that even if one of the individual ribbons, each about the width of old-fashioned 35mm film, was hit and taken out, the ribbons stitched to either side would remain intact, and repairing the broken section would be a simple enough task. The first tower was simply to haul up the hundreds of tons of “ribbon” at reasonable cost to build the primary tower for actual commercial use.

Until then, it was hoped that the space-faring nations would at least attempt to cooperate and nudge their satellites a few hundred meters to one side or the other if on a collision course.

However, that had not stopped a few opponents in the Senate from demanding high-profile hearings on this “new hazard that can shut down space travel,” even though those same senators for years had systematically choked off funding to NASA for their own projects and driven engineers like Gary and Eva into the arms of Franklin Smith and his team.

The harassment built. Franklin appeared before one hearing in which he was shredded. The following day he flew to Kiribati, and within a week most of his key administrative staff had followed. He ignored the next summons to appear in Washington.

He was in near exile now, but his project was in full swing. And although those in power at that moment vilified him, those who supported him—who understood the science involved, and the dire prospects if new answers were not found—grew in number. Franklin’s eternal optimism captured something about the American spirit. An older generation began to speak more to the younger one about a time in their own youth when a young president challenged the nation to dream of new and higher frontiers. The current dystopic vision of America’s future—economic collapse, its decline into a second-rate power, threats of war, gas at twenty dollars a gallon, even zombie invasion—was gradually changing. The belief that a resurgence was at hand for America, and with it the entire world, just might be taking hold.

11

Two Years Later

“Kiribati control, this is Pillar One, we have hard dock.”

“Pillar One, Kiribati Control. Great work. You have a lot of men and women down here about to turn blue.”

Victoria could not help but smile at that one. She looked over at Jason and squeezed his hand, for he had quietly passed along the suggestion that Mission Control say those exact words. It was a direct salute to the famous exchange between Neil Armstrong and Houston when he announced touchdown on the moon: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

The control room on the floating platform, positioned a mile south of the island of Aranuka, was minuscule compared to the once sprawling complex at Houston where hundreds of tech heads and engineers had monitored the Apollo launches. The team numbered fewer than fifty at that moment. If all the dreams came true, it would one day house more than a thousand monitoring the daily operations of the Pillar and its construction.

Victoria looked back at her father, who was seated near Franklin: his gaze still fixed on his monitor, he did not even look up while applause and self-congratulatory backslapping resounded in the room.

It had been a tense five days. Not since the days of the old Gemini Program, when
Gemini 7
and then
Gemini 6
had been launched within a few days of each other to achieve the first “rendezvous” in space, had there been such a launch. It had actually required two launches. First up was the precious payload of “wire,” 40,000 miles of it. And now the manned crew of three to oversee that deployment, two men and one woman, in the first private venture—or, for that matter, any venture—to geosynch orbit.

If all went precisely to plan, they would just spend the next two weeks relaxing inside their “Spam-in-a-can” capsule, monitoring the reels as they deployed the wire down to the earth’s surface. The design was simple and yet stunning, actually drawing upon the early attempts at laying a 3,000-mile-long transoceanic cable 160 years earlier. The wire was wound on to two drums. The “counterweight wire” would climb up out of geosynch, extending outward 13,000 miles to act as the weight balance. The second drum which the manned capsule was docked to would actually remain at geosynch, its end attached to a “descent thruster,” which, starting with a low thrust burn, would begin to pull 23,000 miles of wire off the second drum, guiding it down to the platform at Kiribati.

Eva, Gary, and the entire team had been worn to exhaustion working out this plan. The one ascending, to act as a counterweight, was not so crucial. If jammed, they would just leave it in place for the time being and worry about it later.

The trick, the real trick—what the entire operation now hinged on—was anchoring the first wire in place. They would have only one shot at it; it had to go flawlessly. Thus Gary’s proposal that the deployment drum be kept at geosynch, with the astronaut crew just a few meters away, while a thruster pack, with the end of the wire attached to it, did the descent, the drum unrolling the wire out at two hundred kilometers per hour.

There were hundreds of questions to be answered, calculations to be made, the matter of how to counteract the torque of the drum spinning out wire, and the incredibly complex problem of actually guiding the wire down to a fixed point on earth. Eva’s analogy that it was like trying to toss out a thread so that the end would go perfectly through the eye of a needle 23,000 miles away was apt.

For the entire operation, this was the crucial moment. In private Franklin had made it clear to his inner circle that, just like the high-risk
Curiosity
mission to Mars, they had one chance and one chance only to get it right and, like
Curiosity
, must do so with technologies never actually tested in space before. If the descent thruster system didn’t work, if the drum deploying the wire down jammed up, if the tensile strength of this first wire was exceeded—a hundred other ifs—they were finished. Opponents were just praying for a screwup to jump on, and his network of investors had been stretched to the limit and would fall away if this one failed.

To the public Franklin still spoke with great enthusiasm, as any leader should and must at such times. He asked them to try to imagine Eisenhower, on the day before the invasion to Normandy, telling the troops they stood a 50 percent chance of failure and they would all die, or the very real number predicted by some that Armstrong and Aldrin had only an even chance of actually landing on the moon and returning safely to earth. It was known by some, but at such moments belief in victory had to transcend fears or no dream would ever be achieved.

On a very personal level, the frightening part that had everyone on edge was that if there were problems with the drum and extra-vehicular activity was required to get it functioning or perhaps to untangle a snag, they would be working with a wire strand two millimeters in diameter, all but invisible. If it even brushed against their EVA space suits, it could slice them open like a hot knife through butter. Of course, there were emergency backups: for example, one astronaut would do the repair work while a second hovered back by their primary vehicle, and each would carry an emergency patch kit to slap over a tear in a space suit. The real nightmare was a break in a cable that somehow looped around the manned unit. It would cut through the titanium body, and if it sliced into the service module aft that held their oxygen and fuel, there would not even be a whisper of a chance of getting home. And it would be one hell of an explosion.

It was the riskiest manned mission ever attempted.

The other completely untested unit was the descent thruster, which took up over a third of the weight of the entire vehicle lofted to geosynch orbit. The end of the first spool of wire was already attached to it. The two tons of the descent thrust was mostly fuel. The orbital dynamics were insanely complex, but if all went according to plan, 220 hours after deployment the thruster would enter the upper atmosphere. That would indeed be the hairy part, as Franklin put it.

The last 100,000 feet would be the toughest. There had been talk of a high-flying aircraft snagging it, bringing the entire unit down, and releasing it above the anchor point, or even somehow transferring it to some kind of helicopter with a vast bay aft of its rotors that would drag it down to the platform. It was Gary who vetoed all of it, saying that if they could trust the thruster to bring the wire in 99.9 percent of the way, then they shouldn’t make things more complex but should trust it for the last twenty miles. Besides, to try to snag an out-of-control thruster and wire would be a suicidal gesture. The thruster had to bring the wire in.

The world was startled by the realization of what this plan really meant. Nearly everyone assumed that Franklin’s Folly would be built from the ground up—that first a huge tower, kilometers high, would be constructed and a cable anchored to it would be carried aloft into space, then other rockets would carry it farther.