CostLess Cosmos

My safety officer came to me and said it was posing a risk to the integrity of some of the equipment, so we had to adjust.

The shelter was only partially set up, and we didn't have nearly what we needed done in there to make it fully functional as a habitat (kitchen, machine shop, etc.), but as sleeping quarters and respite area, it was fine.

Crews switched to working from there and not coming back to the ship unless they had to. All the trips through the airlock had added up.

Still, the labs we had for studying the regolith were yielding results. Drilling core samples, we sampled strata until we hit bigger rocks, but it was disappointingly consistent.

Moon rocks are just rocks, and moon dust is just tiny rocks. Melting them, we could make glass bricks, but we only had equipment to do that in an atmosphere and in small quantities.

The first crew rotation was set to be two weeks, and despite how joy-making it was to hop around on the moon for a while, I was happy to be going home.

Riding a super-fat-tire tricycle around the circumference of our station, I got a point of pride following our 'fenceline' made from pairs of flags. The boundary line flags also had a dangling aluminum-and-copper set of flags embossed with, "Canada Territory / Territoire du Canada / BardSpace Corp. Property".

Each pair had a string running between it to form a 'dotted line' boundary that let our people go out and come back without tripping.

The first official structure aside from our shelter was a box with simple steel bracing and bags filled with regolith, and some hold-down rods pounded down into the dirt. It was the size of a large garden shed, but it had a roof and a rudimentary gate/front door with a latch and a (frozen) water jug. The jug could be heated to separate out the right amount of water, triggered, and it would drop a 50 cc slug of ice into a 'sink'

The silly contrivances were courtesy of our legal department, which they said made our territorial claim stronger. It was like an island, one of the lawyers had explained, and one of our expedition members explained it to the camera as she set the thing up. She said, "International maritime law and tradition state that claiming an island as territory requires more than just an 'it's mine' declaration."

"Claims are enhanced by benchmarked surveying (done), boundary markers (done), fencing (done), permanent improvements (landing field, done), prospecting (done), clear and unambiguous declarations to several concerned governments (done), building a domicile with a closable door and running water (done), and either continuous human habitation (we were leaving 4 scientists in the inflatable shelter, done), animal husbandry (rabbits, used for radiation exposure study, in the shelter), or agriculture."

Our ag operation we'd shown earlier. It was several aloe house plants and it counted as a 'cash crop' since selling their aloe would be worth something to collectors, also in the shelter.

Saying goodbye to our four stay-behind scientists, we took off. As soon as we were headed back to Earth, the other ship, the Elmjack, landed and its crew started unpacking equipment and continuing the experiments we'd started.

We were building more ships, each one getting better and more capable.

I had bigger ambitions.

A month later, we sent another expedition out, without me this time, for a very specific destination that we didn't announce right away. I didn't know whether we'd have competition. There were other companies building ships, but none so fast as I was since I had somewhat unlimited funds.

Assembling large sections of a 'wheel' ship on the ground, we soon had (about 8 months after my first flight), a lightweight aluminum framed ship that could rotate for 1/2 gravity. Attachable modules with sets of bedrooms, workshops, living spaces, etc., could be snapped-together (no bolts required -- bolts come off and are lost).

The main spars, the heaviest sections, required 6 ships with 200 meter-long cables to lift it, working it into orbit as a single, slow, heavy lift, and then running a series of fetch-and-attach missions for days as the thing was put together.

We didn't try to hide this work. We did make it sound like it'd be a long time to go before launch, though, when in fact we were much farther ahead than it seemed. Mars was just past the opposite side of the sun from us, and the launch window wouldn't open for another 4 months, but we were ready early. The station was spinning, things were in place that looked haphazard and barely-strapped down, or minimal.

Everyone was briefed that they shouldn't talk to the press about the timing, but all our internal briefings presumed we'd launch at the earliest launch window. That meant a normal Holmann Transfer orbital insertion, five months travel time. Of course that news leaked; scientists are not built for keeping secrets, they thrive on the, 'guess what I just learned!' vibe.

Very few people were in on the real timing, but they'd all signed up for regular dry-runs where we'd get all prepped and simulate various sections of the flight, from takeoff, to landing on mars, to emergency scenarios of various kinds.

Crew was to be size-limited at 100, but with both full food stores for 4 years and hydroponics greenhouses for fresh veggies, we had enough safety margin that we'd have no problem with survival. We'd all seen The Martian and didn't want a repeat of the Poo-Taters.

That said, we brought plenty of seed potatoes and fertilizer along!

I'd also chosen my crew carefully. Most were either Ph.D's or M.D.'s, or had a lot of field experience and were recognized experts. Part of employment was having a personal trainer and dietician, physical fitness so they were all in shape. Everyone had to give ample sperm donations or egg harvests to ensure any radiation damage didn't result in permanent inability to have kids. Some were husband-wife couples, but the big difference was I chose as many women as possible.

Why women? For some reason, they worked together in groups better than groups of men. Of the 106 crew, 82 were women, which is a real trick when you're scouring the world for capable geologists and scientists and mostly you prefer female candidates. We were constantly rotating people in and out of orbit, and they knew sometimes they'd be stationed on the moon for any tour from a day to a month.

The only people who knew the real launch schedule were Ellen, myself, and about 5 people in our mission control operations center who controlled rotations, inventory levels, and flight / launch scheduling. Kermit had just been born, and she knew I needed to go, but the first month was so amazing it was hard to focus on both being a new dad and getting this amazing trip off the ground.

We were racing the Boeing team and the SpaceX team, and they were building ships in orbit, too, and we'd all launch about the same time. I didn't know who would win, myself.

One morning, I kissed Ellen and Kermit goodbye, shouldered my bag (I'd sometimes go on missions, about once a week), and headed to the "remote office", which is to say the expansive set of factories and landing fields we'd built outside of Quebec City. Catching the launch controller's eye, he walked across the control room and shook my hand, casually, but we both knew what was going on.

I boarded the Elmond, a long-range version we'd recently commissioned, with a set of external tanks mounted above the fuselage almost quadrupling the volume of the ship, on the excuse we were adding to the station's expandable bladder-tanks before going to the moon. Everyone with me was a veteran, but about as young as I was and as fit and capable people as we knew how to staff. They were going to need that fitness.

Once we were in orbit, I went to the cockpit, and in a very unusual move they all noticed, I shut down the entire primary and backup comms, which really just meant we weren't streaming audio and video back to mission control. Everyone was already in the cockpit, so I said, "Circle up. All hands meeting."

The conversation was kind of epic.

"So," I started, asking all of them, "What's the chance that some other team has already left for Mars and not said anything?"

Shri, a brilliant female Indian M.D. who we'd hired and gotten Canadian citizenship for, said, "Nearly zero. I have friends at various places. Any departure would be noticed and reported on."

"How long do you think until there's a manned Mars mission, then?"

"We look the most-ready of anyone. Hohmann Transfer opens in 8 months, but everyone around BardSpace is saying at least another 2 months to check out the equipment and finish work on the Oakdale and maybe her sister ships."

"They're wrong."

"You know this?"

"Yes."

Dale's suspicious eyes squinted at me. She normally had a ready smile on her very Nubian-dark face, but she knew something was up from the way I was smiling.

I said, "I'm not putting this to a vote, but I'll consider any objections while we can still change this plan..."

They were waiting, floating with me. The pause was fun.

"Who wants to be the first humans on Mars?"

Mouths dropped open. Inhales were heard. Eyes expanded.

Rob, a military pilot we'd gotten who did his undergrad in petroleum engineering, was the first to say (mostly shout), "YES!" His double-arm bicep curl of happiness shimmied his body side to side in the zero-g and he had to grab on again before he bumped his head into the padded wall. He was ecstatic.

Carol piped up with another wide-eyed happy "YES!" just a moment later.

Dale echoed her, "Yes." Her tone was more careful, reflecting maybe being shocked and confused at the thought.

Maria, usually one to be very talkative, was quiet this time.

I looked over at Shri, who was nodding quickly. "To make it clear, that's a YES for me!" She was wildly happy.

We all turned back to Maria. She said, smiling but a little nervous, "I just got married 5 weeks ago. We were... oh, wow... Fuck, I'm going!"

We all laughed. I said, "That's everyone. Now, to make it impossible for anyone to beat us, we need to leave in the next week, but I've conspired with Chris and the schedulers to launch the Pine [our wheel-vessel] in 2 weeks -- once we're gone. They're the backup ship." We'd always talked about sending two ships, a primary and a backup, in case we had trouble along the way.

"We're going alone?"

"The manifest you read during the checklist read, 'survival supplies'. It was only slightly inaccurate. We have very nice rations, we're set here. The thing is, though..."

They were hanging on this news.

"We have far, far more reaction mass than we should ever need. That means, we can go faster. Our flight plan is for a high-boost, inside Venus's orbit, swing around, and be there in about 3 weeks. Some of it is going to be uncomfortable."

Shri, ever being the doctor, asked, "How uncomfortable?"

"We'll have 3 g's for almost 2 and a half hours, then it will drop back down."

"Not too bad."

"Nope. We're going to tank up, though. We're loaded so heavy, we used about 15% of our reaction mass getting to orbit here, so we're going to stop off at Oakdale and, instead of filling them, they'll fill us, under the guise of a tanking test."

I motioned to the console, "We have a maneuver coming up in 15 minutes to dock with them. Let's do this by the book, normal stuff. I want NO HINT of what we're doing. I've taken a chance by telling you before we boost, I don't want one thought of this getting to anyone."

"Why the secrecy?"

"SpaceX is building better ships than ours. They have more engineers and more experience with hardware. We have seat-of-the-pants fast-iteration like they do, and a much bigger budget, but I respect their talent pool. A friend of mine seemed to think they were getting ready to put a ship up that's not just larger than ours, but also specially designed to reach Mars orbit with a huge payload. They could possibly beat us. I'm not sure. If they do, we'll congratulate them, but you never know."

They nodded, understanding the seriousness. I continued, "Right. Let's do an extra-special status check on everything we can, we'll be without spare parts for a couple of months, I think, since Oakdale is going to take a lower-energy path with more payload."

They got to work, running through checklists at their stations. I re-enabled comms but didn't turn on video and audio. We did that sometimes anyway, but I mostly hoped it wouldn't be noticed.

The checklists were checked, then double-checked. Both Shri and Dale went to validate readings matched what the engine room said they were, look at how things were lashed down, closed even more airtight doors than normal, and retrieved fresh diapers for us. In our flight suits, we had them on already, and we had more in a box right near us, but it was good to have spares handy.

Docking procedures went normally, but as we were about to transfer out (the normal maneuver), Chris in mission control called up to ask us to run the reverse flow test procedure again.

This was the subterfuge. They had vast amounts of water already since they were using it for radiation shielding and we'd be using it as reaction mass.

During the top-off process, he asked us to. "...take some orbits and then proceed with the mission, one more item off today's lugubrious checklist."

That word was key to several processes. Four other people knew what that meant, and 3 of them were commanding Elm-class vessels already in orbit. They'd be called on to help us out if something went wrong with what came next.

We strapped in and started an almost-normal one-third G orbit-raising burn to get us to the right height, and then started the longer and Far More Uncomfortable burn.

Sitting for a while under 3 g's isn't easy. In fact, when you think you're okay with it, you are, but after a while, it just builds up. It was seriously tiring, just breathing. Our acceleration chairs could become couches, and we knew to do that, but even flat it's hard work just lying there.

Vocal commands put on music for us without motion, but after a while I couldn't do anything but sleep.

The flight profile decreased the thrust automatically after the time was up, leaving us to coast for an hour, and then putting us under a constant 1/10th g using our MHD's most-efficient-mode. It was also both light and heavy enough for us to use a sort-of-real toilet, which we had onboard.

About 6 hours into the flight, when it was obvious that we weren't heading for any kind of close-by destination, Chris called in and said, "Your vitals look good, but stress hormones must be eating you up. Have some lunch. Oh, and the press knows."

We all laughed, though in the cockpit it was more sedate because we were still exhausted. It was probably obvious we were going somewhere, but when the drive didn't shut off, that would have been a big giveaway. Plus, our orbital trajectory wasn't exactly secret either.

The press office wanted an interview, but I used my recorded, prepared statement instead, praising all the hard work being done by BardSpace employees wherever they were on Earth and beyond, saying this was the start of a journey so we'd see how things went. I did mention that the Oakdale would leave orbit behind us and bring along people much cooler than I was, and we'd all have a party together soon enough when they did the hard part of getting all the supplies and living quarters science equipment there.

Afterwards, I had an email that the Korean project was proceeding apace. I'll describe that later, but for now just understand I had a lot of irons in the fire. Money was coming in faster than I could spend it, and I didn't mind doing that to get what I wanted.

Chapter: Red Dawning

Four weeks later, the Elmond hung in orbit around Mars as we deployed some GPS satellites.

Getting them wasn't easy. For sure, there weren't any 'extra' ones we could buy, so our CEO had asked if they'd mind if we borrowed some decommissioned ones in 'parking orbits', for ostensible use around the Moon.

There were eight decommissioned ones, super-old, with worn out reaction wheels and zero propellant. We retrieved them into a clean room in Quebec, claimed we could only fix two and the others didn't check out, and thanked the Americans for the chance to 'help' clean out old dead satellites.

Really, we'd managed to repair five. With more efficient PV panels, they passed checks and we'd brought them along.

Opening a sealed envelope from the Captain's Safe, I put the coordinates into the flight computer and we headed down to a very specific spot on the Martian surface, designated by my experts as having useful things nearby. Of course I didn't mention the reason for the location, just that it had been chosen for 'convenience'.

Most of the world was watching, so we all tried to look good despite only having sponge baths for the past month.

Descending into the Martian atmosphere, we tried air scoops but they didn't work very well. Mars has a lot thinner atmosphere than Earth. They added some reaction mass, but it wasn't huge. Thank goodness for giant safety margins.

Down and down, closer and closer, finally plopping down within a ship's length of where we intended to be -- really damned good, if you ask me.

All of us suited up -- no one wanted to be left behind -- but I was the first out of the airlock, down the ramp. Now for some famous words...

"We stand on the shoulders of giants before us. May wisdom and tolerance ever rule this land."

Rob handed me a long bronze spike and a sledgehammer, and I pounded it in right next to where my boot-prints were. We traded the sledge for a flag, and I planted it off to the side of the ramp so we didn't bump into it as we came down.

After I said that, I repeated what I'd said on the moon, "We come in the spirit of exploration and commerce, scientific inquiry, and betterment of the human condition."

I continued, "Again, I'm not trying to be controversial, but I, Kevin Sebelius Rand, do hereby assert a land claim. Effective with our landing, this claim covers the area from the spike where I stand to a radius of one single kilometer. This land is now the property of, and sovereign territory of, the nation of Canada."

Pausing a moment, I continued, "In the spirit of mutual cooperation, I would like to AGAIN suggest the United Nations establish a 'land office', wherein such claims can be registered and certifications made regarding legal claims, surveying, improvements, buildings, occupation, etc. Until such time as that office is established, we shall await their judgment. At all times, we will strive to peacefully cooperate with any persons wishing to visit this place."

I had been speaking somewhat extemporaneously on the moon, but on the way to Mars I'd carefully and exhaustively repeated that text enough to ensure I said it the exact same way I had the first time.

Each of crew came out and said their words to the camera, starting with their name, some words, and then (on advice from the lawyers), "I add my name as witness to the land claim made here, to wit, that this is now sovereign territory of the nation of Canada and the property specifically of BardSpace, Incorporated."

They smiled and thumbs'd up the camera, and we repeated through each crewmember.

After that, we set up some scientific equipment and called it a day. It had been a long last few hours and none of us had slept much.

== ==

About a month later we had three bits of interesting news to report back in a live broadcast.

First, our landing spot near Huo Hsing Vallis in Syrtis Major, was a hugely geologically diverse area, and our luck had paid off. Rob knew enough geology to spot nodules just laying on the surface, so retrieving them with a magnet was pretty simple. We recorded a video exploration of them, showed how we picked them up with magnets, and the spectroscopy results showed they were 20% nickel, 34% iron, 19% indium, and the remaining was split among platinum group metals.