CHAPTER 10
The ninth-floor conference room at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC was filling up fast. The main event, Vice-President Alexa Faulkner, hadn’t yet arrived, but even without her, the room was filled with enough “important people” to make even the most jaded of the Washington cocktail party scene take notice.
Gary Childers was used to being around the wealthy and connected, but this, he thought, was ridiculous. He saw at least five senators, the presidents of Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed-Martin, as well as several other major aerospace companies. Settling in at the head table were a group of nervous-looking men and women with touchpads who looked totally out of place compared to the others assembled in the room. Must be scientists or engineers, he thought.
Childers had received an invitation to the meeting only three days before, in the form of a personal call from the NASA administrator, no less. All she would say was that there was a “situation” that required his expertise and that there would be a meeting in Washington during which she would explain. He was even promised reimbursement for his travel expenses, as if he cared. He was clueless about the topic, but he could tell it was important by looking around at his peers. That, and the fact that everyone in the room except the scientists at the table had been asked to leave their electronics at the door.
Vice President Faulkner walked briskly into the room, accompanied by NASA Administrator Tara Reese-Walker. The women were engaged in lively conversation as they approached the podium, with Reese-Walker only briefly introducing Vice President Faulkner and taking a seat on the front row.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for adjusting your very busy schedules to join us here today. This meeting was called at the request of the president and he’s asked me to personally lead the effort I’m about describe. I realize many of you, though not all, have security clearances of various levels. Today you are going to be briefed on a national security situation and my handlers have asked me to ask if anyone in the room objects to being bound by national security regulations, under penalty of fine and jail, for revealing what is about to be discussed. If so, then you are free to leave. All who remain are implicitly accepting these conditions.” She paused for effect and scanned the room to see if anyone would get up and leave. None did.
“Very good. What we have is a national, dare I say, global emergency. As you may be aware, several months ago the company Asteroid Ores launched a spacecraft to rendezvous with an asteroid now called Sutter’s Mill with the intent of diverting its course through space so as to bring it back to the Earth for mining purposes. According to the company, the mission was all going according to plan until their propulsion system stopped functioning late last week. It was supposed to continue operating for another several months in order to place the asteroid in a safe lunar orbit. When the propulsion system stopped working, the Asteroid Ores team did all they could do to get it working again—without success. When their analysts looked at how much they’d already altered the asteroid’s path before the system failed, they discovered that the two-billion-ton asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. It will impact in just under eight months.”
The room was so quiet that Childers could hear the person next to him breathing.
“Administrator Reese-Walker, can you inform the group what the effects of the impact are likely to be?”
“Yes, Madame Vice President. Ladies and Gentlemen, the experts tell me that the Sutter’s Mill asteroid will enter the atmosphere at seventeen kilometers per second, roughly fifty times the speed of sound. It should begin to break up in the atmosphere at an altitude of about fifty-four kilometers, assuring that it will reach the ground in multiple pieces, each still traveling at about sixteen kilometers per second. The combined energy at impact of the fragments will total about fifty thousand megatons. That’s about one thousand times more energy than the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever tested. If it hits land, then, at a minimum, it will make a crater fourteen kilometers across and half a kilometer deep. Those five hundred kilometers away will feel an earthquake of magnitude seven point eight on the Richter Scale and be pelted with ejecta from the impact. Those that are within one hundred kilometers will momentarily see a fireball twenty-five times larger than the Sun—before their clothing ignites and they die. If it strikes water, the resultant tsunami will be between twenty and two hundred meters in height. High enough to wipe out complete cities along the coastlines of whatever body of water it strikes. And the experts in this field tend to argue about what the longer-lasting impact on humanity will be. Needless to say, things will be bad on the scale of apocalyptic.”
The stunned silence in the room quickly gave way to chatter as participants talked to themselves and each other about what they’d just heard. Childers remained silent.
“Now, let’s dispense with the Hollywood theatrics. We don’t have Bruce Willis waiting in the wings with a super-shuttle and a hydrogen bomb ready to go and blast this rock to smithereens. Though using nuclear weapons to divert it is an option that remains on the table. We also need to let everyone know this is not, I repeat, is not an Extinction Level Event. If it hits, then millions of people will die. Millions. There will be long-term implications to mankind. But it won’t wreck the entire planet and people will survive,” Reese-Walker continued.
“The next thing I need to dispel is the belief that someone in the government has the responsibility for this sort of thing. No one does. No organization wanted the job of protecting the planet because they knew that no new money would come with the added responsibility. NASA’s Office of Planetary Protection is only chartered to consider biological cross contamination, not diverting asteroids. No one in DoD or at DARPA has the job either. All we’ve been funded to do over the last few years is to identify and track new asteroids. Period. Now, there are some bright people here and across the world who have done some thinking about the problem on their own time and they’ve already come up with what we believe is a workable solution. One that has a chance of avoiding catastrophe.”
Reese-Walker looked around the room, making eye contact with some key people she apparently recognized, including Childers.
So why are we here? Childers thought to himself.
As if reading his mind, she continued, “You’re here because you or your organization has critical hardware or skills that will be needed to divert the asteroid and prevent it from hitting in the first place. We have a plan and today we’re asking you to help make it happen.” She stopped and pointed to one of the men, a scientist type—with the requisite mustache and chin-only beard—sitting at the table. He arose and moved to the podium.
“Good morning, I’m Colin Dachwald. I’m a small-body scientist from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and it looks like I’m the one elected to fill you in on the plan that we think will keep the beast from hitting the Earth. This has come together rather fast, and I am sure there are holes, so please make notes and be ready to put us on the right track if need be.”
“The key to diverting Sutter’s Mill is to subtly change its trajectory. Most people incorrectly think that the rock is going to hit the Earth because it is aimed at us. They’re wrong. It’s going to hit the Earth because two bodies are going to occupy the same volume of space at the same time. That volume of space is currently empty. It’s where the Earth will be in a few months as we travel around the Sun. It’s also where Sutter’s Mill will be at the exact same time, and that’s the problem. To prevent the strike, we need to make sure Sutter’s Mill passes through a slightly different volume of space than the Earth at that time so that we won’t run into each other. Either that, or cause it to pass that point before or after we get there, which is much harder to do.”
“Why not just blow it up?” asked one of the men seated near the front. Childers didn’t know the man.
“A good question. First of all, Sutter’s Mill is about two kilometers long and has a mass of over four billion metric tons. We don’t have a bomb big enough to vaporize or even completely shatter something that big. If we were to try, we might just break the big rock into a few smaller rocks, all still headed on a collision course with Earth. So instead of the planet getting hit with a bullet, it would get his with a shotgun blast, which might be just as bad or worse. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t use a nuclear weapon to divert it, however.”
“I don’t understand,” said the man who asked the question.
“When a hydrogen bomb detonates on the Earth or in the atmosphere, most of the effects are caused by all that energy being deposited in the atmosphere. In space, the bomb would release neutrons and x-rays among other things, which would dramatically heat up the surface of the asteroid, causing some of the surface to boil off. The material that boils off would act like a rocket, with the ejecta going in one direction, pushing the rock in the other direction. It should work, but I would call it a last resort choice because of the possibility that it would shatter the rock into pieces.”
“We don’t have much time. The longer we delay in diverting the asteroid, the smaller our chances of success. A small change in course while it is still far away will result in a much larger miss distance later on. If we wait too long, then we won’t be able to give it enough of a push to put it on a course that will avoid hitting us. Given that we don’t have time to build and test new hardware to deflect it, we’re opting to take existing hardware and use it. We’re going to go to Sutter’s Mill and repair or replace the electric propulsion system that failed and caused the problem to begin with. We estimate that the system Asteroid Ores put on the rock could still give it enough of a shove to miss the Earth if we get there while it is still several months out.”
“Why don’t they go out there and fix the damned thing? Are they going to pay for it?” asked the CEO of Lockheed-Martin.
“They simply don’t have the resources to pay for sending a crew to the asteroid to affect the repair, which is what we believe is the best approach to solve the problem. I really don’t want to comment any further on Asteroid Ores’ legal liability. Believe me when I say that the attorneys are all over this as we speak,” Reese-Walker chimed in from her seat near the speaker’s podium.
Dachwald signaled for the first slide to be projected on the screen at the front of the room. It showed a cartoon of a space vehicle departing Earth orbit. Childers immediately recognize the parts shown in the figure and smiled. These guys have been busy, he thought.
“We propose to use NASA’s heavy lift rocket to take the recently tested nuclear thermal propulsion stage, the one planned for the upcoming Mars mission, to an assembly orbit around the Earth where it will mate with Space Excursions’ inflatable, the one they are building for the Mars mission, which will serve as the crew’s deep space habitat. The crew will then launch on one of the commercial space planes, rendezvous with the assembled ship, and be on their way to the asteroid.” He then advanced to the next slide.
“When they arrive, they’ll rendezvous with Sutter’s Mill near the location of the malfunctioning electric propulsion system, go EVA and repair or replace the electric propulsion engines that failed. Once they restart the engines, the crew will remain for a week or so and then depart for home. The timing of their return will depend on too many factors to know it exactly now—the date they arrive, the length of time it takes to repair the existing system, the alignment of the asteroid with Earth to minimize the fuel requirements, etc.”
“How many people will be going?” asked another member of the audience.
“That’s to be determined. We believe it will be between three and five, depending upon the final logistics that can be worked out. These people will be together in deep space for months and we need to make sure that all of their physical needs can be met as well as their psychological needs. This is going to be a high stress and high risk mission. Crew selection needs to be very carefully thought-out.”
“Isn’t the rock spinning? All the studies we’ve done show that it’ll be risky to try and rendezvous with a rotating mountain in space,” asked the Lockheed-Martin CEO.
“They attached two small spacecraft to the asteroid, one on each side, each containing a long cable—a tether. Think of an ice skater when she pulls her arms and a leg in in order to speed up. She’s conserving angular momentum. As she reduces her rotational inertia by pulling her arms and leg in, her rotation speed must increase to maintain constant angular momentum. Now do it in reverse with a spinning rock and extend five-kilometer-long tethers instead of arms and legs. The rock stops spinning. Cut the tethers and you’re ready to go.”
“Surely you’re joking,” the CEO smirked.
“Not at all. We’ve seen their data and confirmed it by radar imaging. The rock was rotating and now it isn’t.”
“What about the Mars mission?” The question came from the CEO of Northrop-Grumman. Childers knew that they were the prime contractor for the Mars Lander, a piece of hardware that didn’t look like it was going to play a role in the mission.
Reese-Walker stood to answer this one. “Mars can wait for another launch opportunity. They come roughly every two years and by then this will have been resolved. Hopefully.” She added the laugh.
She’s telling you to sit down and be patient, you dope. She truly believes that you’ll get your money and that you just won’t get to fly as soon as you’d like, Childers thought. Clearly she has been in government her entire life and has no clue what it is like on the outside. The big concern for Northrop-Grumman would be, Gary thought, if they got money to string them along until the next launch time. Otherwise, there would be layoffs. The CEO would likely lose his job and it could actually kill the mission. Government contracting was always touchy because the government made all the rules and could bend or break them whenever they needed to with no required compensation. There were way more implications to this thing than one would think. There would be a new Congress before the next launch opportunity. Northrop had better hope the election goes their way or Mars will fall out of favor and Northrop-Grumman will be out a few billion dollars that had been promised to them by legal, apparently nonbinding contracts.
“Were it me,” Gary mumbled to himself, “My lawyers would be looking at who caused this mess to be paying for my layoffs.”
The director continued, “Now, for the details. First…”
The meeting continued until they broke for lunch at 1:00 p.m.
Time until Asteroid 2018HM5 “Sutter’s Mill” reaches Earth: 251 days.