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CHAPTER 19:
Exploring Beautiful Places



Richmond Times Features @JenButler

Join me for a look inside astronaut training for NASA and MarsX. The growing habitats and space stations need . . . well, everyone! Tonight, I’ll show you what it’s like during the first month of physical training and medical screening. Stream it now @RTFchannel11016.

Mars Exploration Consortium @TheRealMarsX

@JenButler, thanks for a wonderful feature! We can’t wait to see the next installment.

ChirpChat, January 2043


The Moonbase assignment was important, but terribly frustrating as well. Glenn was officially employed by NASA and working on behalf of MarsX. The problem was that Moonbase was Space Force territory, and several of the crew seemed to resent his presence. USSF seemed to be ignoring him—after all, according to them, he wasn’t fit for space, so he wasn’t really there. Even within the can-do MarsX corporate culture there was political maneuvering by the consortium backers. The chief of the medical section belonged to one of those consortium cliques, and while he trusted Glenn, he was reluctant to put much faith in Glenn’s feelings about some discrepancies in the Mars Three crew medical results.

On the other hand, NASA was hedging their bets by giving him access to the data. It bothered him that the space agency seemed to be two different organizations. One part—the best part—truly wanted to be in space. The other part—the bureaucratic one—only seemed to care about keeping their jobs. “Play it safe, take the easy road. Don’t raise your head. Don’t attract attention and you get to keep your job when the next political administration takes office.” Of course, that raised the question of which part was responsible for hiring him. Then again, he suspected that General Boatright had a hand in it. NASA’s bipolar nature might not be responsible at all.

The job was to review medical telemetry and develop a plan for treating the Mars Three crew when they returned later in the year. They’d been on-site for two years and the replacement crew was due to arrive at Mars on the brand-new Percheron Earth-Mars transfer ship in three more months. After another three months handing over their jobs to their replacements, Percheron would begin the six-month return journey, reacclimating the crew to Earth gravity and atmosphere.

Even there, competing fiefdoms and overlapping areas of authority muddied the waters. MarsX crews were trained to NASA standards, and were supposed to follow all of the medical guidelines learned over eighty-plus years of spaceflight. Percheron was commissioned by NASA for Mars transfer as well as supplying planned asteroid mining and exploration missions. In turn, the United States Space Force operated the ship and all U.S.-majority space infrastructure—such as Moonbase and Heinlein Station—in order to avoid a repeat of the Asimov Station disaster.

Glenn’s gut was telling him that either the Mars Three crew had ignored the rules, or the precautions to maintain crew health for two and a half years on Mars were wrong. There was evidence of bone and muscle loss that simply should not have occurred given the zero-point-three-seven-gee gravity of Mars. Crews in weightlessness, or in one-sixth gee on the Moon, needed to exercise to maintain muscle and bone strength. It had been thought that Mars gravity should be sufficient to at least partially prevent deterioration. Therefore, the daily exercise requirement had been reduced to just one hour per day, as compared to the two-hour-a-day requirement that had been standard for decades.

If there was continued loss, then either the guidelines were wrong—a NASA issue, or the crew was not doing even that one hour of daily exercise—a MarsX problem. Either way, it also suggested that this problem had not been detected and addressed by the Mars Three medical officer, Dr. Yvette Barbier.

That was the real problem. It would be easy for Glenn to blame it all on Yvette. She should be monitoring crew health. She should have noticed the deterioration, and should have enforced—or even increased—the exercise requirement. To be fair, though, this was the first long-duration mission to Mars, four times longer than Mars Two, and twelve times longer than Mars One.

The whole situation was fraught with unknowns. In fact, that was the ultimate reason he’d been assigned to Moonbase. Someone needed to come up with a plan. Even if General Boatright couldn’t get him restored to independent flight status, at least he’d managed to convince all of the parties that Glenn’s brain still worked properly. So, Glenn sent his reports to both General Boatright and to Mission Medical Command. MMC then sent them to NASA and MarsX Mission Control in Houston and Tucson. From there, it seemed as if the reports simply disappeared into a black hole.

He talked with Nik almost daily. It was good to get some of the frustration out. Nik didn’t know the nuances of the crew medical issues, but his background made him an excellent sounding board for Glenn’s thoughts. For that matter, he could listen and help Glenn identify aspects of the data he’d missed. They also brought Marty in from time to time. The three of them could deal with the medical data, but were stymied when there was no response whatsoever from the Earth-based commands.

When frustrations were high, Glenn liked to go out onto the surface of the Moon. Some segments of the Moonbase community weren’t concerned with his accident and rehab. As far as the rank-and-file workers and technicians were concerned, he was still accredited as a Moon-rated astronaut. Some of them had even been here when he was Moonbase CMO. If Glenn wanted to don his spacesuit and go out onto the lunar surface, who were they to stop him? For that matter, if he wanted to check out a moon buggy that was none of their business either—and if he had a special purpose for that buggy, well, Moonbase Command didn’t need to know.

“Hey, Glenn, headed out again?”

“Sure thing, Guenter.”

“Buggy number three is ready for you, and you only. Still working on the special modifications?”

“Just a few more tests, I think.”

“I have to admit, it’s elegant code.”

“Yes, DARPA did good. They just were slow to realize it could be used for something other than my exo.”

“As I said, elegant. The control interfaces look pretty good. I’ve been thinking of using some of it to update the existing drive-by-wire controls. They aren’t causing issues with the overall control system, and might even help in the long run, so I don’t have a problem with it. Think DARPA will mind?”

Glenn laughed. “Unlikely. As you said, it’s just drive-by-wire with an ultra-short decision loop. Thanks, Guenter. I’ll take it from here.” He waved and climbed into the moon buggy.

When Glenn had gone back to the “paint and body shop” after the tornado rescue, he’d received an update to the processor that mediated signals from his nervous system to the bionics. One bonus was software to allow him to extend that control to other computer-driven devices, and a set of chips that had come packaged in a case with the OSI logo on the cover. He’d started by installing one of the chips in his tablet and comm and playing with the resulting brain-to-computer interface to get a feel for how it operated. There was also a letter in the case from General Boatright instructing him to “test the interface under various field conditions.” Included was a list of names of specialists he should work with in the course of his tests.

Sergeant Guenter Wendt’s name had been on the list, and he was in charge of Moonbase’s surface vehicles. Moon buggies had a remote-control link to allow them to be teleoperated and returned to Moonbase in case something happened to the human operators. Buggy Three had been sidelined waiting for an unstated maintenance procedure, but Guenter assured him it was perfectly functional, just “out of date.” He had no problem inserting one of the chips in the buggy’s computer and keeping the vehicle out of general service so that the experiments wouldn’t affect anyone else. Glenn suspected the “upgrade” the buggy was waiting on was the OSI chip, but Guenter only smiled when asked.

Glenn stepped into the buggy, closed the hatch, and powered it up. Even as the cabin pressure came up, the world of the vehicle and garage came alive around him. He could now utilize his bionic eye and ear as a “heads-up” display, and enter commands to the computers by thinking about the muscle movements behind touch and gestures. The system displays and sounds felt as if he was seeing and hearing them naturally, and he could feel the buggy much the way he felt his arms and legs. All he had to do was think of moving forward, and the buggy started out the open garage doors, and onto the Moon’s surface. Throttle, direction, turns—it didn’t matter. The buggy responded flawlessly. It was even equipped with small reaction-control jets allowing it to “hop” to clear terrain obstacles. He thought about jumping with his legs, and the hopper controls obeyed. The first time he tried it, it hadn’t worked, but there was a learning system built into the interface. His bionic interface computer was able to learn his commands and teach them to whatever system he commanded. It also allowed him to experiment and get more out of his bionic interface than anyone had even imagined.

There was a freedom to being out on the Moon surface like this, just Glenn, the buggy, the vacuum. One of the Apollo astronauts had called it “magnificent desolation,” but to Glenn, there was no desolation to the Moon’s surface. It had beauty. It had grandeur. The sharp-edged shadows, and white and black contrasts revealed all of the features in exquisite detail. It wasn’t all colorless, either. When he looked up, there was the Earth with all its blues, whites, greens, and browns, hanging over the horizon.

Apollo 15 astronaut Dave Scott had said, “There’s something to be said for the exploring of beautiful places. It’s good for the spirit!” For a short time, Glenn could forget about regret, disappointment, and the frustration of dealing with bureaucrats back on Earth.

It was indeed good for his spirit to be out here.

An advantage of his bionic ear was the direct interface to secure comms. He reported back to the laboratory whenever he ran his moon buggy experiments, and didn’t want anyone eavesdropping.

“Okay, Ian, are you there?”

“Yup, just waiting.”

“Just sitting there all the time waiting for me to call?”

“Nope, Guenter gave me the heads-up that you took Buggy Three out for a spin.”

“Spies. I’m surrounded by spies.”

“You do know that the original OSI worked within the intelligence agencies.”

“Sure, sixty years ago—and it was Justice Department, not intel. Enough of that. Do you want the results?”

“Sure thing, fire away, Shep.”

“Right. Here you go. I have a zero-point-zero-two-microsecond delay between commands to the steering apparatus and executing of the command. There’s a zero-point-zero-one-microsecond delay between a jump command and activation of the thrusters. The heads-up display is working just fine although I’m still not getting the interior temperature and partial pressure of oh-two.”

“Thanks, Glenn, your signals are looking good. We do have a new update for you. I’ll squirt it to your tablet as a secured file. When you open it, it will automatically download and update your processor, and that will automatically update the interface chips.”

“Um, do you ever worry about my processor being hacked?”

“Do you ever worry about solving million-bit encryption? That doesn’t even take into account the quantum entanglement required to even talk to your processor. At this point, your tablet interface thinks it’s part of your body. Digital viruses are cleared by your brain the same way biological viruses are handled by your immune system. For that matter, there’s a few quantum links in that direction as well.”

“Ouch, thinking like that makes my brain hurt.”

“That’s just quantum physics, don’t try to understand it. Anyway, I think we can either get rid of those lags, or at least get them down to the nanosecond level. Let me talk to the guys in the lab and figure out what we can do about adding features to the heads-up display. Overall, the data you’re sending us looks great.” There was a pause on the comm, and sounds of clicking that were the audible reminder of the encrypted comm. “Last question. Any muscle twitches whenever you give the commands?”

“No, not really. I did at first, but it became fairly easy to direct the commands. I can readily switch back and forth—like if I want to press on the rudder pedal as opposed to simply commanding it. I haven’t had any trouble.”

“That’s good. It’s working the way it’s supposed to. I’ll send you that update and get to work on the display. Has anybody up there figured out what’s you’re doing yet?”

“Guenter, of course.”

“Of course, but besides him?”

“Nope. I’m only using one buggy so it’s not showing up anywhere else.”

“That’s good, then. Okay, I’ll get back to Guenter on the upgrades he wants, and I’ve already sent the file to your comm. Have fun experimenting.”


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