Selected Articles from the
July 1999 Odyssey
Editor: Craig E. Ward
Return to Sender
By Robert Gounley
NEWS ITEM: After two weeks of tracking, astronomers lost sight of asteroid 1998OX4. This body is predicted to make a close fly-by of the Earth and scientists had hope continued observations would improve their estimate of its path. Until it was mislaid, the asteroid was judged to have less than one chance in 10 million of terrestrial impact.
Scientists report they are not concerned.
Inside a vast storeroom near Alpha Centauri, a lone clerk shuffled a deck of hexagonal playing cards. The single light above his counter cast a yellowish glow from all the cobwebs draped about it. With a single sweeping motion, he spread the cards face down in a broad spiral for the 18th round of solitaire today. With luck this one will go better than the previous 17.
Just then, the phone rang.
"Hello. Lost and Found."
The voice at the other end of the line is confused.
"Excuse me. I seem to have been misconnected."
"Who were you calling?" The first two cards turned over were face cards -- a very good start.
"I'm not really sure. Actually, I was on the verge of losing my head while talking to the operator."
The third card chosen was not a face card, but at least it was the same suit as the previous one. This looked like a better hand than before.
The caller continued in a weary tone. "Actually, I did lose my head. My mind's been frantic ever since we lost the asteroid the other day. Day and night reporters call, ‘Have you found the asteroid? How can you be sure we're safe if you can't find it anymore?' On and on like that. I've been awake now for at least three nights. In spite of that, the night operator didn't seem the least bit flustered. By the way, who am I talking to?"
"You're in the right place. You're talking to Lost and Found for Universal Spacelines. Can you describe the lost object?" One by one, cards were lifted from the center of the spiral and laid face up onto the other end which began to wind in the opposite direction.
"Well, I guess this couldn't hurt. It's a Near-Earth Asteroid named 1998OX4."
As if this were supposed to mean something to me, thought the clerk. Do people think we can just call out it's name and have it answer? Better be real patient with this guy.
"Did it have tags?"
"No. I can't say that I remember any."
"Typical!", the clerk grumbled under his breath. The routine never varied. The craters were always arranged in such a distinctive pattern. They can't possibly be mistaken for anyone else's. Of course, he would have to describe every single one in his inventory before hearing another voice on the line, usually a different gender, saying they had found it at home after all.
"Can you tell me the size of your missing asteroid?" Off of the main spiral stem, a few cards were set into rudimentary branches. If this kept up, there would soon be elaborate filigrees covering the counter -- just like the last hand.
"It was several hundred meters wide, at least. Round I believe."
A small one. Just like a few million others around here.
"Can you give me some idea of how you lost it? Judging by its size, my hunch is you had it on carry-on."
"No. I really don't think so."
Small objects used to be fun to hunt for. The clerk's mind slipped back to his younger days when every lost item was a holy quest. Now calls like this were no more amusing than watching yet another Valoxian bot-fly get trapped in the web above his head.
"Can you tell me where you lost it?" The main strand was getting longer. Cautiously, he plucked a few branch cards and gingerly set them onto the end of the counter-spiral.
"Well, I last saw it at..." There was the sound keys clacking on a computer keyboard as the caller read off orbital ephemerides.
"Uh huh. Uh huh. Hmmm." At least this guy knows something useful. This will narrow the inventory a lot. After checking a large card file, the clerk laid down the phone and walked away.
"Hello. Hello. Is anyone still there." From far away, the caller could faintly hear the sound of footsteps shuffling in place. The shuffling stopped, followed shortly by the sharp staccato pulses of work boots striking the floor with a purposeful stride. The pulses grew louder with every step.
"Are you calling from Earth?", the clerk asked brusquely.
"Why, yes", the astronomer answered softly. Thinking of the honor of speaking for all humanity, he deepened his tone and continued, "I am calling from Earth."
The clerk tried to control his temper by staring at his solitaire game for a full ten heartbeats before finally turning over another card. It was not a good card.
"Well, I don't know who you are and I really don't care. There's a whole pile of stuff cluttering our warehouse that has Earth's name on it. We can hardly move around here for all the junk you guys left behind. Now that there's finally someone I can talk to, you get to deal with it."
At the other end of the phone line, the lone astronomer puzzled at the sudden silence. Looking out his dormitory window, he watched slack-jawed as a hole formed in the sky above. It spread like a ink spot from a leaking pen on a new shirt.
The hole stopped growing and all was silent. From the middle of the void, came a stream of falling spacecraft. No two were alike. He thought he recognized a few of them from news reports. He couldn't really say for sure. He had only a few seconds to watch before each one smashed itself to tinsel on the observatory dome.
Back in the warehouse the clerk seemed relieved.
"That's a lot better! Now there's room for all my elbows. Say, don't let me forget the item you originally called about. I'll try to hand it to you gently."
The hole seemed to strain as it grew larger, then silence again. Almost imperceptibly, a rush of air began to flow downward. Out dropped the stadium-sized asteroid like a wayward hailstone. In the moments before the observatory dome was crushed like an eggshell, the astronomer reflected that at least there were a few places left in the Universe where customer service was respected.
Back at Alpha Centauri, all the cards lay face up on the counter. The pattern they made resembled a paisley necktie.
It was time for another hand.
Reusable Launch Vehicles
Coming Together in Palmdale
By Steve Bartlett
Late Summer, 2000: A new type of craft rises from the desert and takes to the skies above Edwards Air Force Base, headed toward the China Lake Naval Weapons Center. Curious onlookers might wonder if this is a new jet fighter or bomber, or perhaps a stealth reconnaissance plane.
This rocket-powered craft, the X-33 reusable launch vehicle (RLV) technology demonstrator, is intended to prove the feasibility of single stage-to-orbit spaceplanes and usher in an era of low cost space transportation. NASA and the Lockheed-Martin Skunk Works organization in Palmdale are in the midst of building the X-33 flying test bed. In the process, they are learning what it takes to develop an operational fleet of private spaceplanes, according to Jeff Laube, head of X-33 operations for Lockheed-Martin. Laube, along with Warren James of the Lockheed-Martin Reusable Launch Vehicle development team, spoke to an interested audience at the Agamemcon convention in Burbank on June 12.
"The X-33 will show that we can build and fly a reusable rocket that faces most of the same conditions that an orbital vehicle would see," said Laube. The test rocket features low-cost, lightweight propellant tanks; an innovative linear aerospike engine which acts like a traditional rocket turned inside-out; metallic thermal protection panels; and autonomous flight control. "Each of these technologies is needed to gain a little more performance and to reduce the huge workforce now necessary to put something into space," he stated.
The X-33 will perform a series of test flights, beginning with short "hops" from Edwards to China Lake at low Mach number and progressing to ever more stressing flights to Utah and Montana to show how the rocket performs under high pressure, high heating conditions like those seen going into or returning from orbit.
The ultimate goal of the X-33 and Reusable Launch Vehicle effort is to develop a fleet of launch vehicles, dubbed "VentureStar," which can place payloads into orbit at a price below $1000 per. "That price is driven more by our need to pay off the loans necessary to build the rockets and the infrastructure to operate them, " Laube said. "Once we have those loans paid off, the price drops dramatically."
Warren James described the difficulties in transitioning from the X-33, which flies within the Earth's atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, to a single-stage rocket. "The X-33 is a subscale test craft," he remarked. "When we go to the VentureStar, we have to reduce weight even further while improving reliability and redundancy and still being able to control the vehicle, NOT an easy task."
The Reusable Launch Vehicle team is designing a rocket which takes off vertically like a conventional rocket but horizontally like an airplane, similar to the Space Shuttle. But James pointed out that this is not the only possible approach to RLV flight. "You have vertical takeoff/horizontal landing, vertical takeoff/vertical landing, and horizontal takeoff/horizontal landing configurations and there's nothing magical about any of them. We can make any of them work. You just have to pick one and go with it!" he exclaimed.
The Lockheed-Martin/NASA team has converted a patch of dry desert scrub land at Edwards into a low-cost but highly capable launch pad. If everything works as planned, the X-33 will conduct its first flight from this pad in July of 2000.
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