Free Pilgrimage (The New World) by Kurt Winans

several items on NASA’s orbital missions’ checklist were being accomplished. In early November of 1983, a few weeks before his daughter Aurora’s sixth birthday, Ross was called into an office to discuss a future mission. NASA intended to retrofit one of the space shuttles in the fleet of five for a different type of mission, and they wanted Ross to be the commander of the flight. He was overjoyed at not only the chance to go back into space, but also the chance to command the mission. Ross accepted the offer from the senior staff without waiting for any of the details, and then rose to shake their hands. The group of men smiled as they knew the correct choice had been made, but asked him to sit back down so they could inform him of the mission at hand.
    Ross leaned forward in his chair as they told him of the planned retrofit to the space shuttle, and the secrecy of the mission that would be two years away in November of 1985. They continued by saying that the crew would consist of Ross and one other man yet to be determined, with a hopeful duration in space of twenty-one days.
    With an eyebrow raised from the information he had just been given, Ross stated that “No other space shuttle mission to this point has exceeded a week in space.” He knew that the current design specifications of the space shuttles allowed a maximum of two weeks in orbit because of restraints on fuel and materials such as food and water. Ross had no doubt that longer human durations in space were possible, as both the Americans and Russians had proven in the past with their respective orbiting space stations, but not on a shuttle mission. The senior staff then informed Ross of the most exciting news he could ever receive, as the true intent of the mission was further laid out for him. Very little time would actually be spent in Earth orbit, as NASA had decided it was time to return to the Moon.

 

     
     
    THROUGHOUT THE NEXT eighteen months Ross kept the news of his pending mission from Patty and everyone else. All those on the outside of NASA who knew him thought he was helping train other astronauts for flights, while waiting his turn to hopefully be chosen for another mission himself.
    During that time Ross had been promoted again to full Commander in the Navy, and his crew mate had finally been selected. It was his old friend Dennis Strickland from their days at Annapolis who had been accepted into the astronaut program about two years after Ross, and Ross had been the one who suggested him for the flight. As had been their mutual plan from those days of yesteryear, Dennis had also flown jets after graduation from the Naval Academy before the transition into NASA. He had been on one previous space shuttle flight as a mission specialist, and Ross knew Dennis had the qualifications necessary for this specific mission.
    Soon after the intent of returning to the Moon had been divulged to Ross, he began to lobby for Dennis. NASA wanted to have Ross land the space shuttle on the Moon near the axis that defined the near and far side. Although the Moon orbits the Earth, it has no rotation of its own. The same side or half of the Moon, where all the previous Apollo missions had landed, always faces the Earth. It never changes, so nothing was currently known about the outward half other than the brief glimpses from above as the Apollo missions orbited the surface. The new intent was to establish a base at that axis point and explore, via rover vehicle and walking large sections of, the outward half of the Moon’s surface. That would include collecting deep core samples of the rock strata to determine where follow-up missions could safely build a permanent structure for a lunar base. Ross knew of the multi-generational mining background that Dennis had, and that he excelled in the field of geology, so he seemed like the perfect fit.
    NASA, like most other big business, needs to know how to play the media in the proper way. The shuttle program was