Free Red Hope by J J (John) Dreese Page A

the idea and then asked
Chris, “Can we afford the extra weight of the person on this mission?”
    Chris nodded his head and answered, “Yes, we can
handle it. However, there is one more tiny problem.”
    “Oh crap, another problem?” asked the president.
    “They’ll let us use the Soyuz, but they won’t let it
launch from Russian soil.”
    “But what if we have a cosmonaut on board?” asked the
exasperated president.
    “It’s a bit more complicated than that. The Soyuz only
holds three people and if we take the extra cosmonaut, we’ll have four. That’s
one too many. So, we’ll have to modify the Soyuz and they don’t want that blood
on their hands if things go badly,” explained Chris.
    “Are there any other gotchas from them?” asked
the president.
    “No, that’s the deal they gave us. Include a cosmonaut and launch it from US soil,” explained Chris.
    “The Russians are getting on my nerves. We may need to
teach them a lesson somehow.”
    Chris deflected that strange rhetorical threat.
    “Anyway, we’ll use the Soyuz to get our astronauts up
to the International Space Station. But, there is still the question of getting
all of our equipment and our heavy ship modules to the Space Station.”
    The president asked, “I’m guessing that won’t be the
Soyuz?”
    Chris answered, “No, the Soyuz is great for lifting
people, but we can’t use it to lift the heavy space equipment that we’re
planning.”
    At that moment the butler came into the room and asked
the NASA director, “More coffee, sir?”
    Chris waved away the offer politely.
    “So what exactly is the plan anyways?” asked the
curious president.
    Chris said, “Well, the plan as you know is to make all
the big launches from the International Space Station. It’s too hard to send
everything we need from the launch site in Florida directly to Mars. Using the
Space Station as an orbiting launch platform will really help us out.”
    Chris looked at some papers in his hand and continued,
“The mission will be made up of two vehicles, or modules as we call them. The
Science Module which is very large. It will be sent to Mars and stay there. Then
there’s the smaller Transport Module which will carry the people with extra
food and water to Mars and then back home again.
    The president asked, “So the two modules won’t go at
the same time?”
    Chris answered, “No, we’ll send the Science Module to
Mars in advance and then send the Transport Module a few weeks later with all
the people and additional supplies. Again, launching from the International
Space Station will really help us out on rocket fuel resources.”
    The president looked confused and furrowed his
eyebrows.
    “I thought you said those Murch Motors were going to
get us there with fuel to spare?”
    Chris answered, “Oh, they will. The Murch Motors are
good for applying a constant push for long periods of time. However, they don’t
have enough oomph to get the Transport Module off of either planet. That short
launch phase will use standard rocket engines. The Murch Motor MM10’s will kick
in right after the Modules leave the Space Station and will push us all the way
to Mars.”
    “You know, Chris, that still leaves one big question.
If the Soyuz is too weak to lift the Science and Transport Modules into orbit,
how will we get those huge pieces of equipment from here on Earth up to
the Space Station ?”
    Chris smiled and said, “Actually, we are in luck. I
had a long talk with the CEO of Whittenberg Space Launch Systems. He was
willing to let us be the first official customer for their brand new Viper9
heavy lift rockets. It has nearly the same payload capacity of the Saturn V
rockets they used on the Apollo Moon missions. It’s huge.”
    “Really?” asked the curious president.
    “Yes, their CEO was reluctant at first due to the
high-risk nature of this mission, but I talked him into it. Patriotic duty and
all. The Viper9 is a very powerful rocket; seriously, it