Critical Mass, page 7
Rochat paused, then held up his hands. “Now, wait. Hear me out.”
The entire team groaned.
Jin shoved his folder away. “You are proposing we use a plan conceived by the pathological liar who sent us out into space without enough fuel to get back?”
Tighe added, “And who financed the expedition by embezzling from dictators and criminal syndicates—people who later tried to kill us?”
Rochat nodded. “I acknowledge that under Nathan Joyce’s leadership Catalyst Corporation was less than transparent. However—”
The group groaned again in response.
Chindarkar said, “Were you really expecting to pass Nathan’s plan off as your own, Lukas? And did you think that we would accept it?”
Rochat put the remote down. “What I was expecting is that you would immediately reject any plan if I told you it was Nathan’s.”
“Then you expected right.”
“Well, if you’re so convinced this plan is foolish, then I guess you don’t want to see Nathan’s video presentation.”
They were all taken aback.
Tighe scowled. “Video presentation? What video presentation?”
Rochat searched through his device’s UI. “Your expedition to Ryugu was merely phase one of Catalyst Corporation’s master plan. Nathan also prepared a phase two—which he detailed in an investor video. A video I found among the files he left behind. I believe it was intended to attract a second round of funding in the event phase one was successful.”
The team exchanged looks.
Chindarkar raised her eyebrows. “Well, we returned resources to lunar orbit. So phase one did succeed.”
Jin bristled. “Except for the minor detail of our crewmates dying.”
Tighe added, “Phase two might just finish us off.”
The group sat in silence for several moments.
But then Yak said, “Frankly, now I am curious. Should we not at least watch this video?”
Jin turned toward him, appalled. “Are you joking? Nathan sent us into deep space with no way to return.”
“And yet return you did. One might say Nathan had faith in you.”
“Easy to say—since you did not go, Yak.”
“Only because I did not make final cut. I would have gone. You know this.”
Jin eventually nodded. In fact, as an ex-cosmonaut maxed out on radiation exposure, Yak seemed more at home in space than any of them.
Chindarkar looked to Jin. “Han, we refined the propellant to make it back. No doubt that’s what Nathan was counting on.”
“But what if we couldn’t have? Do not try to defend Nathan.”
Yak said, “No one here would—but there could be useful designs in this ‘phase two’ of Nathan’s plan. He clearly had engineers working on more than just Konstantin. The spin-gravity space station Lukas showed us looks promising. Perhaps years of design work. Years we do not have to spare.”
After a moment Rochat waded into the silence. “Look, I’ll just press play, and you can tell me when to stop . . .” He clicked a button on his remote.
A virtual video screen projected into thin air at the end of the boardroom table. Text appeared on a white background in plain Arial typeface, as if a rough edit:
Catalyst Corporation Master Plan
Phase Two
06/20/2034
ver 0.391
Chindarkar observed, “Seven months after we left . . .”
Suddenly the handsome face of the late, thirty-something billionaire Nathan Joyce replaced the info card. He sat on the edge of his desk in his bookshelf-lined study back on Baliceaux Island, viewed in medium close-up. It was like seeing a ghost—a ghost who had changed the course of all their lives.
Joyce nodded toward the camera. “What I’m going to share with you today will make your other investments seem quaint by comparison—both in scope and in potential reward. We stand at the threshold of a new era. An energy and resource expansion greater than that experienced during the first Age of Exploration between 1400 and 1650 AD.”
Joyce stood and walked up to a mounted model of the spaceship Konstantin—a ship that in real life this particular audience had ridden to the far side of the Sun.
“With the proven success of Catalyst Corporation’s historic mining operation at the asteroid Ryugu, thousands of tons of highly valuable commodities are now available for use in the vicinity of our Moon—many billions of dollars’ worth and hundreds of rocket launches if they were sent up from Earth. And there are 450 million tons more where that came from.
“Asteroid mining is now TRL-8–proven technology. In addition to the resources we’ve returned, Catalyst also owns scores of now highly valuable patents and enjoys unparalleled experience in crewed operations, spin-gravity, and radiation shielding in deep space. And yet, we are just getting started. In fact, we are now ready to execute the next phase of Catalyst Corporation’s master plan.”
A placeholder card appeared, reading: STOCK VIDEO OF NATURAL DISASTERS.
“Make no mistake, Earth markets are growth-constrained, grappling with the disruption of climate change and all its attendant calamities—drought, storms, floods, pandemics, supply-chain and political chaos, uncontrolled migrations, rising ocean levels, resource conflicts—over both water and arable land. Meanwhile, out in space, we have no such limitations. Instead, we will be creating entire new domains and industries that can help Earth restore its natural climate and its general prosperity—as well as initiating a rapid industrial expansion that could persist for many thousands of years. For us, the sky is just the beginning.”
The video cut back to Joyce, who held up a cautionary finger. “But how do we execute on this celestial expansion? Precisely how will Catalyst Corporation utilize the asteroid resources we have in lunar orbit to make this new era of Earth prosperity a reality?” He paused for effect. “Let me show you . . .”
A view of space filled the virtual screen, and a familiar robot tug passed into view—a spacecraft the team in this room had built in reality and christened the Nicole Clarke. The image panned to reveal the spacecraft was headed toward Earth’s moon.
“At present, we alone possess resources in a trajectory and in the refined physical form necessary to commence game-changing, large-scale construction in cislunar space. And by moving first, we will have immense standards-making power—in deep space communications, transport infrastructure, logistics, cislunar finance, market-making, energy systems, life support systems, and much more.
“That’s why Catalyst Corporation—the unrivaled pioneer in asteroid mining—will counterintuitively utilize the first resources we’ve returned from an asteroid to accelerate the mining of Earth’s moon. In fact, near-Earth asteroid mining was a prerequisite of our lunar mining plan . . .”
The image zoomed down to the lunar south pole, focusing on Shackleton Crater and terrain features labeled “Peaks of Eternal Light.”
“China and the US are currently engaged in intense competition over the water ice and carbon dioxide traps within the strategic, permanently shadowed craters at the lunar south pole.”
The image showed the lights of two lunar bases at the rim of the crater in proximity to each other.
Joyce continued. “These efforts are occurring in an operating environment just 21 kilometers across and are fraught with political and military peril. Yes, millions of tons of water ice exist in Shackleton Crater and in the surrounding craters; however, there is some degree of water chemically bound in all lunar regolith, and the logistical complications of mining Shackleton ice—both in dealing with off-planar, lunar polar orbits, as well as the astropolitical tensions in this confined, strategic location—make it a region that Catalyst intends to avoid. Instead, we have more ambitious plans made possible by the asteroid resources now at our disposal . . .”
The image zoomed back out and centered on the lunar equator, marked by a blue line girding the Moon.
“It is our contention that, except for scientific and commercial outposts, the Moon should not be colonized by humanity. Lunar surface operations should be, wherever possible, unmanned and automated, with the goal to cost-effectively launch vast amounts of material from the lunar surface up into orbit, where it can be used to build and operate at scale in open space. Humanity should, in short, avoid gravity wells wherever possible until we establish a formidable industrial, energy, and transportation infrastructure out in our solar system. To achieve this, we’re going to need mass. Not just tens of thousands of tons—but millions and billions of tons.
“The nature of the contest for cislunar space—whether Earth powers realize it or not—is that the entity with the most mass on-orbit first, wins. Ryugu provided us crucial seed material at low delta-v costs, which we can now use to gain rapid, cost-effective access to the vast resources of our Moon. We do that by building the first substantial, permanent, human habitat from which to operate long-term in deep space. And we build it in a halo orbit around L2, 60,000 kilometers past the Moon.”
With that, the scene changed to a 3D model of cislunar space, with a dot on the far side of the Moon labeled “L2.” The image zoomed in to reveal the dot as the robot tug spacecraft.
“Using the resources we now have in lunar orbit, we will construct the first portion of what will eventually become a much larger spin-gravity space station, but which for the moment will remain only partially completed.”
The robot tug transformed into the same ring-like space station Rochat had shown earlier—although naked beams and girders encompassed most of its circumference. Nonetheless it began rotating.
“Orbiting L2 at this distance still gives us line of sight to both Earth and the Moon’s far side, but also provides low delta-v transitions from cislunar to deep space, helping to facilitate continued flow of both asteroid and lunar resources. When finished, this EM-L2 station will be able to host not just our operations, but those of dozens of astropreneur startups, executing their own business plans with the resources and energy we will make available to them—in exchange for pre-IPO stock in their firms.”
The station model expanded to include a central axis upon which enclosures and inscrutable machinery appeared. Antenna masts sprouted from one end.
“This station will also serve as a base for teleoperations from which we’ll construct a reliable and abundant energy source in the form of a 200-ton, 50-megawatt solar power satellite—or SPS—capable of transmitting electrical power over great distances using microwaves.”
The image zoomed out as an animation showed the construction of a gossamer-like structure made of faceted mirrors that was nearly as large as the space station itself.
“This SPS is not meant to power the space station. Instead . . .”
A small spacecraft docked with the solar power satellite and towed it around to the other side of the Moon, facing Earth.
“. . . we will relocate this satellite to a halo orbit around L1, setting the stage for lunar surface operations.”
The spacecraft detached from the solar power satellite and then descended toward the lunar surface.
“Unlike competing mining efforts centered at the lunar poles, Catalyst Corporation intends to engage in undifferentiated regolith collection on the lunar equator at roughly 33.1 degrees longitude—close by Cape Bruce and Maskelyne-A Crater, roughly 3,000 kilometers from the nearest crewed lunar base—and far away from astropolitical competition. Here there exist vast mares of powdered surface regolith more than 2 meters deep, rich in iron, oxygen, silicon, and aluminum, but also containing a low percentage of water in the form of hydrates, as well as titanium, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, and also trace amounts of phosphorus, thorium, uranium, and rare Earth metals.
“We will not be refining this material on the Moon’s surface. Instead, we will harvest it, and transport it directly into orbit. But more on that later . . .”
As the lunar lander descended, a vast gray plain with hills in the distance filled the screen. The animation depicted the robotic lander touching down, a scouring cloud of dust radiating away from it until the rocket cut out. Cranes on the lander lowered wheeled robots that ventured forth to erect a large net-like grid on poles.
“After deploying a rectenna to receive microwave energy from the satellite in a Lissajous orbit overhead, our lunar base will have access to uninterrupted power, even during the two-week-long lunar night.”
The animation then showed wheeled robots with bulldozer blades extending a road away from the base.
“Construction equipment directly teleoperated by personnel on the L2 station will build a permanent landing pad along with a surrounding berm to receive future lunar landers.”
The animation showed new lunar landers arriving with additional equipment and materials, which the robots then unloaded.
“Setting the stage for the main project: construction of a lunar electromagnetic launch—or LEML—system, a 1.4-kilometer-long ‘mass-driver’ track running eastward along the lunar equator. In the near perfect vacuum of the Moon—and with access to 50 megawatts of on-demand power from our lunar-stationary satellite overhead—this mass-driver will enable us to accelerate bricks of lunar regolith past the Moon’s escape velocity up to 2.53 kilometers per second without the need for chemical propellant, hurling them into orbit on an achromatic trajectory . . .”
The animation zoomed out as a glowing-hot slug launched along a track to arc over the hemisphere of the Moon, reaching tens of thousands of kilometers back to L2, where it slowed and cooled, its energy expended, and floated within the gravitational equilibrium of the Lagrange point.
“. . . all the way back toward L2 and the vicinity of our space station.”
The image zoomed back in to the ring-shaped space station, where a spinning, cone-shaped spacecraft scooped up the bricks of lunar regolith.
“Once completed, our lunar mass-driver will be capable of hurling a 10-kilogram brick into orbit every two seconds—totaling 157,000 tons of resource-rich material per year—where it will be collected and refined at our L2 space station.”
The image cut back to Joyce in his office. He strolled again toward his desk. “With this extraordinary wealth of new lunar material available to us in cislunar space, Catalyst will be able to vastly expand our capabilities—including building additional mass-drivers and solar power satellites to further expand our raw materials and propellant supply chain, and also in building new asteroid mining spacecraft to exploit still more near-Earth asteroids.”
Joyce walked past his desk and stood next to a model of an elongated tether with a gondola on one end and a counterweight on the other.
“But Catalyst will also be in a position to build a comprehensive cislunar transportation infrastructure, enabling cost-effective and sustainable launches from Earth as well as travel to and from LEO, GEO, and lunar orbits. We will achieve this through a series of 3,000-ton, 500-kilometer-long rotating skyhooks in low Earth orbit, as well as rotating tether assemblies in higher orbits to transfer their momentum into customer payloads, sending them to desired cislunar destinations—either higher or lower in orbit.”
Here an animation showed a long, thin structure rotating like a lawn mower blade as it orbited Earth. It had an off-center axis of rotation, with a cupola at the end of the longer span, which dipped down into the Earth’s atmosphere briefly as the structure orbited past it—causing its tip, labeled “skyhook,” to momentarily pause before rotating back up into orbit again. At the apex of its trajectory, the skyhook appeared to fling a dot of payload onto a higher trajectory, where it was soon intercepted by a synchronized rotating tether in upper orbit.
Joyce narrated. “The technologies and materials to build these tethers are well understood—Spectra and Zylon polyethylene fibers woven with aluminum wire can handle the forces involved. All that is required to deploy them is the mass, production capacity, and propellant in orbit—all of which we will have.”
The animation zoomed in to a sleek aircraft taking off from an airport and accelerating through the Earth’s atmosphere. “Through the use of current scramjet aircraft intercepting a skyhook at 100 kilometers altitude, we can lift 14 tons of cargo from Earth to anywhere in cislunar space at a fraction of the cost of a reusable rocket. Later generations of skyhooks and scramjets will be able to lift still more. This will allow us to launch people and specialty equipment not yet producible in space up into orbit, and to do so more cheaply, safely, and with much less damage to the environment than traditional rockets. However, we have more urgent markets to address here on Earth . . .”
The image cut back to Joyce as he walked up to a model of a solar power satellite identical to the one in his Moon mining animation.
“. . . namely in energy. As we build out the cislunar transport network, Catalyst will also use our growing inventory of resources in orbit to build truly massive solar power satellites—each capable of transmitting to the Earth’s surface not just 50 megawatts, but 2 or more gigawatts of electricity.”
The image zoomed in to depict the construction of a chandelier-like solar power satellite similar to the one that powered the lunar mass-driver; however, this one dwarfed the equipment and people constructing it.
“These 7,500-ton behemoths—3 kilometers wide by 5 kilometers tall with microwave transmitters over a kilometer in diameter—can be placed in geostationary orbit, beaming clean, sustainable energy 24 hours a day down to 7-kilometer-wide rectennas on the Earth’s surface. The beam can also be split to supply different cities without the need to run high-voltage power lines over land. Likewise, the beam can be redirected in milliseconds to serve cities in need, allowing grid operators near-instant load balancing.”
The animation showed the huge satellite being maneuvered to geostationary orbit, 36,000 kilometers above Earth.
