There is no more reason for free humans to build spacecraft with twenty-three million dollar toilets than there is for a homeowner to buy a thousand dollar wrench to tighten a bolt. Yet such literal wastage is the norm for statist efforts, from road-building at millions of dollars per mile to pointless wars at thousands of dollars per bullet fired.Are we interested in spacecraft as "instruments of national policy," or as a way to loft people into Space? Choose the former and build needlessly complicated exercises in pork-barrel construction that blow up on the launch pad from the chaotic interactions engendered by such complexity. Choose the latter and build inexpensive, simple devices in which to launch from
Earth and live in Space.
Which would you choose?
That's why you're reading this book.
-- The Orbital Settlers' Guide
The thin layer of water at the bottom of Washington Square's erstwhile fountain, punctuated here and there by islands of litter and debris, reflected its small portion of New York City skyline. The quality of the evening -- warm, humid, and still young -- gave free rein to the students of New York University.
Two of them, dressed in urban camouflage of black and grey, hefted an object between them that looked for all the world like an old Electrolux vacuum cleaner canister, which it in fact had once been before its current incarnation as a weapon. The students -- one man, one woman -- raced across Washington Square toward the university's residential area.
The nighttime city smells wafted past the pair, their footsteps lost in the city noises. Three-quarters of the way across the square, a trio of boys in leather jumped in their path.
"Evening, dudes and dudettes," the tallest one said in an amiable, musical voice. His short hair lay slicked back against his skull. Something heavy sagged the right pocket of his shiny black jacket. "What have we here?" He pointed at the object directly before him.
The students, rather than looking terrified at being accosted after nightfall in Manhattan, appeared vaguely annoyed. The male half, a sophomore with longish hair that looked deep brown in the dim light, said nothing. The woman, short and plump and bespectacled, smiled.
"Cleanup crew," she said in a sardonic voice that could chip flint.
"Science stoonts," muttered a rare purebred Bronx accent to the gang leader's left. "They never got money."
The other raised his hand. "Perhaps we should inquire."
The third kid piped up, "I think a pat search is called for." His face looked like a topological map of Mars, red and cratered. He grinned, his anomalously well-formed teeth glinting yellow in the street lights, and looked at the woman. "Nah. Body cavity search."
The student's expression changed from amused to a twist of anger. She glanced over to her counterpart for approval. He nodded.
"Search this," she said, pointing the Electrolux toward the young thug and pressing a stud on the top of the device. Little grilled doors at the front snapped open. Instantly, an intense blue beam of light erupted from the depths of the machine. Leather, fabric, and flesh sizzled.
Her assailant cried out the near-universal Anglo-Saxon exclamation of surprise and pain, then jumped back to bat a leather-clad hand against his right shoulder. A thin wisp of smoke puffed from the hole in his jacket.
The other two stared at their comrade, then burst into laughter. The object of their mirth swung a savage fist at the gang leader, who took it on the shoulder with a hearty guffaw. The second punch was harder, with more injured pride driving it.
"Stop it, pus heads," the Brooklyn-throated kid said as he tore the two apart.
Having less fun now, the pair turned to look toward their intended victims.
The leader glanced around the square. They stood alone, two sets of soft footsteps vanishing swiftly into the night.
The pair of physics students succeeded in penetrating security at the chem student's dorm. This was not too difficult, since their security-breech team had moments before captured and hog-tied the pair of dorm supervisors. It was just past midnight. Anyone who was not asleep was undoubtedly out committing similar mischief. It didn't matter, as long as the halls were empty.
They started at the first door on the first floor. The woman deftly slid a thin wire into the keyhole. The man pointed the laser at the doorknob and pressed the stud. The blue beam vaporized the wire with a puff and a few sparkles of intense white light. Moving quickly to the next door, they repeated the procedure. Insert magnesium wire, blast with laser, move on. The pair proceeded through the dorm, stopping at each room just long enough to melt the door lock. When they finished with all five stories, they climbed out and down the fire escape.
That was when they were spotted.
"Fizzies!" someone shouted in the darkness below.
The plump girl pointed to the left of the sound. "Fire over there, Lloyd."
Lloyd brushed the long hair out of his eyes, swung the canister around, and fired from the hip. The beam punched into the night, a bright turquoise line from fire escape to pavement. Ancient chewing gum on the sidewalk sizzled and smoked. The cement cracked noisily enough to elicit a yelp from the alarmist, who scrambled into the bushes for cover.
His shout, though, achieved its purpose. From inside the dorm rose the sounds of rattling doorknobs, followed shortly by the pounding of fists.
"Let's scram," Lloyd said to his fellow saboteur. They clattered down the fire escape in tandem, Lloyd slinging the laser over his shoulder to free his hands for the final climb down the first floor ladder.
Inside the dorm the noises abated, followed by a moment of unnerving silence.
The woman looked at her companion. "Uh oh."
The dull pressure and thump of an explosion erupted from the third floor of the dorm, followed almost instantly by similar reports. One by one, the chemistry students blew the locks off their doors with various concoctions similar to C-4 plastic explosive. Most did, anyway. Some chose the less drastic method of removing the doorknob with a screwdriver, or taking off the hinges. They were the wet blankets, though, who never went to parties and actually spent their time studying.
Shortly before dawn, three chem students sneaked across the quad carrying three one-pint bottles and three narrow paint brushes. Their retaliation for the laser assault consisted merely of painting the physics dorm floors with a purple paste. Starting from the top floor and working down, they spread thin coats of the grainy compound along the linoleum floors, on doorknobs, and on the panic bars and kick plates of the hallway doors and exits. The purple paste -- nitrogen tri-iodide -- was a wonderful and dangerously unstable mess created by mixing ammonium nitrate with iodine crystals and then rinsing out the precipitate. As long is it stayed wet, it remained relatively stable. The three made certain, though, not to paint themselves into corners.
An hour or so later, long after the trio of painters had departed, a weary physics student dragged in through the main doors. Short, with thinning reddish hair and thick glasses, he moved, zombie-like, carrying a thick stack of library books and CD-ROM disks under one arm. He paid no attention to where his feet led him, as long as they pointed in the direction of his room. His left foot landed squarely on a smear of the nitrogen tri-iodide. The dry, unstable form of the chemical detonated with a jarring firecracker bang, startling him into dropping the books and setting off a series of mini-explosions. The noise awakened other students, who rushed out into the hallways. The resultant detonations reverberated through the physics dorm, sounding like a military attack.
Through the entrance and into the din walked one student who calmly strode across the nitrogen tri-iodide, deliberately unconcerned with the blasting beneath the soles of his shoes. He walked tall, with dark brown hair the color of an old walnut rifle stock. Tan jeans clad his legs, and over a loose-fitting beige shirt he wore an unbuttoned buckskin jacket cut in the fringed, mountain-man style. The leather briefcase he carried bore a small brass plaque that read "Property of Davy Crockett. Insured by Col. Samuel Colt." He wore a hat made out of raccoon skin, complete with its head perched on top, eyes shut, like a contented stowaway.
With unflappable determination, William David Crockett IV -- graduate student of physics -- walked blithely through the hallway minefield into his dorm room.
Crockett's small fifth-floor room contained a wonderworld of gadgets, books, computer equipment, charts, posters, and more gadgets. He threw the briefcase on his bed and, flopping down in an electronics-encrusted swivel chair, put his heels -- soles of shoes still smoking from the chemical hotfoot -- on his cluttered desk. He drew a cheroot cigar from the breast pocket of his jacket and lit it with a match struck by his thumbnail. Above his desk hung a framed antique lithograph of his ancestor: the original Davy Crockett, coonskin cap and all. He gazed at it for a moment.
After a few meditative puffs, he settled down to work on his computer. The screen displayed a schematic of the chem students' dorm, along with stress analyses. He canceled the screen and called up a file containing the fax numbers of every mail order house in the continental United States. Crockett punched the go command and the computer started dialing each number in succession, using a long-distance access code filched from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The faxes contained a request from the New York University Chemistry Students Association for twenty copies of each company's latest catalogue, to be sent care of Samuel Friedman's dormitory address.
Crockett switched the sound off to consider his next move. Reaching over to aim a milliwatt laser beam at a receiving lens on the chemistry students' dorm building, he flipped the switch on a small liquid-crystal TV connected to a breadboard of circuits that converted it into a picturephone. A face appeared on the screen. Curly black hair framed an intense face accented by blue eyes that normally would have been sparkling. At the moment, they gazed narrowly back at Crockett.
"Well, Sam," Crockett said. "Are you willing to concede defeat?"
"Are you kidding?" Samuel Friedman replied with a grin. "Neither side's resorted to massive property destruction yet!"
Crockett shrugged. "If that's what you want." Reaching over to flip an intercom switch, he said, "Let 'er rip, Bernie."
A female voice responded. "You've got it, Davy."
The lights throughout the dorm dimmed suddenly. Outside, a deep purple glow flickered for an instant, then steadied. A high-wattage laser beam flared across the quad, hitting the chem dorm, deftly carving away a cornice. The concrete chunk fell five stories to shatter on the pavement below.
Friedman dashed out of range of his screen long enough to assess the damage. Returning, he said, "Good shot, Davy. How long will your capacitors hold up?"
Outside, the purple flickering abated. From the roof of the physics dorm arose the crackling sound of electrical failure. The room lights returned to full power. Crockett glanced at his button-encrusted calculator wristwatch. "About seventeen point six seconds," he said.
Friedman smiled. "Good work. However, this should last about four hours. Nighty-night." He pressed a button off screen. A dozen minor, metallic detonations reverberated through the hallways.
Crockett leapt from his desk and stuck his head out the door to see that the fire extinguishers in the physics dorm had been replaced with fakes housing gas canisters. Crockett heard the telltale hiss, held his breath, and quickly stepped over to his closet.
The physics students in the dorm dropped like anesthetized flies. On the rooftop, a lovely, raven-haired student in tight black ninja togs tried to repair the laser. She rubbed her eyebrows once and gazed blearily at her tool kit. Then she tumbled to the asphalt and gravel. Below, innocent passersby collapsed to the pavement as the cloud of knockout gas drifted out of the building.
Friedman viewed the scene approvingly from his window, watching the green images on night-vision binoculars. He turned them toward Crockett's window.
Davy Crockett sat at his desk, feet up, staring insouciently at the computer screen through the lenses of his Israeli Army surplus gas mask. Crockett sighed, lifted the microphone to his mask and said in a muffled voice, "Nice try, Sam. And just so you'll be ready for breakfast tomorrow..."
He called up another screen on his computer, displaying a 3-D schematic of the space between Crockett's window and Friedman's, with a readout of wind speed and direction taken from the meteorological station on the roof of the physics dorm. He clicked yes on a dialogue box that asked
A deep noise coughed four times from inside a device standing near Crockett's window. A quartet of farm-fresh Extra Large Grade AA eggs sailed through the air, describing a parabolic trajectory that arced high over the quad at midpoint to descend upon the alarmed face in the fifth floor window.
Friedman clambered to crank the window shut and just barely made it. The four eggs slammed against the windowpane in rapid succession, spattering their monocellular loads in impressively wide bursts. Friedman turned toward the picturephone and shook his fist, laughing maniacally.
"I shall never surrender!" he shouted. "Nor labor under your oppressive yolk!"
Davy Crockett's lips formed a grin beneath his mask. He switched off without a word.
Friedman walked to class in the cool morning air. Of medium height and in the habit of wearing old Army jackets and carrying his texts under his arm, he utilized the olive-drab canvas rucksack on his back to carry his laptop computer and portable chemistry set. His ebon locks strayed less wildly this morning as he strolled deep in thought.
Davy Crockett quietly strode up beside him, puffing on his cheroot, coonskin hat covering his dark brown hair completely. On his waist hung a cameraman's battery belt.
"Great fun last night," he said, slapping a hand on Friedman's neck just above his shirt collar.
Friedman jumped up two feet from the electrical shock that sparked through his nervous system, but Crockett pulled him down to ground level with both hands, maintaining his grip. The high-voltage, low-amperage current caused Friedman's hair to radiate from his head as if he were touching a Van de Graaf accelerator. It did the same to the fur and the tail on Crockett's hat. He looked like a skunk about to spray.
Friedman recovered his composure quickly enough to carry on an ordinary conversation, saying through his clenched teeth, "Feels like six hundred thousand volts this time."
Crockett grinned. "Seven-fifty."
"Good condensers."
"NASA surplus," Crockett said. "Swap them for some of your superconducting ceramic?"
"Sure." The galvanic tingle in Friedman's shoulders faded. His hair settled down, as did Crockett's raccoon tail.
They cut across Washington Square Park on their way to class when a furious voice from behind shattered the morning. "Stop or you're dead meat, Sam!"
Friedman turned to see a whirlwind of anger approaching. "Bernadette!" he cried. "Oh, temple of lust at which I worship. Oh, goddess of--"
Bernadette caught up with them. She wore an austere white lab coat over a black and extremely retro cowpunk outfit complete with atomic-symbol earrings and a pound or two of silver-and-turquoise Native American jewelry. Her black hair, though bobbed, looked straggled and unkempt, as if she had spent the night asleep on a rooftop. Between sneezes and sniffles into a scarlet handkerchief, she managed to thank Friedman a whole lot for gassing her. "I nearly froze to death, you worm."
Friedman shrugged. "Galahad there had a gas mask. I thought you two shared everything short of your precious bodily fluids."
"Leave my pbf's out of this." Bernadette turned her glower toward Crockett. "Well?"
Crockett mimicked Friedman's shrug. "Be grateful we do this in spring."
The only class the three shared that semester was the mandatory seminar on Scientific Ethics and Social Responsibility, overseen by visiting professor Barry Gibbon, Ph.D., formerly of Yale and currently of the National Organisation of Space Supporters. During the entire lecture series, he displayed a dour expression that always darkened whenever he encountered Crockett and his friends. More sour than usual today, he strode back and forth at the bottom of the auditorium, reminding everyone that he considered Science a beast only partially restrained by constant vigilance.
"But what is ethical science? It is best that we describe it by what it is not. It is not the reckless pursuit of knowledge in the absence of any societal restraint. It is not unbridled research without concern for social consequences..."
He climbed up the classroom steps to peer at Crockett, then at the book he held below the level of the seats. The title read How You Can Profit From the End of Civilization As We Know It.
"And it is most emphatically not childish rivalries such as the feud between the physics and chemistry students."
He stared at Crockett, with Bernadette and Friedman observing from the sidelines a few seats away. Crockett, without so much as looking up from his reading, replied, "Be that as it may, Professor, hasn't the research spun off many useful consumer items?"
Gibbon spoke loudly enough for the entire room to hear. "Mr. Crockett, you and your friends may fancy yourselves to be the scientific vanguard. However, your whiz-bang approach to the discipline of research is infantile and absurd to the point of being Swiftian. And I don't mean Jonathan, I mean Tom."
Some of the students -- the ones seeking better grades -- laughed. Crockett narrowed his gaze and muttered, "I made it a point that every prank would force me to learn something about science."
Gibbon stared impatiently at Crockett, his goat gotten. "Why couldn't you have stayed at Harvard, gotten your MBA, and become an alcoholic businessman?"
Davy closed his book, leaned back in his seat, and smiled. In a drawl that could have originated in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Tennessee, he said, "It's more fun blowing things up."
Gibbon nodded, squeezing his lips together firmly before opening them to speak.
"A fitting attitude, I suppose, for a descendant of the legendary blowhard Davy Crockett. It's a pleasure, though, to note that your opinion is no longer in the mainstream of scientific thought. Gone are the days of the lone nut researcher ready to destroy the world to test a pet theory. Today we have a grander view. In thirty years or so, your children or grandchildren will be living in space. Witness the planned space station Unity. Here we have a stunning tribute to the ability of science to transcend political differences and bring nations togeth--"
Crockett snorted loudly, then muttered, "A hundred billion down the gravity hole to build and operate something only twice the size of Skylab, which cost a fiftieth of the price." He folded his arms, rawhide fringe swinging. "I could do the same for half a billion. You're asking the same kind of minds that run the Post Office to put people in orbit. Look at what happened with the Moon. The US sent twelve guys up there, the novelty wore thin after three years, and they abandoned the project. What would the westward migration have been if the government had handled it? Build a huge, expensive land rover, send a couple of guys to Nevada and have them bring back some dirt and then never return? The government's not interested in you and I gettin' up there, they--"
"Thank you, Explorer Crockett. I suppose you'd populate the lunar surface with corncob-smoking farmers and gun-toting mountain men, in some bizarre hillbilly space program."
"It'd be better than what's up there now. A pile of overpriced metal scrap and some pretty plaques with autographs from a crooked presi--"
Gibbon slapped his palm on the dais with theatrical intensity. "Unless you and your cohorts can do better with your brand of punk science, leave the real achievements to the big boys and go back to your childish war games."
He turned away from Crockett to address the entire class.
"The Space Station, costing tens of billions of dollars and employing hundreds of thousands of people, will be the most complex undertaking in human history, far more complicated and certainly more life-affirming than the Invasion of Normandy... or, for that matter, Desert Storm. And -- if the United Nations approves the Interplanetary Treaty -- Unity would become a truly world-wide effort, far exceeding even the magnificent successes of Russia's late, lamented Mir."
"Which," Crockett interjected, "the U.S. would pay for and everyone else would leech off."
Gibbon smiled, addressing the class rather than the lone upstart. "Is it not proper that the nation that has taken the most from the world give something back?"
"This nation hasn't taken anything from the rest of the world," Crockett said. "The state that claims dominion over us may have, but Americans themselves have given the world electricity, airplanes, computers, medical super-science, space travel itself! As for your damned treaty, it's nothing but an attempt to put Space under the control of government bureaucrats."
Gibbon laughed. "Isn't it already? What the treaty does is make the bureaucrats of each country responsible to a higher authority -- the UN."
"In other words," Crockett said, "you're just adding another layer of commissars to slow us down further. We won't get into Space that way."
"Enough, mountain-boy. No one wants you in space anyway. Although," he said with a smile, "perhaps some of your classmates might wish to ship you off." A large portion of the class applauded. Gibbon spoke slowly and with the cool authority that carried with it the knowledge of power. "As your instructor, I claim dominion over this classroom. I'll not have it collapse into anarchy as you would the space program." Gibbon turned his back on the student to punch up a picture on the video projector behind him. The screen lit up with an artist's rendering of Unity. He resumed his professorial timbre.
"What, then, in this new interplanetary order, is the role of the scientific class? First, to determine via scientific polls the needs of the electorate that pays their salaries. Second, to develop by consensus the technology necessary to meet those needs."
Crockett withdrew from his briefcase a tubular object about the size and shape of a flashlight and put it on his stack of books. Without making any overt motions, he aimed the business end of it toward the fire alarm on the wall near the stage-right exit. He casually rubbed pocket lint off of an iron pellet the shape and size of a pencil eraser and inserted it into the rear of the device. Flicking a microswitch, he folded his hands over the tube and leaned his chin on his hands as if listening to Gibbon with serious intensity. After waiting for the system to power up, he made a last adjustment to his aim and gently pressed a red button on the top of the barrel. Electromagnetic coils silently accelerated the projectile nearly to bullet velocity, sending it smack into the alarm button.
"Knowledge in service to humanity--"
The fire alarm honked into life with jarring intensity, interrupting the lecture. The class quickly flew to the exits, led by Bernadette and Friedman. Crockett pocketed his device and sauntered after them, smiling over his shoulder at Gibbon and spreading his hands in mock helplessness.
On their way back to the dorms, Davy and Sam traded veiled hints at their plans for that night's battle. Bernadette walked silently beside them with her hands in the pockets of her lab coat. She seemed deep in thought and started nodding in agreement with her own interior monologue, which caused her earrings to jangle like tiny wind chimes. After a few moments, she muttered, "We could do it, you know."
"Do what?" Crockett asked.
She whispered with a childlike solemnity. "Ship off into Space."
Friedman snorted out a laugh. "Right -- have you got a spare ten billion?"
She stopped walking to turn toward Crockett and grasp his arms, bracelets clanking. "You said you could do it cheaply. Were you lying?"
Davy shrugged. "Do you mean build a space station or just get something into orbit? If NASA had the brains to park the Shuttle external tanks in orbit, you'd already have nearly ninety roomy space stations for the price of ten percent more fuel. I could build a simple orbital spaceship for twenty million."
"Well," she said, following him again, "what if you deduct what we could scrounge from around the campus and the city? And use volunteer labor?"
Sam smiled mildly. "No one could build a spaceship that cheaply."
Davy said, "Oh, I've seen some designs that cheap. Using aircraft aluminum and off-the-shelf equipment. Zero redundancy -- pull the trigger and take your chances. There's a design I saw that uses a rotor mounted on top of the ship to give it extra lift. I've got a subscription to The Private Space Journal. They cover all sorts of launch unorthodox systems."
Bernadette looked at Friedman. Despite his negative assessment, he appeared to be considering the idea. Producing the laptop computer from his rucksack, he flipped up the screen, sat on the curb, and began to punch in numbers at a furious pace as he strolled.
"It would be possible," Sam said after a moment, "to build a very cheap orbital rocket, assuming volunteer labor and scrounged parts."
Bernadette slugged Crockett's arm as the trio resumed their walk. "Hear that? We've got the highest concentration of scientific minds this side of mit and most of them don't have to work for a living. I mean, you and Sam can marshal everyone into conducting these stupid wars -- why not turn it toward something that matters?"
"Why go into Space?" Davy asked. He was distracted, watching something in the distance.
"Because no one's ever gone into Space on their own, you know, without a whole lot of help. Without a whole big program. We'd be like the Wright brothers, or Lindbergh. Or your great-great-great-great grand uncle. We'd be famous. We'd be heroes. We could write our own tickets."
Crockett made a huffing noise, dismissing the whole idea with one sound. His attention focused on what he saw ahead of them.
Bernadette planted herself squarely in Crockett's path. "We'd probably get our doctorates without having to take another class."
Davy and Sam stared at each other for a moment, then said, in unison, "Sold!"
Bernadette smiled brightly at them. Friedman looked up from his computer, staring in sudden shock at the Chem students' dorm. The entryway and steps lay clogged with thousands of mail-order catalogues in stacks and slipping, teetering heaps. A Postal Service truck dumped another load on top of the huge pile.
"What the hell have you done?" Sam screamed at Crockett.
Davy held a hand against his heart. "How ungrateful! I've given you the perfect fund raiser -- a paper drive!"
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