And some real-life astronauts, to train our guys. Got to be some of them around.”
“Canaveral itself is long drowned,” Patrick said. “Went under with Florida. There was an alternate launch facility in the west.”
“Vandenberg,” Kenzie said. “Run by the air force. Must be flooded too, but maybe more recently. If we have to salvage equipment from one or other of these places, Vandenberg might be the better choice.”
“But that’s a huge commitment,” Patrick said. “A whole new space program! At such a time of crisis, how can you expect to get the government to back you?”
Kenzie smiled. “There’s always national defense. Look—one effect of the flood has been to knock out our national war-making capabilities. Oh, we’ve been moving nuke-tipped ICBMs out of flooded silos in Kansas. But the basic infrastructure has been hit too. NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain is still operating, not far from here. But all Cheyenne did was gather data and feed warnings to Raven Rock on the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, the Pentagon’s deep-bunker control hub, which has now been lost. Meanwhile our satellites are degrading one by one. Even our deep-defense radar systems are failing, now that the bases in Britain and Canada are flooded out. And you have warlike noises coming out of China and Russia and India. What if those guys decide they need a bit of lebensraum over here in the US of A? What are we going to do about it? I think the federal government could be sold the need for a space launch facility, here on the high ground, to give us the means to launch recon sats and to retaliate in case of any strike against us.”
“Isn’t that kind of cynical?”
Kenzie just grinned. “The space program has always run off the back of the military programs. The first astronauts rode honest-to-God ICBMs to orbit. And anyhow, isn’t it for a good cause? Joe—make a note. Start working on fixing me an appointment with the President as soon as we have a reasonable shopping list—”
Liu spoke softly. “I have it.”
He read, “ ‘The warp drive: hyper-fast travel within general relativity.’ A 1994 paper. I am no specialist in relativity but I recognize the soundness of the idea. It is only a theoretical concept, but there are a number of citations . . .”
Jerzy quickly brought up a copy of the paper and skimmed it. “My God, Liu. Riding a wave of spacetime at superluminal speeds. This is it.”
“The engineering details are entirely absent. And the energy requirements are daunting—”
“But we have the concept.” Jerzy grinned at Kenzie. “We must start work immediately.”
Kenzie looked from one to the other, openmouthed. “If this isn’t bullshit—all right. Tell me the first thing you need.”
Jerzy considered. “Mathematicians. Physicists. Computer scientists. Anybody who had contact with predecessor studies, like the old NASA Breakthrough Propulsion program of the 1990s. And, by the way, if we are serious about planning for a long-duration spaceflight we will need life-support experts, biologists, doctors, sociologists, anthropologists.”
Liu said, “Also an artificial intelligence suite, equipped with symbolic manipulator tools.”
“A what-now?”
“We will build a warp bubble. This will be a designer metric.” He mimed a bubble with his hand. “A piece of spacetime, molded to our purposes. To design such a thing we will need a computer system that can solve Einstein’s relativity equations.”
“Make a list.”
Patrick, feeling lost again, shook his head. “Are we serious? Are we really going to try to build a warp drive?”
Jerzy shrugged. “Compared to terraforming a planet, or trying to run a spaceflight lasting centuries to thousands of years, it is a relatively easy option.”
“Fine. So we have something to work on. Meeting adjourned!” Kenzie slammed his palm down on the desk, and toasted them in cold coffee. “Here’s to Ark One, born today. Hey, Joe, make a note of
“Canaveral itself is long drowned,” Patrick said. “Went under with Florida. There was an alternate launch facility in the west.”
“Vandenberg,” Kenzie said. “Run by the air force. Must be flooded too, but maybe more recently. If we have to salvage equipment from one or other of these places, Vandenberg might be the better choice.”
“But that’s a huge commitment,” Patrick said. “A whole new space program! At such a time of crisis, how can you expect to get the government to back you?”
Kenzie smiled. “There’s always national defense. Look—one effect of the flood has been to knock out our national war-making capabilities. Oh, we’ve been moving nuke-tipped ICBMs out of flooded silos in Kansas. But the basic infrastructure has been hit too. NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain is still operating, not far from here. But all Cheyenne did was gather data and feed warnings to Raven Rock on the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, the Pentagon’s deep-bunker control hub, which has now been lost. Meanwhile our satellites are degrading one by one. Even our deep-defense radar systems are failing, now that the bases in Britain and Canada are flooded out. And you have warlike noises coming out of China and Russia and India. What if those guys decide they need a bit of lebensraum over here in the US of A? What are we going to do about it? I think the federal government could be sold the need for a space launch facility, here on the high ground, to give us the means to launch recon sats and to retaliate in case of any strike against us.”
“Isn’t that kind of cynical?”
Kenzie just grinned. “The space program has always run off the back of the military programs. The first astronauts rode honest-to-God ICBMs to orbit. And anyhow, isn’t it for a good cause? Joe—make a note. Start working on fixing me an appointment with the President as soon as we have a reasonable shopping list—”
Liu spoke softly. “I have it.”
He read, “ ‘The warp drive: hyper-fast travel within general relativity.’ A 1994 paper. I am no specialist in relativity but I recognize the soundness of the idea. It is only a theoretical concept, but there are a number of citations . . .”
Jerzy quickly brought up a copy of the paper and skimmed it. “My God, Liu. Riding a wave of spacetime at superluminal speeds. This is it.”
“The engineering details are entirely absent. And the energy requirements are daunting—”
“But we have the concept.” Jerzy grinned at Kenzie. “We must start work immediately.”
Kenzie looked from one to the other, openmouthed. “If this isn’t bullshit—all right. Tell me the first thing you need.”
Jerzy considered. “Mathematicians. Physicists. Computer scientists. Anybody who had contact with predecessor studies, like the old NASA Breakthrough Propulsion program of the 1990s. And, by the way, if we are serious about planning for a long-duration spaceflight we will need life-support experts, biologists, doctors, sociologists, anthropologists.”
Liu said, “Also an artificial intelligence suite, equipped with symbolic manipulator tools.”
“A what-now?”
“We will build a warp bubble. This will be a designer metric.” He mimed a bubble with his hand. “A piece of spacetime, molded to our purposes. To design such a thing we will need a computer system that can solve Einstein’s relativity equations.”
“Make a list.”
Patrick, feeling lost again, shook his head. “Are we serious? Are we really going to try to build a warp drive?”
Jerzy shrugged. “Compared to terraforming a planet, or trying to run a spaceflight lasting centuries to thousands of years, it is a relatively easy option.”
“Fine. So we have something to work on. Meeting adjourned!” Kenzie slammed his palm down on the desk, and toasted them in cold coffee. “Here’s to Ark One, born today. Hey, Joe, make a note of
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