Back to the Moon-ARC by Les Johnson, Travis S. Taylor Page B

glad to be back in Nevada and away from his metaphorical near-death experience at the hands of CEO Gary Childers in Kentucky. The desert was familiar territory and one in which he felt perfectly at home. And he also preferred being on the “engineering” side of the massive facility and not the “passenger training” side. He wasn’t due to be there with the whiny rich brats, aka customers, until tomorrow.
    Gesling, like most Americans, had watched the moderately publicized landing of NASA’s Altair the day before with a mixture of amazement and disappointment. Amazement at what humans could accomplish when challenged and that we were finally on our way back to the Moon. Disappointment with the time it took for America to get back to where it was in 1972. Overall, the landing was flawless—except that there were no human astronauts on board. That in itself was a big enough flaw to keep people from tuning in. Americans, hell, the rest of humanity, could not care less about another robot probe sending back video images of a place that it seemed nobody would ever set foot on. On the other hand, playing it up as the precursor to the very near manned flight did spark some optimism around the country. At least it boosted Paul’s flagging enthusiasm about what he and his crew were soon to accomplish themselves. They were about to take five paying customers on nearly a weeklong fly-around of the Moon. It was to be their own Apollo 8 moment.
    He was on his way to a press briefing. The NASA unmanned Moon landing had boosted interest in all things space related, and Space Excursions was high on the list of many reporters for that “next day” follow-up story.
    Gesling walked into the conference room that had been modified to accommodate the press and was immediately startled by the number of reporters there. He had expected maybe ten or twelve, most of them local, but the room was packed with what he quickly estimated to be fifty or more. There was standing room only in the drab tan-paneled makeshift press room. He recognized the big names like CNN, Fox News, and the networks, but there were others: China Daily, the London Times, and the Times of India, to name a few.
    Already at the podium stood Gary Childers and Caroline O’Conner. Kentucky had come to Nevada. Although he wasn’t late, Gesling was the last one to arrive, and he hoped it didn’t leave a bad impression with Childers. He and Childers were on shaky enough ground as it was. Paul walked briskly to the front of the room and stood behind and to the left of his boss.
    “So, as we can all see,” Childers said, “our brilliant captain has arrived, and so I’ll turn this over to him.” Childers motioned at Gesling to step up to the podium.
    “Ahem.” Paul cleared his throat to buy some time so that he could remember what he had planned to say. “Good morning. Thanks for your interest in Space Excursions. I’m sure we all saw NASA put on quite a show yesterday by landing the Altair on the lunar surface.” There were sounds of affirmation, some heads nodding, but there was little in the way of enthusiastic applause—typical reaction from a press corps only interested in drama to sell advertising time.  
    “We’re very pleased with our nation’s success and look forward to seeing the test flight successfully completed. That said, we’re gonna beat ’em to the punch. And”—Paul paused for his own dramatic emphasis—“we’re gonna do it with people. Real live human beings that are customers who paid to train and become astronauts.” Despite what some bloggers had to say, Paul and Childers and the rest of the company did not view the government’s space endeavors as competition, and he only wished them well. Hell, Childers had originally begged NASA to sell them a seat on their mission, but NASA had for all its existence resisted sponsorship and commercialization. The original space tourists used Russian flights. The Russians understood capitalism,