Star of Fire 火星 Mars Space People

Breaching the Great Wall of China

Dream Team

Pilot Candidate

Casanova 2014

Whisker Burn

Never to young to learn

Peacemaker

No tikki, no laundee

The Abominable Snowman

Honky Tonk Women

Space Music

The Lovelace Torture Chambers

Big Tim encouraged Tiny Tim to take the series of tests that were used to select astronauts at the Lovelace Foundation and Clinic in Albuquerque. Supposedly the tests would be private, paid for by Requinto Petroleum, but Commander Tim knew that the files would be available to NASA and the United States government, given their cozy relationship to the private clinic.
“The Mercury 13 women did it, U-2 pilots did it and the astronauts did it, so you should do it,” said the commander. Big Tim was anticipating a backlash from the American astronauts left behind by a lieutenant whose golden bars weren’t old enough to be tarnished.
“It’ll help you learn the medical terminology of space and you’ll learn something about yourself.”
Only after the tests were completed did Tiny Tim wonder if he had pissed the commander off. [NASA has brought astronaut selection back to the military and government/civilian hospitals from Lovelace.] Now the commander was trying to get him access to the centrifuge and the other stressing simulators used in America’s space medicine facilities at Wright Aeronautical Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio and at Pensacola Naval Air Station on the Florida panhandle.
It was only later that Lieutenant Tim came to believe that the travails that the astronauts had endured in the name of testing and space medicine, as exemplified by Al Shepard’s ear surgery to get back on flight status, are the result of the stressing and medical procedures that they had been subjected to. After all, robotic flight gear was kept pristine during testing while sibling equipment was subjected to stress and developmental tests.

Field Team

Doyle spent two days at the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian Aviation Museum located on Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, DC, three more at both of the NASA museums in Huntsville and Houston, a week of music and beer at Mardi Gras, two days at Carlsbad Caverns and a day at Roswell before heading to the Blue Moon Holiday Boogie in Eloy, Arizona. He barely made it to Lovelace in time for his flight physical after a week of skydiving and chasing a cutie from the University of Colorado Boulder. Having read everything he could find about Lovelace and its tests, he thought the examination was cool and wrote the experience up, heavy with dropped names, for a term paper. After the initial survivor’s euphoria from not getting caught in the sweep, the kids at Boston Latin were starting to develop a healthy dislike for their errant schoolmate. Doyle’s composition, Bipolar Disorder [North and South Poles], written during dinner after 6 hours of sensory deprivation in body-temperature water, replaced the heavily maligned Stairway to Heaven as the first tune learned by aspiring rock guitarists throughout the world. His English Composition teacher gave him a B- for his essay on sensory deprivation and its use in hostile interrogation as well as its involvement in aviation accidents dismissing it as conspiracy theory. The essay was published in Ad Astra, the National Space Society’s magazine.

Chapter 44. Pink Granite

The pink granite of Acadia National Park contrasts with the red rocks of the west. The pink color in granite is due to the natural pink tint of feldspar. [Maine should be called the Granite State instead of New Hampshire – the mica in New Hampshire granite makes it difficult to polish.] The second type of volcanic surface structure, a dome, produces granite. Igneous rock such as granite forms deep in the Earth with the grains of quartz, feldspar and other minerals being smaller, the faster the rock cools. Enough said about black flies, mosquitoes and overzealous temporary park rangers at Acadia National Park.
Volcanic flows produce cones, about half a dozen of which disappear annually in Arizona as their red cinders are distributed on the desert lawns of the Southwest and among the bushes at the Boston Sheraton.
Glaciers flow like molasses, a viscous liquid, in geological time. The ice masses accumulate as precipitation is dumped in the Polar Regions and ground mountains down as they drift toward the equator, dumping their debris as they melt. Glaciers normally melt from the bottom up, heated from the interior of the planet. Glaciers accumulate meteorites as well as dust and microbes. These meteorites are collected annually in the glaciers of Antarctica that are barricaded from the ocean by mountainous features.
Erosion is the easiest process to understand – a stream pushes rocks and sand towards the ocean, a hill cleaved to level new roads starts falling apart after the first winter and wind etches patterns in sandstone. Look at any rock cliff made by cutting through a rock ledge – the erosion from the water freezing in the cracks in the rocks are evident after only a few winters in northern America. Life contributes its efforts to the transformation of rock and man’s fleeting artifacts of civilization.
The alliance between China, Inc and the big box stores made pre-cut polished granite sink tops and marble available for hundreds instead of thousands of dollars at Home Depot, eliminating the need for stone artisans. India jumped into the decorative stone business, competing with China solely on price.

Mount Desert Island Rusticator

Doyle drove his mother’s van to Bar Harbor, Maine and paid for a week of RV camping at the Blackwoods Campground in Acadia National Park on Mt. Desert Island. The French explorer Samuel de Champlain explored Acadia naming the area containing bald (desert) granite mountains bald mountain island in French. MDI has the highest mountain on the east coast – Mt. Cadillac standing tall at 1500 feet above sea level. Glacial activity and erosion wore the overburden of the volcanic dome down to the pink granite rock, which forms a lasting impression on all visitors to the park. Doyle slept in his van in a rain-soaked campground lot at Blackwoods. Nature woke him up periodically, punishment for the blended orange and pineapple juice that he had been drinking all day. The trees in the lot hid most of the sky, exposing only the sky directly above. Deneb, the head of the swan, Cygnus, was visible. Doyle searched for the remaining stars of the Cygnus constellation as Vega, the brightest star in the area appeared, dominating the small patch of stars overhead.
Doyle would dive with Norm Garrett for shellfish during the day, scuba training for the dark, cold caves of Mars. Norm had been cleared by Jerry Littlefield to train Tim and Doyle under a non-disclosure agreement on the electrolysis machines. Doyle saw the most highly defined rainbow he had ever seen, in the aftermath of a shower.

Twinkle, twinkle

Astronomers describe how uniform the atmosphere is to viewing the stars as the quality of seeing. Even when atmospheric dust or water droplets are minimal, or we should say when light pollution bouncing off these particles is minimal, turbulence in the lower or upper atmosphere such as the jet stream distort the light from the distant stars. Doyle stood on Cadillac Mountain buffeted by the winds after the unenforced midnight closing of the peak. The clear, dark sky was like an abstract painting, the constellations so blurred as to be unrecognizable. The stars looked like distant headlights through a rain-soaked windshield.

Solo

Norm spent his belated Puffin Engineering paycheck for $1500 by buying a block of flight instruction for a Cessna 182 RG at the Bar Harbor Airport. Only one prepaid hour of instruction remained after he was lucky enough for the weather to clear enough for his instructor to allow him to solo. He’d have to spend some time this weekend diving for shellfish to buy another block of flying to consolidate what he’d already learned. There were whole worlds to be conquered outside of mid-coastal Maine.
Norm liked guns – not collector items but guns that were made to be fired cheaply and often. If it moves, shoot it, make love to it, or both. Arise, shoot, eat. Norm got his deer every year, more for food than for sport. Norm thought that deer were the most beautiful animals that live on land. He found it impossible to declare an underwater favorite.
Norm had acquired his forearm tattoos on his trip to Southern California. He had a job excavating for swimming pools in the San Fernando Valley but was released because he was spending all his time looking for gemstones and minerals during work. Norm had accumulated enough credits to barely be considered a college junior, a low B scholar at that. Doyle recommended that Norm be hired to go to Mars as a technician and diver. The recommendation prompted a visit by Lieutenant Tim, Tania and Kay, who flew in for some Maine seafood, diving, camping and hiking. Doyle moved in with Norm who lived on Bar Island, swimming home when the incoming tide covered the bar to the island. Doyle also learned to mix drinks and schmooze customers for tips as the scheduled week on the central Maine coast grew into a month. Then it rained, and rained, and rained.

Iridium Flares

The park ranger and her backup had the group of forty neophyte star gazers rolling like California grunion on the shell-laced sand of Sand Beach, looking up at one constellation after another, sequencing from one cardinal point of the compass to another. Most of the people had brought beach blankets; Norm considered it down country-like to use a blanket. Norm periodically jumped into the 50-degree water during the presentation. Enough of this, thought Norm. This water is frigging cold and I’ve show these wimps who’s boss. Kay wandered into the water slowly, walking up next to Norm with her eyes never leaving the star-lit sky. [A rough translation of the old Chinese proverb that Kay was repeating mentally is, a man’s got to do, what a man’s got to do.]
Norm thought that his feelings could be attributed to following Kay up too many flesh-colored granite faces in Acadia National Park. Their hands joined without their eyes leaving the sky. Kay swam to Bar Island that night with Norm and Doyle. Later in the morning, Norm concluded that Kay was a keeper.

Working for Wages

Tiny Tim wanted Norm and Doyle to become his drilling assistants and Norm was invited to vacation with pay on the ice after taking his first class medical physical at Lovelace. In renditions of his flight physical travails Norm swore that he heard the Japanese-American physician whisper “Bonzai” under his breath during the examination of his prostate gland. The physician also told him that he had a potential hernia to which Norm replied, “I didn’t before I had this examination.”
Commander Tim asked Norm, “So you just soloed a few weeks ago?”
Norm answered, “Yes. It was beautiful flying without all the screaming coming at me from the right seat. The plane took off like a rocket without my fat ass instructor sitting next to me.”
Nobody forgets the first time he soloed including Tim. Tim had forgot to come to a full stop on his first solo flight around the traffic pattern when he got distracted by his flight instructor jumping up and down, apparently in a rage. Tim had quickly settled down to perform the next two patterns correctly. “Screaming” Biladeau explained that he was freezing his ass off and was doing jumping jacks to keep warm.
Norm knew that it was his diving skills and work ethic that Tim was interested in – all of Tim’s friends had hundreds of hours in jets and months in space. When his friends asked Tim what Norm Garrett’s skills were, Tim would say with a straight face, “Norm’s a bartender.”
Tim told Norm that he could offer him $400,000 a year, room and board, with a signup bonus of $200K to get his affairs in order. Norm looked back in disbelief, saying “What?”
Tim replied with a smile, “$500,000 a year, and that’s my last offer.”
Norm sat down in a daze. Maybe I can get by without bartending on the side.
Norm and Kay were sent to visit Moffett Field to NASA’s Mars exhibition with only a month for Norm to consider Tim’s offer. Mar’s red face smiled with irony when Norm wondered if there’d be any bartending for him to do on Mars. Mars roared when Norm wondered if there’d be any fishing for him to do. To the casual observer, Valles Marineris still made Mars have an unhappy face :(

300 Degrees of Freedom

Liang sat with Qi and Lin in the sauna. Qi and Lin were dressed in one-piece bathing suits and hiking boots while Liang was wearing a robe. The other twelve people were dressed in sneakers and smiles. Martin Venskus, an astronomer babysitting a small array interferometer during the austral winter, was the only person standing. He paced back and forth in the small room, anxious to start the program. The program was running around the ceremonial South Pole in the minus 100-degree Antarctic weather. The remaining members of the group seemed happy just to enjoy the heat, savoring the moment. Mark scanned the group when the red light came on indicating an internal temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Everybody turned his or her attention to Martin who was waving everybody towards the door. He grabbed Professor “Doc” Dieter Kammerer, who was wearing a camera, and dragged him towards the door. The two disappeared out the door leaving the sound of the thudding door in their wake. Norm and Kay left next followed by Qi and Lin. Qi stopped outside the door and started to remove her bathing suit. She looked at Lin.
What are you doing?” Lin asked Qi.
In response, Qi asked Lin, “Are you going to be the only person with clothes on?”
“We’re going to get in trouble,” Lin answered as she peeled off her bathing suit.
Qi and Lin sped after Norm and Kay, who had stopped to wait for them. The quartet ran to the South Pole. Doc was taking a picture of Martin who was concealing his manliness behind the narrow pole. Martin would use this photograph, properly oriented (upside-down) to a South Pole orientation, in all of his presentations back at Socorro. Doc lined up behind the pole for his picture lifting up the sphere that rested on the South Pole. Being in possession of the camera he was obligated to photograph the next four runners singly and in various combinations as well as the next eight stragglers. In spite of some serious tongue teasing, nobody got his tongue stuck on the pole and sphere. Qi and Lin stopped to put their bathing suits on before returning to the building without realizing that Liang had watched their run.
Actually it wasn’t the professor’s ass that was freezing. This unusual case of frostbite was published in the JAMA proceedings and posted, complete with photographs, on the National Radio Astronomical Observatory Website.

Oracle

Colonel Perry, Major Wu and Doyle went to see Zhou to obtain his blessing for a family wedding. Zhou approved but wanted the marriage to be kept secret. Zhou agreed to give the bride away and approved of Lin and Qi’s presence as flower girls.
Zhou requested a briefing, which also included other Dallas and Phoenix flight crewmembers – Major Mikhail Sorenev, Dr. Peter Eisendorf and Tsai Hen. Zhou entered the room with his old friend, the defrocked priest, Sheng Zhi. Wu had explained Sheng’s difficulties with the Chinese government in Hong Kong and his fringe, rejected apocalyptic views of present-day civilization to Tim and Doyle.
Sheng’s twenty-minute presentation predicted political instability and a collapse of the economies on Earth. Oil production, the source of the industrial world’s energy, had passed its peak production in 2002, and it was all down hill with gas and coal from here. Sheng finished his presentation, disconnected his laptop and left the room without allowing a question period. Zhou took over and described the defensive position that the three crews would assume, just in case there were difficulties while the crews were on Mars. Green houses would be expanded with tools and devices for manufacturing and repairing equipment on Mars. There was no opposition to this approach, even though the Russian and European astronauts seemed to be dismissing Sheng as a crackpot. Wu seemed even more reserved than usual. Zhou knew that the colonists on Mars would not be self-sufficient even after the flights of this opposition. He added three tons of freeze dehydrated fruit and vegetables to the Phoenix manifest.
The Russians launched the Dallas and the Phoenix within two weeks of each other during the 2016 opposition. The Dallas was a lander/rover, as big as a motor home. The Phoenix lacked a garage and rover because of its extended passenger list and equipment.
Charon, her pregnancy barely showing, attended the launches with her fiancé, the Hawaiian-born Chinese philosopher, Hsi Wang. Charon would find out that raising children was more difficult than going to Mars.

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