BooksBarbecue
Back Moonseed Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Annotation
  2. Moonseedby Stephen Baxter
  3. DRAMATIS PERSONAE
  4. PART IBIG WHACK
  5. PART IIARD TOR
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. 5
  11. 6
  12. 7
  13. 8
  14. 9
  15. 10
  16. 11
  17. 12
  18. 13
  19. 14
  20. 15
  21. 16
  22. 17
  23. PART IIIEARTH
  24. 1
  25. 2
  26. 3
  27. 4
  28. 5
  29. 6
  30. 7
  31. 8
  32. 9
  33. 10
  34. 11
  35. 12
  36. 13
  37. 14
  38. 15
  39. 16
  40. 17
  41. 18
  42. 19
  43. 20
  44. 21
  45. 22
  46. 23
  47. 24
  48. 25
  49. 26
  50. PART IVMOON
  51. 1
  52. 2
  53. 3
  54. 4
  55. 5
  56. 6
  57. PART VBOTTLENECK
  58. 1
  59. 2
  60. 3
  61. 4
  62. 5
  63. 6
  64. PART VINADEZHDA
  65. AFTERWORD

So the next day they flew down to Alabama, to the Marshall Space Flight Center at Huntsville. This was the centre which had originally been built up around von Braun’s core team of German rocket engineers; this was the center which believed its engineers had pulled off Apollo-Saturn despite the dead-weight of the rest of NASA, and in their approach to engineering they were as conservative as all hell.

The review was tough, confrontational, detailed, laced with that conservatism. Von Braun didn’t fly to the Moon that way, and we sure don’t need some kid from Texas coming here telling us how to fly to the Moon now. Soon Frank was sweating, trying to cover questions to which he hadn’t had time to assemble answers.

But Geena kept pushing. She had the group break into study forums to thrash out issues, and had Frank make conference calls to Houston and other centers, and soon Frank’s rough sketch was being worked into something credible. And, once the Marshall guys started to believe that, hey, this was something they could actually build, they got remarkably enthusiastic. They even started to advise Geena and Frank on how to present to the other centers.

Jays told her she shouldn’t be surprised by the speed of all this. “Hell, we did this before. We’ve been to the Moon. The Moon is a walk around the block. And we’ve been waiting thirty years to be asked to go back… These Marshall folks are tough on bullshit, but they want to make this work.”

And then, only four days after that brainstorm in the Outpost, Geena found herself in NASA Headquarters in Washington, briefing someone called the Associate Administrator for Exploration, and at last the NASA Administrator herself.

The Administrator, a tough woman of fifty with a helmet of steel-grey hair, made a decision after thirty minutes. “She has kind of a lot on her mind right now. I’ll take it to the President myself.”

10

Monica Beus distrusted Henry Meacher from the moment he stood at the lectern in front of the OSTP.

She knew he’d just come from giving testimony over in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, before the Senate committee on commerce, science and transport. And now here he was in Room 476 of the Executive Office Building to give a briefing to this subcommittee of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which reported to the President herself.