Read Another World :: Chapter 2: Orbital Mechanics

As I step out of the gateway and onto the ship, I grab the first available handrail and wait just a few moments for my stomach to settle. That sudden drop from Earth-normal gravity to freefall is more than a little upsetting and not something that you ever really get used to. There’s been some research lately on the possibility of artificial gravity, but we’re far from a working solution.

The Mona’s Isle had been coasting into the 18 Scorpii system for a few months now and dealing with free-fall was just part of the job, but it wasn’t an easy thing to do. You just had to get on with it though. We’d be firing the engines in just a few minutes to make our orbital insertion and I wanted to be on the bridge with Argus for it. I wasn’t expecting any of the other team members to be with me, but a few of them were waiting behind me for their chance to step through.

“Good morning, Argus,” I managed as my stomach finally stopped churning and I made my way, handhold after handhold to my seat in front of the main displays. “How are things doing?”

“Yes, sorry to mess up the calculations. I guess we all just want to get on with it.”

<Well, I know that many of you haven’t seen Verus from up close. It’s pretty spectacular from here.>

We were cruising in at about 100,000 kph and were now maybe 250,000 km from the surface of the planet. Magnified on the big main screen, Verus looked almost like Earth’s twin, apart from the seeming lack of deserts and icecaps.

“Yes, it looks pretty warm down there, though. Not sure I’m looking forward to that.”

<Well, so far, I’m not detecting any particular hotspots. It’s just a couple of degrees above Sevrin average. Say four above Earth average. Partly due to the closer orbit and slightly brighter star, but also to the 0.7% carbon dioxide atmosphere. It’s just uniformly hot and humid, as far as we can tell from out here.>

“So, Congo or Amazon then. We’ve trained a little in the rainforest. Should be bearable. Mary might find the analysis a bit boring.”

<Yes, she has already had some comments along those lines. As for the vegetation, you probably don’t have much choice if you intend to land close to the equator. Up in the higher latitudes, it’s not bad at all. There are some grasslands and more open woodland, even near the equator.>

“Speaking of which, Argus. Have we decided on a prime meridian yet?” It somehow seemed quite important for us to have a working co-ordinate system as soon as we could. We’d waited until we were close enough for good imaging before making the decision and then had left this in Argus’ safe hands.

<Yes. I’ve picked the western bank of the mouth of that big river that ends just south of the equator. It’s pretty hard to miss, from any distance.> As he spoke, the view changed to include and overlayed latitude and longitude grid in yellow. There’s a flashing marker added to indicate Argus’ chosen zero point.

“Morning, Chief,” Toby calls as he manhandles himself into the seat to the left of me. He was shorter and bulkier than me, making the movement in free-fall look a lot easier for him than for me. His normally flamboyant blond hair was carefully tied back today. “Wow. That looks like quite a planet we have to work with.”

“Those thunderstorms look like real monsters,” Mary mutters as she slips into a similar seat to my left. Her wiry tight curls are much easier to manage in free-fall than Toby’s flowing locks will ever be. Her almost midnight black complexion is a stark counterpoint to his paleness. “We’ll do well if we can stay away from the worst of them.”

“Yes. It’s a bit like Earth on thermal steroids, isn’t it?” I ask them both as we continue our approach.

“It sure is. A very pretty world, though,” Toby adds.

“Argus, how long until you start the burn?” I ask.

“You heard the AI. Get strapped in for powered manoeuvres guys,” I call out. All in all, about a dozen members of the crew have arrived and are taking their seats. That’s more than half of the initially assigned team.

We’re heading towards the nighttime terminator as we approach and I can’t help but wonder what our final few moments of thrust will look like from the surface. The sudden appearance of a strange moving star perhaps.

The faintest rumble passes through the body of the ship as the thrust comes on line at a little over one gravity – actually one Verus gravity. We are suddenly back to our normal weights – or thereabouts – as the thrust steadies. Argus quickly changes the viewscreen to show orbital data, the glare from the thrusters blocking much of the view of Verus.

“Right folks,” I call as I unfasten my belt. “We’ve got about an hour of deceleration or so. Let’s make the most of it and get as many readings as we can during the final approach.”

<62 minutes, Peter.>

“Thank you, Argus. Do give us a warning, won’t you?”

I’m glad to see everyone around me getting down to work. I know that what we are doing for this hour or so isn’t really important in the scheme of upcoming events, but it is nice to have so many members of my crew getting on with whatever needs to be done. For several of the specialists, this will be their first chance to get a close look at Verus and to start their research.

I hadn’t asked everyone to be here for orbital insertion, so it is good to see so many people taking the chance to get an early start, even if it messed with Argus and his calculations a little. Let’s face it, he’s not had all that much to do for most of the past forty years or so.

There are advantages in travelling quickly, but there are also disadvantages. In the final analysis, it takes the best part of a year to get a ship like this up to speed and then the same amount of time to slow down again at the destination. For more than 90% of the journey, the Mona’s Isle was travelling at a high percentage of light-speed. We actually managed to achieve 81% in the end, a good balance between the time taken to make the journey and the huge amounts of reaction mass needed.

Our highly evolved and refined magneto-plasma-dynamic thruster designs are extremely efficient, but there is a limit to the speed of the exhaust gasses which limits the final speed of any payload. There was previously, of course, the traditionally held limitation on the amount of fuel being carried that was finally removed by using a gateway pipeline to keep the fuel flowing directly from Earth.

Carried further, it is bizarre to think of using a gateway to bring across the fuel needed to keep the fusion reactors running that provide power to the very same gateway.

Still, here I am, standing on the working bridge of a starship with a mass of over a thousand tonnes, decelerating at just a little over 1g on its final approach to a brand-new world ripe for exploration.

I feel I should practise what I preach and spend much of the next few minutes taking more detailed spectrographs of the various vegetation and trying to analyse whether there is any plant-life in the oceans. I am, as many of us are at this time, hampered by engine glow, but I try to make the best of it and let the time pass.

<Five minutes until insertion manoeuvres.> Argus calls out even as I am absorbed in the figures coming back from the telescopes and spectrometers. <Better think about strapping in for final corrections to our insertion point.>

“Argus, have you finalized the orbital parameters already, or are we going to work our way down to a final altitude?” I ask him as I take my seat and fasten my belts.

“I’m fine with that, Argus. Anybody who doesn’t want to do 2g, get back through the gateway right now.” Toby looks across at me and frowns. I manage a quick smile that he returns before pulling his straps a little tighter. “No shame if you want to avoid it, but if you stay, you have to stay for it all. You won’t be able to walk to the gateway.” I add.

I was well aware that landing, if and when we eventually got to it, was going to need us to experience a little more than 3g, but if we chose to, we could all stay on Earth and leave it to Argus. I’d actually already decided that I wanted to experience it and I knew that Mary at least was planning to join me.

“I always loved theme-parks,” she tells me as she too straps back in. “This should be quite a ride!”

The main thrusters cut briefly, replaced by a multi-part blast of thrust in different directions that last for what seems like a minute but is, in actuality, only about twenty seconds. Argus fights us into a different orientation and the main engines come back to life. The forces increase as Argus brings them up to a power level that they have never used since they were tested in the factory on Earth. I can feel myself being lightly crushed back into my seat and down towards the floor. It’s an unpleasant feeling, but not an overly uncomfortable one and I know I can take it for the timescale required.

Argus has the decency to fade the burn out to zero over a couple of seconds, much more comfortable than the alternative of just cutting us to freefall instantly. I honestly thought for a moment that he might just do that to shock us on purpose.

“Okay, people, let’s start gathering data. I want all the scans started as soon as you can. The quicker we have a full planetary map and survey, the quicker we can get down there and see what it’s like.”

There are multiple quiet calls of affirmation from various directions and a few people are already out of their seats and moving about carefully in freefall once more.

“Argus, how quickly can we have the confirmation probes ready to drop?” I want to get sensor packages down onto the surface as soon as possible. We simply can’t analyse everything from altitude and need to have spectrometers and samplers on the surface.

“No, four is fine. That is what we discussed on the approach. How long to set up the pattern and get them all down?”

“Thanks Argus. You seem to have it all under control. Go ahead with the drops to your best pattern as the targets bear. I’m going back to the gravitational comfort of my office.” I unstrap and handhold myself back to the gateway.

<I’ll keep you posted, commander.>

This is the tricky bit. I have to position myself so that I am standing in the virtual gateway and then push through. Gravity is going to grab hold of me as I do so and I’m almost certain to fall over on the other side, even after doing it dozens of times. The Earth side of the gateway is well padded and clear of obstructions to help with this. At least I’ve never lost my last meal on arrival, in either direction.

All the public gateways back home are set up in pairs, as it is not practical for large numbers of people to go in both directions at the same time. Here we have to make do with a single and it’s important to make sure you can see through the mist before you take those last couple of steps.

Well, the best I can do is sit for a few moments on the padded floor and wait for my senses to settle. I am as used to the sudden change as anyone can reasonably get and after just thirty seconds or so, I get back onto my feet and head off down the corridor towards my office.