Century-old Schaefer Station sprawled a pole of the moon to get sunlight on at least half of the arrays of solar panels throughout the monthlong day. The roof was about thirty meters below the surface. Four widely spaced giant terraria provided fruits and vegetables. Liquid circulated between them and through the domes to maintain stable interior temperature and protection from radiation. The reduced lunar gravity enabled such engineering.
The launch site was twelve kilometers away from the living zone and below the surface. Four hours after dinner, the crew of eight left their quarters located on a giant turntable, which provided centrifugal force to simulate gravity close to that of home. The underground shuttle carried them to the launch site.
“What’s the forecast?” meteorologist Raul asked with a smirk.
“Solar flares with a slight chance of meteorites,” responded Savanna with a laugh.
Chen looked at his handheld. “Looks like we’re wasting our time. The computer forgot to initiate launch prep.”
“Yeah,” Lucinda said. “And the Exxon guy didn’t fill up the tank. Damn.”
More gallows humor and inane chatter relieved tension as they navigated the last four hundred meters of the tunnel with multiple turns, ports, and blast doors that slowed progress.
Entering Engineering with its color-coded gray motif on the first floor through a small door, they walked up two flights to the tan-colored quarter deck where they placed the suits in lockers and secured their last personal items. Pilot, copilot, and commander climbed to command and control on the seventh level as the other peeled off to their respective stations. They had a narrow window for launch, since they had to rendezvous with the rapidly moving Long Burn Stage.
Ninety minutes later, precisely on schedule, the engine burn was started. Through the windows at Schaeffer Station, eyes and cameras viewed the tip of the rocket as it began to rise above the surface of the moon. The full ship emerged from the shaft. The light from the launch was also faintly visible to curious telescopists from almost half a million kilometers away. This was the last time any family members would ever see anything but recordings of their loved ones on REAP 23.
Their seven-section crew module, with D-shaped floors, was attached to a rocket called a tugboat. It had a separate, small crew. For almost thirty minutes, they moved at three times gravitational acceleration, 3 g, before they achieved at a speed of forty kilometers per second and in perfect closing angle with the enormous Long Burn Stage. The engine was cut, and the crew was weightless for the next twenty-four hours.
The next day as they coasted close to the rendezvous with the engine that would carry them out of the solar system, trio of distant but expected explosions and hard shudders was followed by “Separation successful,” Chen announced so all aboard the crew module and the tug could hear.
“Look at the size of that ship!” Maricia spoke as six of the crew gathered in CAC looked at the screen that showed the tug and a part of the LBS in the same moving image.
LBS rockets were all manufactured in weightless space in a process that took ten years. Maricia recalled her surprise on learning this. Her Danish medical education did not include astro-engineering. There was no other way to assemble vehicles of this size. Each was custom built for the length of the journey. On screen was the largest ever built. It had enough mass to propel REAP 23 for eight months of 1 g acceleration, eight months of deceleration, and six months of intermittent use to maintain a velocity of 0.7 c, the technical abbreviation for seven-tenths the speed of light.
“It needs an enormous amount of matter to fire for almost two years.” McBain had explained on the day they arrived at Schaeffer months ago. “It’s about nine months to achieve 0.7 c and the same to slow down. It may need to fire up every so often for course corrections, loss of speed, and so on. The engine consists of particle accelerators, which shoot matter at near the speed of light from the exhaust port. The shell is dense, to protect against thousands of collisions with dust-sized specks. Subatomic alpha and beta particles that are most dense near the sun and become sparse deeper in space would provide little or no resistance until they approached the target speed. Striking an object as small as an orange traveling in the wrong direction would end the mission, folks. You need to be vigilant out there.”
“The tug is a ladybug on an elephant,” Savanna said as they monitored its attachment to a secondary dock site toward the rear of the LBS to facilitate docking the two craft. The crew module at this point of the journey had no rockets for propulsion. There was an auxiliary rocket pack that would be used at the end of the mission that was stored in the Long Burn Stage. The REAP 23 stage docked two hundred meters from the tip of the torch, as it was called. This entire complex was coasting in a highly eccentric elliptical orbit. After required additional checks, both the LBS and the tug engines fired up to lift REAP 23 out of orbit. Twenty-two hours later, the tug disengaged. It would jettison its disposable booster, destined to spiral into the sun. The craft would then return to get new personnel, fuel, and supplies for REAP 24. REAP 1 to 23 were now speeding in different directions, each alone in the galaxy.