As if on cue, Richard walked in clutching
papers in his hand. “I’ve completed the flight plans as you requested, but I’m
pretty sure you’re not going to like them.”
“You see what I mean? It only took him
thirty minutes. Well done, Richard. What do you mean I’m not going to like the
plans?”
“Well, the Earth is coming up behind us, so
it was easy for me to formulate a flight plan to launch and intersect Earth’s
orbital path just as Earth arrives there and then swing in to an orbit around
it. You could achieve that in two months from launch, but then you have to set
up a docking maneuver with the space station, transfer crew and supplies onto Albatross, and finally execute an
extraction from Earth’s gravity, say forty-eight hours after establishing the
Earth orbit. In that time Earth will have pulled ahead of Mars by 1,200,800
kilometers. Then it gets even more complicated. I won’t bore you with the technical
specifics, but even the best-case scenario is that when you launch from Mars,
you won’t be landing back on it again for at least nine months.”
There was a huge combined intake of breath
and then silence, until I eventually broke it.
“Let me ask you something, Richard. If you
had the choice to go and rescue the astronauts on the ISS or to stay behind,
what would you choose to do?”
“I would choose to go, of course! Those
people aboard that space station will perish within four months without our help,
and we are the only people in a position to help them. There is no choice; we
have to go.”
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