How differently would the space exploration develop in a world where you can recruit astronauts that weigh as little as ten grams? Whatever happened to that sheep who wanted to be an astronaught.
I'm unsure about the structure and flow. To dry? To nerdy? To simple? Pleas review.
As Parcat left the stage the spaced out tones of rocket mouse filled the auditorium. On to stage rolled a Segway, apparently self-propelled, it was only when the screen switched to live feed that revealed that the tiny sand coloured blob on a platform where the handle bars would normally be was a kangaroo rat; Dressed in the blue flight suit of the ZSA, aviators perched on his short snout. He saluted the crowd as he lapped the stage before coming to a halt front and centre as the music faded, folding the glasses in to a breast pocket.
"Now when I arrived tonight I was disappointed to find I had left my laser pointer at home, then Dr Simian let me borrow his." He hefted the six by two centre meter stainless steel tube on to his shoulder, holding it like a rocket launcher, striking a pose. "I'm not disappointed any more, he grinned."
"Now to business." He slung the pointer over his back on a make shift harness. "Ron Kapule, astronaut, mechanic on expedition 130 and 140 to lunik base and riding shotgun on the Ibis 2 planetary flyby in three years' time. Still without a driver's licence though".
He looked distracted for a second before snapping back to the audience.
"I'd like you to introduce you to a very special place, one I haven't been yet but hope to visit one day."
Behind him a fuzzy aerial photograph appeared, craters dotted a grey landscape, in the centre stood a bright Wight dome, airlocks visible around the peripheries, rovers parked outside and solar panels stood in banks to the north. A Zootopian flag was the only colour, flying from a flag pole to the south, held out ridged by a meatal rod.
"Unity observatory, Schrödinger crater, far side of the moon, built over ten years to service some of the most sensitive scientific instruments ever constructed. It has accommodation for a crew of six, state of the art chemical, physical and medical laboratory, panoramic views and most recently, infinity pool and volley ball court." He pointed to the locations on a blue print while images of the respective features flashed up, stopping on a shot of four mice in space suits playing volley ball, pink bikinis strapped over bulky life support packs.
"This location, in its short life, has yielded a higher volume of knowledge, adventure and high quality dicking around than possibly any in history. It is a jewel in our civilisations crown."
"And yet we at the ZSA have a significant problem, one that has become glaringly obvious in the last few years; crewed space flight, our greatest adventure has for some fifty years now, remained our moats exclusive exploit. Unity base fills a space barely five cubic meters. The heaviest crew member to ever visit weighed ninety grams; No non rodent has ever left low earth orbit. This is not good enough."
"Many have argued, quite justifiably, that the exclusion of astronauts over one hundred grams has served our space program well. Indeed, we have cheated radiation and gravity with shielding and centrifuges that would be too cumbersome at any other scale; we have saved hundreds of billions on the R and D needed to build and a launch vehicles capable of getting up to a hundred tons in to orbit at a time, this is what we estimate would have been the requirement to get a crew of just three mid class mammals in to lunar orbit."
"The most powerful rocket we operate, the titan, is capable of five tons to orbit. This is after-all all the satellite industry requires, and is enough to get two tons of supplies to the moon, this means that unity was complete within seven launches, and only needs resupplying once every five years. meaning we can support hundreds of individuals off planet at any one time running thousands of experiments, servicing the scientific industries beyond all expectations. This is not something that could have been achieved with large mammals without funding a hundred fold what it is today."
"It dose however mean that when Alan (ham) Hamilton became the first mid class mammal to make orbit forty years ago; well lest just say he strapped his ship on as much as was strapped in to it." A polaroid of A boar, strapped in too a bucket seat, surrounded by hundreds of caged switches grinned from inside his pressure helmet, arms crushed in to his sides by the thin walls of the capsule. "During that flight he burned through enough resources to keep 380 mice alive for the same period."
"Thus As we look to the future, reassessing the purpose of spaceflight, to wider exploration; we find that our lack of foresight is screwing us. One date, little known outside the nerdiest of spaceflight circles will forever be mourned at the bot lab. In the fall of 1977, the planets aligned in such a way that if we had had a launch vehicle capable of just fifteen tons to orbit we could, with a single probe, have made all the gas giants and interstellar space; this was an opportunity that comes once every 175 years and we missed it."
"Then we find ourselves wanting to send probes to even the inner planets, and indeed we have, they weigh barely ten kilograms and consist of little more than a camera and spectrometer. The ibis program that took five mice past Venus last year was as bare bone as it gets and required dangerous in orbit assembly; were not getting boots on any planet any time soon, no matter how small."
"And then we have the immortal ideal, "anyone can be anything", this is fundamental to what makes us great and so it should be in space flight; until now, larger mammals like ham and a few others remained token animals, biological experiments and in the case of the space stations dexterous heavy construction equipment. This isn't good enough, the rodent population has a tradition of producing great systems mechanics, we have after all been servicing the worlds need for intricate mechanisms for the last four centuries; but we simply don't have enough scientists and so many perfect candidates have sailed by purely on the basis they weigh over a thousand grams. As we move further away from home we need higher qualified mammals, not just mechanics, we want to be able to recruit from military sectors and the entirety of the scientific community."
"To quote the great highland terrier himself, we need more power. So Last year ZSA announced the M1 rocket, at a hundred meters tall, it has the mythical hundred ton to orbit payload. An engine test last week caused sound complaints three counties away, a new record for the pyromaniacs with PHDs at RPL."
"This will facilitate our first significant robotic landings, The nerds over at the bot lab are beside themselves; Their already talking about nuclear powered laser robots on mars, we had a drug squad raid the lab but turns out that's what engineers come up with when you give them tons rather than grams to play with. But more importantly it will see maned exploration of the planets and a new class of astronaut."
"And so, to take you in to the future, I would like to introduce a woman who makes a doddery old rocket jockey like me jealous of where she's going, the head of the Leo class astronauts; Cassie Bloomfield."
A sheep, surprisingly young for an astronaut stepped out to enthusiastic applause; the customary blue flight suit looking odd on such a large animal, a severe buzz cut contrasting with wide eyes and wider smile. In the audience one rabbit gaped in recognition, the sheep she'd known at school had headed abroad to study astrophysics, having recognised in her teens that her species was not just a social but a very physical barrier to her dream job, and now here she stood, very delicately fist bumping Kapule; who bowed, turned and took the wheelchair ramp stage left to take his place back in the audience.
"Thanks Ron, she turned to the audience still grinning, well this is thrilling she began; swinging her arms in excitement. I won't bore you with a life story; needless to say When I was ten I decided I wanted to be an astronaut, then when I was thirteen I met a mouse for the first time, bit of a bummer. All the same; a masters in astrophysics and commercial piolets licence later and your chundering in a centrifuge."
A photo appeared, showing her lent over a bucket, a badger technician patting her on the back, the massive arm of the device looming behind them, the audience chuckled.
"Of cause it's not that easy, they also shave you so you'll fit in a liquid cooling garment, but any-hoo. The leo program; The precursor we hope to long distance space exploration for astronauts of every genus. We aim, within five years, to have a permanent orbital outpost maned entirely by a crew weighing over forty five kilograms each. It shall remain a medical and physical laboratory to test the suitability of species for space flight. Were still unsure if we won't just explode up there; but oh well, that's what I'm here for."
"We will be launching aboard the new Artemis spacecraft and M1 booster. Capable of sustaining a Leo crew of four for two weeks. While a ship of this size is more powerful than the ibis craft conducting planetary fly byes currently, it faces a considerable challenge. Traditionally gravity has been artificially generated by spinning space craft; we are now working on a scale where that is impractical. Shielding also has to go, with a standard rodent ship we simply have everybody sleep in a lead case, no longer possible, we would be talking about doubling the weight of the ship."
"So, we expect to encounter o few minor and possibly deadly side effects, or as we at the ZSA like to put it, challenges." she said brightly.
"Our primary concerns are predictably biological. What are the effects of weightlessness on a mammal? We have only just begun experiments with mice in anticipation of the centrifugeless craft of larger mammals. The effects however are hard to deduce, bone loss is detected but we anticipate that the larger the mammal the greater the effects will be."
"So, how does one go about predicting the effects of space flight on large mammals? Well we thought that getting to know the extreme opposite of what we are used to was a good place to start."
"Meet Rich;" an elephant this time, bent over the same bucket, being patted on the back by the same badger in a lab coat, the centrifuge pod behind him; noticeably reinforced; "formally of astrodynamics and honorary lab elephant. The biologists love the data points he's giving us; as many of my smaller colleagues will gleefully tell you, elephants are damn delicate."
The audience looked confused.
"Let me elaborate. Materials don't scale well, so while a mouse's capillaries only have to withstand the pressure of a few grams of blood, elephants virtually identical capillaries have to withstand 245 litters. Start turning up the gees and we have a problem. I, as a mid-class mammal reach G-LOC and pass out around nine G. rich on the other hand;" she turned to the screen. a video played, the young elephant in a green flight suit was strapped in to a centrifuge; lights flashed behind him as he was spun up to speed; the digital readout dialled up to two G, his breathing became laboured then as the dial reached 3 G his ears became limp and his head sagged. "G-LOC" appeared in red on the readout.
"While we have a few tricks to increase tolerance this is still a major problem, the highest we have got Rich to is six G, and that's just for thirty seconds, a launch takes minutes and the lower the acceleration the less efficient the launch as the rocket spends more time in the thick atmosphere. for perspective, were currently launching rodents at twenty G, if we tried this on Rich, as our medical officer put it we'd have a code brown followed by celestial discharge, for those unacquainted with medical slang, look It up, needless to say we don't intend to try it."
"On the other end of the scale we have some interesting results from the vomit comet, our zero G aircraft. In what many are beginning to call the kill Rich program we strapped him in and, well…"
A fish eye video taken from the striped out interior of a large aircraft, rich stood, still in his green suit, at one end while a cheetah stood to one side holding on to a bungee cord with one paw, camera in the other. A green light flashed and both sets of feet left the ground. The cheetah held his position, using his tail to counter balance any rotation. Rich on the other hand was kicking as if trying to swim, his foot contacted the wall and two tons of physicist barrelled down the aircraft, the cheetah dodged by flipping on to the ceiling, keeping his camera pointed at Rich; Rich continued until he impacted the fish eye camera which cut out.
"You'll be pleased to know that only the go pro was injured; Furthermore Rich suffered no immediate adverse effects. However ECG sensors show dramatic changes in the distribution of blood in his body even for this brief period. This we suspect is due to the capillaries in his legs contracting as they no longer half to hold his blood against the force of gravity, forcing it towards his head. A delightful phenomena that some are worried will cause headaches, blurred vision and in the case of larger animals nose bleads or at worst aneurisms."
"Plans to send Rich on a suborbital flight to test this hypothesis is still in the works but rest assured his trials are far from over."
"in the meantime; When Artemis one launches next year; myself, Jake Melvin and Laika Treshkova;" photos of a mountain goat and Siberian wolf posed in space suits in front of the Zootopian flag; helmets under arms, grins on faces; "will be the first to fly without the accompaniment of rodent astronauts. We will be self-sufficient for the two week shake down. If all goes well and we don't start bleeding from our eyes, Artemis 2 will dock with the single module Orion station for a three month stay to begin serious biological experiments, test space suits and the plethora of new technologies needed to support life on an unprecedented scale."
"From there, the sky ceases to be the limit. Having large mammals and heavy equipment on the moon will be vital in the expansion of unity observatory; the current ten meter array can be expanded hundredfold; while mining operations can begin on a scale useful beyond supplying existing bases; servicing larger space missions and even sending rare materials back to earth; not to mention some epic photo ops."
On the floor of a massive swimming pool in front of a mock up lunar habitat wearing space suits stood Laika and Rich, the latter balancing on the formers helmet. If it weren't for the sea lion safety diver floating off to one side the situation would have been utterly surreal.
"I would be lying if I didn't say that the brave men and women of the rodent community haven't done an astounding job, their work has given us forty years of experience managing complex crewed operations on an astounding scale and will likely continue as trail blazers far in to the future. But we have also failed ourselves, maintaining restrictions that have not only restricted us as socially but scientifically. With the leo program we are setting the record straight, proving that we will always be better in collaboration. To counter the now infamous words of a member of my own species, were looking out for the big guys as well."
"These are the first steps that will ensure that when we do put boots on another world and make home elsewhere, we will be doing so not just as a species but as a society."
Cassie bowed to the applause that rolled in from the audience as #spaceforall flashed behind her; looking up at the sound of whooping from the block of police officers. Her eyes opened in surprise at the sight of an old school friend (she hadn't been one for following the news in the hectic months since her graduation). As she took her place in the audience she whipped out her phone searching for Hops and sent a friend request; they would have a lot to catch up on later.
A very nerdy chapter, lots of real world references,
Lunik = USSR lunar probe and rover series
Schrödinger crater = real far side crater near South Pole of moon; named after the farther of Quantum physics and his infamous cat.
The Saturn IV of Apollo fame had a capacity of 140 tons to orbit to take three "mid class" mammals to the lunar surface.
Fall 1977 was the launch of the voyager probes which for years were our only close up view of the outer planets and still our only close encounters with Neptune and Uranus.
Alan (ham) Hamilton, named after Alan Shepard (first American in space) and Ham (first monkey in space (however Ham felt like the unfortunate nick name of a boar))
Highland terrier = Scottie dog (yes I know it a domestic species but maybe there was some weird medieval inbreeding going on in medieval "Zootopian Scotland")
M1 = reference to the N1 rocket, the soviet equivalent to the Saturn IV. It had 36 engines in its first stage alone. It launched once and exploded within seconds.
Rich of astrodynamics = "rich Pernell" off "the Martian"
Look up the medical slang yourself
Nuclear laser robot on mars = curiosity rover (NASA is freekin awesome)
Artemis = goddess of the hunt and wild animals
Orion = her husband
Jake Melvin; Leland Melvin; astronaut with coolest official photo ever, Jake is his dogs name
Laika = first dog in space (USSR); sadly died in orbit
Treshkova = Valentina Tereshkova (USSR), first woman in space
Swimming pool = neutral buoyancy lab