C James

She was indeed guessing that the operation in Australia would fail. However, she could not be sure, so she had a backup plan; get the tape and edit it, then turn it over to the cartel as part of her presentation. She had it planned both ways; success or failure would both serve her ends. However, she felt that failure would be a better result from her point of view regarding her true goals this time. And yep, Sanchez may well be a fool, if he doesn't see it coming, but he trusts Bridget. He was worried about someone using the tape against him, but assumed Bridget couldn't, due to it being a threat to her as well. He underestimated her... or has he?

You're right. Indeed, Bridget assumed just that, as shown by her reaction when she saw Kookaburra sail with Basingstoke aboard; What I meant to say (and phrased very badly) was that she thought his plan would fail before he got aboard, meaning he wouldn't get that far. The plan was a likley to fail one; it was predicated on forcing Kookaburra into, and then out of, port. In other words, they had to accurately predict just how the other side would react. And, it nearly did fail; had Bridget not been spotted (something that wasn't part of the plan), Kookaburra probably wouldn't have sailed.

Umm, he did find Ares.

Actually, the LEM and the command module had no data link. There were some instrumentation crossfeeds, that's it. For example to transfer guidance system readings from the LEM to the command module, you had to use a pencil and paper. In those days, computers had very little ability. Um, no, they absolutely could not jettison the SRBs or the external tank prior to SRB burnout. There was no remote-command ability to fire the explosive bolts and do so. Such a commandset could have been added easily, but the reason it wasn't is that attempting an SRB jettison before they had reached burnout would have been a non survivable event; the SRB exhaust plumes would have destroyed the shuttle orbiter and all aboard. The same is true for attempting to detatch the shuttle from the external tank (the SRB's attach only to the external tank, which the shuttle was mounted to.) prior to SRB burnout; it would be a very fatal move, zero chance for survival. They did have abort scenarios for after SRB burnout, including a transatlantic abort, but those depended upon how many of the three main engines had failed, and the payload weight. The only time they had an in flight launch abort was when a sensor failure shut down one of the three main engines (the shuttle was Challenger in that case), but they were far enough into the flight to abort to orbit via throttling the remaining two past 100%. They were damn lucky; had they not figured out it was a sensor failure and overridden the shutdown on the two remaining engines, they'd have lost them as well (they have no relight capability) and the shuttle at that point was on a trajectory "black zone", meaning that it's trajectory and reentry angle were not within the survivable envelope. A shuttle main engine failure during the SRB burn could be handled by an abort mode (return to launch site abort) but, they'd still have to ride the SRB's to burnout; There was never even a theoretical scenario where the shuttle could survivably part company with the SRB's pre burnout. (at just over two minutes into the flight). Nope... only if it's due to misconduct, violation of orders, etc. Collateral damage (including civilian deaths) happens in military missions all the time. IMHO, yes; it wasn't just an accident, it rises to the level of negligent homicide. I'd be fine if they'd just fired those responsible, but so far as I know, the only people who were punished were the two Thiokol engineers who tried to stop the disaster from happening. Can and do. Quite a few parts of the shuttle were made from carbon composites, including the wing leading edge, which was carbon-carbon. They can go beyond that now, but even in the early 70's (when the shuttle was designed) The Dragon capsule makes use of it for some components, including their reusible heat sheild. (before now, capsules used ablative sheilding; it partially burned away during reentry). The shuttle and the X-37 use ceramic tiles, but the Dragon's PICA-X sheild is one peice, and also far more resistant to damage than tiles. NASA developed PICA, but SpaceX changed the process, getting a better result and loweiring the cost by a factor of ten.

It's only this attempt on Kookaburra that was really aimed at Sanchez, so as the narration says, "that would soon change." The story is nearing its conclusion, and there might possibly be, near the end, a moment that could be described as ever so slightly tense. Though no cliffhangers, of course.

Bridget is sneaky... This time, Trevor and Kookaburra were mere pawns in the great game she was playing against Sanchez. There were many clues as to what she was up to; her seemingly incongruous reaction to apparent sucess (seeing Kookaburra sail with Basingstoke aboard)her cheerful demenor after Sanchez had treated her like an underling (which would normally have infuriated her)and her involvement with a plan that was flawed; it was predicated on driving Kookaburra into port, and they back out. Far too much could go wrong with that. It's not like her to do things like that, unless she's up to something. And BTW, there are no cliffhangers.

He's quite dead. But no cliffhanger!!! Bridget hasn't actually viewed the tape, but she knows basically what's on it. We find out exactly what it is in a chapter entitled "The Last Secret of the Ares" which is coming soon. In the next chapter or the one after (I can't remember offhand) there's a bit of narrative that summarizes what's going on (the motives, not just what they are, but what they have been and how they have changed) for trying to get both the boat and Trevor. That's there because it's been so long, plus rather complex. Yep, that's exactly what they are doing; using Atlantis as a stand-in for Kookaburra for the planned rondevous with Bridget. If she goes, she'll have one hell of a surprise waiting. Interesting that the pressure on Sanchez they are providing plays right into Bridget's hands. As we've seen with Bridget, she only kills when it suits her goals; she lifted the hit on Lisa and Joel when it was no longer useful to her for them to die. Well, she also kills if she's betrayed; Arnold Bellevue and George Alfred would attest to that, were they still alive. However, that little photo shoot she did in Geraldton, which we now know was to demonstrate to the cartel that taking care of the matter would be easy; it involved blasting the boat to pieces. That would not be a good thing for anyone aboard. Yep, things do seem to be converging on the Bahamas... If Bridget succeeds against Sanchez, she'll be massively powerful, with the Bahamas as the seat of her power. Trevor and Shane would be well advised to stay well away from the Bahamas if that happens. Bridget had no idea whether or not the guys would survive if Bassingstoke got aboard. She'd assumed (quite logically) that his plan would fail before that point. However, always the planer, she had a backup option, which we saw when it looked to her as if it would work; get the tape and not just destroy the boat (with the tape on it). She would have then used an edited version to make her case against Sanchez. One thing to bear in mind; Trevor has never been directly in Bridget's sights; always before, she's gone after him using Sanchez as an intermediary, or in the case of Geraldton, when she didn't really want to succeed (yet) because Kookaburra wasn't the real target: Sanchez was. And good point; just what is the First Amongst Equals up to? That's not part of Bridget's plan; she doesn't know he's doing it. That first line of the prologue... the prologue is the key to the story in a great many ways. And Rick, thank you for your help on the chapter.

Interesting! That looks like it could be a next-generation LCAC (The hovercraft landing craft the Navy and Marines use).

A great many things about SpaceX's mission to the station impressed me; it was nearly flawless. However, the thing that impressed me the most occured months before launch; SpaceX delayed the mission in order to do a complete rework of the Dragon's flight software. They did this partially due to NASA concerns, but went well beyond that. That could not have been an easy decision; it caused them a lot of bad PR. However, they took the dealy in order to reduce risk. They, unlike NASA, didn't take risks to keep to a schedule. NASA can do many things well, but launch systems do not seem to be amongst them. Better, I think, to get them out of the launch business and let them concentrate on reserach and exploration. SpaceX and others seem far better suited to providing launch services. I earnestly hope the senate-designed Space Launch System is canceled; it's a massive boondoggle, and will only drain funding from useful NASA programs. It already is. The problem is that this is a boondoggle that has bipartisan support; the two senators who took the lead on creating this project, Bill Nelson of Florida and Kay Baily Hutchison of Texas (A Democrat and a Republican, respectively) rounded up quite a few senate supporters from both parties. They are intent on keeping all that's bad about the shuttle program; massive cost and a flawed design. I'll defend NASA on one issue; no launch abort system for the shuttle. They could not have one; due to the system design, the weight penalty was too large. Every pound in an abort system is a pound of parasitic weight, and an abort system for shuttle would have weighed a lot. However, on the flip side, NASA is putting all sorts of constraints on companies such as SpaceX when it comes to manned launches; they are insisting that every element of the launch system be "human rated", and meet exacting criteria (such as very demanding launch phase abort capabilities). The irony here is that the space shuttle, by NASA's own definition, was never a "human rated" vehicle. And neither was the Ares1, the canceled NASA manned launch vehicle that was part of the canceled Constellation program (the failure modes of its shuttle-derived solid rocket booster stage included quite a few that would prevent any survivable abort during a launch).

King Hunt is up. In this chapter, we learn a great deal, including the reason behind some seemingly incongruous actions by Bridget in recent chapters, such as her reaction to seeing Kookaburra sail with Bassingstoke aboard. We also see the explanation for some of the chapter titles, such as Queen's Gambit Accepted. We also finally see the reason behind that photograph of Lisa, taken on the streets of Newark, many chapters back. BTW, this is a very large chapter, about twice normal size.

That's great news!!! Thanks for letting us know, and I hope all goes well.

Chapter 124: King Hunt For those who would like to follow the action on a map, here's a link to google maps, centered on Geraldton, which can also be moved and zoomed to show other areas mentioned. Bridget studied the GPS for a few moments more, and made her decision. She took a deep breath. “We know that Basingstoke has told them a great deal, however he could not tell them what he does not know; the names we are traveling under. He knows there are two of us, so we shall fly out separa

I can't say much at this point without giving spoilers, but I can mention that Bridget knew Rachel was alive; Bridget had been told this, before leaving Florida, by her mole there; the assistant state attorney (the one Gonzalez took down). So, Rachel being alive was no surprise. Rachel being in Gelaldton and whacking her with a cane, though, was a big surprise. The bows... It would be the forward few feet that were replaced; less than eight feet. The crew cabin's forward wall is the bulkhead referred to, so the crew cabin would not have been replaced on either boat. BTW, the coming chapter is called "King Hunt" and it's a big one; it's almost two normal chapters in size. CJ

Challenger was far from an old shuttle when she was lost. With Columbia, as far as I know they only released the video of the foam loss to the public a few days after the disaster. The crew didn't know either. The causes of both disasters had one thing in common; they were both largely due to bad management decisions. One thing to bear in mind with NASA; since the end of the Apollo program they most often appoint managers who are not experts in the divisions they are overseeing. So, you get a heat shild manager who is not an expert (or even particularly knowledgeable on) the thermal protection system. Indeed, many have no engineering knowledge at all. Once we ceased construction of the original four shuttles, we lost the ability to build more without astronomical cost (restarting production is a massive undertaking for anything highly complex). When Challenger was lost, she was replaced by Endeavour, but contrary to popular opinion, Endeavor was not a new shuttle; her airframe was created from structural spares. Firings for the Columbia and Challenger disasters? Yes, there were, so far as I know, only two, both for Challenger. They were actually forced demotions, to be exact: two engineers at Thiokol. They were trying to stop the launch, and called several people at NASA, thus bypassing the normal chain of command. As a result, NASA insisted that they be fired - for going outside the chain of command. They were demoted instead, and reasigned to projects where they would not be in contact with NASA (and also at a far lower pay rate). So far as I know, those two men were the only ones fired or demoted for either disaster - and this was done because they were calling in with their opinion that the launch temperatures were well out of spec (it was well below freezing) and they believed it was unsafe to fly, due to the fist of O-ring burnthrough. They were right, and NASA punished them for it. That, to me, speaks volumes about what's wrong with NASA, and how different NASA of the Apollo era and before was to what came later. I grew up as a huge fan of NASA... and it pains me greatly to say this, but I now wonder if it's broken beyond fixing.

very close on layout! Here's a pic of a Lagoon 55 from a similar angle. The major change now is that both Atlantis and Kookaburra have dark red hulls, not white.

Chapter 123: Endgame For those who would like to follow the action on a map, here's a link to google maps, centered on Geraldton, which can also be moved and zoomed to show other areas mentioned. Freetown, on Grand Bahama Island, was quiet; just a typical weekday afternoon. For Frank Tittle and Mike Gonzalez, it was anything but relaxing. The meeting between Alan Sharpton, the corrupt DEA agent they had turned, and his contact had been arranged to occur in just under two hours. Gonzale

Endgame is up. BTW to anyone wondering about Lisa and Joel; we'll see them fairly soon. They just haven't been in any chapters lately due to not having a role in this part of the plot.

Winemaker, thank you! That is a fascinating story, and that new design sounds very interesting indeed.

Cliffies? You know I can't write those...

That's what worries me most about them; this is the first Falcon9 flight in over a year. They need to ramp up production. They have plenty of private launch contracts now, so we'll see what the coming year brings. The Russians don't even have a proposed heavy lifter. There just isn't the demand. The only reason SpaceX is going ahead with Falcon Heavy is it promises a lot less cost per pound; were it not for tha,t there's no point to one. Unfortunately, even with commercial, you get politics and political meddling, but at least it's less of a problem. Because there's only so much you can do with chemical combustion; rocket engines today are little if any better than those of 40 years ago. There's only so much energy in a chemical reaction, so there hasn't been a lot of room for improvement. Thiokol makes some smaller military rockets, plus other things, such as the pyrotechnics that inflate the crash airbag in cars. There was no way NASA could maintain the spec they wanted for the boosters and have them made in Utah. Doing that but an absolute limit in diamiter, and also required the segmented design. That was a purely political decision that was out of their hands. And you can't just add a booster to the shuttle; there are no hard attach points for an extra one (such as a smaller SRB, as used on Delta and Atlas) and you'd hit the MAxQ wall; as it was, the shuttle had to throttle down about 40 seconds after launch because of maximum dynamic pressure (they'd throttle back up about twenty seconds later). So, adding a booster of some sort would not work. Going with larger boosters that had a longer burn time though, that would work. Columbia wasn't at the station, it was a spacelab mission, with the lab in the cargo bay. The damaged section could not be seen from any of the windows, and the commander was blameless; NASA never informed the crew of the foam strike, even though they had video. They ASSUMED it wasn't fatal damage. They also passed up at least two chances to find out. NASA screwed up, massively. Their reasoning seems to have been that even if there was a problem, there would be no way to save the crew. They were wrong, very wrong, on every count. There were several ways to image that wing, but they turned down the idea to image it with a recon sat. The most basic way for the Columbia crew to do it themselves would be a free-drifting astronaut on the end of a tether. Just a mild push off to put him on a trajectory past the leading edge. They did have an emergency manned maneuvering unit, but that'd be good to save for a repair job. So, if they did find the hole (it was about the size of a bowling ball) in the carbon-carbon leading edge, then what? NAsa was right in one regard; there was no time to launch a rescue shuttle; launch prep would take too long. Once Columbia had been up a week, there was no chance of help from the ground. Docking her at the space station is one frequently mentioned option, except orbital mechanics made that impossible; their orbits were about 25 degrees apart, and Columbia had nowhere near the needed Delta-v capacity to reach the station's 51.5 degree orbital inclination. NASA, of course, knew that. But, they assumed that there was no way for the crew to patch the wing. They were wrong. The problem was that the wing leading edge takes the worst of the reentry temps. That hole allowed the heat to burn through the wing spar, which is aluminum. However, the leading edge is essentially a hollow C shaped piece of carbon carbon, in pannels. So, there's a void space behind it, between it and the wing spar, of roughly a foot deep. That's what the hole opened onto. They were thinking there's no way to patch it, and technically that's right, but it overlooked the obvious; you don't need to patch it, you just need to keep the reentry heat and plasma out of the wing. To do so, they could have scavenged the ship's interior for a piece of steel that would fit inside the hole, and glued it to the spar. They could have then filled a trash bag (they had those aboard) with water, and shoved it into the hole to fill it. It would freeze, becoming a plug of solid ice (and even under massive heat, a block of ice takes time to melt). Then put foil, duct tape, or whatever they could find as an ablative covering. It'd be no sure thing, but it might have held together long enough. Better than doing nothing. One argument against this idea was they had no handholds, and no longer have the full manned maneuvering unit. That's a weak excuse; even if they had no rope or line aboard, they could have scavenged wiring and made what ammounts to a pole out of various parts, and rigged a harness to use it to hold an astronau; the pole would be held by a second astronaut in the cargo bay, where there are handholds. Wouldn't even need to do that; put a few handholds on the pole and the astronaut could use that; it wasn't far from the cargo bay to the hole. The problem, in a nutshell, was that the decisions were made by people who did not understand the systems, or the tech. They never bothered to ask for advice, such as from the actual astronauts they had in the building, or from engineers, etc.

My inner geek is showing. Yep, I remember the Columbia loss too. What bothermed me then, and still today, is that too MAY have been political in cause. The immediate culprit was the left bipod ramp (that's the chunk of foam that did the deed). Why did it detach? Foam loss was always a problem, but the problem increased when NASA began using non-freon-based foam for parts of the ET, per an EPA mandate. They found ways to reduce this loss to roughly what had been occurring before, thoughb that makes me wonder; what if the same improvements were used on the original BX-250 foam? LEt's not forget; the return to flight mission, flown by Discovery, also lost a big foam panel, very close to the bopod area, and had that come off earlier in the flight (when air density was greater, like with Columbia) the results could well have been the same. That was the new foam. The bipod ramps used for the Columbia disaster were the old BX-250 foam, so the change in foam was ruled out as a cause. However, it should not have been; the bipod ramps are hand-applied, and applied over what? Foam - the ET's "acreage" sprayed on foam. And that foam, on that tank, was the new formula, which even NASA says has poorer adhesion qualities. It also had a greater tendency to "popcorn" - small bits popping off. Could this have caused the left bipod ramp to come of as it did? Maybe. We don't know, and no one seemed interested in finding out. So, in my mind, it's possible that it did, and if so, that's another ship and another seven astronauts lost due to political meddling. And a further factor; one proposed solution to the foam problem was to apply, to the bare metal of the tank, a nylon netting prior to foam installation. The problem was that this would have added around 5000 pounds of weight, which would have cost that much payload. If the shuttle had the bigger (and longer burn time) Aerojet boosters instead of the Thiokol boosters, might this have been done? Maybe. Well, Dragon is now berthed at ISS, so so far, it has been a highly successful mission! SpaceX seems to be doing well, but my one big concerns with them; they keep experiencing schedule overruns, and have yet to ramp up to the high flight rate needed for commercial success. That will be the deciding factor; if they can't do it, they are done. I think they can, but I think it will take them longer than they think. There were many issues with Energyia, but it did fly twice, both time successfully (the loss of payload on the first flight was due to the payload, not the launcher). Falcon Heavy Vs. SLS... you're comparing two different things The SLS payload you cite is not what it would have when entering service, but after a theoretical upgrade nearly twenty years from now. If we want to count that, what about the proposed Falcon Heavy LOX/LH upper stage? That would increase it's payload too. So would strapping on a few small solid rocker boosters such as the ones the Delta and Atlas rocket families use. I was using baseline operational capability; for Falcon Heavy, that's 120,000 pounds (54,000 kg), and for SLS, 150,000 (68,000 kg). However, SLS is still in the early design stage, so that 150,000 is a best case scenario. The best thing about Falcon Heavy; we (taxpayers) don't have to fund it. It's being done, and it's far closer to completion than SLS. SpaceX is saying they'll have it on the pad by December of THIS year, and frankly I doubt it, but I think we'll see it fly next year. SLS, on the other hand, is many years down the line (and many billions of dollars). The biggest problem with SLS is that the many billions it will cost to develop will take most of NASA's budget for a decade. Every dollar spent on it is a dollar not spent on space. That's why I favor canceling it, and using the money for what NASA is supposed to do: explore. Otherwise, we'll see many more cancellations, like the entire Mars unmanned program, which has already been terminated (the rover heading there now will be the last unless this is changed). Now, for cost per pound. Falcon Heavy is supposed to cost about 100 million a launch. So to be pessimistic, let's double that and say 200 million. That's $1666 per pound of payload to LEO. SLS? Don';t forget that you have to factor in development costs, currently estimated at 18 billion (though that's low, as they always are). Flight rate? Maybe one per year. That works out to (including support infrastructural expenses) around 2 billion a launch in today's dollars. So, we doubled the SpaceX cost estimate, let's cut this one in half; a billion a launch for the 150,000 pound payload. That's $6666 per pound!!! So, for a givern dollar in launch costs, you can fly five exlporation missions on FH, 1 on SLS. I'd rather see five missions per year than one. Plus, there's a better option. IF we really want a 150 metric ton capability (more then 20 years away with SLS) SpaceX offered to do it in less than 5 years, for 2 and a half billion total deverlopment , payable upon delivery. A far, far better way of getting there, and getting there far faster and cheaper. Personally, I see no good reasy for super heavy lift yet, so I'd be happy with just canceling SLS. (If you need a larger payload, launch it in segments). But, if they really want a super heavy lifter, bid it out to SpaceX and others. We'd get it far faster and cheaper.

Yes, she still has one stick and one remote trigger remainging. Or she did. It was supposed to be used to send Kookoburra to the bottom after she'd taken some rocks abaord. So, where would it be now? Bridget may still have it... Or Basingstoke did, though it's clearly not on him now. Either way, nothing to worry about. Thank you!!! Thank you!!!! I do have other projects in the works. The first will be a novel for premium, then a new one for the general site. Once Circumnavigation ends, I will however being going on a writing hiatus, I need a break. It's been grueling at times keeping to the weekly shedul, and I need to recharge for a while. I don't know for how long, but it'll be less than a month, and most likley a lot less. (Last time was less than two weeks of actual writing break; writing is a bit of a compulsion for me) One other huge aspect of this, one that might not be apparent; Trevor had his high stress moment, and didn't go PTSD. This is good in itself, but also critical because now HE knows that too. BTW, Benji is just teasing; we all know that FTL's Eric was one of his favorite charachters - poor Eric, he was just so... misunderstood. Thank you!!!!! Thank you!!!!! Absolutly; we can safely rule out anything that might lead to a cliffhanger. Basingstoke did mention that; he told Trevor everything Trevor thoguht to ask, and Trevor did ask about Bridget and the rondevous. I just didn't cover it in detal, because Basingstoke's confession was all stuff we readers already knew. *********** The title of the coming chapter is "Endgame".

Who, me, frustrating? Well yeah, honesty compels me to admit, I can be. Benji!!! Not you too!!! I'm shocked!!! Using the boom to distract Basingstoke was good thinking, and even so, it was a near run thing. And yep, had a shark gone for Bassingstoke at any point, there wouldn't have been much Trevor could do, even if he was inclined to try. Bridget is very good at tactics, and also adapting. But, she's in one hell of a fix right now. Given how stuck up Bridget is on appearances, doing what she's done must have hurt. If Basingstoke gets loose, he's still injured and unarmed against two uninjured, armed guys, who are guarding him closely. I think either Trevor or Shane would happily toss him over the side if he tried. Trevor and Shane heading out to sea was unplanned by the authorities, though it was the objective of the bombings in Geraldton. Ironically, it probably wouldn't have worked had Bridget not been spotted by the only person in Geraldton (except maybe Trevor) who could do so. Even Bridget was shocked that it worked. The stakeout at the airport preculded bringing Trevor and Shane to shore to evacuate them by air. So, they will keep heading at high speed for Fleet Base West, which might have the means to aid them even before they get there. The police ashore will be looking for Bridget and Billy, a lot of them. Bombing a police station makes this very much a major, major manhunt. Billy, however, is in a jam; he can't leave Bridget; he's wanted in Florida, so he's reliant on her. His new ID is through her, and he has no access to funds, so what could he do on his own? He took part in two muders in Florida, so if caught, he's done, and he's got to know that. Trevor knew from bitter experiance what it's like to be left adrift, so yep, he knew just what buttons to push.

Those are both weird, but that second one... wow!

But Cia... I was just trying to persuede the readers to help me fight the unfounded slander!!