Mal-3 Wrote:And on the subject of new material... BA, you up to writing a little thing about Annika meeting Queen Serenity about the RR's concerns? Doesn't have to be long, just enough to outline the argument & set up the fallout.

blackaeronaut Wrote:Mal, I'll give it a good shot, and try for a bit of funny, too. I've got a good idea of how this all went down.

Quote:They called it Yuri's Night. The party was intended to celebrate the first time a human being left Earth to fly into space, the man who had done it and the idea of space exploration in general. It had started around the turn of the century, as a way to get people interested in spaceflight after a long period of public apathy. When handwavium went viral the celebration became something more; a celebration of human ingenuity and the conquest of the final frontier. As people moved into the solar system, the holiday went with them, and Yuri's Night would be celebrated as a public holiday on the Moon, the Lagrange points, Mars, in the sky-cities of Venus and the domed towns of Ganymede.

Yuri's Night 2011 was considered something special. It was the 50th anniversary of Comrade Gagarin's flight, and the 30th anniversary of the first flight of the Space Shuttle. To that end, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had pulled out all the stops, including a massive open house at the Kennedy Space Center. Throwing caution to the wind, they also invited several Fen groups to the open house, including the Soviet Air Force. The Soviets agreed immediately, and since they had an Orbiter plus Russian ties, their shuttle quickly became the star exhibit at the KSC open house.

The Soviets themselves made for interesting attractions, too. Kat and Zib Stewart brought discs of Soviet documentaries and uncut footage and commandeered a tent to use as an impromptu theater. Lena Oorebeek, Ptichka's co-pilot, took tour groups through the shuttle's hold and main cabin, explaining the differences between Ptichka and American shuttles. KJ DeRosia pulled a crate full of model rocketry materials out of the hold and organized a schoolgroup competition 'to put a My Little Pony on the roof of the VAB.'

All in all, a grand time was held by all, and it wasn't until sometime around mid-afternoon that Sullivan Dwyer noticed that someone was missing from the festivities. In the middle of a crowd, he flagged down a Soviet – Cal Renken, the 'flight attorney' – and asked “Where's Captain Fnord?”

Cal looked around and scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Haven't seen Mal in a while,” he said. “Though you might want to check the shuttle hangars.”

Dwyer frowned. “Those are off-limits,” he said.

“I know,” Cal said, shrugging. “Still, if Mal's anywhere, that's where he'll be.”

~***~

The interior of the hangar was well-lit, even though nobody was working on the Orbiter within. Dwyer walked in through the front door and spotted his target immediately. Mal Fnord was up on a work platform near the front end of the Orbiter Discovery, leaning against the safety railing. He wasn't touching Discovery or doing anything to it as far as Dwyer could see, just... admiring the scenery.

“You know you're not supposed to be in here, right?” Dwyer called. Fnord shrugged.

“I'm not supposed to be a lot of places,” he replied. “And yet, there I am.”

Sullivan climbed up the ladders to the platform, grumbling as his not-quite-elderly bones protested at the extra work. “What brings you by?” he asked as he reached the top.

“Well, we were in town and it'd be rude not to stop by and say hello,” Fnord said. Sullivan chuckled. “She's a beautiful machine.”

Dwyer nodded. “Yes, she is.”

“So what's next for her? Graceful retirement in the Smithsonian?”

Sullivan sighed. “You think that,” he said, “but that's not happening. The whole program's gone screwy. There's no more money in the budget for flight ops, but at the same time there's no budget for a proper decommissioning, so they can't leave the OPF. Officially Congress is 'looking into options,' which means we're stuck. We can't go forward or back.”

Fnord blinked in surprise. Sullivan couldn't blame him; this wasn't exactly common knowledge. “That's weird,” Fnord said. “I thought the R&D guys were all about building a replacement?”

That opened the floodgates. “They were,” Sullivan said. “Then the Pentagon started putting pressure on the administration. TSAB has control over all the handwavium in the US, which means we can't even get samples to test, much less the quantities we'd need for real work. The hell of it is, we've got proposals coming out of our ears: Langley and Ames both have next-generation reusable spacecraft designs, Glenn and Goddard have proposals about handwaved RTGs and sensor gear that could revolutionize the unmanned science program. But every time we bow and scrape before TSAB, they reject our proposals because of 'insufficient materials' or 'low probability of useful application' – by which they mean military applications. The Air Force finally has NASA where it wants us, by the balls.”

“Okay,” Fnord said. “Where do the shuttles fit in? Or hell, even unmanned launches? I don't think I saw a single booster sitting ready on the way in.”

Sullivan laughed bitterly. “Oh, that's the best part,” he said. “Despite being terrified of the stuff, Congress in it's infinite wisdom has decided that since handwavium makes ordinary rockets obsolete we should have the money to launch any. And just to make things worse, TSAB squeezes us when we try hiring Fen contractors, or even non-Fen operators like SpaceX or those nuts in the Solomon Islands. They're justifying it on grounds of 'national security,' but it's all about keeping us neutered.”

“Hmm,” Fnord hummed, noncommittally. Sullivan sighed.

“Yeah, I know, I should stop whining, right? At least we still have an agency. Still, we could be out there doing things, the same things you guys are doing, and the fucking Air Force won't let us off the leash.”

Fnord turned to look at Sullivan. “If you had a choice,” he said, “which proposal would you say is the most realistic?”

Sullivan raised an eyebrow. “Does 'realistic' have a meaning when it comes to handwavium?”

Fnord conceded the point. “Let me rephrase that. Which proposal would be the fastest and easiest way to get NASA back into space?”

“Huh,” Sullivan said, running a hand through his graying hair. “I always liked the idea of refitting these things-” he waved at Discovery “- using handwavium, kind of like what you did with Ptichka. It's the most efficient use of existing resources, we've still got the technicians and trained astronauts to fly them... all we need is the handwavium.”

Fnord didn't say anything at first. He looked at Discovery, and then back at Sullivan, as if searching for something in his face, or maybe his soul. “What would you say,” he said after several minutes had gone by, “if I could get you the materials you needed?”

Sullivan Dwyer looked incredulously at Mal Fnord. Growing up in the southern states, he'd heard all sorts of outrageous stories about the Devil, and how the Devil would tempt the innocent and unwary. He felt a growing sensation that standing next to him was, if not the Devil then certainly a devil, and one with an impressive devil's bargain at that. And yet that bargain was incredibly tempting. As NASA's Deputy Administrator he had the pull necessary to make something happen, and the desire to show up the zoomies, the Giuliani Administration and everybody else who said NASA was an obsolete dinosaur in this brave new world.

And yet... “I'd draw the line at giving you my firstborn or my immortal soul,” Sullivan said cautiously. “Other than that, I'm willing to talk about it.”

Mal Fnord smiled. “Well then,” he said, gesturing to the open hangar door where Ptichka sat parked outside. “Shall we retire to my office and discuss options?”