Von Neumann’s War

“Mr. President, if I may.” Ronny turned the Huntsville white paper to a page midway through it. The page was marked at top and bottom Top Secret/Neighborhood Watch.

“Look at this graph on page two, sir. You see, this curve shows that the growth of the phenomenon is nonlinear. The fellows from Huntsville who figured this out used data that was several months more recent than the Hubble data that NASA showed you. And if you follow this curve it tells us that the change in Mars’ albedo is such that it’s noticeable now with small amateur telescopes. Don’t forget, sir, that some of the amateurs in the world have telescopes as big as some of the professional observatories. I fear we can’t continue to hide this much longer. Before long, Mars isn’t going to be red.”

The President traced his finger over the curve in the graph. It was a growth rate curve, flat for a while then climbing steeply upwards. Economists saw similar things all the time; he understood it well. He also understood that this could be bad. How, he wasn’t sure, yet. But he knew it would be bad. Even in stocks, growth rate curves were bad. Eventually, something had to break. Eventually the environment could no longer support the growth and the surplus had to spread. Just where would this Martian growth spread when Mars could no longer support the growth?

“So what do you need, Ronny?”

“Well, Mr. President, the guys down in Huntsville have really spelled it out for us in this brief,” Ronny replied, tapping the Top Secret document. “We need to commandeer the ccd cameras from the NASA Jupiter probe, some hardware from three of my programs, a commercial spacecraft platform from Ball, an antenna from a DARPA SPO program, and the nearest Delta IV Heavy or Atlas V launch that we can get. All this is already-paid-for hardware, but around-the-clock effort from about two thousand people for six months is required. The hardware costs are about $100 million plus the commandeered components, launch vehicle with integration is about $150 million, the labor is another $225 million, add about twenty-five percent contingency and we’re talking $600 million total for the project. The schedule proposed shows a six-month build time and a four-and-a-half-month mission time. Normally, with spacecraft design and construction you’re talking about people working nine to five. Just increasing that to twenty-four hour schedules will cut the time, but the money will go up fast. Dr. Reynolds underestimated our interest, however. I believe if we double the budget and distribute some more of the work we can get the probe ready in three to four months, but after that we’ll be looking at diminishing returns. Not much we can do about the travel time to Mars. This is right at the edge of ‘doable’ boost for current systems.”

The President thumbed through his copy of the briefing one last time, sighed and set the paper down on his desk.

“And what will this billion dollar spacecraft buy us?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs whispered something to the NSA about a “contingency” and Ronny could tell the NSA agreed with whatever he had said.

“Mr. President,” Ronny replied, seriously. “I believe this is the only hope we have of getting intel on the situation on Mars. The telescope for the probe will give us a resolution of maybe as good as a few centimeters as it makes its closest approach to the Martian atmosphere. We could see solid detail of the phenomenon at that resolution. It would be like looking at data from a reconnaissance satellite. That’s, essentially, what we’d be building here, an interplanetary reconnaissance satellite.”

“I see,” the President replied. “If there turns out to be something bad there, what then?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Mr. President, Kevin would like to make a suggestion on that point,” the NSA offered.

“Well, Kevin, don’t leave me hanging.”

“Right, Mr. President,” General Mitchell said. “We could attach a fairly high yield nuke to the probe and attempt to steer it toward a central activity point. This might slow whatever this is down some,” the general said.

“Kevin, I’m not sure I’m ready for that just yet,” the President said, rubbing his chin. “Besides, if this phenomenon has changed an entire planet, I’m not certain what a single nuke could do. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, sir,” the Chairman replied. “I agree a hundred percent with that assessment. However, it does give us an option. Without it, we can’t do anything but look at the threat.”

“I agree, sir,” the NSA said with a nod.

“Sir, if I may,” Ronny interjected. “Adding that much mass to the probe will change the trajectory. How much, I’d have to run some numbers, but it might be enough to slow it down considerably. And as you pointed out, having the option or not might not mean much as we’re addressing a planetary scale phenomenon.”

“I can see that, Mr. Deputy Director,” the Chairman said, nodding. “On the other hand, if you can throw a probe to Mars, it means we can boost nukes later.”