Von Neumann’s War

“During the cruise phase we’ll have time to catch our breath and to conduct some on-board systems diagnostics. We’ll have two teams: one for checkouts and calibrations and the other for trajectory optimization and correction maneuvers. Also, at this time the recon operations team will, as I said previously, begin shaking down the passive science instruments and start taking data.

“As a side note here, we’ve looked for a space qualified 50- to 100-centimeter aperture diameter telescope that was designed for any previous classified or unclassified mission that could be commandeered for this mission. Unfortunately, we have not found one anywhere. So, in the interim we will, today, develop the telescope design parameters. Then we finish the optical design from these requirements within the next two weeks from this kickoff meeting. The structural design will be complete a few weeks later. We’re already talking to CTI, Lightworks, Composite Optics, and Zeiss optics companies with the hopes that one of these companies can complete the task of constructing our telescope to our design requirements, successfully, within the schedule required. We’ll give all four companies a contract with the hopes that redundant teams will give us a better chance for success and less risk. Telescope team, we’ll break out after this session and get to work. I have some preliminary design characteristics we can start from. I’m wide open for suggestions though.”

One of the optics designers interrupted with a raised hand.

“Uh, Dr. Reynolds, I’m Carla Watts from Zeiss. I have a question.”

“Yes, Carla?” Roger breathed an inaudible sigh to himself. He knew that he had to take and answer the questions. But they took time.

“Does the primary have to be a build from super lightweight like other space optics?” She paused for a second, removed her glasses, and rubbed her nose. “Or could we hog one out of a heavy piece of glass or Zerodur or something. I mean, the reason I ask this is that, there might be big blanks lying around in this aperture diameter range that could be ground out. That would be a lot quicker than building the lattice, filling, baking and all the rest.”

“What would that do to our mass budget?” Roger asked.

“Well,” Carla screwed up her faced in thought for a moment. “It might as much as double it. But, and this sounds like a critical but, it would decrease build time by at least a factor of two, maybe more.”

“Okay. Let’s keep this idea on the table as an option. During the break could you call around and see if you could locate such blanks?”

“Sure. I think I know where there might even be one with a hole already in the center for a Schmidt-Cassegrain design.”

“Good, thanks. Back to the cruise phase: the ops guys will train the telescope pointing algorithms on Mars early on so that the pointing and tracking closed loop software will have learned to minimize the pointing jitter by the time it gets to Mars.

“The final phase will be the approach and the detailed recon phase. Since we don’t plan to orbit Mars, our goal is to collect data from a few months out and right up until the spacecraft passes by the planet and views it from the other side. We’re open to clever ideas about how to extend the mission operation lifetime, but we have yet to come up with anything brilliant in that regard. The spacecraft will pass by Mars at about fifteen kilometers per second, so close approach dwell time will not be very long. During the final phase, Percival will point its active science instruments, such as the lidar, at Mars. During the active part of the recon phase we’ll implement an alternate beam path through the primary telescope objective with a lidar system. Hopefully, we can gather some sub-meter three-dimensional imagery from the laser imaging and ranging system. We intend to take the old canceled and mothballed NASA SPARCLE program’s lidar instruments, dust them off, and update them.”

“Dr. Reynolds,” Fisher said, sighing and holding up his hand.

“Go,” Roger said, shaking his head.

“SPARCLE’s not off-the-shelf and has never been successfully tested,” Fisher pointed out. “What if it’s a dud?”

“Then it’s a dud,” Roger said. “If we have active recon, that would be good. If we don’t, we can live with it. Continuing…” he muttered, looking down at his notes.

“Although we’ll have had months to keep the batteries charged, just in case, we might as well also try and keep the solar arrays continuously tracking the Sun. I originally considered the use of radioisotope thermal generators, but haven’t found any available on such short notice. We could buy some plutonium from the Russians, but that might tip our hand and the nuclear power nuts would probably hear about it, increasing the media presence of the launch. So, solar power it is, again, unless somebody comes up with something brilliant in its place.