Back to the Moon-ARC

Chapter 4

Retired Navy pilot Paul Gesling paced in the waiting area outside the office of Gary Childers, president of Space Excursions. Gesling, who was too tall to qualify as a NASA astronaut, looked more like a recently retired professional basketball player than a soon-to-be commercial space pilot. His forty-one-year-old frame was covered with muscle, and his piercing green eyes and coal-black hair gave him the appearance of being some sort of wealthy playboy—at least to the ladies that he frequently found himself in the company of. And they seemed to like it—and him.

He grew tired of pacing after a while and sat on the plush green couch in the waiting area. Being one of those people who was uncomfortable just sitting around without something to read, he absentmindedly picked up one of the brochures that described the company’s history.

The Space Excursions headquarters in Lexington, Kentucky, was everything one would expect of a company founded, owned, and managed by a man who had made his billions in coal. Rich, thick carpet and high, ornately carved ceilings adorned every room in the twenty-five-story building that served as the global headquarters of both Space Excursions and Coal Tech, Inc. The glass and steel building might not be the tallest in town, but it was certainly one of the most striking. A French architect, whose name no one could recall without resorting to looking it up online, had designed the building and reserved the top floor for the company founder and CEO’s pet project, Space Excursions. A dedicated elevator running up the north side of the building served to remind all visitors that they were leaving coal country and entering the twenty-first century.

Gary Childers, having lived through sixty revolutions of the Earth around the sun, as he liked to put it, was a genuine space geek. Born and raised in Kentucky, he had made his fortune in coal. Of course, having started with a smaller family fortune certainly helped. He made his money and career in mining, shipping, and selling coal, but his heart was always in space. His interest became his business after the success of the first commercial human space flight back in 2004 with the launching of the Paul Allen and Burt Rutan project, SpaceShipOne. While other companies were forming to send people to Earth orbit, he decided to do them one better and offer a commercial ride around the Moon. Space Excursions was born.

He hired the best and brightest engineers and scientists from America and around the world to make his vision a reality. With a manufacturing facility in Nevada near the Las Vegas Commercial Spaceport, Space Excursions quietly took the lead in the next step of space tourism. Over a thousand people had now paid over two hundred thousand dollars per person to make suborbital flights with his competitors, and several millionaires had paid the Russians to take them to orbit. Now it was his turn. Five people had paid twenty-five million dollars each for a seat on the maiden flight of Dreamscape, the flagship of Space Excursions. Twenty-five more had made deposits for the next flights, the first of which was scheduled to occur within six months of the first. It had taken a little over fifteen years to get to this point, and Childers had selected Paul Gesling to be the pilot and commander for the first flight.

Thumbing through the rest of the brochure, Gesling saw the usual corporate mumbo-jumbo marketing and financial statements as well as some pretty pictures of the Space Excursions Nevada facility, at which he had practically been living for the last three years. He glanced over the section called “Company at a Glance” and saw listed the other two divisions of Space Excursions that sold their wares to either NASA or the Pentagon. He didn’t have anything to do with those operations. Commercial space was his sole interest. The NASA work was done mostly at the Nevada facility. The work for the Pentagon was performed just outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Gesling was still thumbing through the brochure when Childers’s door opened and the company president waved him in. He tossed the brochure back into the stack and entered the office.

And what an office it was. First of all, it was large. It had the usual corporate furnishings of desk, meeting table, and bookcases, plus obligatory corporate photos along the walls. What made it stand out were the models. Models of virtually every piece of space hardware that had been flown by the United States, the U.S.S.R. or Russia, China, Europe, a few from India and even Iran. They were everywhere. Suspended from the ceiling was a model of the International Space Station flanked on each side with Russia’s Mir space station and the U.S. Skylab. Along the north wall were models of each of the rockets that had carried humans into space. The east wall was graced with models of rockets that carried only satellites and unmanned spacecraft. The south and west walls were the windows that made his corner office, and high above each window, just out of direct line of sight, were hanging models of spacecraft—well over a hundred of them.

Gesling took the seat directly across from Childers, and both men sat down at about the same time.

“So, to what do I owe this pleasure?” Childers began. “Your text said it was important but not urgent. I don’t get many of those. Usually everything is urgent and important.” Childers, with his full head of closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair, looked the part of a corporate executive. He could have been the CEO of any large business or a Wall Street executive. He had “the look”—the look of a man with money and power.

“Well,” Gesling started. “Gary, you know I am dedicated to this flight. I’ve worked my butt off getting ready. I’ve been with you for seven years, helped you make the pitches to the board and the regulators, faced the media, and I even took that low-blow interview for 60 Minutes that made us—both of us—look like fools eager to part with our money. But I’ve just about had it up to here with some of the pantywaists we’re taking to space.” Gesling quickly moved his right hand to his forehead as he completed the last sentence and then dropped it back down to his side.

“I’m a pilot, and a damned good one. I flew for the Navy and faced hostile fire more than I’m supposed to admit. That ‘police action’ near Indonesia just about became a war between China and us, and let me tell you, for those of us in the planes, it sure felt like war. I’ve been chewed out by the best the U.S. military has to offer. You’ve given me a few that I’d just as soon forget. Dodging missiles is a piece of cake compared to what you’ve asked me to do—and I am not talking about flying Dreamscape. She’ll be a pleasure. It’s the damned customers that are driving me crazy!”

“You’ve got to be kidding” was all Childers could manage to say. Gary Childers was not usually a man at a loss for words. From the look on his face, he seemed frustrated with Paul. Paul couldn’t understand why.

Looking exasperated and more desperate than a Navy fighter pilot should ever appear to be, Gesling directed his gaze downward to the floor and then back to Childers’s face.

“I am not kidding,” Gesling told him. “Take Matt Thibodeau, for example. First of all, he showed up for the survival training late. While he was there, he kept taking calls on his satellite phone and basically tuned out most of the time. He won’t work with his seatmate—says she’s ‘too bossy’ and will hardly give her the time of day. He’s not yet been able to seal his pressure suit correctly and insists it’s everyone else’s problem but his own. He doesn’t have a clue how to share the emergency air supply and shows absolutely no interest in learning. On top of that, he pukes every time we fly parabolas in the trainer and refuses to acknowledge that it is his responsibility during the flight to clean up his own mess. I cannot and will not clean up this arrogant customer’s puke when we are on our way to the Moon!” Gesling gritted his teeth behind his pursed lips. His jaw muscle tightened tensely.

“And then there’s that Sudanese guy, Sharik Mbanta. Who does he think he is? Sure, his father is filthy rich, but that is absolutely no excuse for him trying constantly to sleep with my trainers. Sharon and Tara are good at what they do, and, yes, they are both pretty good-looking. They are also both very married, and Tara has two kids! But that doesn’t stop Mr. Mbanta. Oh, no. If he propositions her one more time, he’s liable to end up with something removed from his anatomy and stuffed in his mouth by an irate Mr. Tara. I could go on.…” Gesling’s voice trailed off.

“Ha.” This time Childers’s laugh was genuine. “So, the unflappable Mr. Gesling doesn’t like his job as babysitter-in-chief?”

“Damn right I don’t” came the clear and unequivocal response.

“Believe it or not, I understand. But that doesn’t mean I can or will do anything about it. What you need from me isn’t action; you need me to be your counselor. You probably want me to tell you to suck it up and be a man. But I won’t.” Childers sighed and leaned back in his chair before he continued. “Yes, Thibodeau is an ass. He has a reputation for being selfish, self-centered, and an all-around difficult person to work with. He’s also well connected, and if he takes the flight and enjoys it, I suspect at least five others from his circle of friends will sign up for a future flight.”

“Money, Paul. Money.” Leaning forward for effect, he intoned, “That’s one hundred twenty-five million dollars.” Once again leaning back in his chair, he continued. “Mr. Mbanta is a special case. He doesn’t have many friends eager to fly in space. But there are many filthy-rich Africans who have spoiled family members eager for that next thrill that will be lining up at our door once Mr. Mbanta gets home and the African press runs with his story. I cannot do anything about his overactive libido other than offer your trainers hazardous-duty pay.”

Paul was taking it in. He knew he had to suck it up, and he knew that it took money, lots of money, to go to the Moon. But he was not sold yet. Gary Childers rose from his seat and walked around his desk to stand by Gesling’s chair.

“Paul, I’m the president and CEO of a Fortune 500 company. I don’t just deal with contracts, the futures market, and keep up with the latest green-energy legislation. I find that I spend over half my time managing people. The buck stops here on everything in the company. We recently fired an employee for selling sensitive corporate data to a trading company that was actually owned by a Chinese sovereign investment fund. The guy is now under investigation by the FBI, yet he sues us for some alleged prejudicial misconduct. It seems the man is also a member of some offbeat religious cult, and he claims we singled him out because of it. I can’t tell you how many meetings—how many hours—that’s taken. And the list goes on. I simply do not have time to whine nor to hear my key people do so.”

“I am not whining. I’m just used to dealing with people who take orders and, most of all, take their mission seriously. Out of the five passengers you’ve given me for the first flight, three are okay. The other two I’d just as soon see kicked out of line and replaced with their backups.”

“Kicked out?” An incredulous tone appeared in Childers’s voice. “Captain Gesling, that is simply out of the question. Let me remind you that I have a backup for you. This is a business—not the military—and these are paying customers. They are paying us millions of dollars for this trip, and unless I determine that one of them is a risk to the flight, they will all, by God, be flying. So, and I said I wouldn’t say this, but by damn, suck it the hell up, Paul! Stop your damned whining and do your job. Make it work and quit involving me at every hiccup!” The tone in Childers’s voice went from incredulous to borderline anger, and it was clear that he wasn’t going to put up with much more of Paul’s whining. Gesling really hadn’t thought of it as whining until just then.

“Yes, sir!” was all Gesling could say at this point. He was used to following orders, and that was exactly what had just happened. He had trained too long and too hard to let Thibodeau and Mbanta cost him a trip to the Moon. It was all he could do not to stand at attention and salute. Given Childers’s mood at this point, doing so might have cost him his job—and a chance to go to the Moon.

“Damn right.” Childers’s tone returned to a more businesslike one as he retraced his steps back toward the other side of his desk. “Was there anything else?”

“No, sir.”

“Very good. Now, I’ve got that personnel matter to attend to. If you will excuse me?”

Taken aback at how this informal “chat” had nearly cost him his job, Gesling arose uncomfortably, but quickly, and walked back toward the office door. As he neared the exit, two models on the rocket table caught his eye. Clearly visible on a simulated lunar landscape were the Apollo lunar lander and the new Altair lander that NASA at this moment was commanding into low lunar orbit as part of their unmanned test flight.

“Yeah,” he muttered as he opened the door. “I envy those guys.…”