One of the central themes of Immortelle is the first manned mission to Mars, which does have astronauts land on the planet but in circumstances that make the historicity of the event hardly worth bothering about.
But in the real world can we really, really do it? From the POV of technology, not quite yet. Getting a lander on Mars with current techniques works for anything weighing a ton or less. The Curiosity Rover is about the limit. Heat shield, parachute and landing rockets by themselves won't work for a spacecraft that has to be large enough for a complement of humans. Say ten tons or so. There are theoretical ways of overcoming the problem but no tech has yet been developed that can demonstrably do the job. No matter. The world is full of clever people. We'll lick it eventually. What we won't lick however is the cost. Getting people to Mars and back to Earth in one piece will be way more expensive than the Apollo programme. Probably four times more expensive. According to this Wikipedia source - which I've seen corroborated elsewhere - a manned Mars landing will cost at least $650 billion in contemporary money, though probably much more. Say a trillion dollars. The entire Apollo programme from 1960 to 1973 cost about $280 billion in contemporary money. In 1966 NASA's budget reached 4,41% of the entire US Federal budget. That's more than many nations spend on their military. Why so much massive spending to get a couple of men on the moon? There was a unique combination of circumstances in the 60s that enabled the Moon landings to become such an overwhelming priority. First, a healthy and growing US economy which left plenty of cash available for such an undertaking; secondly, a boundless optimism and enthusiasm for progress which the government was happy to foster by spectacular technological feats like getting men on the moon; thirdly, a cold war that had nearly become a hot one, and in which the US had been humiliated twice by Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin. To wipe out that shame and reassure the free world that America was still Top Nation no expense would be spared. We haven't seen a combination like that since. The political desire to get kudos by showing off technological superiority is largely gone. The new cold war between East and West is a grimly practical business, using economic power or just naked military force to cripple one's adversary. It's the difference between Queensbury rules and streetfighting. A Mars landing means less and less to politicians in the new political environment, especially as the prestige that space technology once had is waning. The truth is that the tech is reaching its natural limits. We consider it a major media event when SpaceX gets a few astronauts into LEO - something that NASA itself did for decades and is now doing via a subcontractor. And there is no way for the forseeable future that NASA will get the money to be able to pay anyone to fly people to Mars. That giant leap for mankind may have been as far as leaps go.
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When writing Immortelle I wanted the human technology to be rock-hard. Absolutely everything had to be plausible given what we would expect that tech to be like in 25 years' time. By rock-hard I mean that anything in the book can survive a google test. A google test is when somebody stops reading and does a cursory 15 minute trawl through sites like Wikipedia. If at the end of it he can't find anything that contradicts the bit he stopped at then that bit has passed the google test. It doesn't have to survive the fine detail of a doctoral thesis that gives a 57% probably it should have gone differently. I've written an academic book for academics and I know how that goes. A novelist doesn't have to lock himself in the same pillory (thank heavens).
Why go to the trouble? Because I believe Science Fiction should still be capable of doing what it originally did: spin a fictional yarn that might just - ooh, the thrill! - actually happen in the real world. When Jules Verne wrote From Earth to Moon in 1865 the idea of using a giant cannon to shoot a spacecraft to the moon was not considered absurd, and Verne spent some time doing calculations for the trajectory. This kind of realistic world building gives the story it contains a solidity and immediacy that pure fantasy does not. It's what sets The Day of the Jackal apart from other political thrillers. The difficult part with this kind of SF of course is getting an interesting story out of it. You're very limited in what you can do out in space or on a planet like Mars. The Martian isn't completely hard SF: it cheats on the power of a Martian storm and it forgets another crucial problem with staying a long time on Mars (which I can't mention because it would spoil the plot of Immortelle). I also cheat from the middle of the novel onwards but in a way that doesn't obviously undermine the science. Up to the reader to decide whether I pulled it off. I've finally decided to get off my derriere and self-publish my novel Immortelle. I had hawked the MS around a few lit agencies but we know how that kind of thing goes. Then I lost interest in it (as I tend to do with anything once I feel it is a finished product) and forgot about it for a while. But it seems a pity to let it disappear after I had put so much effort into it, so here goes.
The novel takes place in the 2040s. NASA and the ESA have financed a joint manned trip to Mars. The West isn't the focal point of world economic and military power at this point, with a rising East tempered only by the fact that China and Russia are at loggerheads. The Mars trip is a prestige mission in the same way the Moon landing was prestige mission. It's likely to be a once-off as going to Mars is far more expensive than going to the Moon. But everything changes with the arrival of 1036 Ganymed, biggest of the Amor asteroids, that is knocked off course by an object from the Kuiper belt and is now scheduled to score a bull's eye on Earth. The plan is to deflect it with nukes, but then something else arrives on the scene that changes everything, again. And with that appetite-whetter, off you go and start reading.... :-) Critiques, suggestions, etc. are welcome here. I put a good deal of research into the science (with some useful input from Andy Weir...name dropping, yeah!) as I wanted the technology to be watertight. With Google at our fingertips we have no problem picking holes in what passes for hard SF. If you're going to do it to my novel I wanted to make it a challenge for you. Have fun! |
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