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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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Slipping The Surly Bonds Of Earth: William Samuel Henson and the Birth of Aviation
by Chris Oakley
Part 24
Summary: In the previous chapters of this series, we explored the history of aviation and spaceflight from William Samuel Henson’s first experiments with powered flight during the mid-1840s to the development of the first nuclear spacecraft propulsion drives near the end of the 20th century. In this chapter we’ll look back at the establishment of the first permanent human outposts on the Moon and the moment when the dream of a manned landing on Mars finally became reality. ****** The year 2000 marked not only the dawn of a new century but also the beginning of the final leg of the decades-long quest to put a human being on Mars. Technology and spacecraft designs had been steadily improving over the past thirty years, and among all of the world’s major space-faring countries there was a growing sentiment that the time was close at hand when a manned landing could finally be attempted. This feeling was particularly strong in the United States, where both private and government agencies were helping to lay the foundation for a full-time human presence on the Red Planet and Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush was making permanent manned bases on the Moon and Mars a key element of his campaign’s science agenda. In the European Union’s member nations, programs for extended scientific missions to Mars were gaining support among Europe’s most respected science and economic experts. As early as 1998, a joint Franco-German commission on space affairs had recommended that the European Space Agency commit more resources to the goal of an ESA manned flight to Mars by the mid-2010s. Great Britain’s leading space experts were adopting an increasingly Mars-oriented stance in their approach to the job of setting priorities for the next decade of British space science activities. Even San Marino, the tiny landlocked microstate whose entire space budget wouldn’t cover the cost of a single thruster for one of the landers which George W. Bush was proposing to dispatch to the Red Planet in the near future, was getting caught up in the grip of Mars fever. In Russia, new president Vladimir Putin had brought the Russian space program’s own dormant Mars lander project back on the front burner; to him, the project represented not only the chance to expand human knowledge of the final frontier but also a golden opportunity to reassert his country’s greatness in the post-Cold War era. In a fit of patriotic ardor, Putin went so far as to suggest to his aides that the launch of the first manned Russian landing on Mars should be timed to coincide with the birthday of the country’s most celebrated astronomer, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Fortunately common sense overrode nationalist zeal in that instance; even if rushing to meet such a deadline wasn’t hazardous to the safety of the cosmonauts involved, said Putin’s space advisors, it would certainly put a considerable strain on the men of the launch crews at Baikonur-- and besides, Mars would be in the wrong orbital position by then anyhow. During the late fall and early winter of 2000, as the now- infamous presidential ballot recount controversy roiled the U.S. political landscape, NASA probes diligently scanned the surface of the Moon for suitable locales for the first permanent American lunar installation. One of the potential sites inspected by the probes was Mare Tranquilitatus, where John Glenn had made history some thirty-seven years earlier. By the time the Supreme Court made its controversial ruling in favor of George W. Bush in the case of Bush v. Gore et. al., Mare Tranquilitatus had gotten onto the short list of finalists for home of America’s first permanent outpost on another world. In January of 2001, just after his inauguration as President of the United States, Bush called a meeting of his chief science and aerospace advisors to get their final recommendation on where the new lunar base should be established. In a decision which few were surprised to hear, the advisors overwhelmingly favored Mare Tranquilitatus as the locale which would be best suited to house the future lunar facility. It wasn’t strictly for sentimental reasons that they made this choice-- the Sea of Tranquility’s flat, mostly smooth surface was ideally suited to the kinds of overland transit routes which NASA intended to set up as the new base’s main mode of local transportation. ****** Across the Atlantic, the hoopla surrounding the anticipation of a return to the Moon and the beginning of human exploration of Mars was exceeded only by the revelry marking the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of William Samuel Henson’s historic maiden flight aboard Icarus. Everybody from the humblest Welsh farmer to the royal family at Buckingham Palace was caught up in the year- long festivities; even the Premier League soccer organization was cashing in on the festivities, buying air time on the BBC and Sky TV to promote the connections between their clubs’ hometowns and the history of aviation. The highlight of the sesquicentennial festivities was a three-day air show in March held near the grounds of William Samuel Henson’s original laboratory at which aviation buffs from every age group, nationality, and social class came to get in touch with aviation’s roots and glimpse its possible future. On the closing day of the festival a team of engineering students from Oxford University re-enacted Icarus’ maiden flight, much to the enjoyment of the air show spectators; right after the Oxford team landed, jets from the RAF’s Red Arrows aerobatic display squadron buzzed the airfield in salute. The following month, the William Samuel Henson Aerospace Museum opened amid huge fanfare and another Red Arrows flyover. One of the key driving forces behind the Henson Museum, future British prime minister David Cameron, made a rather memorable impression among the guests at the museum’s grand opening when he arrived at the gala flying in early production model of one of the new generation of personal mini-copters which had then just been brought into service by Richard Branson’s Virgin Aerospace. Three months later NASA finally made the announcement Mars enthusiasts had been waiting decades to hear: that the day had arrived for human beings to attempt a landing on the Red Planet. A nine-person crew was being launched from Cape Canaveral in mid- July for a fourteen-month-long voyage whose ultimate goal was to execute a successful touchdown in Mars’ Utopia Planitia region and set up a scientific outpost there to gather new information about the planet along with the asteroid belt separating it from its neighbor Jupiter. The news was greeted with enthusiasm by space buffs the world over; if everything went right this would be humanity’s greatest triumph in the field of spaceflight since Explorer VII landed in the Sea of Tranquility 38 years earlier. But tragically, an act of incredible violence back on Earth would soon take the spotlight off the Utopia Planitia mission... ****** September 11th, 2001 dawned clear and warm in New York City, giving no hint at the near-apocalyptic carnage which was about to be inflicted on its most prosperous borough. Around 8:15 AM that morning, radar operators at the city’s two main airports noticed that two American Airlines Boeing 807s out of Logan Airport up in Boston had suddenly and dramatically changed course; that in and of itself would have raised some eyebrows, but what truly alarmed air traffic controllers in the New York region was that the 807s were flying what looked like a collision course toward one of the larger skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan. At 8:47 AM one of the Boeing 807s slammed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, scattering jet fuel and debris in all directions; within seconds of impact a blazing inferno had been lit inside the building. While FDNY firefighters were racing to the scene of the impact, the other Boeing 807 struck the North Tower and touched off another massive fire. Less than 45 minutes after the second 807 crashed, both of the towers collapsed into rubble. In between those events word came that a third Boeing 807 had hit the Pentagon and seriously damaged one of that building’s outer walls. Before the carnage was over, close to five thousand people were dead and America found herself in a state of war with the Taliban regime that then ruled Afghanistan and was sheltering the attacks’ principal mastermind, Osama bin Laden. NASA’s Mars landing mission, then just over two months out from Earth, got pushed to the back pages of the newspapers as the full weight of American military power-- including a new breed of V/STOL combat aircraft --was brought to bear against the Taliban and its al Qaeda allies. The U.S.-sponsored military campaign to topple Afghanistan’s Taliban regime also marked the combat debut of a new generation of unmanned drone aircraft with new advanced AI systems that allowed them to act independently if they should for any reason lose contact with the human operators who directed their flights from outposts behind the lines. These new drones-- aptly codenamed “Predators” --would quickly prove to be the bane of the Taliban’s existence. Designed to be launched from forward bases that required only a minimal support staff, as opposed to the massive technical crews normally required by more conventional combat aircraft, the Predator had two primary missions: tactical reconnaissance and fast attack runs against enemy personnel or vehicles. They were especially well-suited for the latter role, a fact which inspired the CIA to assemble its own Predator inventory for use in covert operations against al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership. The Predator had the most sophisticated onboard sensor equipment of any combat deployed up to that time; as the war on terrorism progressed, so did the Predator’s development as a tool of war. ****** In March of 2003, as the United States was on the verge of going to war with Iraq for the second time in twelve years, the NASA Utopia Planitia expedition finally assumed orbit around Mars and started final landing preparations. It was a welcome piece of good news for a nation-- and a world --that had had all too much bad news of late. Even in Iraq itself, despite the Saddam Hussein regime’s decree banning its subjects from watching U.S.-produced media broadcasts on penalty of imprisonment or even death, there were nonetheless people tuning in on their TVs and radios or else surfing the Net for any tidbits of information they could pick up about the landing. As the Mars Lander began its final descent towards the Martian surface, billions of people all over the world held their collective breath waiting for the delicate-looking yet impressive craft to conclude its long and historic voyage to the Red Planet. When the vehicle’s landing gear finally touched the surface of Mars and its crew sent Houston the simple but memorable message “We have arrived”, it set off a wave of euphoria around the world the likes of which hadn’t been seen in a generation. For the next two months, the men and women of the first Mars Lander expedition would be the center of attention back on Earth as they undertook the first comprehensive survey of the Red Planet by human beings. One year later, amid considerable fanfare by NASA, the first of three teams of astronauts trained in basic construction techniques departed Cape Canaveral on a historic lunar mission which would lay out the foundations for the first permanent human outpost on the Moon. The outpost, designated Copernicus Station in honor of the Polish mathematician whose discoveries about the orbital path of planets had played a critical role in shaping the field of astronomy during the 15th century, was primarily meant to function as a scientific installation, but even as its dedication ceremony was being streamed live over the Internet experts were already beginning to tout the facility’s potential as a site for industrial production. In August of 2004 a joint NASA/Department of Commerce study proposed that part of Copernicus station should be leased to private companies on a trial basis to determine the feasibility of lunar manufacturing complexes. Not wanting to wait for Uncle Sam to make up his mind on that score, s group of West Coast banded together in October of 2004 to create the world’s first space industrial firm, Cosmos Global Manufacturing Incorporated; the following January the new company built its own lunar outpost which would house two small assembly lines and a research lab. For better or worse, the human race was making itself at home in the heavens....
To Be Continued
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