Pillar to the Sky Read online

  Of course, Gary, Eva, and the team working with them were the ones who had come up with the ribbon concept years earlier, but Franklin had sworn them to secrecy, preferring to keep public attention and investor interest focused on what was already in place. Eva and Gary had learned a lot about the difference between working at Goddard and being part of a private venture, otherwise they would have felt no constraints about publishing their revised concepts, even repudiating the original design of the tower, given the technological advances that had been made since the mass production of carbon nanotubing had begun. But they knew, even if Franklin had not extracted a promise from them, that publicizing their misgivings would destroy the program; thus their work was kept at a level of secrecy equal to that of a highest-classified military program. Even as Fuchida was turning out strands, he was now secretly manufacturing their first reels of ribbon as well.

  It was Jason Fitzhugh who had come up with the right analogy. When the Roeblings, father and son, had designed the Brooklyn Bridge, mass-produced steel was still a dream. But even before the first tower of that bridge had been set in place, Bessemer’s new process of blast furnacing was soon turning out high-grade steel at a fraction of the cost. The Roeblings were already committed to using old-fashioned iron for the bridge’s cables and thus stayed with that material. A hundred and fifty years later that bridge carried tens of thousands of automobiles daily and no one thought twice about it, even though nearly every bridge built afterward had steel cables of far better strength.

  Franklin had not left Kiribati since the tower linkup: things were still hot with Senator Proxley, who was demanding another grandstand public hearing and even claimed now that by building the first strand, Pillar Inc. had become a monopoly that had to be broken up. But the winds were beginning to shift back in the States. Private firms were now routinely offering suborbital launches, and thousands of passengers, all of them voters, proudly wore on their lapels the “astronaut” wings given to them after their flights. They had actually become something of a status symbol. America was becoming pro-space again.

  A private venture firm had even gotten within a hairsbreadth of a manned flight to the moon, but the first stage had detonated seconds after liftoff. Fortunately this system was similar to Apollo, with the built-in safety feature of a rocket-powered escape tower that pulled the capsule with its two passengers free of the explosion.

  And there had been disasters as well. So far fifteen had died trying to reach the heavens. Two of the Brit’s competitors were out of business after their spacecraft broke up in flight.

  Although no one ever said it directly, it was clear that rocket-powered space flight would always be much too risky for high-volume commercial use at even one-tenth of 1 percent the level of daily jet travel around the world.

  But rather than decreasing, there was actually a resurgence in public interest in space. Going into space, for the younger generation, was the new extreme sport that made base jumping in “flying squirrel” suits look tame. Extremely high-altitude jumps from balloons were now “in” as well, and fascination with the potentials of the tower was growing.

  The unmanned work of NASA, especially its Mars landings, had created intense enthusiasm and received much support. There had even been a slight increase in NASA’s budget, but it was human exploration that held and would always hold the key to public and therefore taxpayer interest. And with that, the promise of the Pillar was stirring public interest.

  * * *

  Where once there had been negative press about Franklin’s Folly, now there was growing fascination in the Pillar, with hundreds of blogs and discussion sites dedicated to it. The comparisons had been made so often that they had become the standard retorts to critics: Where would aviation be today if after the first plane crash all flying had been stopped in order to investigate? Thousands had died and thousands had been injured in the first generations of flight up until World War II while simply learning how to get off the ground for a few seconds, or during high-speed, instrument-based cross-country flights at night in heavy weather. Hardly anyone thought twice about the reality and sacrifice behind their getting into a hollow tube with wings and jets strapped to it, leaving New York, and seven hours later waking up in London, a journey that took weeks and was fraught with such perils as collisions with icebergs only a hundred years earlier. The same thing was true today as we reached for the stars within our lifetimes, the arguments ran, provided we had the guts to do it, and this resonated especially with a younger generation around the world eager for challenge and adventure.

  It was Victoria, of that same generation, who convinced Franklin that he should put up multiple Web sites dedicated to different niche audiences—not with the usual boring stuff like some photos and videos, but with active daily videoconferences with team members, discussions of future plans (only the “unclassified” ones, of course), and live cameras feeds of the spinners at work. The spinners were actually rotating around the Pillar at more than one revolution a second as they built up the cable’s diameter, but someone with a bit of computer savvy figured out how to snap an image every second from the precise same spot and thus stream it as a live video. The spinners were even on the social networks with their own names, putting out bulletins about their progress, and a couple of full-time staffers handled the uplink traffic, answering serious questions as if they themselves were the spinners, or cooking up witty replies that at times went viral.

  The names of the spinners were inspired by a popular computer-generated cartoon of a few years earlier about two robots who fall in love and in the process save humanity and restore earth’s environment. The firm that created the cartoon was more than eager to join in the fun, allowing use of the names of the two smitten robots, one of which was given to a spinner working from the top of the Pillar downward, the other to a spinner below that was working its way upward; longing to one day meet in the middle. Their ongoing romance was a hit; and the parent company who created the cartoon was soon turning out short “outtakes,” as had been run during the film credits at the end of the movie, of the antics and interplay of the two spinners and other characters. It had definitely gone viral, a hit with schoolkids around the world.

  Other Web sites went up, for elementary, middle, and high school and high-tech college-level conversations and information. Victoria’s fiancé, Jason, had pushed as well for a site dedicated to the history of technological innovations that had transformed how humanity lived; it was a proactive measure to mollify a significant technophobic minority. A critic of NASA long ago had made the slashing comment that the agency had taken the most exciting adventure in the history of humanity, the Apollo program, and made it almost boring and routine. Victoria, Jason, and others of their generation who were computer and social network savvy were making sure that would not happen again. There was even rumor that in a year Proxley would face stiff opposition from a very pro-space opponent. Perhaps the tide was indeed turning after a long moribund period in which the heavens were calling but no one felt like making the investment to answer the call.

  But what was increasingly the hot topic was Franklin’s remarks that the ultimate intent of the Pillar was not just inexpensive transportation to space but the piping down of limitless energy from solar arrays deployed around it. It could mean an end to the dependence on fossil fuels, even fission power, thus in fairly short order slamming on a brake against global warming.

  The weight load for such a power system, though, was magnitudes higher than what the tower could bear … and thus the ribbon was the ultimate answer: stitching layers of ribbon side by side and atop each other could build the tower out to any strength load desired, and it was ultimately why the construction tower was already obsolete as soon as it went up. But to say as much to the world and investors would have ended the project on the same day.

  “In for a penny, in for quite a few pounds more,” was Franklin’s favorite line … in private, of course.

  It was the problem
that consumed Gary and Eva now that the tower was up, with the spinners reinforcing it day by day so that it could eventually withstand the stress of carrying a viable load of ribbon clear out to geosynch. Franklin slipped out word of a meeting for his “inner circle”—Gary, Eva, Fuchida, and a few others—to discuss the next step.

  Franklin had picked the location for this meeting well. To get into this room required connecting flights from Hawaii or Fiji and then to Tarawa. If need be a lot of “sudden” paperwork could tie up uninvited visitors forever at Tarawa. Permission to land on the island of Aranuka, now that the tower was up, was strictly limited to aircraft that had first landed at Tarawa for a rigorous security inspection before being cleared to bring in supplies, with carefully selected pilots at the controls for the final leg, hauling in the reels of wire and personnel with what were called “blue pass tags.” These pilots were armed and if that defense failed, they were instructed to fly straight into the ocean before allowing anyone to take control of their planes. There would be no repeat of 9/11, at least by any aircraft.

  Though no one spoke openly of it, the United States Navy did seem to have a special interest in events around Kiribati, and at times an Aegis-class cruiser or destroyer could be sighted lingering on the horizon. The few times an unauthorized aircraft started to approach the island, the ship’s high-gain X-band target acquisition radar would switch on, “painting” the aircraft and then suggesting it turn about back to Fiji or land in Tarawa for clearance. At other times an Australian or British ship would take up position as well.

  It was obvious that although he was in semi-exile, Franklin had friends somewhere who understood America had a stake in the successful completion of the tower, and Australia and New Zealand could already sense the potential economic impact of the tower on the entire region in the years to come.

  * * *

  The room where this very private meeting was about to be held could seat fifty comfortably and had a curving glass ceiling that offered a spectacular view of the tower from its base; at night its illuminated surface rose arrow-like to the heavens. Everyone present was definitely blue pass only. Gary could not help but notice with pride that Victoria and Jason had been invited. Like any father, he had a lot of doubts at first about who his daughter’s heart had settled on, but over time this young man, with his decidedly Oxford accent and British manners and mannerisms, had won his heart. Jason had really won Gary over when, over a bottle of good Scotch that Jason had provided, the young Briton had actually managed to explain how the game of cricket worked. The two were laughing uproariously by the end of the evening, and the following day Gary took him out for the male bonding ritual of shooting flintlock rifles at a nearby range where security personnel, nearly all of them citizens of Kiribati in constant training with some former American and British military types, put them through their paces. Whenever Gary showed up with his treasured flintlock, he always caused a stir, not just because of the uniqueness of his gun, but because he was one of the two people who had played the greatest role in making the dream that was transforming their world a reality.

  It was a hobby Gary had indulged in as a young man, and he was embarrassed by the extent that Parkinson’s had affected his ability to hold a Pennsylvania long rifle steady; he could barely hit the target when seated and resting the weapon. Jason, with his fascination and professional interest in early technologies, waxed on at great length about the historical debate and mythology of “Yankee riflemen” versus “lobsterbacks.” His aim was little better than Gary’s, who could sense the young man was deliberately missing in order to be polite. As they talked about the technology behind the weapon, Jason reminded him that it was a British officer named Ferguson who had invented a breech-loading rifle seventy years ahead of its time, which if adopted rather than mockingly rejected by higher-ups, would have changed the course of the Revolution. Unfortunately “for our side,” as Jason defined it, Ferguson was killed at the Battle of Kings Mountain early in 1781, though at that point it was already too late to “bring you colonials to your senses.”

  On the trip back to the platform, the topic shifted to disruptive technologies and the impact of that thesis on further development of the Pillar. Professor Garlin had actually written a book denouncing its construction, pointing out all the hazards both to low-orbit navigation and the stream of seventy years of technological development of rocket-powered flight. The tower, she contended, would end that research, putting hundreds of thousands out of work at a time when some firms were finally proving that traditional methods of access to space were becoming viable. Sounding like an anthropologist, she then went on a lengthy diatribe about how it was technology that was destroying humanity, not saving it, and raised the old argument that space would not be the answer to humanity’s woes until its problems “down here” were solved. Garlin’s book had gained favorable notice in several major papers and journals. She was now a regular on the talk show circuit as a critic of the program and had suddenly become close friends with Senator Proxley.

  By the time Gary and Jason returned from the shooting range, they reeked of black powder and their hands and faces were covered in soot, but they reveled in their appearance. Gary said but one thing to Victoria when she greeted them at the door to their small apartment on the platform: “If you don’t marry him, you’re crazy.”

  * * *

  Franklin stepped up to the podium, turned to take in the view—a spinner just beginning its ascent, jet engine thundering—then nodded to his audience, who stood to applaud. But it was obvious he was nervous as he extended a hand and gestured for all to sit down.

  “I only hope you will applaud when I am done speaking,” he said, and there was actually a bit of a tremor in his voice.

  Only a few in the room—Gary, Eva, the Brit and his American partner, and Fuchida—knew what was coming.

  He paused for a moment and looked back at the tower, the roar of the spinner’s jet engine piercing the room as it rotated around the Pillar, spinning another layer into place.

  “It is a magnificent sight, is it not?”

  He paused, and, of course, there were nods of agreement, even some more applause.

  “And who of us just seven years ago would have dreamed that we could have reached this far.”

  More nods of approval, but the audience could sense something was up.

  “But it will never be economically viable.”

  Now there was total silence.

  “If you wish to drag me out and toss me into the sea when this meeting is done, that is your right. However, given my ethnic heritage, I do detest lynching, so let us refrain from that.”

  He turned his back to the audience, watching as the spinner continued to climb heavenward.

  “Perhaps I have led all but a few of you a little bit astray. Let me say in my defense, though, that I had to in order to get us this far. Remember in the old Westerns, when a group got lost in the desert, the leader promised that water was just over the next ridge, even though he knew it was still fifty miles off? I had to play that role, my friends, in order for us to get to this point, and now that we are within sight of the real goal, I hope you will hear me out.”

  “Some of you might have picked up a hint when I referred to this as Pillar One. You see, all along I saw it as that. The first pillar. Most of you smiled and nodded, realizing that once we proved our point with this one, more would surely follow—and I did say that this was simply the first tower and a second would follow. Already there is an indication that the Chinese, having recruited a few renegades, shall we say, from Dr. Fuchida’s team, are now preparing to start construction in Indonesia, and I wish them well. Competition fuels innovation.”

  That had indeed been troublesome for Fuchida and now for a host of lawyers in Japan, America, Kiribati, and China who were arguing whether the three men who Fuchida had fired early in the project—and who were now living somewhere in China, without doubt in great luxury—had engaged in patent violations. One c
ould always get by even the tightest security with terabytes of data, if planned for sufficiently in advance. Regardless of who won or lost the legal battle, the Chinese were rapidly moving toward the start of their own tower.

  “I will confess to you now that early on I realized one fundamental flaw with our current design, but at that stage we were already committed to building the Pillar as it was originally designed. That, and technological innovation is always racing ahead, and before this first strand went up, a far better concept was laid before me.

  “Often with rapid technological innovations, in the time it takes to get from what they used to call the drawing board to actual construction, a newer technology is developed. Thus it is now with our tower. It is obsolete even as we build it.”

  Now there was a stir in the room, and one of his primary investors asked loud enough for all to hear, with plenty of expletives added in, why in hell were they building it in the first place.

  Franklin nodded to him, thinking that the investor was about to become a former friend.

  “Because we are building it,” Franklin replied. “Building it and here is the entire point of this meeting. We are building it not to be used as a commercial launch system. We are building it not to be eventually used as a commercial platform, to put satellites into geosynch orbit at a fraction of the cost, or from that high point atop the tower to hurl spacecraft to the moon, Mars, and beyond, again at a fraction of the cost. We are building a tower in order to prove we can build it, then use it to haul up the hundreds of tons of additional material needed to build the real Pillar, the ribbon design you already know we have been working on.”

  “My God, Franklin, what in hell are you talking about?” the investor shouted. “We’ve sunk nearly forty billion into this so far. Let this ribbon thing of yours wait. Start sending up commercial launches, we could be doing that by year’s end and at least starting some return cash flow. And at least get some payback for a while.”