Livi Michael

Super heavy

‘Very dependent on volume, but I'm confident moving to Mars (return ticket is free) will one day cost less than $500k & maybe even below $100k. Low enough that most people in advanced economies could sell their home on Earth & move to Mars if they want.’

*

She pulls the curtain back. There is Orion, hanging low. The brightest star is his left knee. It is nearly 800,000 light years away. A needle of light, pulling her like a thread.

*

A moth staggers along the edge of the curtain. There is a whisper of cobweb in the corner of the window. The moth skitters onto the pane then pauses for a moment, wings twitching.

*

‘The development and operation of the settlement itself can greatly improve our sustainability efforts on Earth. All required actions will be taken to prevent environmental contamination caused by importing Earth life (humans and their companion organisms).’

*

Between the window and the stars are leaves, in perpetual motion. She can almost hear the murmuring of the grass, the concentrated activity of tiny creatures in the soil.

*

Beyond the line of trees and the rooftops, there is the great curve of the planet, articulating itself endlessly. More mysterious, even, than space.

*

Space is a hostile environment for humans, with temperature extremes, lack of atmospheric pressure, microgravity, solar and galactic cosmic radiation, high speed micrometeorites, accelerated telomere shortening and space-enhanced aging. ‘It may be a pretty tough neighborhood, in the not too distant future,’ General Shelton said.

*

Someone assembled the stars into the pattern of a giant man, his face turned away, shining, and suffering.                                                               

* 

According to NASA, an average of one catalogued piece of space debris has fallen back to Earth each day for the past fifty years. ‘If you think about it,’ General Shelton said, ‘there are probably ten times more objects in space than we’re able to track with our sensor capability today.  

*

Memories blow like litter through the caves of her heart. The wind is hot, and scouring. There is grit in it, and fragments of glass.

*

‘Those objects are untrackable, but lethal to our space systems — to military space systems, civil space systems, commercial — no one’s immune from the threats that are in orbit today, just due to the traffic in space. From a probability point of view,’ General Shelton added, ‘smaller satellites, more debris is going to run into more debris, creating more debris.’                                           

*

She wonders how she can move forward bearing the full weight of the past. It’s like carrying the cargo of the whole human race. Which, like gravity, bends time and light into a prefigured shape.

*

Super Heavy is more powerful than the immense Saturn V launcher used for the Apollo Moon missions in the 1960s and 70s. It will be made of stainless steel, and one half of its surface will be covered in glass tiles to take the brunt of the heat upon atmospheric entry. With its nosecone and landing fins, the stainless-steel vehicle resembles the rocket-ships from the golden age of science fiction.

*

Sleek and full of portent. Rising from a collective dream.

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Rapid and frequent reusability is key to SpaceX's long-term vision. Super Heavy will return to Earth for vertical touchdowns shortly after liftoff, and Starship will be able to fly from Earth orbit to Mars and back again many times.

*

 Like a digital pterodactyl, angled towards the future.

Livi Michael has published nineteen novels for adults, young adults and children, and some of these have won, or been nominated for, awards. Her short stories have been published in: Anglofiles, Confingo, Granta, Writing Women, the Hard Times-Deutsch-Englische Zeitshrift: Metropolitan, The Manchester Review, The Lonely Crowd and The City Life Book of Manchester Short Stories (Penguin). She teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.