Sex in Space

As a way of explanation regarding this story, I want the reader to know immediately that while there are some real facts used about our present day space program and the Space Shuttle, I quantified them regarding a futuristic space program and the Space Shuttle, including the engines needed to get its far greater mass off the launch pad and into orbit around the Earth before it began its journey to the planet Mars

.

In no way is it intended to be completely and scientifically accurate (I am not an aerospace or aeronautical engineer nor a physicist. lol), especially since the story takes place centuries from the present day space program, leaving everything up to speculation. Therefore, it is simply my creative inventiveness about this mission to Mars, a space program of the future that is being considered even now in this century. It is nothing more than a showcase for my story.

Therefore, I hope you approach this story in the same way as do millions of viewers and fans of such stories told in the series

Star Trek,

taking as fact many futuristic and scientific marvels as if they were feasibly possible such as transporting humans and objects from one location to another by disassembling their molecules for transport and then reassembling them wherever they were intended to go. So, in the spirit of Captain Kirk,

"Beam me up, Scotty,"

and Mr. Spock,

"Live long and

prosper,"

I hope you enjoy reading the story, and,

"May the Force be with you.

(

Star Wars

)."

Maggie

----------------------------------------

T-Minus ten and counting. "10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1...0" SRB (solid rocket boosters) Ignition! Lift off!

The large Space Shuttle

Enterprise III

's eight powerful rocket boosters fired on launch pad 39 at the

Kennedy Space Center

outside

Cocoa Beach, Florida,

with a thunderous roar, shattering the peaceful stillness of early morning.

Enterprise III,

weighing an amazing 300 tons, shot flames of orange and white onto the pad. Its eight booster rockets that carried more than 8,000,000 pounds of solid propellant generated most of the thrust at 24,000,000, but this thrust was combined with the large, main, external tank that had eight rockets inside that was surrounded by the rocket boosters. It carried super cold (cryogenic) liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel that was mixed inside the tank, generating 4,000,000 more thrust which, when combined, generated a thrust of 28,000,000 for liftoff of the large Space Shuttle on its mission to Mars.

However, despite all the power this special Space Shuttle had, it seemed to hover over the launch pad before it broke away from the gantry that had securely held it upright since it had been brought out from its hanger and onto the pad. As if in slow motion, it finally broke the bonds of Earth's gravity, shuddering back and forth about five feet, and lifted off towards outer space, leaving a curly que, white contrail in its wake that was visible against the clear, blue sky.

Shortly after takeoff Mission Control told the pilot to roll the Shuttle into an inverted position, which she did, as it picked up speed. Two minutes after liftoff at an altitude of approximately twenty-seven miles the Shuttle was traveling at the speed of 3700 miles per hour. At this stage the solid rocket boosters were separated from the large external fuel tank and jettisoned away from the Space Shuttle to parachute back to Earth towards the

Atlantic Ocean

where they would be retrieved, taken back to the Cape, refurbished, and reused.

The Shuttle's main engines continued to burn, using the mixed cryogenic liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel. Dropping the solid rocket boosters made the Shuttle lighter, and this enabled it to move faster.

After SECO (Sustain Engine Cutoff), the large external fuel tank was separated over the

Indian Ocean

where it, too, returned into the atmosphere, landed into the water, and was retrieved for future flights. During the early days of space travel, the main, external fuel tank was separated from the Shuttle only to burn up in Earth's atmosphere. However, that problem was eventually solved at great cost, but it saved the W.F.O.P.E. alot of inter-universal money.

Now, all rockets having worked flawlessly put the Shuttle into orbit fifty miles above the Earth, traveling at the speed of 17,580 miles per hour.

The Shuttle used that speed to orbit the Earth twice in order for the Commander and pilot to have time to check and make sure all systems were "Go." Once the crew felt secure with all the readouts, they waited until the Shuttle was on the Earth's backside with the Moon in front of it. Here the pilot did slow burns of the small, directional, thrust engines to maneuver the Shuttle towards the Moon in order to put them on a course towards it, and then a three minute burn of the Shuttle's onboard rockets thrust it towards the Moon whose gravitational pull would bring it ever closer and faster until the pilot was able to get the Shuttle into orbit around it.

The journey from Earth to Moon used to take about three days, but because these modern Shuttles were so much heavier and powerful, the Moon's gravitational pull was that much greater on it. Thus, it took less than a day to make the journey from the Earth to the Moon.

When the Shuttle was in orbit and on the backside of the Moon, the pilot once more used the small rocket thrusters to invert the Space Shuttle and fired the retro-rockets, allowing it to land on the Moon Space Station. Here rocket fuel of cryogenic liquid hydrogen and oxygen was filled into the tanks inside the engine compartment of the Space Shuttle. Water and dried food packets were put onboard, too.

The Shuttle had a complex water filtration system that cleaned all gray water and recycled it to be used over and over again.

Once all was ready the crew buckled themselves into their seats to prepare for liftoff from the Moon Station to the Mars Station. Since the Moon was smaller than the Earth, its gravitational pull on the Space Shuttle was less, allowing it to lift off easily.

After the long months of the flight are finally over, the pilot would slow the Shuttle and carefully dock it onto the Mars Space Station. Mission accomplished.

The year was 2404, exactly386 years since the second flight to the Moon by the US and 435 years since the first flight to the Moon when Neil Armstrong was the first human to step onto the Moon's surface and say the now famous quote, "That's one small step for

a

man, one giant leap for mankind." The letter "a" had been a topic of great debate for some time whether Neil Armstrong omitted the "a" in his words or not. He confidently said he did not omit the word even though many thought he had, but modern technology confirmed that Neil Armstrong did, indeed, include the word/letter "a" in his most momentous saying about this history-making achievement. As it were, the letter "a" was lost in the transmission of the mille-second it took to say it.

This mission had its beginnings in the

Constellation Program

back in the early twenty-first century. However, even though major advances had been made in interplanetary travel, this model had some glitches during its planning stages both with the Space Shuttle because it was a much larger version of the earlier ones and with crew assignments regarding gender on long missions.

First, there were design and engineering difficulties which, however, were eventually corrected, but there was still the matter of the crews that had to be rectified if the missions were to succeed with as few problems as possible.

Years had gone by when shuttles had been sent to Mars with equipment, materials, and international, expert personnel to build a space station from which smaller shuttles could be launched to land on Mar's surface to conduct scientific, geologic, hydraulic, biologic, and environmental tests, bringing back samples for study in the space station, the results of which would then be transmitted back to Earth. The crew also had special terrain vehicles to transport them to various possible sites for finding water at the polar ice cap and to find and study minute life forms.

Now that the Space Station was completed, it had many launches going to and from Mars in order to add on new sections to make it larger and more ergonomically comfortable as well as re-supplying it with food, mechanical parts, and whatever was needed to keep it going and efficient.

Since it was realized staying in outer space was difficult on crewmembers both physically and mentally, they were rotated every six months. However, mixing of genders presented several problems, problems that created conflict among the crew members during the flights and ongoing, related problems upon return to Earth, problems that needed immediate attention by the board members of T.W.F.O.P.E.,

The World Federation of Planetary Exploration

.

After much discussion about the inherent problems of mixing the sexes on such long flights that took seven to eight months or longer if Earth's and Mars' orbits were far from one another, the integrated, twelve members of The Board of The

World Federation of Planetary Exploration

(W.F.O.P.E.), represented yearly by rotating members so the committee consisted of both experienced veterans and new members alike, agreed on two things. The nations of the world organized the T.W.F.O.P.E. after the big nuclear holocaust in the year A.D. 2012 that brought an end to the use of nuclear arms capable of mass destruction and agreed to be as one, continuing to work for a planet of peace, harmony, and cooperation, especially when it came to outer space. There was a unified agreement among the nations of the world that there are no national boundaries in the cosmos. Outer space surrounded the whole Earth and, therefore, could not be divided.

The second item of difficulty regarded gender-norming which, simply put, required the same set of rules and requirements for both women and men if they were to qualify for the space program. This being the case, The Federation Board unanimously agreed that crews would be of the same gender on missions to Mars and that this mission coming up would have an all-female Shuttle crew.

However, in addition to having same gender missions, the differences in personality were also important if the crew was to work well with one another. The crew had to be considered with great care both individually and collectively. This would be true for every flight to Mars, whether the crew was all female or all male, beginning with this mission and for all the missions to come.

The crews were rotated by gender for one main reason and one reason only, sex. Since sex is a primary part of the human psyche, sexual liaisons happened during the long flights whether they were gay or heterosexual. This often led to conflict and problems.

Men have a tendency to become physical when provoked to settle disagreements, and it was a given issues

would arise

during such a long space journey. Despite this reality, it was still expedient to rotate the shuttle crews by gender. One of the main reasons went right back to sex. The Federation Board would be like ostriches who bury their heads in the sand if they failed to realize male and female crewmembers would couple whether for a long time or one-night stands from which some of the female members could become pregnant even though both women and men were given birth control methods to prevent pregnancies.

The second reason for separating the genders involved conflict and conflict resolution.

Unlike men, women usually tend to quarrel with words and not muscle. Even though this was true, to prevent conflict from arising during these long journeys, there was careful selection of candidates who, once chosen, had much training to help, counsel, and educate them about conflict resolution, backing up what was learned in the classroom with test-run scenarios to let the crew role play so they would know what to expect and to educate them about how to handle given situations to prevent or help alleviate tensions before problems, misunderstandings, and conflict arose so they could be worked through amicably, using positive methods for relieving stress. Each crewmember had several sessions with behavioral psychologists before being selected as a member of the crew.

In early stages of planetary flights time capsules were used by the crew wherein they would go into a time capsule and be put to sleep in suspended animation until the flight was over, and they would be awakened by computers in which co-ordinates back to Earth would have been programmed, giving the specific day and time set to awaken them upon arrival on Earth. It was a very primitive system compared to the technology of the twenty-fifth century. Now the crews were animate throughout the flight just as they were on Earth.

As for this mission there had been many qualified candidates, but the crew could not exceed six, so T.W.F.O.P.E. was very selective about whom they chose. Their choices were made not just on different skills, but the candidates had to be at least bi-lingual in the languages of those on board the Space Shuttle. The American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut had to be fluent in both English and Russian. The American was fluent in French and Italian, and the Russian was fluent in German and a few other Eastern countries. The ones from England and Australia could speak English, but beside English the Brit spoke Japanese and the Aussie spoke both East Indian and Spanish.

One advantage of communicating among one another was the fact that English, being the first world language, enabled each of the astronauts to communicate with one another. The need for their being bi-lingual in other languages was for them to be able to communicate with scientists and technical advisors back on Earth in other parts of the world.

As always T.W.F.O.P.E. wanted no chance of misunderstanding among the crew with transmissions to or from those involved with the

Mars

mission back on

Earth

.

The names and skills of the crew were Shelley, Commander and systems engineer; Olga, pilot and aeronautical engineer; Indira, physician-surgeon and laboratory technician; Komiko, the computer and communications specialist; Tilly, the geologist and geo-physicist; and Maggie, the scientist and astrobiologist. Not one of the crew had any rank beyond their designated expertise so there would be no pulling rank; although, Shelley as Commander was in charge of the flight and the crew to see all that was needed to be done for a successful mission was done well. She had the duty to see that everything was done according to the book.

In the beginning before flights to Mars could even have been considered, there were issues needing answers, none of them easy. Weightlessness and working in a non-gravity environment was the most challenging problem. How could the crew manage this effect on their bodies and do their jobs effectively over such a long time? Scientists, astro-physicists, aeronautical and mechanical engineers, and mathematicians from all over the world met in Helsinki to discuss and to work on the problems together. After much debate and experimentation, it was decided the Space Shuttle would be made into two parts: the

crew module

would have a gravity environment so the crew could live and work as they would on Earth even though it added to the cost and the

cargo-equipment module

that would be without gravity where the payload would be properly secured. It would be from the cargo module the astronauts would sky walk. Once on Mars the crewmembers would egress onto the surface through a special door located in the cargo-equipment module and travel either by foot or by using specially built land rovers in which to get around.

While on rare, summer days the temperature on Mar's surface can be as much as 81 degrees Fahrenheit / 63 degrees Celsius, the air temperature rarely gets above 32 degrees at the equator and --215 at the poles. Therefore, this would not allow humans to be outside the Space Shuttle without special clothing. It is believed there is water near the polar ice caps as well as primitive life forms on the surface where methane gas, if found, could sustain oxygen-producing bacterial life. All-in-all Mars is not human-friendly. Therefore, members of the crew as well as those already on the Space Station were only able to go outside to collect samples and run tests and bring them back to the Station for analyses.

This being the case, the purpose of the mission had been carefully decided, problems such as weightlessness and gravity had been solved, and the crew of all females had been chosen.

Now the crew was on their way to Mars that is at its closest 35,000,000 miles (145 times the distance from the Moon). This is the shortest distance the Earth is to Mars, and the last time this happened was in August of 2006. Before Mars was that close to the Earth our ancestors were living in caves struggling to survive the extreme conditions of the

Ice

Age

. It will be 284 years the next time Earth gets this close to Mars after the year 2004. It will then be in the year 2688. This meant this mission was close to the greatest distance between Mars and Earth that is 63,000,000 miles. However, aeronautical technology eventually was able to move the Space Shuttle at the speed of light to get it into close proximity of Earth's orbit to Mars' orbit

In retrospect to the day

Enterprise III

began its journey to Mars, the six-woman crew were all excited as each felt the thunderous power of the combined booster rockets and main rocket thrust them towards outer space. The 3gs pushed them back into their seats, and they felt the pressure on their bodies.

With a big grin on her face, Shelley, the Commander, remembered saying to her pilot Olga, "Good job of flying and getting us off the ground."

Olga returned Shelley's smile and said, "Why thank you Commander. But I still can't get over those three Gs on lift off and the ten-minute ride to get into orbit above the Earth. It is always a thrill for me to feel the force and be in control of such power. What an adrenalin rush!"

"That's for certain, Olga, but please," said Shelley, "from now on just call me Shelley. I don't want to be known just as Commander. I want to be just one of the crew and have each of us be comfortable with one another. It's going to be a very long journey to Mars, and at best we're going to be cramped in this enclosed environment even though we have just about everything imaginable to keep us entertained and much work to be done during the eight months we'll be together before we get to the space station. I'm sure every now and then one of us is going to feel cabin fever from being confined in this Space Shuttle for so long. Don't you?"

"Da. You have that right," Olga grinned, having answered Shelley's question in Russian.

Shelley turned herself around in her seat to look back at the rest of the crew who were still in their respective seats.

"Hey, I want the rest of you to hear what I just asked Olga. I'd like for all of you to call me Shelley and not Commander. It's going to be a long time cooped up in this

tin can

," Shelley jokingly said.

Indira, Komiko, Tilly, and Maggie all looked at Shelley, and Tilly asked, "What did you say, Luv?"

"I said I wanted all of you to call me Shelley and not Commander," answered Shelley.

"Oh, right you are, Shelley," answered Tilly.

"Hai," said Komiko in a very soft voice with a slight bow of her head

"Namaste," said Indira with her distinct East Indian accent while bringing her hands together in front of her lower face and nodding her head.