Ice Shadows Page 2

  With all of that in mind, and knowing that a confrontation was inevitable, I tried to fix our marriage in a similar manner or approach as I did with my many projects. But machines and human beings—and women, in particular—are entirely different. I’m sure my wife didn’t appreciate my putting together an analysis T-chart depicting areas of improvement coming from both sides of the equation. She didn’t enjoy my taking a rational approach to an emotional issue. She even yelled that you can’t put a marriage back together using an arc welder. Yes, I got that; I understood. But when you are trying to sort out personal issues remotely and through a computer screen, it doesn’t work very well. In fact, it fails in a host of ways. It was far too impersonal. It was disconnected. It was infuriating from my wife’s perspective. I told her we would work on things the moment I completed the most recent project. But she pushed back. She said that things had already gone so far that there was little likelihood that any sort of repair was even possible. As it was, we were teetering on the edge of divorce. She still loved me, but at what cost? If I were always taking off, what was the point in having a relationship? And didn’t I love my work more than her? That hurt. That hit home. Here, all along, I thought I was being the constant provider. But when physical proximity is the missing part of the overall equation, challenges naturally arise.

  Unfortunately, I was at the peak of my career. I wasn’t at a place or age where I could easily change my work trajectory. No, I was committed. Until I aged out of the industry, what I currently did was it; there was no turning back or an alternative means of making a living to fall back on. So when I came home, I fully expected to find a stranger living in my house. I anticipated his clothes in my drawers or hanging in my closet. I would be able to smell his cologne. I would sense his presence even if he weren’t there physically. Oddly, that didn’t turn out to be the case.

  From what my son later told me, the man that had been hanging around evidently didn’t want to have to face me or admit to his malfeasance. From my perspective, that meant he was a coward, a freeloader, or a mix of both. If he couldn’t stand up to me and tell me how wrong I was to abandon such a desirable woman, then he wasn’t worthy of her. But even with that being said, it was as if the tide had gone out and my wife was a changed woman. She no longer had the patience to wait. She felt empowered and independent. She didn’t need me anymore—other than to receive her monthly alimony payment. When I asked if she would reconsider, she asked if I was going to change? Would I be there for her or, instead, was I home only long enough to do some laundry and to take a much-needed rest? She knew my pattern. She knew I would get restless. In a matter of days, I’d start going stir crazy. She knew me well enough to know that I always had to be busy.

  I didn’t manage downtime well. And even if we planned some sort of romantic getaway, I was always checking email and text messages. It drove my wife crazy. I couldn’t let down. In my book, relaxing was about being lazy. I looked down my nose at those who could idle their lives away while essentially doing nothing. As far as I was concerned, lying on the beach was a waste of a life. It was a worthless pursuit. So when the lunar project appeared, I knew it signaled the end. I knew it would push things to the point where this failing relationship was irredeemable. My wife and I were simply going through the paces of what, for years, had been a slowly dying relationship. I only mentioned the project as a way of letting her know where I would be for the foreseeable future. If she wanted to contact me, specific protocol had to be followed. But I knew she wouldn’t reach out. I knew she and I were now history.

  That doesn’t mean that I didn’t think of her and my son on occasion. While I had a moment to stare back at that blue pearl of a planet framed by star-peppered blackness, I felt the ache that comes with distance. It’s an odd thing to see your home planet in its entirety. It’s almost as if you could reach out and touch it. But there it is and you’re not there. It’s at moments like that when your imagination goes places that might not be all that healthy. You begin to long for companionship. You start to realize that work isn’t the answer; that meaningful relationships outlast one’s career. I would take a deep breath and then tell myself to get back to work. It was pointless to devote any energy to anything other than the task at hand.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Demetrius Antonia had been the project foreman on almost all of the projects we had worked on together. He was like the brother I never had. He was a man of few words. But he had a demanding eye for detail that was irreplaceable. It was almost instinctual the way that he could spot a problem even at a distance. Subcontractors hated working for him. But when you are working on something that cannot leak, must maintain a constant life support system, and must not fail despite the worst of conditions, you have to maintain exceptionally high standards. Tolerances have to be exact. There is no room for error even on the less demanding components that exist inside the living environment.

  To say that I depended on “D”—his nickname—would be an understatement. And as they say in the business: you are only as good as your last successful project. All it takes is one failure and that might be it. All of your efforts hinge on the idea of consistent predictability. And working in a world of extremes, the elements are always working against you. You have to think ahead; you have to anticipate potential problems before they occur. You plan for them; you spend untold hours trying to envision any fail point or challenging situation that could happen given something contrary occurring. At the same time, you can’t get cocky. Just because we managed to string together a number of projects that both met and exceeded expectations didn’t mean we could let our guard down even for an instant. That was compounded on the moon one hundredfold.

  So when the lunar project was initially presented, I knew D had to be the first member of the nucleus of our emerging team. Even though we wouldn’t be part of the earth-based fabrication, we still needed to be onsite to understand how everything would be assembled once on the lunar surface. I was impressed with some of the new methods being employed to create what would ultimately prove to be individual, self-supporting, living modules. The structural members were being built out of high alloy steel coated with a ceramic composite fiber skin, thick heat-resistant mirrored glass, and interior supports and/or partitions made of powder-coated aluminum.

  As with a large ship or submarine, the same idea applied to what would ultimately become a dome created out of individual hexagonal-shaped modules: if one contained area failed, it could be easily sealed off. Then it wouldn’t have a detrimental impact on the community as a whole. Each module would be sent to us on a separate delivery vehicle. Conveniently, other related parts could be stowed inside the modules to maximize space and storage capacity. A specialty vehicle was being built that had a hoist and a mobile platform (known as a lift rover) where the module would be lifted and then fit into place. Everything was run on solar-powered batteries.

  When completed, 120 modules seamlessly secured together would create the outermost shell of the dome. An interlocking system would link each unit to the next. A silicone membrane would then be applied beneath the shell creating a large enclosed area under the dome. That, in turn, would have sub-sections defined for a mechanical area, a greenhouse domain, and a vast living area where trees and other oxygen-producing plants would hopefully take root, flourish, and then create a micro-climate or a contained sustainable atmosphere. That was the concept. The only question was if it would work? As it stood, this would be by far the largest enclosed environment I’d ever worked on. With this many parts involved and the increased potential for any sort of leak, this would be the most extensive and demanding project of my entire career. At first glance, it was daunting, to say the least. But as with any project, you start with one part and then incrementally and carefully add more pieces. In this case, the only difference was about scale.

  D seemed a bit reluctant to take this one on. When I asked why, he said he felt it had too many moving parts—or to put it more simply, this wa
s so far out of the scope of anything we’d tackled before, he wasn’t sure he wanted his name attached to it, but especially in the event that it failed. Besides, being on the lunar surface was unlike any challenge we had ever faced. Doing assembly work at a two hundred foot depth was one thing, but when you’re in the ocean, once your shift has been completed you can always return to the surface. That was the case when D, our crew, and I worked on the Sea Lab project located off the Bahamas. At the time, that was one of the most demanding assignments we had ever worked on. Even though most of the living module had been built on land and then sunk, there were still the needed tweaks and fixes required to sort out unforeseen flaws in the overall design.

  So for D, that was the closest example he could refer to when comparing it to something far grander in scope but also located on the moon. It felt as if there were far too many unknowns. From my perspective, I was up for the challenge. I viewed it as the crowning project of my career. If my company could pull this one off, who knows what might come next? But D didn’t share my enthusiasm. Even though he’d taken on unimaginable challenges—not to mention daunting risks in the past—this one gave him reason to pause; he needed to take the required time to think it over.

  But to even attempt this behemoth of a project without him being there was unthinkable. Even though the money we’d receive was astronomical—no pun intended—didn’t mean hazard duty pay wasn’t in order, because it was, and then some. D didn’t care about the money. It didn’t mean anything to him. As with me, he was typically only home for short stints and then off once again to some distant port on the other side of the planet. Wisely, he’d never been committed to one woman let alone had a family. He understood early on that this sort of work demands too much, and that making a relationship last was virtually impossible. I wish I had talked to him about that subject early in my career. But hindsight is only worth its value when errors in judgment aren’t an issue. But what I’d done was what it was.

  So it took D a bit longer to commit than I was initially comfortable with. But with cost overruns, more time than anticipated, and myriad design changes, the project on the ground fabrication side was taking far longer than anticipated. I guess that was to be expected. After all, hadn’t NASA invested a lot in a launch vehicle that took twice as long and cost twice as much as projected? Even though that was the reality at the time, my crew and I had a lot of training to do before we ever set foot on the lunar surface. Our individual spacesuits had to be fitted. We had to act as if we were actually on the moon. That meant that we had to sleep in our spacesuits in what was meant to represent an airlock type of environment. It was about getting our bodies acclimated to an artificial environment created and sustained by our pressurized spacesuits.

  Furthermore, we had to practice the assembly process. That, however, had to be done in an Olympic-sized pool. Even though that didn’t exactly match the limited gravity we would encounter on the moon, it was far closer to reality than attempting the same in earth’s gravity. Fortunately, the engineers that designed the project used a locking closure system that snapped into place and then united the modules together. There were no nuts and bolts to fumble with in what otherwise might prove to be a frustrating or futile exercise.

  But vital to that process was a designated director of sorts that would be based in the lunar living module. Those of us doing assembly would have cameras on our helmets that would, in turn, send the image of what we were doing back to the control room. The director could warn us of any unforeseen issues or guide us as to minor corrections needed. We went over the entire process for ten weeks. Fortunately, D finally appeared around week five. He said he had a few loose ends he needed to get settled before he would commit. But he was fully on board and was ready to move forward. I was both delighted but also relieved. Without D there, I would always be like a mother hen inspecting every action. But now that he was part of the team, I could relax somewhat. I knew quality control was back in the house.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  There is nothing that can prepare you for something so otherworldly. Sure, more than a dozen astronauts had been on the moon; but that was only for a short duration. To reside there and to experience such confining and claustrophobic conditions was akin to being a member of a submarine crew. It takes a certain mindset to tolerate such tight proximity. Even though we had trained for this, once here, it was not as we had expected. Living on the moon is in reality an alien experience. We aren’t resident to it. We are visitors at best. We are temporary residents at worst. And when you have a timeline dictating your daily expectations, the stress and close quarters start to mess with your head. The need to escape becomes a daily struggle. Any minor annoyance gets magnified. If someone on the crew snores, everyone is disturbed. But if several do, it becomes next to intolerable.

  With time and continued issues constantly appearing, the need for alone time becomes essential—something in rare supply. So when I was out working on the project, I would take my time; I would take a moment or two to take in the view and honor such an exceptional vista. But if I did it too long, and my thoughts wandered back to all of the simple things I was missing, I had to rein in my thoughts. On the list of things missed, taking a hot shower was a high priority. Using packaged wet swabs for a bath was a poor substitute at best. Being in the same spacesuit day after day became not only tedious but also created an inescapable personal odor. Bacteria naturally came along with that.

  But what was most problematic was the mental aspect of it. As noted, you were essentially stuck. You were marooned. You were entirely dependent on those on the ground or mission control. To leave before the project was completed wasn’t an option. Each of us had essentially signed our lives away. We were subject to the terms of the agreement. An escape clause didn’t exist. And to be clear, there wasn’t an escape module. That’s correct: the delivery crew essentially dropped us off. We were more or less left to fend for ourselves. If and when the need arose to return to earth, it would be dependent on those in control along with the availability of a large enough return spacecraft to accommodate most if not all of us.

  With that in mind and with the determination to keep focused on the project at hand, a host of reservations started to enter the picture. First, D started noticing that even though the fabricated modules might have been pristine pre-launch, something in the after-launch process was distorting them. In other words, soon after they were delivered, and when we began assembly, the built-in connectors weren’t lining up exactly. That was a serious problem. If each unit wasn’t precise, there was no guarantee the overall structure would fit together let alone become airtight. Over time, and with continued imprecision, a millimeter here or there starts to add up. Before you know it, things get so far off that the envisioned connections no longer work.

  D knew enough to catch that early on. That meant that there was now a production delay. We had to do a thorough assessment on our end and then send back our findings. The only challenge was if it would require an entire new approach or not? We might be stranded here with nothing to do for months, if not longer. That was the first real issue that started to put everything into question.

  But with little to do and so much free time on our hands, there is a limit to how many books you can read or how many video games you can play before it starts to make you a bit crazy. Being stuck inside the living module was beginning to stink in a multitude of ways—but especially with a dozen-man crew essentially packed close together. Fortunately, the ground crew was offering an alternative approach. The larger structural members were being shipped. That meant that the framework the individual modules would ultimately rest on was coming first. If that seems somewhat out of order, you would be correct. Logically, the support network should have been built first. But even with that, the glaring issue was how to set them up. We didn’t have a crane. We didn’t have a hoist that could reach several hundred feet in the air—or whatever you would call an almost non-existent atmosphere. We were assured, how
ever, that if we took each metal strut or buttress section and then locked them together, with time and further thought, a solution would be provided—but only once we began to reach potentially dangerous heights.

  The key objective was to keep moving. There was always that looming completion date. My only concern was the idea that some “genius” on the ground would insist that we act like riveters on one of the early Manhattan skyscrapers—you know, and sidle out on a narrow beam to continue assembly. I could just see it: one of us would be up on one of those narrow metal support beams and one of the connectors would give way. The next thing you knew, the entire support would collapse along with a dead team member covered with lunar dust. I wasn’t going to let that happen, but especially if I had anything to do with it.

  With all of this in mind, and the idea that this private enterprise project had a lot of both public interest as well as investment, time was the enemy. Untold expectations and promises had surely been made. And unlike anything I’d ever attempted before, this monumental task was becoming laborious. It wasn’t like a one-off submersible that once completed was finished. No, instead, this monster of a project was going to consume years of my life—but only if I could survive the obvious stress and pressures that came along with it.