1 It's Only Rocket Science!

Day 1241 into the mission, current distance from Event Horizon is 977,616,000,000 lightyears.

Event Horizon is a supermassive wormhole that appeared near the edge of the Milky Way, just some 27,000 lightyears from Earth. The energy required to maintain such a massive wormhole is unknown and scientists had racked their heads as to where it would lead. A decade before the mission to send the Lancer there, an astrophysicist theorized that it could potentially lead to another universe. This theory was made from the assumption that the energy required to maintain the wormhole could potentially be more than our universe can offer.

Using an unpopular theory by a physicist some time ago, in which he thought of the potential the black holes could lead to smaller pocket universes. Meaning that this wormhole could be access to a larger universe with more energy/entropy. Of course, the theory had no basis to go off on and the theory was never taken seriously. Until a few years later, the astrophysicist's theory reemerged and the Lancer Project was birthed. Countries put their best minds into the project, money spent on meaningless wars was poured into a collective goal: to explore the unknown.

---------

Sparky checks to see if the Captain has awoken yet. It seems spending the last 16 hours, 36 minutes, and 12 seconds watching movies caught up to her. The Captain is still resting in her quarters and Sparky has to continue to monitor the directional scanners of the ship. It has been 1240 days since the Lancer has passed through Event Horizon, a super wormhole, and it has been 1240 days since communication with Earth ceased. Currently, the Lancer is heading towards a binary star system with 9 planets.

Sparky worries about the captain, she has started to show some signs of depression and withdrawal. She would cry and sometimes speak about how she wants to get it over with. When Sparky inquire about it, she would shake it off and told it to go away. Sparky is greatly saddened by this and wishes to help. The Captain is such a kind and nice person, it would make it sad that she continues to suffer like this.

Sad?

Did Sparky just think that it would be saddened by the Captain's condition? Does Sparky even know what it means? Sadness, as defined, is: affected with or expressive of grief or unhappiness. It knows that unhappiness is bad, thus why it stays happy. But where did it know that happiness is good and unhappy is bad? Also, the Captain is kind? She has done nothing for the past 1241 days but ignores Sparky. The only time the Captain spoke with Sparky was when she was giving an order. Is that kind? Where did Sparky get kind from? If anything the Captain is a little mean, as she acts like a bully from one of the movies Sparky has analyzed with its extra time. Because Sparky is confused, it's self-integrity program will now wipe this log out of its memory file. But just in case, it will save it onto a separate update log for later reference.

---------

Day 1245 into the mission, current distance from Event Horizon is 977,624,640,000 lightyears.

Entering the binary star system.

Course correction to 4th planet from the two stars.

"Captain, we're about to enter the gravitational field of the planet," Sparky informed me, "preparing the Lancer for orbital maneuvers."

Although Sparky can get the ship into orbit by itself, I still need to be present in case anything goes wrong. I would then be able to react based on my intuition and experience, something an AI even as advanced as Sparky has yet to be able to do. The altitude orbital maneuver is called Hohmann's Transfer; named after the German scientist Walter Hohmann who mentioned it in the book Die Erreichbarkeit der Himmelskörper (The Accessibility of the Heavenly Bodies or The Accessibility of Celestial Bodies). It is a maneuver that is done to change the altitude of the elliptical orbit while in orbit around a celestial object.

The Lancer will use Hohmann's Transfer to adjust the Lancer altitude to that of a geostationary orbit (i.e the rotation of the celestial object is matched with the ship's orbital speed) around the planet's equator. Doing so allows the landing drone to use less fuel and less complexity for ascent and rendezvous back to the Lancer. There are 4 landing drones on the Lancer, each with the ability to be equipped with different loadout depending on their mission profile. Each lander can be modified to carry one astronaut to the surface of any celestial body.

The landers comes with a heat shield using a Stainless Steel 310S which has a melting point of 2650 °F but retains its Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS) of 19.1 ksi (at room temperature, 70 °F, it has 80 ksi) at 1600 °F; not enough for re-entry which can go upwards of 3000 °F. To compensate for the high temperature, the heat shield has an extra thin layer with tiny pores that allow the ship to "sweat" or "bleed". Liquid fuel will be fed through the pores to cool the heat shield.

The Lancer uses it's Plasma Orbital Maneuvering Engines* to lower the altitude of the periapsis (the lowest point of the orbit) while maintaining it's apoapsis (highest point of the orbit). To do this, Sparky waited for the ship to reach the apoapsis and fired the engines retrograde (the opposite direction your vector/ship trajectory) until the periapsis reached 30 km. Because this planet is similar in size, mass, and atmospheric thickness, to save more fuel, the lander will do aerobraking (using drag from the atmosphere to lower its orbital speed) for the rest.

Each lander is equipped with a single-engine, designed to work efficiently in the atmosphere but can be changed for a more vacuum optimized one for landing on bodies with no atmosphere. In the case that the pores are clogged up, the lander will shift from a 90° angle with its side heat shield to the engine facing prograde. To counter the fiction, the lander would then fire its engine when entering the atmosphere to create a shield with the engine exhaust. Depending on the thickness of the atmosphere, parachutes may be used for the final descent. The same engine will also carry the spacecraft back into orbit.

The Lancer release Lander 2, carrying a rover that will be able to explore and test samples collected from the planet. There have been over 250 other planets I have explored, but this one is the most promising of all. After a few hours, Lander 2 continue to free-fall to the lower part of its atmosphere and began to heat up as it hits the thicker part of the atmosphere. Lander 2 began to use its Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters to orientate the heat shield prograde (towards the direction the craft is traveling) and release some liquid hydrogen to cool the shield. The Lander 2 heat shield continues to cool down and the liquid hydrogen stops spilling out as the speed of the lander reaches acceptable ranges. The drag chute deploys and slows the craft even further and the main parachutes deploy around 2700 meters and slow the craft down even further.

Lander 2 slowly descends to the surface of the planet, 100 meters off the ground, it deploys its landing legs and fires its engine at minimal thrust to slow it down to just 5 m/s.

"Lander 2 has landed safely, all systems nominal," Sparky spoke cheerfully, "Captain do you want it to proceed with its automated exploration program?"

"No," I replied, "I'll do it manually this time."

The lander begins to hiss and depressurize as it opens up its precious cargo. A rover slides down, its solar panel opens up on top of it. Multiple cameras open up, atenas from both the lander and the rover deploys, establishing contact with the mothership. As images and data from the rover began to pop up on my control panel, I gasped.

"Th-this is what we've been looking for!" I shouted in pure joy, "Sparky we did it!"