On their way to Galaxy, the combination galley, exercise, study, clinic, and entertainment module, the president stopped several times to shake hands with station personnel, and the stopping and restarting greatly helped his maneuvering skills. Although Raydon had announced that the president was aboard, most of the technicians he met seemed absolutely shocked to see him. “Why do some of the men and women aboard the station seem surprised to see me, General?” Phoenix finally asked.
“Because I chose not to inform the crew until I did just as you came through the airlock, sir,” Raydon replied. “Only myself, Trevor, the Secret Service, a few officials at Sky Masters Aerospace, and the Midnight spaceplane flight and ground crew knew. I felt security was paramount for this event, and it’s too easy for station personnel to communicate with Earth. I expect the messages to family and friends to be spiking soon, but by the time word gets out, you’ll be on TV worldwide.”
“And the time of your address was chosen so when you made your broadcast, you would not be in range of any known Russian or Chinese antisatellite weapons for several orbits,” Trevor Shale said.
The president’s eyes widened in surprise—that revelation definitely got his attention. “Antisatellite weapons?” he asked, astonished.
“We know of at least a half-dozen sites in northwestern and eastern Russia and three sites in China, sir,” Raydon said. “This station has self-defense weapons—short-range chemical lasers and missiles—but the Kingfisher antiballistic-missile and anti-antisatellite systems in Earth orbit aren’t yet fully operational again, so the spaceplane had no protection, and we didn’t want to take any chances.”
“Why wasn’t I told about this!” the president exclaimed.
“It was my call, sir,” Raydon said. “Frankly, in my opinion, the threat from antisatellite weapons is far down the list of the life-threatening dangers you face on this mission—I didn’t want to give you anything more to think about.” The president tried to say something, but his mouth only wordlessly opened. “By the time you depart, you’ll be in range of just one site,” Raydon went on, “and Boomer is planning the deorbit path of the spaceplane to avoid most of the others. You’ll be as safe from antisatellite weapons as we can make you.”
“You mean, you have been planning for this trip on the assumption that some foreign government would actually try to attack the spaceplane or the space station while I’m aboard them?” Trevor and Raydon’s silence and expressions gave Phoenix his answer. The president could do nothing else but shake his head for several moments, staring at a spot on the bulkhead, but then he looked at Raydon with a wry smile. “Are there any other threats I haven’t been told about, General Raydon?” he asked.
“Yes, sir—the list is longer than my arm,” Raydon said directly. “But I was notified that the president of the United States wanted to visit Armstrong Space Station, and I was ordered to make it happen, and we succeeded. If my orders were to attempt to deter you from coming up here, I think I could have delivered a very long list of very real threats to your family, your administration, and to members of Congress that would have succeeded in getting this mission canceled as well.” He motioned to the end of the connecting tunnel. “This way, Mr. President.”
Unlike the storage and processing module and the tiny spaceplane cockpit and passenger module, the Galaxy module was light, warm, and airy. The walls of the module were lined with a variety of stand-up desks and pub-style tables with the ubiquitous footholds, many computer monitors and laptops, exercise bicycles, and even a dart board. But the greatest numbers of station personnel were clustered around a three-by-five-foot picture window, snapping pictures and pointing at Earth. A large computer monitor showed what part of Earth the space station was overflying, and another screen showed a list of names that had reserved a space at the window for taking pictures of their hometown area or some other Earth landmark.
“Highly trained and skilled astronauts who had to work their tails off to get up here—and their main form of entertainment is looking out the window?” the president remarked.
“That, and sending e-mails and doing video chats with folks back home,” Raydon said. “We do a lot of video chat sessions with schools, colleges, academies, Scouts, and ROTC and Civil Air Patrol units, along with the media and family and friends.”
“That must be a very good recruiting tool.”
“Yes it is, for both the military and getting kids to study science and engineering,” Raydon agreed.
“So in a sense, my coming up here may have been a bad idea,” the president said. “If kids learn that any healthy person can travel up to a space station—that they don’t have to study hard sciences to do it—maybe those kids will just turn out to be space tourists.”
“Nothing wrong with space tourism, Mr. President,” Shale said. “But we’re hoping the kids will want to design and fly newer and better ways to get into space, and perhaps take it all the way to the moon or the planets in our solar system. We don’t know what will spark a young imagination.”