Daedalus Leo E-Book

Robert G. Williscroft

• Herausgeber: Fresh Ink Group
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Daedalus
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 78

Beschreibung

The new armor-plated Gryphon-10is ready to launch, and Derek “Tiger” Baily will test-fly it from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for the first time, more than double the Gryphon-7’s best drop. Orbital re-entry in nothing more than a wingsuit carries extreme risks, yet Tiger and his team must rely on the numbers—and their own practical know-how—as they plan for the worst and hope for the best. Ride along with Tiger as he’s catapulted into space by Slingshot, then dropped from a record-obliterating 160 klicks. Strap in for a story that flies like the Gryphon-10.

Leseprobe

DAEDALUS LEOSWIC Drop from Low Earth Orbit

Copyright © 2019

by Robert G. Williscroft

All rights reserved

Fresh Ink Group

An Imprint of:

The Fresh Ink Group, LLC

Box 931

Guntersville, AL 35976

[email protected]

FreshInkGroup.com

Edition 1.0 2019

Cover art by Anik / FIG

Illustration by Anik / FIG

Book design by Amit Dey / FIG

Covers by Stephen Geez / FIG

Names, characters, and incidents in this story are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, names, and people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher.

Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 and except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, no portion of this book’s content may be stored in any medium, transmitted in any form, used in whole or part, or sourced for derivative works such as videos, television, and motion pictures, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Cataloging-in-Publication Recommendations:

F1CO28020 FICTION / Science Fiction / Hard Science Fiction

FIC002000 FICTION / Action & Adventure

F1CO2801 0 FICTION / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019911112

ISBN-13: 978-1-947867-59-8 Papercover

ISBN-13: 978-1-947867-60-4 Hardcover

ISBN-13: 978-1-947867-61-1 Ebooks

This story is dedicated to the U.S. Navy SEALS who may someday make this story a reality.

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Cast of Characters

Daedalus LEO

Low Earth Orbit

Coronado—San Diego—Several Days Earlier

Coronado—Gryphon

Coronado—Max

Slingshot—Equatorial Pacific

LEO—Unmanned Drop

Coronado—Manned Drop Prep

Howland & Baker Islands—Prelaunch

Amelia Earhart Skyport—Prelaunch

Amelia Earhart Skyport—Launch

Slingshot Rail - Coupled

LEO - Manned

LEO - Disaster

LEO - Rendevous

LEO - Miss

LEO—Orbit Shift

Figure 1—Orbital paths over US & Mexico

Figure 2—Orbital paths Kinshasa to Australia

Figure 3—Orbital paths over the Pacific

LEO—Manned Drop

Houston Flight Control—Landing

Daedalus LEO—Finale

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Excerpt from the first chapter of Slingshot

About Robert G. Williscroft

Other books by Robert G. Williscroft

Connect with Robert G. Williscroft

Daedalus LEO Glossary

Several people contributed to the creation of this book.

Most significantly, my wonderful wife, Jill, whom I first met when I returned from a year at the South Pole conducting atmospheric research, and who finally consented to marry me nearly thirty years later, pored over this story with her discerning engineer’s eye. She kept my timeline honest and made sure that regular readers could understand fully the arcane details of the Launch Loop and the Gryphon.

Hard science fiction authors Alastair Mayer, John Clark, and Prof John Rosenman, and USA Today bestselling author Dave Edlund reviewed the manuscript and offered their editorial insights.

Lauren Smith from Fresh Ink Group applied her professional associate publisher’s eye to improve the story.

It goes without saying that any remaining omissions, errors, and mistakes fall directly on my shoulders.

Robert G. Williscroft, PhDCentennial, ColoradoSeptember 2019

Slingshot is my novel about constructing the world’s first Space Launch Loop. The book was launched August, 2015, at the International Space Elevator Conference in Seattle, and resides on the desk of every Space Elevator scientist in the world. Space Launch Loops appear in the subsequent books in The Starchild Trilogy, and anyone familiar with my Trilogy knows all about these commercial space launch systems.

When I discovered the Gryphon rigid wingsuit, the SWIC Daedalus Files pushed themselves into my consciousness. The first story is a consequence of Slingshot’s skyports effectively being eighty km tall wingsuit base-jumping towers. This second story follows naturally from the first.

SEAL derring-do is real, the science and technology are real, the Gryphon rigid wingsuit is real, and I suspect that something like SWIC will become part of the U.S. Navy SEALS in the relatively near future.

Robert G. WilliscroftCentennial, ColoradoSeptember 2019

SEALS Winged Insertion Command (SWIC)

Capt. Brad Nelson—Commanding Officer SWIC.

Lt.Cdr. Tom Spitzer—Executive Officer SWIC.

Mother—Controlling computer in each Gryphon-10

Max—Full-size Gryphon-10 simulator

SEALS Winged Insertion Command Three (SWIC-3)

Lt.Cdr. Derek “Tiger” Baily—Narrator, Commanding Officer SWIC-3.

Lt. Jim Fox—Executive Officer SWIC-3.

Master Chief Jerry Boldt—Master Chief SWIC-3.

Senior Chief Bob Baxter—Master Chief Boldt’s second.

Launch Loop International (LLI)

Sam Davidson—Slingshot Director.

Apryl Searson—Chief Diver EMT.

Houston Flight Control

Disembodied voice—Houston Flight Control Director.

LOW EARTH ORBIT

“What the fuck!” I yelped as the rear of my Gryphon-10 pallet tilted sharply upward while the nose yawed to the right. Then the whole thing started to tumble in a spiral fashion as the kick thruster continued its burn. Mother wasn’t stopping it, so I activated the manual jettison override. I watched the burning kick thruster spiral ahead of me and then flare out. I lost it in the glare of the morning sun.

“I got a problem here, Control,” I said as calmly as I could manage. I described what had happened from my limited perspective. “Mother, deploy the tethered holocam and make a full external inspection,” I ordered as I began to get my act together.

“Tiger, we are calculating your modified orbital parameters right now,” Master Chief Boldt told me with his calming voice. “Okay…here it is. You are nominally still at one-hundred-sixty klicks, but your orbit has shifted right by twenty-two-point-five-degrees. That passes over central Mexico, well south of Baja. You’re stable, but you have to get control of your tumble so we can calculate a new set of drop parameters.”

“Roger,” I said.

“Tethered holocam deployed,” Mother said softly.

Mother controlled the bird-size tethered holocam to ensure that it maintained a stable position relative to my corkscrew. Using additional short gas bursts, I maneuvered the holocam down the length of the pallet and Gryphon-10 looking for damage.

“Jesus H…,” I muttered as it moved to my stern. “Are you getting this, Control?”

“Roger, we are.”

The back end of the pallet was partially melted, and a large chunk was missing from my right fin.

“Mother, can I survive reentry with that fin damage?”

“Negative, Tiger,” Mother said softly, “Probability of complete structure failure one hundred percent.”

CORONADO—SAN DIEGO—SEVERAL DAYS EARLIER

Derek “Tiger” Baily—you may remember me. The Gryphon-7? My 80,000-meter base jump from the Fred Noonan Skyport on Slingshot? Well…so much for fifteen minutes of fame, but you still can see Gryphon-7 at the Smithsonian, and you can read about my exploit if you dig a little bit.

I’m still with the Teams—the U.S. Navy SEALS, but now I command SEALS Winged Insertion Command Three, SWIC-3 for short. I suspect somebody in the hierarchy goofed after I completed that 80,000-meter base jump, but I got orders to OCS—that’s Officer Candidate School for you non-military types—and ended up back at SWIC-3 as a freshly minted Butter Bar—Ensign. We continued our Gryphon development with me as XO under Lt.Cdr. Tom Spitzer. Senior Chief Jerry Boldt was still with us, in line for Master Chief. By the time my old CO Brad Nelson made Captain, they gave him command of SWIC, assigned Tom as his XO, and I got command of SWIC-3 along with early promotion to Lt.Cdr. Like I said, somebody really goofed up there, but who am I to argue with them? Besides, they sent me Lt. Jim Fox as XO. He had come up through the SEAL ranks like me, and I couldn’t have gotten a better man to back me up.

My assignment, SWIC-3’s assignment, was probably impossible to accomplish. I figured that just made it interesting. All Capt. Nelson wanted was for SWIC-3 to do a Gryphon drop from LEO—Low Earth Orbit.

CORONADO—GRYPHON-10

Gryphon-7 had been relegated to the annals of SEAL history. Gryphon-8 incorporated the structural changes resulting from my water landing, causing the craft to act more like a surfboard when upside down in the water, and giving it external propulsion—basically incorporating a water-jet. Gryphon-9 changed a lot of things. It had larger wings with more fuel capacity, more powerful jet with throttle control, longer tail, and more intuitive control interface.

Gryphon-10 is the baby we would use for the LEO drop. It had some radical changes including full body armor with circulating fuel for heat protection, an increased surface area using dimples, wrinkles, and rolls that dramatically boosted heat shedding, and it incorporated a new type of polymer that was stronger, lighter, and more heat resistant than anything before. The biggest change, however, was the guidance computer unit—we called it Mother—that was designed to act on its calculations before the human pilot was even aware of them. Gryphon-10 was still man-transportable, although more ungainly than the old Gryphon-7 model. Its unpowered glide ratio was 14-1, and it could fly 100 level klicks under power.

Unlike Gryphon-7 that started at eighty klicks with zero velocity, Gryphon-10 would start at 160 klicks moving at orbital velocity. To survive the jump, Gryphon-10