1) First email from space.

Neille opened her email with great anticipation. In her inbox, she hoped, would be her first message from Lester since the TMI burn. Being to far away for useful two way conversation Lester and Neille would be forced to use email throughout the trip. The crew had been very busy making sure that all systems were go, before being allowed personal time to send messages. Now that they are on their way there will be plenty of time for personal messages. This trip is to be a classic study in the "hurry up and wait" philosophy. Short times of feverish, critical and even dangerous activity followed by days or weeks of nothing. Lester was prepared for that. He had been training for eight years for just this trip.

Neille, on the other hand, had not tranied for this at all. She had only met Lester six months ago. The crew of the "Oasis" participated in a great many PR events in the months leading up to their voyage. Neille, as a makeup artist had the privilege, she didn't think of it that way, of getting those stuck up astronauts presentable for their on-stage appearances. She had heard all of the stories about those macho astronauts. Lester was a big surprise. He was nothing like she expected. In fact from the moment she saw him she had the feeling that he was different, maybe even special.

The months that followed were magical, late night rendezvous with Lester falling asleep exhausted with his head on her shoulder. Working so many hours made it hard to find time to be together but Lester always found a way. He is resourcefull and smart and good looking and now he is gone. A million miles away. Currently he is only 50 thousand miles but his destination is 50 million miles away. Lester and his crew are headed for Mars. The first humans to make the trip.

And what a trip. First was the lift off. Spectacular! Neille had a front row seat for the enormous fire and thunderous noise. They had just completed the TMI, or trans-martian injection, burn. Neille was still getting used to the sea of acronyms the astronauts used. Next, after two days of drifting weightless they would be rendezvousing with the first RAB, refueled acceleration burn, structure. There would be two RAB's on the trip out. Lester had tried to explain the details of how these burns would allow them to make the trip to Mars in two weeks instead of six months. She still did not grasp it totally.

She new what to expect reading this first email from Lester since lift off. He would start by explaining what they had accomplished so far. He was so in love with his work that he couldn't help but talk about it at every opportunity. He would end with far too few words about himself and finally even fewer of his love for her. That was Lester, and in spite of all that, she loved him more than she had thought was possible.

Those few words would have to be enough. It would be eight weeks before they would be able to talk again in person. That's two weeks en route to Mars, two weeks at Mars, and four weeks flying back to Earth. How many times had he tried to explain it to her? She still did not fully comprehend why it would take twice as long to get back as it did to get there. "Remeber, It is Rocket Science!" he would say to her "You are good at what you do and I am good at what I do."

2) RAB-1 and 2

After two days, Neille was still not used to being away from Lester. Now they were approaching the first RAB. Neille could tell from Lester's tone that he was nervous. He tried to hide behind his business as usual smile. The message with the nervous picture of Lester also contained pictures of the RAB structure. It was huge. Lester had told her that it had been constructed robotically in space en route to Mars from thousands of ten kilo spheres. She had not expected something this enormous.

The RAB-1 capsule had left earth one week before Lester had in the CEV or crew exploration vehicle. Sitting on top of the Falcon 9 rocket it had looked about the same size as the CEV, christened "Oasis" by her crew, that Lester and his crew are traveling in. Now that ship sat in the middle of the RAB-1 structure and was dwarfed by an enormous disk. Having heard this story from Lester numerous time she tried to remember the details. For months earth bound launchers, like cannons, had been launching ten kilo spheres into orbit. Most of the spheres contained rocket fuel. Either liquid oxygen or liquid hydrogen. Others contained various raw materials that would be needed by the crew on their trip to Mars. Their technical name is "Fuel and Supply Transfer" spheres or FaST spheres. Everyone involved just calls them "FaST Balls."

He called it a cannon but that is not a good term. It is a percussion gun that can fire a projectile at better than 5 miles per second. It has two tubes. The first has a plug that is fired inward. As it moves in it creates enormous pressure inside the tube. A FaST Ball is placed inside the second shorter tube. The pressure created in the first tube is transferred to the second tube and propels the FaST Ball. Enough force is created to send them all the way to orbit.

The FaST Balls were captured in orbit by a second cannon. This cannon, and all of the space borne cannons are not percussion guns like the Earth borne ones. They are electro-magnetic rail guns or EMR guns. The EMR gun in orbit would use solar power to launch the FaST Balls from there to the L2 LaGrange point of the earth sun system. Again captured they were stored until adequate supplies were ready. After RAB-1 made it's TMI the L2 EMR gun began shooting those FaST Balls at it. RAB-1 had been capturing them for a week now, one at a time, and it's robots had been assembling this enormous structure. In fact, the "cannons" in orbit and at L2 had been assembled the same way months before. And to be precise, Lester always insisted on precision in his explanations, the space borne cannons are clusters of four cannons. Clustering provided redundancy and higher capacity.

The structure of each space borne cannon is an enormous dish built from FaST Balls. After being captured the FaST Balls split in two and are connected together. The surface of each half is covered with solar cells. Thus when they are all connected they create a solar panel large enough to power the cannons. Once the solar array is large enough the rest of the FaST Balls received are stored until it is time to launch them with the cannon.

With a week of drifting behind it the CEV was going to get a big boost. After docking with RAB-1 it would load the fuel from those thousands of FaST Balls into its main fuel tanks. Those tanks had been drained and the fuel consumed during its ten-minute TMI burn. With the main tanks full again the CEV could make another ten-minute burn that would cut the trip time to Mars from six months down to two months.

She remembered her own question at that point. "Two months, but you said it would take only two weeks?" To which Lester had replied, "That is how long it would take if we continued at the speed attained after RAB-1" going on to explain about RAB-2. After the CEV made it's burn and left, RAB-1 FaST Balls with fuel would continue to arrive at RAB-1. Instead of storing them it would use it's EMR gun to accelerate them on to catch up with the CEV. Robots aboard the CEV would capture them and transfer the fuel into the again empty main tanks. This process would continue until the main tanks were again full. At which point the CEV would initiate RAB-2. RAB-2 is another ten-minute burn that would shorten the trip to Mars to two weeks total.

Just before RAB-2 the CEV would release an EMR gun that it had carried from Earth. This EMR gun would continue to receive FaST Balls with fuel from RAB-1 and accelerate them again to catch up with the CEV at it's new velocity. The CEV would capture these and transfer the fuel into the main tank, not for another RAB but for the all-important TEI, trans-earth insertion, burn when Lester and his crew were ready to return home.

This last batch of outbound FaST Balls, empty of their cargo of fuel, would be assembled into a large mirror, the Surface Usability Node Two, or SUN2. After the CEV separated and descended to the surface of Mars this mirror would enter a geo-synchronous orbit directly above the landing site. It would then reflect light to the surface near the landing site thus raising the surface temperature making it easier for the crew to explore.

3) Let's go home.

It was nerve wracking, exciting, dangerous, momentous, historic but now all of that was over. They had explored the surface of Mars, collected samples of rocks, gems, and martian dirt. They had packed all of them into the sealed sample containers for the return trip. Neille read and re-read every message from Lester describing the sights, sounds, smells, and touch of the first human expedition to the surface of Mars. All she could think about now was how much she wanted Lester to come home. She thought of what Susan Borman, wife of Commander Frank Borman of Apollo 8 is reported to have said. She did not remember the words exactly. If her husband and crew went into luunar orbit and could not get back out of luunar orbit they would die there. They would "wreck" the moon for everybody. Every time someone on Earth looked at the moon they would think of those three dead astronauts endlessly circling the moon. Neille did not want Lester "wrecking" mars. Neille did not want Lester "wrecking" her life. She simply wanted Lester to come home.

Her last message to him had asked, "... tell me again how you are going to have enough fuel to get back here to me in four weeks?" and "Why can't you get here in two weeks like the trip out? I really miss you!"

His response was in front of her now. She didn't understand it any better now than the last thousand times he had explained it. But, Neille was determined to try again. More to get her mind off the dangers still remaining than anything.

After the CEV arrived at Mars there was no more reason to send FaST Balls to it. The CEV would no longer be in position to capture them. RAB-2 would instead enter the ReTRAB phase. That is the Return Trip Refueled Acceleration Burn phase. In this phase RAB-2 would stockpile the FaST Balls it received from RAB-1. When fully loaded it would fire it's engines to enable it to arrive at Mars at the same time that Lester and the CEV were ready for TEI. RAB-2 would then loop around Mars and enter the same trajectory as the CEV headed back to earth. After the CEV emptied it's main fuel tank RAB-2 would begin launching it's FaST Balls at it. The CEV would use that fuel for it's ReTRAB. ReTRAB meant another ten minute burn of it's main engines to turn a six month trip into a four week trip. "Oasis" and her crew is on it's way home!

4) Happily ever after.

"Can't I see you just once? How can one kiss hurt?" screamed Neille into Lesters ear. "It is great now that we are close enough again to have a real conversation but this last half inch is killing me! I want to touch you! I don’t want to wait until the end of your four week quarantine! Is there someone I can talk too? How about…"

"Calm down Neille." Lester broke in. "I know it has been a long time. I miss you too! But, we can't break the rules, you know that as well as I do. You can come and visit me every day if you like but you will have to stay on the other side of the glass."

Still breathing hard Neille shook her head. "I understand dear, but I don't have to like it."

"I've been thinking," Lester continued after Neille regained some composure, "I found this really pretty gem on the Martian surface. The boss said that the first man to walk on Mars deserves something special. How about we put that little Martian gem onto a ring that would fit on your left hand?"

"Yes, yes, yes, are you sure it's ok? I mean, about the gem, of course it's ok about us. You did just ask me to marry you, didn't you? Yes, yes, yes." Neille said yes a few dozen more times then calmed down a little. It would still be hard to wait four more weeks but now she had something to look forward to, and a wedding to plan.

The end.

Grapical Trip Profile (not exactly as described in the story.)