Before 24 Billion and Counting

Chapter 3 Part 1 Problems of publicity loom

Chapter 3 29\/6\/2039 Thur 

Jacob was in the front office and,looking up, said, "Good morning - good morning - did you sleep well - how was the trike trip - what about the ICBM?" 

Knowing his current mood I just gave him all the answers to let his over-active brain continue, "Good morning to you - I slept well, the trike ride was superlative, and the ICBM news could hardly be much worse." 

He nodded in agreement and then growled more quietly into the paperwork in front of him, "It's just as well we've got something interesting to distract us. Right, I'm ready. Let's get Will and Ellen. We'll use the lecture theatre." 

"I thought they were on last night - and what's this lecture theatre?" 

"It was only a short program till ten thirty. NASA had the 'scope under remote control from eleven, and Joe was on for that. We built the lecture theatre in April - it's not big but it means we can do better presentations here and save carting people about." 

He led the way to the lecture room - theatre was a little pretentious - but still it was comfortable, with ten audience seats around a conference table, a lecture bench, a big computer driven monitor, and a projector for flat media. 

Bill and Ellen, both looking fresh, arrived, said their good-mornings, and Jacob took the chair. He dimmed the house lights and keyed up the first screen on the monitor which resembled the comet I had seen the previous night, but with better definition. The slight orange tinge to the head, and yellowish hue spreading from the head to the progressively fainter tail could either be a coding or true color and I asked which.

"That's how it really looks - comet Rosetta due to fall into a Jovian orbit in six month's time."

Jacob superimposed a three-dimensional grid axially aligned to the comet which gave the image perspective and scale. The head was a thousand kilometers in diameter, we were looking at the head first, and the tail at about 30 degrees down and away and to the left. This went into invisibility in 300,000 kilometers. Most of what we could see would be gaseous, and stars could be discerned through the tail. The next display was coded by density, in shades of green and yellow with small concentrations of blue in the head. 

Jacob said, "The blue code is material equal to or denser than water ice." 

I could see two separate pieces to the head and as Jacob rotated the image of the computer's best guess at a structure, a third appeared. The name suddenly triggered off my memory, "Wait a bit - is this the comet that a drilling probe was sent to early this century - landing was due 2010 or something like that?" 

"Well remembered," said Ellen," - it was launched 2003 and due to rendezvous 2013, and it did, well a bit later in 2014. We've got the results of the drilling program. It's not relevant at the moment, but we'll show you later on."  

The image returned to the view from the 'scope and Jacob continued, "So far nothing special - it's an average comet on a near Jovian encounter, which is nothing unusual either, as Jupiter is vacuum cleaner for a lot of interplanetary debris. What is unusual is the orbit, and this could be spectacular." 

He keyed again and the monitor faded. Above the table appeared a hologram of Jupiter and the four largest moons all spinning and orbiting. Even the maelstrom of Jupiter's weather system could be discerned moving. A dotted line through Jupiter's centre indicated the orbit around the sun and as the display centred on Jupiter the dots moved through the planet's image. 

"That's really good", I said, "better than that, it's beautiful." 

I could see Jacob's grin in the yellow light shed by the image, "If you recall this was your idea five years ago - you just didn't think we had the computer power for it, but technology moves on - we've got the whole solar system, and since NASA digitised most of their pictorial info all of the presently acquired surface detail is on it too. I think that our presentations will be very much better in the future. Yes - I wanted to surprise you with this as a display, but here is the event I want you to note."