- Suarez, Daniel.
Delta-v.
New York: Dutton, 2019.
ISBN 978-1-5247-4241-6.
-
James Tighe is an extreme cave diver, pushing the limits of
human endurance and his equipment to go deeper, farther, and
into unexplored regions of underwater caves around the
world. While exploring the depths of a cavern in China,
an earthquake triggers disastrous rockfalls in the cave,
killing several members of his expedition. Tighe narrowly
escapes with his life, leading the survivors to safety, and
the video he recorded with his helmet camera has made him an
instant celebrity. He is surprised and puzzled when invited
by billionaire and serial entrepreneur Nathan Joyce to a
party on Joyce's private island in the Caribbean. Joyce
meets privately with Tighe and explains that his theory
of economics predicts a catastrophic collapse of the
global debt bubble in the near future, with the potential
to destroy modern civilisation.
Joyce believes that the only way to avert this calamity
is to jump start the human expansion into the solar
system, thus creating an economic expansion into a
much larger sphere of activity than one planet and
allowing humans to “grow out” of the
crushing debt their profligate governments have run up.
In particular, he believes that asteroid mining is
the key to opening the space frontier, as it will
provide a source of raw materials which do not have to
be lifted at prohibitive cost out of Earth's deep
gravity well. Joyce intends to use part of his fortune
to bootstrap such a venture, and invites Tighe to
join a training program to select a team of individuals
ready to face the challenges of long-term industrial
operations in deep space.
Tighe is puzzled, “Why me?” Joyce explains
that much more important than a background in aerospace
or mining is the ability to make the right decisions
under great pressure and uncertainty. Tighe's leadership
in rescuing his dive companions demonstrated that
ability and qualified him to try out for Joyce's team.
By the year 2033, the NewSpace companies founded in the
early years of the 21st century have matured and, although
taking different approaches, have come to dominate the
market for space operations, mostly involving constellations
of Earth satellites. The so-called “NewSpace Titans”
(names have been changed, but you'll recognise them from
their styles) have made their billions developing this
industry, and some have expressed interest in asteroid
mining, but mostly via robotic spacecraft and on a long-term
time scale. Nathan Joyce wants to join their ranks
and advance the schedule by sending humans to do the job.
Besides, he argues, if the human destiny is to expand into
space, why not get on with it, deploying their versatility
and ability to improvise on this difficult challenge?
The whole thing sounds rather dodgy to Tighe, but cave
diving does not pay well, and the signing bonus and
promised progress payments if he meets various milestones in
the training programme sound very attractive, so he signs
on the dotted line. Further off-putting were a draconian
non-disclosure agreement and an “Indemnity for Accidental
Death and Dismemberment” which was sprung on candidates
only after arriving at the remote island training facility.
There were surveillance cameras and microphones everywhere,
and Tighe and others speculated they may be part of an
elaborate reality TV show staged by Joyce, not a genuine
space project.
The other candidates were from all kinds of backgrounds:
ex-military, former astronauts, BASE jumpers, mountaineers,
scientists, and engineers. There were almost all on the
older side for adventurers: mid-thirties to mid-forties—something
about cosmic rays. And most of them had the hallmarks of
DRD4-7R
adventurers.
As the programme gets underway, the candidates discover it
resembles Special Forces training more than astronaut
candidate instruction, with a series of rigorous tests
evaluating personal courage, endurance, psychological
stability, problem-solving skills, tolerance for stress,
and the ability to form and work as a team. Predictably, their
numbers are winnowed as they approach the milestone
where a few will be selected for orbital training and
qualification for the deep space mission.
Tighe and the others discover that their employer is
anything but straightforward, and they begin to twig
to the fact that the kind of people who actually open
the road to human settlement of the solar system may
resemble the ruthless railroad barons of the 19th
century more than the starry-eyed dreamers of science
fiction. These revelations continue as the story unfolds.
After gut-wrenching twists and turns, Tighe finds himself
part of a crew selected to fly to and refine resources
from a near-Earth asteroid first reconnoitered by the
Japanese Hayabusa2
mission in the 2010s. Risks are everywhere, and not just
in space: corporate maneuvering back on Earth can kill the
crew just as surely as radiation, vacuum, explosions, and
collisions in space. Their only hope may be a desperate
option recalling one of the greatest feats of seamanship
in Earth's history.
This is a gripping yarn in which the author confronts his
characters with one seemingly insurmountable obstacle and
disheartening setback after another, then describes how these
carefully selected and honed survivors deal with it. There
are no magical technologies: all of the technical foundations
exist today, at least at the scale of laboratory
demonstrations, and could plausibly be scaled up to those
in the story by the mid-2030s. The intricate plot is a
salutary reminder that deception, greed, dodgy finances,
corporate hijinks, bureaucracy, and destructively
hypertrophied egos do not stop at the
Kármán
line. The conclusion is hopeful and a testament to
the place for humans in the development of space.
A question and
answer document about the details underlying the story is
available on the
author's Web site.
July 2019 