- Baxter, Stephen.
Titan.
New York: Harper Voyager, 1997.
ISBN 978-0-06-105713-7.
-
This novel begins in the latter half of the first decade
of the 21st century. Space shuttle Columbia
has been lost in a re-entry accident, and a demoralised
NASA has decided to wind down the shuttle program, with
whatever is to follow, if anything, ill-defined and subject
to the whims of politicians. The
Huygens
probe has landed on Saturn's moon Titan and returned intriguing
and enigmatic results which are indicative of a complex chemistry
similar, in a way, to the “primordial soup” from which
life formed on the ancient Earth. As China approaches economic
superpower status, it begins to flex its muscles with a
military build-up, an increasingly aggressive posture toward its
neighbours in the region, and a human spaceflight program which,
while cautious and measured, seems bent on achieving very
ambitious goals. In the United States, as the 2008 presidential
election approaches, the odds on favourite to prevail is a
“thin, jug-eared man of about fifty” (p. 147)
with little or no interest in science and technology and an
agenda of fundamental transformation of the nation. The
younger generation has completely tuned out science, technology,
and the space program, and some even advocate a return to the
hunter-gatherer lifestyle
(p. 450).
Did I mention that this book was published in 1997?
Astronaut Paula Benacerraf has been promoted and given the mission
to shut down the space shuttle program in an orderly fashion,
disposing of its assets responsibly. Isaac Rosenberg, a JPL
scientist working on the Huygens probe results, pitches a mission
which will allow the NASA human spaceflight and solar system
exploration programs to go out in a heroic effort rather than
be ignominiously consigned to museums as relics of a lost age
of greatness. Rosenberg (as he prefers to be addressed), argues
that a space shuttle should be sent on its final mission to
the only place in the solar system where its stubby wings make
any sense:
Titan.
With an atmosphere about 50% more dense than that of the Earth,
it is plausible a space shuttle orbiter could make an aerodynamic
entry at Titan. (The profile would be very different, however,
since Titan's low gravity [just 0.14 g] would mean that
entry velocity would be lower and the
scale height
of the atmosphere much greater than at Earth.)
Benacerraf recruits a cabal within NASA and begins to put together
a mission plan, using existing hardware, components under
development for future missions, prototypes from laboratories, and
legacy gear liberated from museums and static displays, to see if
such an absurdly ambitious mission might be possible. They
conclude that, while extraordinarily risky, nothing rules it out.
With the alternative a humiliating abandonment of
human spaceflight, and a crew willing to risk their
lives on a mission which may prove one way (their only hope of
survival on Titan being resupply missions and of return to Earth
a crew rotation mission, none of which would be funded at the
time of their departure), the NASA administrator is persuaded to
go for it.
This novel begins as a chronicle of an heroic attempt to expand
the human presence in the solar system, at a time when the
door seems to be closing on the resources, will, and optimistic
view of the future such efforts require. But then, as the story
plays out, it becomes larger and larger, finally concluding in
a breathtaking vista of the destiny of life in the galaxy, while
at the same time, a chronicle of just how gnarly the reality of getting
there is likely to be. I don't think I've ever read science fiction
which so effectively communicated that the life of pioneers who
go to other worlds to stay has a lot more in common with
Ernest Shackleton
than Neil Armstrong.
If you're a regular reader of these remarks,
you'll know I enjoy indulging in nitpicking details in
near-future hard science fiction. I'm not going to do that
here, not because there aren't some things the author got
wrong, but because the story is so enthralling and the
characters so compelling that I couldn't care less about
the occasional goof. Of course NASA would never
send a space shuttle to Titan. Certainly if you
worked out the delta-V, consumables requirements, long-term
storability of propellants, reliability of systems over such
an extended mission, and many other details you'd find it
couldn't possibly work. But if these natters made you put
the book down, you'd deprive yourself of a masterpiece
which is simultaneously depressing
in its depiction of human folly and inspiring in the heroism
of individual people and the human prospect. This is a thick
book: 688 pages in the print edition, and I just devoured it,
unable to put it down because I couldn't wait to find out what
happens next.
The Kindle edition appears to have been created by
scanning a print edition with an optical character recognition program.
There are dozens (I noted 49) of the kind of typographical errors one
expects from such a process, a few of which I'd expect to have been
caught by a spelling checker. I applaud publishers who are bringing out
their back-lists in electronic editions, but for a Kindle edition which
costs just one U.S. dollar less than the mass market paperback, I believe the
reader should be entitled to copy editing comparable to that of
a print edition.
December 2012 