Overview: Stories in the Stratosphere by Michael G. Bennett & Joey Eschrich & Ed Finn

Author:Michael G. Bennett & Joey Eschrich & Ed Finn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub

Richard pulled a screen out of his messenger bag, unfolding it to the size of a poster; each conference participant occupied a square inside it. No one would find it weird that Noriko was doing this outside—she often showed off Spaceport Tucson like this.

“Alex Mascart is on,” Richard announced.

The space debris guy. He had a grant to scan low orbit for debris smaller than the marble-sized chunks that NASA and the Air Force tracked. Mascart fretted that something pea-sized could hit a satellite and start a chain reaction. The network’s cheap Stratollites made LEO tracking affordable. A first use of All-Sky Awareness.

“Welcome, Ruth Obatola,” Noriko said, as a woman’s face popped in, the Lagos skyline visible behind her. Obatola had signed over to World View a big U.N. World Security contract after the Stratollite network analyzed a two-kiloton airburst off northern Japan last year. They’d proved it had been a meteoroid and not a provocation by a nuclear-armed neighbor. Again, All-Sky-Awareness—or ASA—proved its worth. Obatola wanted more data on near-Earth asteroids and cometary material, and the Stratollite network seemed the cheapest way to get it fast.

“Berson Singh,” Richard announced the next one to pop in, with palm trees and the white sand gleam of a private beach in the background. Show-off, Noriko thought, with barely enough tact and common sense not to say it aloud. A trillionaire, Singh wanted the network to aim sensors far higher than Mascart’s. Singh’s passion focused on the stars, listening for “pings” that might indicate a transitory SETI signal, indicating the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Of course, there were gigantic telescopes—on Earth and in space—staring at individual objects out there one at a time. ASA offered a way to scan the whole sky at lower sensitivity, but around the clock. Singh had been a major early investor in the network.

There was a Ph.D. candidate in upper atmosphere chemistry—Susan Smythe—studying auroras, lightning strikes. She was also trying to find someone who was dumping aerosols into the upper atmosphere in an illegal geoengineering attempt to cool the Earth. Noriko had advised Susan to narrow down to one topic, but she seemed determined to use ASA to investigate it all.

And then there was Lieutenant Jason Zhou. Noriko glared at Richard, who quickly tapped mute and said, “I set up the group chat a week ago.”

The military had sensors and several Stratollites in the network. Zhou always told them he just wanted to be in the conferences where they determined how the ASA resources were being used, so the Air Force had a bead on what was going on. They were solid silent partners, but he was the last face Noriko wanted to see right this second.

Richard unmuted the call. Everyone started talking at once, pointing out how their money, their mission, or both, meant that they should be able to use more of the Stratollite network.

Noriko wanted to shout at them all. None of this scheduling mattered if something was going wrong with the Stratollites, if someone was messing with them.

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