INGRID DOWS - AN ALTERNATE STORY PART 3 - THE SPACE AGE by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 26 – WORLD REACTIONS

12:23 (Washington Time)

Friday, July 01, 1955 ‘C’

The Oval Office, The White House

Washington, D.C., U.S.A.

President Earl Warren, who had been watching the latest news on television with his Vice-President, Dwight ‘Ike’ Eisenhower, sat back in his presidential chair while holding his head with both hands.

‘’Holy Moses! She designed, built and flew a spaceplane which attained Earth orbit, all without any government help or support? This girl is truly incredible!’’ Eisenhower, who was grinning from ear to ear while watching the news coming from Le Bourget, nodded his head in appreciation.

‘’That is definitely the Ingrid Dows I know, Earl. She is a genuine national hero and treasure to the United States.’’

‘’Do we have any Space-related program going on at this time, Ike?’’ Eisenhower had to think long seconds before he could answer that question.

‘’I believe that the Navy has a modest program to develop a rocket able to send meteorological instruments up in the stratosphere. However, it is meant to be able only to send its rocket up a parabolic, ballistic course, not to place instruments in orbit. Its intended payload is very small, a few pounds at the most, and the rocket itself has not been able to get off the ground...yet.’’

‘’And a private corporation was able to send a craft the size of a light bomber in orbit, where it completed a full orbit before coming back down? How much do you estimate that this Hughes spaceplane weighs, Ike?’’

‘’Hum, I am no engineer but, at first sight, her STARBLAZER must be at the least ten or twelve tons or more...empty. Once fueled up, I suspect that it would approach or surpass the fifty-ton mark.’’

‘’And we can’t send up a few pounds yet? That’s unacceptable! You realize how foolish or incompetent we will look when we will reveal that now to the American medias? Our people will look like a bunch of badly trained chimps!’’

Ike’s grin turned to a grimace at that remark from Warren.

‘’Uh, you do realize that a large-scale national Space program will cost a lot of money, Earl?’’

‘’So?! That girl used her own money, yet look at what she was able to accomplish by herself. We should give her our full support for her project.’’

‘’But the Congress is liable to scream favoritism, Earl. Budgets for national programs are supposed to be voted by the Congress, with a competition held first to designate a prime contractor. Also, that girl has a lot of opponents and enemies in the Congress, thanks to her open opposition to racism. ’’

‘’I don’t care what those bigots and racists think of her, Ike. If they try to smear her after such a success, then they will only end up being ridiculed by the American public. Besides, I want to know what she has in mind about her Space project. I suspect that this spaceplane of hers is only the first step in her private Space program. I would like to meet her here at the White House in the coming days, so that we could talk about a national Space program. When is she due back from France with her spaceplane?’’

‘’Uh, I am not sure, Earl. She said to reporters that she uses a converted heavy cargo aircraft to move her spaceplane around . However, she didn’t say when she would return from Paris.’’

‘’Then, find out about that, Ike, and have the Air Force pay the fuel bill for that cargo aircraft. It is high time that we become serious about this Space business. Can you imagine the reaction of the American public if this would have been a Soviet spaceplane landing in Paris after coming down from orbit? Do we even know what the Soviets have in terms of a Space program ?’’

‘’Message understood, Earl. I will get things rolling on this.’’

18:01 (Moscow Time)

Cafeteria of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR

Moscow, Soviet Union

Having a lot of work still to be done today, Sergei Korolev had decided to have supper at the scientific staff’s cafeteria of the Academy of Sciences building instead of going home. He had barely sat at one table with his tray of food when exclamations of surprise and shock from other scientists around him made him look at the small, black and white television set placed in one corner of the cafeteria. One look was enough for him to forget about his supper and to nearly run to next to the television set, so that he could watch and listen better what was transmitted from Le Bourget Airport by a Soviet television crew. What that crew showed of a fantastic-looking craft the size of a large fighter and of the smiling young woman wearing a no-less fantastic suit made his jaw drop wide open.

‘’Chiort! She attained orbit with that huge craft?’’

Another scientist standing near him, a physicist, gave him a mocking smirk.

‘’You really believe this crazy story, Sergei? This must be some kind of American propaganda, using a disguised fighter aircraft.’’ Korolev replied in an acerbic tone while drilling his eyes into the physicist.

‘’Do you know who that girl is, Konstantin? This is General Ingrid Dows, the one who bombed out of existence both the Japanese High Command and the Nazi High Command, including Hitler, in 1944. That same woman then bombed to rubble the Kremlin barely six years ago, killing Stalin and nearly every member of the Praesidium. She is to be taken very seriously indeed.’’

A female physicist next to Korolev then asked a cautious question to him.

‘’What can you surmise from those pictures, Sergei?’’

‘’Uh, let me hear Dows’ answers first, Anna.’’

The interview given by Dows to the agitated group of reporters assembled around her spaceplane went on for a good fifteen minutes, with Korolev and many other scientists in the cafeteria frantically noting down the main points of her answers. When the view from Le Bourget was replaced by the image of the main newscaster in Moscow, Sergei reviewed his notes before speaking to Anna.

‘’Now, as fantastic as this story may sound like, I believe that Dows was mostly truthful about her trip to Space. She understandably was not ready to provide technical specifications and details about her fantastic craft but the burn marks on the nose of her spaceplane proves to me that she indeed went up to low Earth orbit and then reentered the atmosphere, a quite fiery and risky procedure. This business of atmospheric bouncing is also something I can easily believe. Why else would she break the secret around her spaceplane by landing in Paris rather than in the United States, if not because of that bouncing?’’

‘’What about her claim that her project is strictly a private one meant to explore Space? Couldn’t this be a previously hidden secret American military project, Sergei?’’

‘’That I don’t know, Anna. Yet, just look at that supersonic airliner of hers sitting next to her spaceplane: she has already proved many times that she is able to realize incredible things by herself. She also proved again to be an incredibly brave woman.’’ That last remark made Anna smile with pride and she then lowered her voice to make a remark to Sergei.

‘’Even if she is an American, I must say that I am proud of what she did, Sergei. Maybe some of the chauvinists in this building will finally respect the opinions and ideas of us women.’’

Korolev nodded his head at those words while looking at the file picture of Ingrid Dows, wearing her United States Air Force uniform, being shown by the television newscaster.

‘’And I will definitely pay more attention to what she says from now on, Anna. On the other hand, I will most probably be called to the Kremlin, either tonight or tomorrow, to be told there to boost our own efforts to send a satellite in Earth orbit.’’

13:22 (Paris Time)

Saturday, July 02, 1955 ‘C’

Le Bourget Airport, Paris

France

Hien was crying tears of joy as she tightly hugged Ingrid inside the cargo hold of the C-152 heavy transporter which had brought her, Vice-President Eisenhower and a team of Hughes Aircraft technicians, to Paris.

‘’Oh, Mommy! I was so scared for you.’’

‘’I know, Hien. However, I came out of this whole and well, so you can relax now.’’

‘’But you will make other flights to Space, no?’’

‘’I will, Hien. However, that is what I truly believe in doing, irrespective of the risks I will face. You will just have to have confidence in my design and piloting skills while I advance my project. However, I can promise you that the next couple of weeks will be much quieter and safer: my flight to orbit and back showed me that some modifications in the design of my spaceplane are warranted. I will thus be doing mostly engineering work during those weeks. Does that reassure you, Hien?’’

‘’A bit, Mommy.’’ said Hien while wiping away her tears. ‘’I realize how important your work is to you.’’

‘’Good! Loading my STARBLAZER into this plane will take a few hours, so we will have time to go have supper together at the Truongs’ restaurant before leaving for the United States.’’

‘’That would be really nice, Mommy.’’

‘’Then, let me speak in private with the Vice-President, sweetie. In the meantime, you can go see Katharine and wait with her that I am finished here.’’

‘’Yes, Mommy!’’

Looking for a moment at Hien as she walked away, Ingrid then went deeper in the vast centerline cargo hold of the C-152, joining up with Eisenhower in two of the folding seats lining the sides of the hold. Eisenhower smiled to her while shaking hands with her.

‘’Ingrid, you are a truly fantastic woman. And please call me simply ‘Ike’ rather than Mister Vice-President.’’

‘’With pleasure, Ike.’’

Eisenhower then searched for his words for a couple of seconds before speaking again while keeping his volume of voice low.

‘’Ingrid, you will not be surprised if I say to you that you are now the darling of the American public and that you started an enthusiastic storm about Space exploration in the United States. To be frank, your success, made without any government support, is proving to be a bit of an embarrassment to the government due to our own lack of accomplishments or even of true efforts in that domain. The President has thus tasked me to approach you and to invite you to the White House for a very serious discussion about creating a national Space program. Your technical expertise, as well as your vision and foresight, will be priceless for us in order to make that program both meaningful and successful. In that optic, what did you have in mind as the ultimate goal of your spaceplane project?’’

‘’My goals are many, Ike, and are meant to open the United States to the use of Space, ideally for peaceful purposes. Once my spaceplane will be proven as a relatively safe meant to attain Earth orbit, I then intend to use it to place in stable orbits a number of artificial satellites of various designs and purpose. Those could include communications relay satellites placed in geo-stationary orbits; meteorological satellites able to warn us in advance of storms forming up off our coasts; Earth mapping satellites able to produce highly accurate maps of our planet; along with many other types of satellites. Eventually, I envision the building in orbit of permanently-manned Space stations, the sending of automated probes to the other planets of our Solar System and the landing of astronauts on the Moon. However, such a vast program will take years and decades, not mere months, and will also cost a fortune. We will have to avoid the temptation to go too fast and thus take unnecessary risks by cutting corners. I was ready to accomplish all that by myself, developing a satellite network that would at least reimburse me for its cost, but I will certainly welcome the government’s help in this. However, I can already see loud protestations from the Congress about claimed favoritism in my favor if the White House prioritize Hughes Aircraft as a main contractor for any national Space program.’’

‘’Well, while you are right about possible protests from the Congress concerning the financing and conduct of any national Space program, the President and me are resolve to use your expertise and vision to the maximum. What we are thus offering you is a cabinet position as ‘National Space Program Advisor’. You would still be mainly busy as CEO and chief designer of Hughes Aircraft but would be called to help plan, structure and create a Space program that would open the use of Space to our nation. My question to you now, Ingrid, is this: would you be ready to take on that job?’’ Ingrid didn’t need seconds to answer that and nodded her head once.

‘’I accept, Ike! Let’s launch the United States into Space.’’