A novel by Victor Crockett
A Martian Odyssey
The greatest distance is not always measured in miles.
01The premise
A space elevator opens the way to Mars. Aboard PEGASUS, an immense crew begins an extraordinary expedition. But a hostile planet is only part of the challenge. Back on Earth, powerful opponents are determined that the mission will never return.
Two crews have already been lost between the planets. Daniel Winstanley has spent forty-five years building a ship that will not fail, but on Earth there are those who believe mankind was never meant to leave it, and they are determined that PEGASUS will.
50,000km
Space elevator
Of carbon-nanotube thread, tethering Earth to a counterweight beyond geostationary orbit.
2km+
Drive train
A braced linear accelerator running the length of PEGASUS.
30days
Earth to Mars
At one hundredth of a G, not the 330 days of a conventional ship.
2crews
Lost before her
EAGLE and CONDOR set out for Mars. Neither crew came home.
02On board
Two carousels · one full gravity · thirty days to Mars
“Not a thing of beauty.”
“No, Bill, not a thing of beauty.”
Daniel Winstanley spent forty-five years on her: over two kilometres of braced linear accelerator, nuclear power and contra-rotating carousels, built to carry hundreds to Mars in thirty days, and bring them home.
01
Cyclotron stage
4 × 200 m
Four cyclotrons in a cruciform give the reaction mass its first push. Inside them, a toroidal tank of powdered iron.
02
Power complexes
2 × nuclear
Two nuclear generator complexes, contra-rotating, shed their waste heat as infra-red through vast radiator vanes.
03
Pressure vessel
2 × 400 m · 1 g
Two carousels turn in opposite directions, pushing against each other to hold the crew at one full gravity.
04
Excursion vehicles
6 + 2 VTOL
Six conventional craft and two vertical take-off landers wait at the aft air locks to carry crews down to the surface.
05
Drive train
2 km+ · 0.01 g
A braced linear accelerator. It manages only one hundredth of a G, but it never has to stop.
03The novel
An ambitious voyage into the science, courage and human cost of reaching another world.
Half a century after EAGLE and CONDOR were lost in the void, PEGASUS carries not a handful of astronauts but hundreds of explorers to the Red Planet. Told week by week across six months of 2075 and 2076, the story moves between the Martian wilderness and a manhunt on Earth for the preacher known only as the Prophet, a man determined that the mission will never return.
01 · The science
Engineered, not imagined
Space elevators, linear accelerators and contra-rotating carousels, worked out by an author who studied aeronautics and ship science.
02 · The people
Hundreds, far from home
Half a year in each other's company, and the human frailties that doomed the missions before them.
03 · The threat
A hunt on Earth
A fundamentalist preacher who believes mankind should never leave the Earth, and the search to find him in time.
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Published by UK Publishing House
From the mission log
04The journey
Earth, where it begins. Mars, where it is going. And the danger that follows it all the way.
Where it begins
A carbon-nanotube thread fifty thousand kilometres long climbs from a ground station on the equator to a counterweight beyond geostationary orbit. From Easter Island, mission control watches every step.
Where it is going
From the edge of the Hellas Basin, rover crews push out across the planet: the South Pole, Valles Marineris, the Face of Mars at Cydonia, and the slopes of Olympus Mons.
What follows it
Not every danger lies in space. A preacher known as the Prophet believes mankind was never meant to leave the Earth, and his followers will go to almost any length to see PEGASUS fail.
Meet the author
Engineer · Royal Navy, 30 years · Essex
Victor Crockett studied Ship Science at the University of Southampton and spent thirty years in the Royal Navy, from commanding a fast patrol boat to working in naval intelligence, alongside a career as a professional engineer.
Beyond Tranquillity brings that engineering mind and life at sea to the voyage to Mars. He lives in Essex with his wife, Pauline, and has many more books already drafted.
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