Chapter 1: Cape Canaveral, Florida 2025

Kennedy Space Center, Launch Complex 36, Blue Origin

Sara Hartman hated Florida. She didn’t like sweat. Or humidity.  She didn’t like the strip-malls, chain stores, and fast casual restaurants that littered route 95 on the way from Orlando. And she didn’t like the strange politics of the state.  But there was no other place on earth she wanted to be right now.  She had promised herself she wouldn’t come back to this coast for anything that didn’t matter, not after what it had taken from her family. But “mattered” was a moving target when rockets were involved.

And this one mattered enough to make her palms sweat even before the humidity got to her. A personal and professional milestone awaited her over the next few days that had been a culmination of many years of work.  She had found a few pleasures in Florida.  She did enjoy the Cuban fusion food she was occasionally able to find in little hole-in-the wall restaurants, like that small Puerto Rican Eatery on Atlantic Avenue she had found earlier that day.  The taste from the slow cooked carnitas was still on her palate as she looked out over the Cape from 200 feet up.  

From this height, the juxtaposition of natural wonders and the towering achievements of human engineering was striking.  The tranquil beauty of Florida’s Space Coast, contrasted with the raw power of the rockets that launched from Blue Origin’s Launch Complex-36, was a strange blend of elegant nature and crude technology. 

The flavor of Florida has always consisted of a strange set of contradictions.  Hot and muggy, vibrant with new immigrant energy and the fusion of culture, food, and ambition that is the inevitable result.  Florida was also at the same time calcified with retiree conservatism, corrupt politicians, entrenched wealth, and a hostile pride that was cold and dismissive to outsiders.  Based on its ideal location for launching matter into space, Florida was also the home of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with many different types of launch facilities.  

Sara was petite, towering over almost no one at her modest five foot four inches.  She was also used to holding her own amongst the boys and a few girls of her engineering class at UC Berkeley.  Her rule was simple: never be the story. Be the reason the story doesn’t happen. If the rocket flew clean, nobody would remember her name. That was the point.

Foregoing a master’s to get some on-the-ground experience was a good call.  She was able to join Blue right out of undergrad and started to learn the rocket game from the inside.  Blue had been a chaotic mix of enthusiastic youth and grizzled veterans of the aeronautics industry.  They pulled from Boeing, SpaceX, NASA, and all of the myriad companies that supported the big players in space and aviation manufacturing.  Some old-school attitudes required a kick in the ass sometimes.  Sara was happy to provide that kick when it came to outdated and inefficient ideas on how to develop technology and build rockets and to the mild sexism that was inherent everywhere.  Being a young and single woman at a company with big male egos was an additional challenge even in this progressive decade of the 20’s.  She did, however, love her job and both liked and trusted the people she worked with.  Some of whom were on this short tour with her of the LC-36 campus.  

Her phone buzzed once. 

MOM: Launch is soon right? You eating?  

She ignored it the way she ignored most things that threatened to soften her focus.  She brushed back her long hair and tightened her ponytail to  reset her concentration.

LC-36 had evolved from supporting early planetary exploration missions to being a hub for the new era of commercial space exploration, bridging NASA’s pioneering efforts with Blue Origin’s ambitious future. Sara was looking out from the top of the LC- 36’s tower that would soon host the 313-foot-tall New Glenn rocket in its first commercial launch.  It represented her team’s hard work over the last three years and more for some.  Below her she could see the Transporter Erector (TE) in the distance, slowly raising the overly phallic rocket to the vertical attitude required for launch.  Sara was the payload specialist for this launch, and it was a personal culmination of several years of work that would put a private satellite into geostationary transfer orbit and eventually on a path to the Jovian system for a mix of science and commerce still yet to be fully disclosed.

Sara was getting the full tour of the facility pre-launch with her team working on this specific payload for Eden Systems, ensuring that all of the millions of details and coordination of thousands of different companies, components, systems, and bureaucracies seamlessly resulted in solving what was a ridiculously difficult problem;  how to get 10,000 kg of payload out of the gravity well of Earth and into a stable orbit without blowing up, being damaged, or otherwise molesting some of the most fragile and expensive hardware ever to be launched into orbit.  Only slightly more difficult were manned missions which carried an even more fragile and less tolerant payload.  

Atop the tower Sara could see the rest of LC-36’s structures and far across the flat terrain of Merritt Island and beyond, the Atlantic Ocean dominated the eastern horizon. The shimmering expanse stretched endlessly, its surface rippling with sunlight and reflecting the sky's changing hues. Closer to shore, whitecaps were breaking gently against the sandy beaches of Canaveral National Seashore, one of the longest stretches of undeveloped coastline on Florida’s east coast.  To the South was Banana River, a tranquil lagoon separated from the ocean by a narrow barrier island. On Sara’s first trip out her Uber driver mentioned that you could see bottlenose dolphins, manatees, or even a bald eagle on a trip through the calm waters.  To the West was Merritt Island and Indian River, another large lagoon and part of the Indian River Lagoon system. It was a vast estuary fringed with dense mangroves, sabal palms, and slash pines, adding a touch of green to the landscape. Between the Banana and Indian Rivers, the land transitions into the sprawling Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, a haven for diverse flora and fauna.  And finally, as Sara panned north, all the Kennedy Space Center infrastructure, including other launch complexes such as LC-39A and LC-39B, came into view.  The historic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) rises prominently in the distance, a stark white monolith set against the natural backdrop. 

Sara was always impressed at the size of the complex.  She had been to the Cape several times before but had not seen it from this height.  It would be an exciting launch for several reasons.  It was the first for Blue Origin and the untested New Glenn rocket and this was her first mission as Payload Specialist.  This was a commercial launch of a very sophisticated satellite from a private company she’d been working with for over two years.  Eden was a secretive company with a very small footprint and diverse holdings across the world.  Eden’s secrecy wasn’t glamorous to her, it was sloppy in a suit. Secrecy always meant someone, somewhere, was skipping a step and calling it strategy. 

Eden had paid over $100 million to Blue Origin for this launch and most likely billions for the development of their satellite.  She knew that it would be a big deal for her company and for her personally to get this launch right and show everyone that Blue was a hungry competitor.  The launch was on Saturday, and they were currently at L-3 days.  Sara had drawn up a list of all the things she wanted to personally examine in addition to all the standard checklists in the Launch Readiness Review her team had set up to ensure every detail was in place before launch.  Sara had been working inside the  Payload Processing Facility of the Blue Origin vendor Astrotech, which helped manage payload preparation before launch, for several weeks already.  She had been working to ensure that Eden’s satellite was ready for insertion and delivery to the main fairing of the New Glenn rocket.  Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday went by in a flash, despite the 12-hour days, the multitude of minor issues, and bureaucratic headaches she had to navigate.