Low Earth Orbit is a mess. Decades of abandoned satellites, transfer stages, and debris from failed missions have left space travel nearly impossible. Every launch into space now runs the risk of crashing into debris and causing a chain-reaction of collisions known as the Kessler Syndrome. This has limited travel between Earth and the moon to the absolute minimum. When deliveries must be made, there is only one man for the job, and that man is Rick Johnston.
The population of Moon Base Alpha is dying of space-pox, and the only vaccines left are on Earth. Johnston is warned that if another crash were to occur, the debris field will be so intense that he will not be able to return. Knowing this, he makes his way up the elevator on the launch-pad. The first few stages of the rocket are reminiscent of the Apollo missions, but inside the fairings of the final stage there lies something completely different: Johnston’s favorite ship, the Starquake. A one of a kind, the Starquake is designed with a powerful reaction-control system to maneuver around debris, and a state-of-the-art on-board computer to make split-second course corrections. Most important is the payload: several tons of vaccines and medical equipment. He has only a slim chance of making it through the space-debris, but he has to do it to save his family on the moon.
Three. Two. One. Ignition.
Johnston is pulled back into his seat as the Starquake blasts off through the atmosphere. Below him there lays the sunny beaches of Florida, but just beyond the horizon there sits the moon, home to hundreds of colonists.
Stage one separation.
The rocket makes it through the atmosphere safely. Millions of pieces of space-debris were meticulously catalogued and their trajectories calculated in order to make this delivery possible. Johnston has only a one-kilometer window to shoot through. If he is even slightly off-course, the ship will slam into the debris field. Johnston notices a blip on the space-radar. A piece of rubble from the intentional destruction of the Chinese Fengyun satellite of 2007 is on a collision course with his ship. Johnston reacts quickly with a slight nudge on the controls, putting his ship on a safe course. He checks the space-radar again, reading two, three, and then eight more blips. The Starquake has entered a debris-field.
A tiny piece of space-debris drills its way through the ship at over four hundred meters per second. The ship tumbles out of control into a rapid spin. It seems as if each of the dozens of status lights in the cockpit are flashing red, and every conceivable alarm is going off. Johnston runs through the override procedure, the situation becoming more severe with every switch he flips. After he overrides the last alarm, the ship is eerily quiet. The status light on his communications reads “inoperable.” Thinking it could be another faulty alarm, Johnston asks the radio “Ground control this is Captain Johnston of the delivery ship ‘Starquake’ do you come in?” The ship responded with silence. He asks again, desperately, “Ground control, this is an emergency, do you come in?” and again there is no response. The ship’s communications are destroyed, but Johnston is comforted by his altimeter, which shows that he is above the bulk of debris. Johnston’s peace last only for a moment, interrupted by his fuel gauge which is slowly and steadily dropping.
In an emergency-free mission, Johnston would have days to correct his course. With the fuel rate as it is, he only has minutes. By the time he reaches the moon he will be completely out of fuel. After doing some rough calculations, he knows that he has just enough delta-v to put himself on a free return trajectory and bring himself back home. But that wouldn't cure his wife or son from the space-pox. This was his last chance. Using the last drops of fuel, he puts his ship on a collision course with the moon.
It takes several days to reach the moon, but all Johnston can do now is calculate his ballistic trajectory again and again, making sure that the ship will crash. "Will the ship even survive?" Johnston thinks to himself. "Best-case scenario it will roll for several kilometers." But he knows it's much more likely it will be smashed to pieces on impact. In the meantime life-support is also failing. Just as Johnston approaches perilune, he quietly passes out from hypoxia.
Johnston awakens to the sound of air rushing into the capsule. As his vision comes into focus, his entire field of view is taken up by the cratered surface of the moon rushing under him at dangerous speeds. A voice behind him yells “I didn’t come all the way up here to take in the view!” The voice belongs to Rick’s brother, Mike. Mike grabs his brother by his suit and kicks back against the window, making his way through the airlock and onto his own ship. In a brave maneuver, Moon Base Alpha had sent one of their ships to meet with the Starquake on its suborbital trajectory. The vaccines are now safe on the colony ship, but they are both tumbling towards the moon at several kilometers per second.
The two ships quickly undock. The lunar colony ship snaps towards retrograde and immediately goes full throttle, the exhaust burning the Starquake apart. Technically, the most efficient way to land is to burn at full throttle up until landing. For any ordinary descent this is only a theory in the back of the pilot’s mind, but for Johnston this is reality. They touch down violently, sloped so that if it weren’t for the low gravity they would surely tip over. The ship slides down the lip of a crater for some time, eventually coming to a stop not far from Moon Base Alpha. Johnston will likely never be able to return to Earth, but the lunar colony was safe again.