Richard J. Ronayne

Novella

Phenix Publishing Ltd

Nation-X Project

Dozens of my stories are currently being illustrated for release by Phenix Publishing Ltd for their Nation-X project, a multi-year project for 4-8000 word educational novellas.

This series was designed for young adults and high schoolers across Chinese and American schools, harnessing anthropomorphism to help digest mature, dark or joyful topics, whilst reflecting life, and exploring real social issues in an exciting and educational way.

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The Kessler Effect
By Richard Joseph Ronayne

CHAPTER 1: First Attempt
“Okay. Hook attachment successful, Control. Spacewalk commencing in three, two, one.” William Earle nervously reported to the tensely awaiting audience of controllers and technicians over two hundred and fifty miles away. He delicately pushed himself away from the NXSS (Nation-X Space Station) orbiting Planet-X at fifteen thousand miles per hour.
His mission was to fire a high-powered laser at an unused satellite to push it off its collision course with the NXSS. One wrong move at any moment, he understood, would result in the failure of his mission, his being stranded alone in space, the destruction of the NXSS, the total obliteration of all orbiting satellites, and the entrapment of all of mankind for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.
The flying squirrel was under intense pressure but kept his nerves as he always did. “EVA confirmed, Spazzle.”
“Roger that, William.” William’s partnered astronaut, Spazzle P. Doofleburger III, responded. “Releasing clamps for BFG in three, two, one.” 
He hit the release controls for the Bi-Fractal-Gun. Too big to be stored inside the space station, it was being jettisoned from the cargo area of the docked shuttle they rode into space.
As the BFG slowly floated to William, the sun began to poke out from behind Planet-X, and, as the terminator line slithered across the face of the planet, the light also began reflecting off the satellites in orbit.
William could now see the ancient sixty-year-old satellite SPOT II, once essential in the growth of the technology age, quickly became obsolete as better and better technologically advanced satellites were sent up into orbit.
When a satellite was no longer useful, it was deactivated and forgotten about. Thousands of obsolete satellites now raced around the planet at over seven thousand miles per hour, it was not until recently, in the last decade, that space agencies realized the problem. Now, new satellites are programmed to remove themselves from orbit when they are redundant to avoid any collisions. Such as, what threatened the space station now.
William took hold of the BFG as it floated close enough and applied slight force to halt its movement. In controlled motions, he opened the control hatch and plugged his suits computer in for a direct connection.
The Heads Up Display on his visor lit up with potential targets as he selected SPOT II from the list, and the BFG calculated the vectors required for successful targeting. It then adjusted itself slightly, almost invisibly to the naked eye and gave the astronaut confirmation. “BFG connection successful, target lock confirmed, Control. Permission to fire?” 
“Green light to engage, Pilot,” Control responded.
“Firing sequence one, commencing in three, two, one.” William pulled the trigger, and a two second stream of green light fired noiselessly out of the BFGs muzzle before ceasing just as quickly.
“Direct hit, Command. Can you confirm results?” William queried.
A few moments passed before he got a reply, the idea here was to push it off course using the laser, if that failed to be sufficient to do so, they would reduce the weight of the satellite by melting small pieces of it away by shooting slightly longer streams of laser fire, this would also succeed in adjusting SPOT II’s orbit, but may inadvertently create more, smaller pieces of debris which would be just as dangerous to the space station.
“Pilot confirmed insufficient orbital adjustment. Object is now spinning rapidly with increased risk of breakup, fire two more short sequences, and we will calculate results again.”
“Roger, Command.” William changed his comms channel to Spazzle. “Did you hear that, Spazzle?”
“I did, William, commence with firing. Don’t worry about me in here, I have a cunning backup plan,” Spazzle replied. Spazzle was the commanding officer here, as a Corporal in the Air Force, his rank follows him to Space Agency missions, whereas William’s rank is too low to do so. William knew Spazzle always had a cunning backup plan, but he had yet to see one ever work the way Spazzle intended, though he’d technically never seen one of these plans fail either, it did not fill him with confidence.
“Okay, Corporal, I don’t think I want to know. Commencing firing sequences,” William said before changing back to open comms. “Firing first volley now, Control.”
He pulled the trigger again as another brilliant green light shot out across space for just a moment, he counted to five and fired again, praying it had worked this time as he awaited news from Control.
Many more nervous moments passed as the satellite was getting bigger and bigger in William’s view now.
“Object is still on course for collision, Pilot. Orbit recalculations are still insufficient, recommend longer bursts of fire. Commence immediately,” Control urged.
William heard panic in their voice. “Immediately, Control?”
“Fire at will, Pilot! Now!” the controller in the command room shouted through the comms.
William didn’t hesitate, overcoming the sudden fear rising in himself, he switched firing modes through the BFG’s command console and pulled the trigger as beam after beam fired out across space. Pulling the trigger over and over as he let out a roar of defiance inside his helmet, as the satellite began to fill his view, he could see that the mission was a failure but continued firing anyway, as it was all he could do now.
He noticed suddenly that the NXSS was moving slowly. He couldn’t tell visually, but the instruments on the BFG were telling him to adjust aim between each volley of laser fire. Spazzle! William suddenly thought. Letting go of the trigger, he slowly careened his body around so he could look back down at the still docked shuttle.
Spazzle had been firing the engines on the shuttle on and off carefully so as not to break up the station but give it enough force to move a few dozen meters further away from the planet.
William saw Spazzle salute him through the cockpit window whilst giving his signature overly cocky toothy grin.
Then the shuttle vanished as the satellite flew past, only colliding with the shuttle, removing it in a flash and sending the station spinning before everything went dark.







CHAPTER 2: The Cascade
William ripped his helmet off and stormed out of the simulation room as various technicians waited outside to help him remove the rest of the simulation gear.
Spazzle came out of his simulation room across the way and gave him a nod before seeing in William’s face how angry he was, then just shrugged his shoulders as William shook his head in disapproval.
William didn’t say a word as the two of them were led to a debriefing room. The room was large, and all the support staff from the simulation were also filing into the room as the Director of the Space Agency, Louise Griffon, stood in the middle patiently, waiting for everyone to take their seats.
“Shall we begin?” Louise asked, eyebrow raised, looking unimpressed. “Where shall we start? Shall we start with the unacceptable lengths of time it took to recalculate the projected orbits? Or perhaps the exaggerated promise of effect that the BFG was capable of?”
“We succeeded the mission in the end though, we saved the space station,” Spazzle foolishly claimed.
“Indeed, you did. Congratulations. You saved the world, for two hours. I commend your initiative Corporal, but it was not sufficient. We left the simulation running and sped up the results, a complete Kessler Effect was initiated, as we feared it would,” Louise announced forlornly.
The room gasped as everyone began chattering amongst themselves in fear before Spazzle stood up and queried. “Oh, sorry for my ignorance, but what is a Kessler Effect?” 
William stood up and stared him down. “As usual, Corporal, you didn’t read the entire mission brief. The Kessler Effect is the entire reason we are here performing these simulations. Whilst our society scrambles all their resources to save the planet from the climate crisis, there is a second apocalyptic event that people have also solely created for itself. We have polluted the lower orbit zone of the planet, and it is on the verge of stopping us from being able to use or visit space for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.”
“Oh, that does sound bad. So, wait, we stopped the satellite from crashing into the space station, so why didn’t that stop this Kessler Effect?”
William just shook his head; he couldn’t believe he had been paired with Spazzle for this project. How could he trust someone to watch his back when he can’t even be bothered to read the full mission brief.
“I’ll take this, Pilot Earle, thank you. I think we could all do with a reminder of just how important this project is. The climate crisis, if ignored, will end most life on the planet. The Kessler Effect is less destructive, but without fulfilling our species ambition to reach beyond our planet, we will likely turn against one another in a third World War, likely ending all life on the planet anyway.” Louise tapped some buttons on her computer pad, dimming the lights and projecting a holographic display around her for all to see which showed the planet from high earth orbit.
“For eighty years, we have been sending objects, manned, and unmanned, into space to better our understanding of the universe, to improve technology and expand the limits of our species. This brought the world into the Technology Age, a golden age of prosperity for all. It is imperative that our species continues to push further and further into the unknown. It is a condition of sentience to do so.”
She pressed another button on her pad, as the space surrounding the holographic planet lit up with dots. “These are the two-thousand satellites that are currently operational. Most supply telecommunications coverage to the planet, whilst others are research based or military.” She pressed her pad again, and the projection was almost filled with tiny dots. “And these are the eighteen-thousand other satellites that no longer serve any purpose. They either malfunctioned, became obsolete, or they are left over pieces of rocket sections, all of which we have no contact with, so they are just orbiting around the planet at dangerous speeds.”
The room gasped in unison, the visual impact of seeing what most of them already knew really helped to show just how cluttered the lower orbits had begun. It looked like an impenetrable shield, Spazzle wondered how it was even possible to still launch anything into space through all that.
Louise, perhaps seeing the disbelief on his face, answered as she continued, “Tracking these objects has become the most important part of the Space Agency’s mission. It now takes far too many of our limited resources to continue computing safe launches of the next generation of rockets, and soon we will no longer be able to track them at all.”
She tapped her screen once more as the projection erupted in tiny lights. “These lights represent the nine-hundred-thousand pieces of debris that are too small for us to track effectively.”
“But where does this Kessler Effect come in? I still do not understand how we failed the simulated mission?” Spazzle innocently asked, now fully engaged with the full mission brief.
 “That is the question we all want to know, Corporal. The Kessler Effect is coming, but we have no way of knowing when. Any one of these dots you see projected here can begin the effect at any time. All it takes is a single collision between two of these objects. We do not know when it will happen because we cannot track them all. Even a piece of debris, smaller than one cm, say, a lost fleck of paint hardened by ice due to the coldness of space, is capable of destroying a satellite. It may not completely destroy the satellite, but it will definitely damage it, creating even more debris. Critically, the more debris there is, the higher the likelihood of collisions. The more collisions there are, the more debris there will be.” She pressed her pad once more as the projection highlighted two pieces of debris that were circling the planet in different angles but crossing paths at two points.
The audience watched as they narrowly missed each other over and over until eventually they collided as smaller, just as bright lights scattered outwards. Their orbits were shown as suddenly more and more collisions occurred until the entire world was fully engulfed in a deathly dust cloud of lit motes, each one capable of ripping apart any rocket that attempted to penetrate.
“This is the Kessler Effect.”


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