Two weeks later.
Aron was standing in the middle of Avalon Island with Rina, Felix, Sarah, his parents, and Alexander in a glass building that was strong enough to face a bomb head on and receive only a few scratches.
The new presidents were also in attendance, but only in VR. They couldn't attend in person yet, as they were still inside the pods receiving their genetic enhancements and treatments, which wouldn't end until a few days later. It had only been three days since they'd started receiving the enhancements; it had taken a full week and a half to settle their grievances as Aron had promised.
As the people in the room watched through the wall, a sound started coming through the speakers. "T minus ten minutes. All systems are currently go and weather conditions are favorable for liftoff. Please remain in a safe viewing area."
"Wow," Henry said as he gazed at the massive rocket on the other side of the wall.
A few kilometers away from the room, a massive rocket was at rest on a launchpad, looking very majestic as the entire area surrounding it had been emptied hours ago. Though, "emptied" might be the wrong word, since the entire launch area had been printed by an atomic printer, including the transport that moved it to the launch area. They couldn't print the rockets on the pad, as that increased the risk of the printers being discovered, so a transport was still necessary.
It was the first of a series of launches planned to take place over the span of the next two weeks. They were setting up a satellite coverage net to cover all the needs of ARES and GAIA Tech, so as to prevent the possibility of economical and technological isolation, but also to build their own self-sufficient infrastructure.
"T minus five minutes. The rocket's internal systems are transitioning to launch mode." Henry had his face stuck to the wall, as he didn't want to miss a single detail of the launch.
"T minus three minutes," came an announcement. The rocket's guidance system took control and started conducting final self checks to ensure all the systems were functioning nominally. The checks came back all green, and the launch was set to take place as planned with no delays.
"T minus one minute" was followed shortly by "T minus thirty seconds."
With that announcement, the Radial Outward Firing Igniters started spewing sparks below the engine nozzle as the engines themselves began a rapid pressurization process in preparation for ignition.
"T minus ten seconds."
"Nine."
"Eight."
"Seven."
...
As the countdown continued, the engines started spraying pressurized propellant into the "sparklers" and the coolant system went to work flooding the launchpad with water as the gantry fell away from the rocket. A cloud of white steam surrounded the rocket, then flared outward almost like a shockwave.
"Three."
"Two."
"One."
"Liftoff."
With that, the rocket engines released a flood of pressurized propellant and the rocket finally began its struggle to break free from Earth's gravity and fly past the Kármán Line.
Slowly at first, but picking up speed, the rocket began winning the fight against the gravity holding it to the Earth's surface and rose to the sky with a long trail of white exhaust behind it. It soon passed Mach 1 and left its own exhaust behind as it continued climbing into the air.
The cloud covering Avalon Island was split apart by the powerful vehicle as it started its journey to orbit. Control surfaces on the rocket came to life, allowing it to make final adjustments as it rose through the layers of the atmosphere.
"Max q" was soon announced, letting everyone watching the launch know that the rocket had reached equilibrium and the thrust was safe to increase again. The rocket was now past the most dangerous point of the launch.
(Ed note: Max q is the point at which the pressure differential between the launch vehicle and the atmosphere is at its highest point. This is the number that engineers use to determine how much load the rocket or shuttle needs to bear during the launch.)
Shortly after max q, the speakers announced first stage separation and half of the launch vehicle fell off, while the other half accelerated even further. The first stage fired its final retro-rockets, guiding it down to the waiting recovery team; it was paramount that no hardware be captured by anyone outside of Eden—or more specifically, Avalon Island—to prevent tech snooping.
As for the second stage of the rocket, it soon started its orbital insertion burn. The moment it reached a parking orbit was announced, and the rocket released its payload: a Q-com satellite.
The rocket had admirably completed its task and began a coast phase, after which it would reorient itself and perform a short deorbit burn, then fall back into the collection area. Just like its first stage had; there was no longer a need for the payload to be protected anymore.
(Author's note: a parking orbit is a preliminary orbit that satellites or other vehicles enter to wait for a window to enter a higher or lower orbit, as needed.)
"Is it over?" Henry, who had been watching the entire launch with excitement, asked when the screen showed the darkness of space.
"If it was a normal launch it would be almost done. But for this one, it isn't finished yet. After reaching the parking orbit, the satellite has to perform a series of burns to transfer to a geostationary transfer orbit. Once it does that, which will take a few hours, it undergoes another coast phase before finally performing another series of burns to reach the desired geostationary position...." Aron explained orbital mechanics to his little brother for a few minutes before realizing that Henry's eyes had long glazed over. So he ruffled his hair and said, "Not yet. It'll be a few hours still. But the exciting part of the launch is done—the rest is all math."
Henry's reaction to the launch had given Aron a clue as to what the boy would pursue as a career in the future, and he gave his younger sibling a bright smile.
"That was sooooo cool, brother!" Henry exclaimed. "It's almost worth doing the extra math homework for!"
"Oh? Only 'almost'?" Aron joked, and everyone in the glass room chuckled along with him at the younger boy's crestfallen expression.
"Yeah, I guess... it's almost enough to convince me. But there's a few games coming out soon that I think might just push me that bit extra," Henry wheedled. It was apparent that he had been taking to Nova's lessons incredibly well. Perhaps too well.
...
As the launch was taking place over Eden, a few countries' intelligence analysts—both in their military and their space departments—had identical looks of disbelief on their faces. When they had received an order to monitor Eden's launch, they'd been sure it wouldn't succeed at all and had prepared popcorn. As far as they knew, Eden had zero space capability and had never done any testing at all, so how could they possibly have successfully launched a rocket into orbit?
But reality was determined to disappoint them. It seemed like someone in Eden had gotten extremely lucky, and they knew that a very comprehensive investigation was about to begin. Someone had obviously leaked and allowed Eden to join the space race, and heads were guaranteed to roll in the near future. They had already ruled out poaching, as there were no rocket scientists that had been poached from established companies at all.
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