Europa Leader Competition

The Europa Leader Competition is a colonization simulation competition designed to select the extraordinary people who would lead the colonization of Europa.

When I was little, I wanted to do something totally different from my parents. I wanted to stand out for something of my own just like any other kid, but I had some big competition- when your mother is an actress/astronaut and your father is the astronaut who colonized Mars, you've got to do something pretty grand to bump them out of the headlights. Not to mention a younger genius brother that could prove troublesome in the future.

So I chose figure skating. I was going to be an olympic figure skater and nobody in my family could compete with that.

With parents that ambitious (and rich) I had all the means to work towards my goal. I was homeschooled and finished with high school by age thirteen which left me with plenty of time to practice skating. I was quite good. At age fourteen I was competing in the national juniors competition- almost the very tippity top for someone my age. Winning wouldn't get me to the olympics since I was too young, but it would mark me as a serious contestant for when I was of age.

I was very determined to stand out in my routine- adding a puzzle aspect and a risky jump. A quadruple axel was something completely unexpected of a girl in the junior competition and something that could even deduct points but hey- that competition didn't count towards the olympics really, so why not?

And the puzzle aspect? Well you can't just be the kid of the most famous astronauts in the world and not have something to show for it. The footwork in my routine was incredibly complex and more difficult than all my jumps put together- the footwork mapped out the stars on the ice rink. That might sound a little weird, but seeing it from a high angle made sense and looked really cool. The editors in the program even added the points of the constellations I made for television showings.

During that competition season, my parents were on a mission to set up an external planetary station off of one of the moons of Jupiter- Europa. Europa was the next destination that colonization efforts of Orion had their eyes on. After Mars, the world was hungry for more.

My parents, along with three other astronauts, were on a mission to set up a small station that would be a necessity for the future colonization astronauts. After that mission my parents were going to quit the astronaut life so that they could spend more time with me and my brother. With  my athletic career picking up and my brother's educational career needing guidance, they wanted to be home with us.

At the end of my skating program was a long series of spins. It was my favorite part of the program and my favorite thing to do, so I thought that ending with it would always leave me feeling good about my performance.

I finished with my arm reaching up towards the sky and my eyes pointed up. I expected applause.

Not to sound full of myself, but typically even if a skater sucked, the audience at least mustered some polite clapping.

Instead there was a ghastly silence in the arena.

Exhausted and confused, I finally looked around me. The audience seemed horrified, but they weren't looking at me.

I turned around to see some men in suits standing at the entrance of the rink. One man looked familiar- he was one of the flight surgeons assigned to to my mother.

Flight surgeons were the medical consultants for aviation and aerospace missions alike. In space missions, they often spent a lot of time with their astronauts learning about their medical stats and needs. Some flight surgeons rotated between astronauts after missions but since my mothers first space travel trip was not affiliated with any one organization, she hired someone to be a flight surgeon for herself. When she moved on to be an astronaut for the company Orion, her flight surgeon followed her, so he'd been a good family friend due to how long he watched over my mother. His name was Cooper.

Cooper didn't attend my competitions. Flight surgeons had to have a presence in mission control at all times when their astronaut was on a mission.

Cooper couldn't go to my competitions.

Cooper wasn't there to see my competition.

   

Determining the time of death for my parents was near impossible. They were responding perfectly normal before the communications cutoff, so all the officials could provide was that the deaths most likely occurred within minutes of 15:47:30 on June 10th 2089.

It was determined that the cause of the incident was an asteroid collision.

Sometimes those kinds of events can't be predicted or avoided. Everyone knew it was going to happen at some point in space travel but nobody thought it would happen with Anne and Nicholas Bowen on board.

I'll admit, I don't remember the month that followed  their deaths.

I remember that we had no immediate family to take us in so Cooper became our caretaker instead. Our property was large and had too much emotional value for myself and my brother Juno to leave willingly, so instead of moving us away from our only comfort he otped to move into our house.

He never took the master bedroom that belonged to my parents though. We left that room untouched.

All I know is that after that terrible month of grieving, Juno and I emerged closer and more mature. Somewhere in that time, instead of growing to hate space travel and exploration like some might understandably do, we became motivated to follow our parents footsteps and go beyond where they reached. We were able to use that grief to push us forward.

Orion was excited for the opportunity to use us for publicity, so when we expressed our interest they set us to work immediately. Obviously as I was only fourteen and my brother was eleven, they couldn't literally put us to work. Instead they guided us in our educations and gave us exclusive internships that included the training we would need when were old enough to actually engage in space travel.

A bachelors and masters degree later, I had completed all of the training I could do without officially being an astronaut at the age of nineteen. At this point, I left for a brief career in the air force and managed to complete an Astrobiology PhD while serving in combat rescue in the military.

I was able to finish my time in the military with small amount of time to spare to live life before my real journey in Orion would begin.

Juno on the other hand didn't have that padded time. He had to work hard to catch up and at the time he would begin the competition with me, he had completed an Astrophysics PhD and an additional Aerospace studies Bachelor's.

At the ages of twenty two and twenty five, Juno and I would begin the Europa Leader Competition.

The Europa Leader Competition was developed with both me and Juno in mind. The idea was in its early stages before Juno and I took foothold in Orion, but once we became pieces in the game it took life.

The Europa Leader Competition (ELC) was designed to find the best people fit for colonizing Europa while adding a public aspect. The competition would host four groups consisting of five people that would simulate colonizing Europa while on Mars.

The reasoning for placing us on Mars was that it was close enough to the three developed colonies already on the red planet that if we had an emergency there would be help, but far enough from Earth's resources that we were on our own.

The ELC was open to the eyes of the public. They were able to watch and know about everything we did. The public would pick the team they liked the best and cheer for them for the entire year and a half we would spend on Mars.

Space exploration was already a popular topic on Earth, but the addition of the competitive nature in teams added a certain spark to the mission that the public ate up.

Daily updates were included in news reports, merchandise for teams and even individual competitors were sold and most commonly bets, were popular ways that the public participated.

Juno and I were already planned to be commanders on seperate teams, and the two other commanders were required to be recommended from an already established space agency. All other positions were open to the public to apply for, though it was extremely competitive and difficult to get in. Juno and I were used as examples for what the competitors should be with our experience, educations and most importantly- young age.

Since the ELC was merely the mission being implemented to choose who would eventually colonize Europa, age was important. The participants needed to be young enough to spend almost four years total in the ELC and then be able to colonize Europa while still being an age able to handle the unique physical tolls of the mission. The golden age group was a small gap; people between the ages of twenty five and thirty were given top priority in consideration. People outside of that gap were still considered, though it was much more difficult for them and they were held at higher expectations in the applications.

This method of selecting astronaut candidates for a mission was highly experimental. Usually astronauts candidates gain their experience (military, education, or a mixture of both) before being an astronaut, but the ELC called for those who didn't necessarily already have that experience and instead aimed to give the experience through the ELC to those who had the right stuff.

Needless to say, the competitors who weren't in the winning team still had bright futures ahead of them. The experience would be enough to guarantee almost any position in any space agency, and most competitors would most likely go on to be astronauts in other missions. Some would even probably be involved in the colonization of Europa, astronauts or not, they just wouldn't be an astronaut in that core group of leaders.

For me and Juno, this is what we were meant to do. There was no other option for us. One of us was going to lose, yes, but whoever lost would continue on in another mission to support the other- possibly lead the second mission to Europa to bring colonist. Either way, we knew we would end up working together.

This thought process made us less competitive with each other and created debates amongst the public over which sibling would win. 'The Binary Stars' is what we were fondly dubbed.

In space, a pair of binary stars is two stars that are gravitationally bound and orbit each other. On Earth, 'The Binary Stars' were the siblings orphaned by space, destined to push farther than any other.

But to my team, I am Commander Cassini Bowen.

Author's Note

This is the first chapter for a book I'm working on. I won't upload all of it but some pieces I need outside opinions on so I'll post here. There's a summary for this piece uploaded separately. Please tell me your thoughts!