This novel is about the race to Mars between America and China. It's a competition for national prestige while fulfilling the human desire to experience a nation's Manifest Destiny.
America's technological genius creates a modular space station which replaces the International Space Station. A California-based company joins modules to create a new structure near the Moon. Over three decades, Chinese businesses and students copy America's entire space apparatus and clone it on the south coast of the country.
America's Space Force and Intelligence Community uncover a Chinese plot to destroy the Space Station Discovery, a critical cargo resupply depot for the 140-million-mile voyage to Mars. A secret mission enables a small cluster of AI-based Microsats to capture a Chinese Coil Gun disguised as a communications satellite and send it into a useless orbit without creating debris or exposing how the weapon was lost. The mission probably avoids a world war.
As a result, the Chinese can only watch and applaud while America launches Bald Eagle One's two-year mission to Mars and back. One of the key events enroute is the thawing of a cryogenically preserved astronaut as a proof-of-concept.
In the end, two key Space Force officers get married and honeymoon in the Grand Canyon where they discover Mars amidst millions of stars in the heavens.
