Yanci, Sherry and I weren't the only ones talking about the HX Chaser. The debate about whether or not to send the HX Chaser, and what it should do when it arrived at the HX, raged throughout the Solar System. Clearly this was risky. That left questions in two major categories: "Was it worth the risk?" and "What could be done to reduce the risk?" Earth media talked mostly about the first question, and the way they reported their stories they made it clear they had decided it wasn't. Titan Colony and Belt media talked mostly about the second question, and that made a lot more interesting reading.
In my own mind I was very uneasy about the voyage. I was thinking, "Maybe we should take the second ship." I was, until I returned to Earth my junior year.
The vacation home was painful for many reasons. First off, the 2nd Siege of Titan had begun, although this time period wasn't given that title until many years later. What I encountered coming home was a lot more security bullshit and a lot more Immigration red tape. It was known to the Earth government that I had been on Mars, and that I had applied to voyage on HX Chaser. This put me some kind of "suspect category" in Earth government's eyes, so as I landed and traveled, I found myself pulled aside frequently and asked questions. It was annoying.
I also found Earth expensive. I'd done some prep exercising on Mars before my return to build up for Earth gravity, but I still needed some leg boosters for a few weeks while my muscles finished toning up. My gosh they were expensive! Not just expensive, but big and cumbersome, too! Rather than being the size of unpowered aluminum leg braces, the Earth leg boosters were more like powered wheelchairs in size and performance. Why? Because they were nuclear powered. Those available on Mars were neutrino jet powered -- an HX technology spin-off.
When I got home and spent time with Mom, Dad and relatives, things didn't improve much. I myself only talked about platitudes, but the conversation often slipped into discussions of how in spite of Earth government's best efforts, pirate HX technology was slipping into Earth society and corrupting its youth.
The things people complained the most about was stuff I used pretty much every day on Mars. Yet somehow, I didn't feel corrupted. I was smart enough to do a lot more listening and head nodding rather than talking or laughing outright at these quaint ideas. What I was hearing was either "facts" like, "Neutrino jets cause terrible accidents." -- which were just as true of nuclear power or any other power source, or "Neutrino jets cause cancer." -- which were outright lies. It wasn't until this trip that I realized how intensely Earth society loved and hated this HX "forbidden fruit", and how crazy it made Earth people. The symbol for this problem was crazy Earther jet skiers who used outlawed neutrino-jet powered jet skies and killed themselves.
But, more important than jet skiers specifically, it was the difference in attitude. Yeah, jet skiers died, but they didn't threaten society with their living or dying, and lots of people in the Outer System have to do risky things, so in the Outer System context, a jet skier death was just one more way to die, so crazy jet skiers were no big deal. On the other hand, social parasites were community threatening in the Outer System. Everyone in the Outer System contributed -- no one sat around protesting that they weren't begin given "their rights." And nothing was more dreaded than sabotage, so people like First Earthers who grabbed headlines with sabotage were considered deadly in the Outer System. No one raised in the Outer System could understand why Earthers gave these people so much slack.
It was when I realized how different my attitude had become.... That's when I decided that "there was no going home", and I lost my worries about heading out on the HX Chaser. I would either head out on "The Chaser", or become a permanent member of the Outer System. I was not going to continue sharing Earth's hypocrisy and psychosis towards things HX.
Heading back to Mars, by the way, was its own red-tape hell. Once I was back on Earth, I was refused passage to Mars twice because my father was such a prominent First Earther.