Chaz stared at his coffee cup and toyed with it. “You had some good thoughts about money-paying options when we started, but this thing still isn’t going to be cheap. I’m not sure I would have brought you this project if I had recognized some of the colonization issues beforehand. You were looking for something to do, though, and the ships looked like a good project.”
He looked at Danny. “I think your first step has to be deciding what you want to do with your life. The ships will be done fairly soon, but colonization will take years. Probably decades. Do you really want to spend your time finding money for a proposition that is as risky as this one?”
Danny chuckled. “When I was a young guy I couldn’t have imagined what I’m about to say.” He took a sip of coffee and turned serious. “I want to leave something behind when I go, something more than a pile of cash that someone else is going to waste. I don’t have any kids and there is no way I want to leave my money in some trust for lawyers to get fat on. I’m thinking that the Moon colony, for better or for worse, is something I can leave behind. Even if it’s not a success, at least we will have left the information about what made the failure. Even if we fail, our attempt may help someone else to get it done.”
Chaz smiled ironically. “You know, it would be a lot cheaper to have kids than to spend your dough on a Moon colony. I’ll bet Charity’s got a half dozen hottie girl friends, any one of which would love to help you spend your money on their babies.”
Danny looked disgusted. “Yeah, right. Like going through a few divorces would be cheaper.” He smiled and shook his head. “No, thanks. If I find someone special, well, I might change my mind. But not right now. I’d rather beg for money for a worthy cause. I think I’ll take the Moon.”
Steam Turbines
Kevin was feeling much better about the project after the last few days. The meeting about Moon problems had been a bit scary; he hadn’t really thought much about what his ship was going to do once it was operational. It helped to know that Danny and Chaz were thinking about that and had another team working the problem.
The ship was starting to come together. For a while, though, his regeneration idea for the moonship engines had almost turned to dust. He couldn’t find companies that made high performance turbines at the scale he needed that could use ammonia as the working fluid. Most regeneration facilities were far too big to fit on the ship, as well. The customers for such things were big organizations to really big ones like power companies. Not much market for regeneration for one-megawatt plants. Especially not regeneration based on ammonia, in an atmosphere-free environment.
Then he’d found a company that made small regeneration steam turbines for everything from small farms to middling-sized factories. They weren’t perfect for his needs but they were close. He had taken Arturo Sanchez, his chief engineer, and Suzette Girard, his chief mathematician, along to visit the company. They had talked over the possibilities with the folks there and he had waved a little money under their noses. It helped that a big money guy like Smith was funding them. The turbines that Kevin wanted for the ship would have to be high performance, lightweight, and highly reliable. Just the kind of expensive little toys the engineers at the company loved to have someone else pay for. Now he just had to bring in Klaus to make sure those guys didn’t rob him blind.
Danny Talks Politics
Danny had never met the Secretary General but he needed a multinational authority to control the Moon, and the United Nations was as multinational as it got. He was a little surprised that it had been fairly easy to arrange an appointment with her. But then, money tended to talk even when it wasn’t crossing any palms.
The Secretary General rose and reached across her desk to shake hands. “Mr. Smith. I don’t think we have met.”
“You’re correct, Madam Secretary General, I’m sure we haven’t. Thank you for extending the privilege to me.”
“I am frankly surprised, Mr. Smith. Your reputation precedes you and there is little of the diplomat that I can see. What brings you to me?”
Danny took a deep breath. A lot rode on this meeting and he wanted to get it right.
“About a year ago, a young man sent a proposal to my foundation that we elected to fund. After a year of progress I believe that the young man will soon succeed in an endeavor that will have a profound impact on the future of humanity.
“While the project is not yet complete, it is likely that in two years we will demonstrate the availability of low-cost, high-speed travel to the Moon. Perhaps of more importance, we will soon begin construction of a research station that will demonstrate the viability of long-term survival up there.
“We will also begin development of a craft of greater capabilities that will enable humans to travel to Venus in a fraction of the time required by other means. Like our lunar ships, the interplanetary ships we intend to build will also operate at considerably lower cost than anything now available.” That was a bit beyond their current plans; in fact, they had nothing in the way of an interplanetary ship beyond the dream stage. But it was his dream, and if everything worked out there would someday be ships to the planets with Smith’s name on the ownership papers.
The Secretary General knew little about space treaties, but she did know that at the moment the Moon Treaty and the Outer Space Treaty were little more than pieces of paper. As the Americans would say, they were nothing more than apple pie and motherhood. They were that way for a reason; at the time the Moon Treaty was written only the USA, the UK and the then- USSR had any interest in the Moon, and only one was demonstrating the capability to get there. Since then no one had found a strong reason for establishing a permanent colony up there, or even a good reason to return. As for the Space Treaty, there were many signatories but the treaty had yet to be tested. As long as there were no human beings anywhere except on Earth and manned space travel was prohibitively expensive the Space Treaty worked. What would happen if someone found a reason to go there and economic means to establish a colony on the Moon or some other place in the Solar System? How was ownership going to work on a distant rock that no one really owned? She frowned a little. Had Smith found a good reason to go back? Would getting there faster and cheaper make a difference?
“What does this have to do with the United Nations, Mr. Smith?”
“As I said, ma’am, we intend to establish a permanent colony on the Moon, which will be a stepping stone for trips to Venus, and perhaps to Mars. We recognize the problem with any one of the major powers controlling the Moon. If a single nation takes control, there is a pretty good chance that a major power shooting war on the Moon will start whose purpose will be to settle the issue of property rights up there. We don’t want to be the cause of that, and we don’t want to be fought over.
“It seems to us that the U.N. is the best alternative to any of the major powers. I think that we need a few things. First, we need a document covering governance of non-Earth territories that addresses the needs of any colonies, research stations, or other settlements that may be established in the near future. That has to include some means of establishing ownership of parcels of land peacefully. Second, I think we need some police or similar organization to act as a sort of trip line in case one of the major powers decides they want to take any lunar settlements by force. Third, we need a judiciary to make decisions in cases of crime, civil disputes, and possible violations of our governing document.”
The Secretary General interrupted, “What about a legislature?”
“We will need that, too, but right now any colony we build will likely be rather small, almost certainly too small to require a legislature. My foundation will implement our corporate behavior policies but I think we will also plan on limited-charter town meetings for self-governance for a while. They will be meetings that all inhabitants of the Moon will attend by some means.
“The first colony is likely to be a research station more than anything else. The first human habitat up there is likely to be a research st
ation with a fairly narrow purpose. It will provide detailed assessments of the resource situation on the Moon and identify locations suitable for a permanent colony that will be more than a tourist attraction.”
The Secretary-General turned her chair and stared at a large bookcase against her office wall for a while, digesting what she had been told. She turned back to Danny.
“I don’t think we can help you very much with your plan. Much as I’d like to be of assistance, the permanent members on the Security Council are quite unlikely to allow anything meaningful to come out of my office. With the exception of Earth orbital satellites, there is no profit motive for activities in space and therefore no interest. Ownership in near-Earth space is like ownership of the seas. No one owns anything except the devices they get into orbit.
“There has been no evidence that establishment of permanent habitations on the Moon will be little more than curiosities for the foreseeable future. Of course, if you do demonstrate that colonization of the Moon will someday be profitable, the major powers will scrap over property rights like dogs over a bone.
“There is also the strategic argument against permanent habitation. Once there, a colony on the Moon could be a valuable military asset, a place from which to launch high-velocity weapons toward Earth. The Space Treaty forbids nuclear weapons but variants of conventional weapons such as kinetic weapons are not mentioned.
“The major powers on the Security Council have become experts in cold war. They do their fighting on other people’s property to insulate their own people from most of the violence. The Moon would be a great place to fight over because of its possible strategic significance and complete or nearly so lack of innocent victims. That is, assuming that your project demonstrates that the Moon can become a relatively inexpensive orbital bombardment platform. Right now it seems to me that getting a nuclear weapon to the Moon and then sending it back during hostilities is a rather expensive proposition. There may be other ways to use the Moon as a weapons platform, but I think all of them are likely to suffer from great expense for little benefit.
“That’s unlikely to be a near-term concern, but a permanent station up there will start people thinking of the Moon as a long-term objective, at least for some of the major players.”
Danny shook his head. “We think that hauling strategic weapons up to the Moon, even with our new technology, will not be cost effective any time soon. On your first point, however, that’s why we need some form of political shelter. The technology exists to make the Moon readily accessible. Whether or not it’s our group, someone will implement existing technology to get to the Moon quickly and cheaply. If that happens in a political vacuum the major powers will turn the Moon into a bone to fight over, as you suggest. That’s why it’s necessary to fill that vacuum with something that will keep them at bay. At the least they will have to think twice if we have some political cover in place.”
The Secretary General swung her chair away from Danny again. Not a patient man, Danny waited patiently as the Secretary General stared out her window. At last she turned back again.
“Do you think that getting to the Moon will produce a significant return?” She grimaced. “Of course you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.” She leaned forward a little.
“I can’t do much for you officially, but give me a day or two to think this over. I think there may be a way we can work together on this a bit and solve both our problems. I may get a decent agreement on space activities and fill a potentially troublesome gap. You will get the cover you need to keep the big dogs at bay.” She smiled and rose from her chair. “And now I must end this meeting. You’ve taken the little bit of free time that I have in this job and given me an excuse to fill all of it.”
She offered her hand to Danny, who rose and shook it. He smiled. “Thank you, Madam Secretary General. I am sure any assistance from you will be worth the wait.”
Artie’s Bad News
“It isn’t going to work.”
Kevin looked at Arturo Sanchez, his principal engineer, with a look that could kill. He was in no mood to be told that his ship wasn’t going to work.
“What do you mean it isn’t going to work?”
Arturo shrugged and waved his hands. “I mean the sail isn’t going to work. It looks like there are a few big problems.
“We can’t get the half-moon sails into orbit. We looked at the biggest cargo carrier out there and the diameter is too small to handle a large segment of the frame arc. We’d have to break each sail edge down into four pieces, maybe more, and trying to put them together again in space is going to be difficult. That’s if it can be done at all without human hands-on. And for each join point we have to add we’ll weaken the frame and make it heavier. Any benefit we might get from the strength of a circular frame is likely to be lost because of added weight and less strength. Another big liability is that it’s probably going to be really expensive even if we can do it, because we would probably have to dedicate a whole cargo run to the outer frame sections alone.”
The design of the ship currently ahead in the development process included two sails. Each sail was a large half circle, the two halves separated by a space for the ship’s hull. The outer edges of the half circles were lightweight metal arcs that supported the outside edge of each solar sail. The half-circle design was intended to provide strong support for the solar panels while keeping the weight of the ship’s sail frames as low as possible. An arc was stronger than a straight edge of the same material.
Whether or not the half-circle sail frame was the best design, it couldn’t easily be taken into orbit by the existing cargo carriers. They simply weren’t large enough in diameter to hold a length of curved aluminum big enough to keep assembly of the sail frames in space easy. Then there was the loss of the original weight advantage and the possible weakening of the frame.
They could ask someone to build a custom booster that was fat enough to handle the sail frame, but that made no sense economically. Like paying for two new spacecraft at once.
The base of each sail was a long, straight mast that spanned the diameter of the sail. The main masts were fifty meters long and were attached to a massive (in space terms) axis that connected them both. The hull of the ship sat at the center of the axis, inside gimbals, two concentric rings that turned at right angles to one another, enabling the hull of the ship to change direction relative to the sails.
Overall the ship looked like a huge letter H inside a broken circle. The H was made up of the ship’s hull and gimbals, along with the two straight masts. Each half circle was divided in two by a spar that stuck out of the center of its mast. The sail frames were split by what the team had come to call the spars of the ship, hollow metal tubes that spanned the radius of each semicircle from the center point of its mast to the outer frame of the sail. The spars stored the very thin material of the solar sails when the ship was at rest. When no power was being drawn by ship’s systems the fabric of the sails was completely tucked away, folded like an old Asian hand fan inside the mast spars. This was done to keep the sails from accumulating heat from the sun’s rays when the sails weren’t generating electricity. The spars also contained the electrical cables that powered the sail motors and the cables bringing power back to the ship from the sails. When the ship was under way, each side of the H formed a large solid semicircle of fabric like two hand fans that had been popped open. At least, that had been the plan.
Arturo continued on. “We’re also beginning to think that the solar panels are going to take a beating because of the switching we might have to do. As you know, part of the solution to the heating problems in the solar sails and the engines is to turn off the electricity by retracting the sails into the spars. It looks like opening and closing the fans frequently to turn power on and off will cause a lot of wear. The alternative is to slow down the switching, but it might have to be so infrequent that we can’t really use it. Maybe the regen system will take care of the cooling problem, but if it d
oesn’t and we have to open and fold the sails frequently we’re sunk.”
Kevin sat back in his chair, looking tired and frustrated. “So are we back to the drawing board? Did we get stuck here just because that was what my original sketch looked like? What about the window shade design we were thinking about? Was that a flop, or did we abandon it just because we wanted to get the sail weight down?”
Arturo shrugged. “We ditched it to get the weight down. It looked like it was going to be quite a bit heavier no matter how we put it together. But we have to get the frame up there. Even if we manage that with the current design, it might still be a nonstarter. We run the risk of not being able to shut down without causing a lot of wear in the sail fabric. We have to try something else.”
Kevin nodded. “It doesn’t matter how much better the circular frame design is, and we’re likely to have to switch power on and off frequently to let the plasma motors cool. I don’t think there’s a worry about the sails accumulating heat.” He thought for a moment and then made the decision. “Okay, let’s backtrack and try the window shade arrangement. Maybe there’s something we can do to keep the weight down. Whether or not it’s heavy, it will almost certainly be easier to ship and assemble just because the frame parts are straight. It may also be quite a bit faster to open and close the sail, too.”
Arturo nodded. “Will do. It might not be so bad. It’s only the sail structure that has to be redesigned. I don’t think we’re going to have to rework much if anything of the ship’s hull and the payload design.”
Kevin frowned as he went back to work. “I sure hope not.”
As it turned out there were some advantages to the window shade design that weren’t immediately obvious. As Arturo and his team worked on the redesign it looked like there were some good things about a rectangular design that hadn’t been taken into consideration.
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