Solar Sailer

by Stephan Besik

  Once he had a contract in place with the Treble Foundation, Wallace started to flesh out his proposal. It was still a dream, but now with hard work and the right kind of planning it could become a reality.

  The original proposal had a number of bullets that now needed more detail, more reality. The bullets were as follows-

  1) Detail the plan

  2) Set up an organization (staff, contracts, logistics, etc.)

  3) Do something about space politics?

  4) Design the ship

  5) Develop a plan for assembly in space

  6) Build a space infrastructure (Drones? People? Getting to orbit, a place to assemble?)

  7) Automate piloting (AI? All of the trip or all except critical points? People only as passengers?)

  8) Test scale models

  9) Assemble the real thing

  10) Launch the ship (Success!)

  When he went back to the proposal, he was once again struck by how much work there was to be done. It wasn’t just building a ship; it was a project in space.

  There were some things coming that he wasn’t sure he could get done, but the ship plan was slowly coming together. (Maybe he shouldn’t have started there, but the ship design had been in his dreams for months.) The heat problem was actually quite a big one- existing plasma engines spent a lot of energy for magnetic fields not only to accelerate the plasma but to keep the plasma away from the walls of the engine so the whole thing wouldn’t melt. The magnets themselves got very hot, requiring that the magnets be cryogenically cooled and the engines stopped regularly to cool down. The result was rather poor conversion efficiency as electricity from the solar panels was changed into ship motion.

  The engines themselves were highly fuel-efficient but ran so hot their operating time was measured in hours, with a relatively high risk of failure. The magnets took a severe beating as well. Ideal output for a half-megawatt system was over a five hundred horsepower. It was hard to get that output when a lot of energy was being used to cool the system. Even with a lot of energy lost in keeping things cool during operation, the engines would still have to be shut down periodically to cool down. That last bit was truly inefficient- not only causing the ship to drift at constant velocity while trying to dump a lot of heat into space, but having to come back up to operating efficiency after each shut down.

  The answer Wallace came up with was more complicated than he would have liked, but he thought it had possibilities. The newest magnets could run hotter and he thought he could get away without cryogenic cooling. The magnets and the magnetic fields had to accelerate the plasma, but he thought the field protecting the interior walls of the motors should be minimized. The walls of the accelerator chamber and the area around the accelerating magnets would be made of high temperature steel. The new engine casings would be ceramic pressure vessels. The steel plasma chamber and the magnets would be water cooled, with a fairly thick jacket of water inside the ceramic casing surrounding the chamber. The water would still be very hot, actually superheated steam, when the engine was running. As the water heated up it would be sent to regeneration turbines to convert as much waste heat as possible back into electricity to propel the ship while reducing the overall heat in the system. He thought that the system would be able to operate for longer periods at higher efficiencies, even though there might still be times when the engines had to be stopped to cool them. Perhaps there was a way to cycle the system on and off in short bursts, to keep the system from building up a lot of waste heat.

  The engines would almost certainly use more fuel than current plasma engines, but the engine would run at a temperature high enough to produce a decent amount of thrust while low enough that the engine could run for long periods of time without a meltdown. After all, the idea was to keep the engine running, continuously if possible, to produce as much acceleration as possible. The longer the ship could accelerate the faster it would go. Even a relatively low-thrust engine would be effective if the ship could run under constant acceleration.

  Another possibility for engine coolant was to use the fuel, circulating it in the jacket surrounding the acceleration chamber as it proceeded from the fuel tanks to the engine. Wallace thought that could be a big saving in weight in the sense that there wouldn’t be a completely separate system for water. He still had to extract heat from the coolant and turn it back into electricity, requiring some kind of fuel-based generating system, but there might still be merit in the idea. The good thing about the likely fuels was that they weren’t terribly dangerous. They wouldn’t catch fire or explode if they were kept hot. Definitely an idea that should be explored.

  There was still going to be some waste heat in the propulsion system and it had to be prevented from building up over time. His answer for this remaining loss was a set of cooling vanes, probably running along the length of the craft in open space. They might look like tail fins, or rectangular radiators, or perhaps like a last casing around the engines that was open to space on both sides.

  Wallace was also planning on cooling the solar panels with cooling vanes connected to the solar arrays. Once again, though, the intention was to try to squeeze as much power out of the available sunlight as possible. The “sails” would incorporate another heat-based regeneration technique. There were new materials that converted heat into electricity and he planned to use them in the construction of the cooling vanes. Between the regeneration in the panels and regeneration that cooled the engines he hoped to bring the overall sunlight-to-thrust efficiency of the ship above fifty percent in a system that could run continuously. The solar array would have to be pretty big to get to a megawatt of power. It wouldn’t be a racehorse, but a megawatt pushing a fifty-ton ship would have a trip performance better than a short-burn chemical rocket while still being fairly fuel-efficient. The thrust he calculated didn’t sound like much, but with no resistance and a nearly constant push performance in space would be good. That’s what he was after.

  He worried about the mass of the ship. The cooling systems were adding mass, even though they partially paid for themselves by returning power from otherwise lost heat. He had to let it go, however. He needed the radiative cooling on the sails and the engines to get rid of the heat that couldn’t be converted to electricity and thrust.

  He was still in a bind. He had to focus on logistics and the organization he needed pretty soon or the plan would stay a pile of bits on a disk. He didn’t want to leave the ship design as conceptual as it was but staffing, facilities, and an organization to help him get things done had to come now. This job wasn’t going to get done if he was the only one working on it. His concept would take a lot of engineering and he had to get a good team together to get it done.

  Engineers and Businessmen

  “Well, what do you think of our boy?”

  “Our boy, Aman? Who would that be?”

  Exasperated, Aman retorted, “You know who I’m talking about, Chaz. How’s he doing? Are we making progress?”

  The line was silent for a moment. “He’s a good engineer. Very solid. I think his plan for the ship looks quite good. On the other hand, so far he rather sucks at project management. He needs help there, Aman. The project is rapidly outgrowing his ability to keep it moving. He’s behind on staffing and would have made a hash of the facility if I hadn’t stepped in. He’s behind on expenditures, too, of all things.”

  “Hm. Well, what do we need?”

  “I think a modest bump in the budget to cover a project manager of some sort. That’s going to be a little delicate. Wallace thinks it’s his project, after all, and he’s not going to take kindly to having it taken away. I don’t think he’ll make it if we don’t fix this, though, and in his heart I think he already knows this. If we move a little gently I’m pretty sure the resistance will fade quickly and we will be back on track. He’ll be happier and so will we if he sticks to engineering and leaves what he considers the boring crap to someone else.”

  “Do you have someone in mind to
manage the project?”

  “I have. He comes recommended by the project mathematician that Wallace finally managed to hire and I’ve heard he’s good from other sources as well. Name’s Klaus Erheim. Knows a fair amount about space projects and will understand the stuff Wallace is working on. Also the kind of guy who can be a real pain in the ass to anyone who gets in his way.”

  “Okay. Take care of it.” Chaz could hear Aman thinking on the other end of the line. “But the ship looks good?”

  Chaz smiled. “Yeah, it looks good. This is going to work, bro. Better start getting your political sticks and carrots and your checkbook out. A couple of years from now we’re going to make a mess of the world order. And we need the checkbook out for project resources as well. We’re going to have to pay for some pretty exotic stuff pretty soon.”

  Klaus the Fixer

  Wallace didn’t like what he was about to do but he was at his wits’ end. Try as he might he wasn’t able to buy launch capacity from any of the big providers. Parts were coming together and the ground tests were going well. All that wouldn’t do a bit of good, however, if he couldn’t get someone to take his cargoes up into orbit. Parts for a space dock, the Lego kits that were the prototypes, the big kit that was the ship itself and assembly drones had to have rides up.

  Much as he hated doing it he had to ask Klaus. It was a hard thing to admit, but he knew that Klaus would get as much launch capacity as they needed. He would smile and grease his way to what they needed, and if that didn’t work he’d cajole, harass, and annoy as much as necessary to get the job done. In short he wouldn’t take No for an answer. That was what they needed, and Wallace just knew he personally couldn’t get it done in time. Not without a few years of therapy, anyhow.

  He found the number and dialed.

  **

  Klaus knew what his problem was. He needed money and the amount might be intimidating even for a man like Treble. He asked for a meeting with Chaz and the big boss.

  “Thank you for meeting with me, gentlemen. I’m afraid we need your help with the Moonship project.”

  Aman smiled slightly. “I take it that means money.”

  Klaus nodded. “Yes. Wallace is having trouble arranging for the large number of launches into orbit that he will need. Not in the hundreds, certainly, but likely a dozen or two. And he says they will have to be dedicated- the mass of the subassembly cargoes will be such that it’s unlikely there will be much chance of cost sharing with others who might want to piggyback on our launches.”

  “Chaz brought this up a while ago,” replied Aman. We’ve been thinking about the problem. It’s going to cost a lot of money but we have no choice. The best we can do is reduce costs. It will be a long-term issue beyond the initial construction schedules, too.”

  “We’re going for it, Klaus,” interjected Chaz. “This is just the start. If the new ships perform as we expect, we’ll be in business for quite some time.”

  Klaus was a little surprised. He hadn’t really taken seriously the sales pitch he had gotten when he had hired on. The little he knew about lunar colonization problems suggested that research stations, and relatively few and small ones at that, would be the only likely permanent facilities. It wouldn’t take all that much to run out of business if researchers were the only customers.

  “Well, we have an immediate problem that must be solved. I’m having trouble getting launch capacity for the prototype and the first production sailer. The commercial launch firms like small packages because they can fit a lot into one launch and spread the costs across multiple customers. We’re going to need a number of dedicated launches and we will have to bear the full cost of each. The providers are a little leery of us. If we have to cancel a launch, or worse decide to cancel the project, they’ve made expensive commitments for nothing.”

  Aman thought for a moment. “What do they want? A deposit or bond of some sort up front?”

  Klaus shook his head. “I’m not getting much in the way of feedback from these providers. I think perhaps I’m talking to the wrong people. They’re leery of our project overall. They think we won’t be there when they’ve got capacity waiting for us. A bond might help, but they might want a large deposit for a number of launches up front. To me, that makes the cost to us prohibitive. You, sir, could end up paying millions for nothing if we go off schedule or cancel the project.”

  Aman’s smile in response was ironic. “I appreciate your concern for my wallet, Klaus, but I’m aware of my risks. The overall gamble is much bigger than just the orbital launches and we can fund this part without a problem.

  Let me suggest this. Let’s give them a bit of earnest money. Circulate a request for bid among the launch people. Make the first RFP for all launches to complete the prototype and the first production model, with, say, three additional launches for refuels and cargoes. Tell ‘em we’ll pay a cash deposit up front per launch as soon as we schedule our need, with an additional twenty percent penalty for substantial delays and fifty percent for cancellations. That way they have cash in hand before they have to provide us a vehicle, with a bit for their trouble if we don’t show up. That should give them cost plus a bit to help them find new customers for any launches we don’t use. Hardly a loss to them; they get paid and have time to find new customers for any rockets we can’t use. Give them a reasonable period for bid response, and we will do our best to turn around an award.” He stopped for a second. “We’re far enough away that we can give them time, right?” He looked at Chaz and Klaus.

  “We’ve got enough time to give these guys a reasonable window for evaluation and response.” Chaz looked at Klaus. “I think you should sell the rocket boys on the long-term possibilities, too.” He put on a salesman-like smile. “Give them the full pitch. Tell them of all the wonderful plans we have to put permanent colonies on the Moon. They might not believe you, but I guarantee that they’ll take you a lot more seriously if they think you believe in what you’re pitching.” His smile got a little more serious. “And don’t forget- in their hearts these guys want to believe in us. They would like nothing better than to have regular cargoes going to the Moon on their rockets.”

  Klaus nodded. “I understand. I think some upfront money will make a difference. Some of the smaller players are always a little short of cash. A deposit will break the ice, and we might get some decent bids. Um, do we have anything that you might want me to incorporate into a sales pitch for the long-term plans?”

  Chaz shook his head. “Not much on paper yet, but I think with a little research you can come up with some motivators, at least for the first ship’s objectives.” Then he looked at Aman. “But about the long-term, Aman…”

  Getting There is Only Half the Fun

  Aman had been half expecting a call from Chaz, especially since they hadn’t talked in a while.. They tended to text and email more, but calls happened occasionally. And if it was about what he thought, a call was best.

  “What’s up, Chaz?”

  “We’ve been working on the destination problems. I think we should get together to go over the issues and our progress so far.”

  “Okay. When do you want to do it? Do you want to come here or should I come to your place?”

  “I need a few weeks to pull a presentation together. I hate to pull Wallace and Klaus off the ship but I think it would be good if they both went over things with me and my destination team. I think it will take an afternoon to go over the issues and present some likely solutions to you. Probably best if you came here. That way if there are any last minute questions we can take care of them quickly.”

  “You know I’m pretty useless on the technological details. If you want me in on this it sounds like this meeting is about cost.”

  Chaz looked serious. “Afraid so. I don’t think it’s a killer but if you are serious about planting a flag on the Moon there are problems that have to be addressed. Timing is an issue too. Right now it looks like the ships will be ready before we can implement a destination
plan. We need time for site research and selection of course, but even then the ships look like they’ll be early. We have to do some hard thinking to get things to mesh.

  Besides, both you and Klaus should know more about what we think the permanent base or bases might be dealing with. You guys are our salesmen, and the more you know the more realistic the pitches will be.”

  “All right. Give Charity a ring when you think you can set a date.”

  “Will do. See you soon.”

  Aman knew about unanticipated problems. Those were the ones that were expensive and painful. He had wondered for some time whether Chaz and he had gotten ahead of themselves with Wallace’s moonship concept. He didn’t want to abandon the ship, but if the destination problems were too expensive or plain unrealistic that might have to be the decision. That was the only answer, though. Chung wanted to build a ship. Aman wanted the destination. He wouldn’t need the ship if he couldn’t have the Moon.

  He didn’t think Chaz was talking about backing out, though. If not, he was right about this meeting. And maybe they would need more meetings as well. As he said, it never hurt if the sales guys actually knew what they were talking about.

  **

  There were a dozen people in the room for the presentation on Lunar destination problems. Chaz opened his laptop and presented his first slide. It was titled “Problems.” There were six bullets on it.

  1) Magnetic field

  2) Solar wind

  3) Moon dust

  4) Nitrogen and carbon

  5) Locations and shelter for medium-term habitation by humans

  6) Gravity

  7) Funding

  Aman spoke up almost immediately. “That’s an interesting list of topics. I thought we would be talking about lack of air and water. Things like that.”

  Chaz replied. “We’ll get there, but first we have to start with the fundamentals.”

  “Well, then I’ll keep quiet for a while and let you talk.”