Solar Sailer

by Stephan Besik

  Wallace looked stricken. “Oh, man. So we just threw away a bunch of money on a bad design and we’re going to have to go to the drone builders and tell them to start over?”

  Albert nodded again. “Pretty much. The drone guys aren’t going to be real happy, but on the plus side we caught this early. They haven’t gotten very far into assembly yet. And they’ll grumble, but they’ll think about the extra cash flow and the pain will go away. The guys that are putting up the money, though…” He left the punch line unsaid.

  Wallace frowned and wiped a hand across his forehead. “Man. They’ve been good about the money so far, but this one’s going to hurt. There’s no way we can fix the old design?”

  “Not really. We looked at it and it’s pretty fatally flawed. We just didn’t realize how close the tolerances had to be on the jets to ensure that the push and the brake forces were identical. The only good thing about this is that the simulations let us catch the problem early instead of getting drones up in space and finding out they didn’t work then.”

  “How does the new system work?”

  “It’s pretty simple, really. In the old model the operator maneuvers the drone around to get the sight set on the destination. In the new system, the only thing that moves before the operator pulls the trigger is a sighting camera. The drone stays stationary until the operator executes the move. The drone can be completely out of sync with the camera. The drone does its reorientation as part of the process of getting to the target.”

  “That’s great! Why didn’t we design the drones that way in the first place?”

  Al shrugged. “There are some tradeoffs. The programming is more complex now; it’s not just about figuring out how much force is needed to launch and stop. It’s more expensive, too, both for the software and the drones themselves. Now the cameras have to be able to rotate, elevate, and decline separate from the drone. The engineering is tricky because we have to counterbalance any camera motion to hold the drone steady until the operator is ready to go. We didn’t think the original design would cause the operators as much trouble lining up the drone as they had.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’d better go tell Klaus. He’s not going to be happy.”

  Albert looked shocked. “You mean you haven’t told him yet?”

  “I didn’t want to take him a technical problem until we had a solution.” Wallace shrugged. “I hate telling him that we’ve got a problem we don’t know how to fix. He gets you in range with those beady eyes and it feels like he’s drilling a hole in your head with them.”

  “Well, better you than me. I sure wouldn’t wait any longer.” Albert looked thoughtful. “I’ll get on the phone with the drone builders. He’s going to want costs. The sooner we get him those the better.”

  “Right. Get them to me as soon as you’ve got something.” Wallace sighed. “I’ll go talk to Klaus now.”

  Klaus looked at Wallace with a stony, thin-lipped expression. “Do you have a cost for me?”

  Wallace shook his head. “Not yet. Al is going to get me a rough from the robotics company as soon as he can. He’s probably on the phone now.”

  “You’re sure we have a fix?”

  “Al says they ran a number of options through the simulators and the one the engineers have selected is far superior to the old system. It will save a lot of time in training and during assembly of the ship, which should help to counterbalance the redesign costs. It’s going to cost up front, though. He says there’s no way to fix the old design. They have to throw away half or more of the original.”

  Klaus turned away from Wallace. “Once Albert gets the rough have him call me. I want to be involved in the negotiation of the final cost to us. Let’s not allow the drone fabricator to go wild with our money.”

  They stood in silence for a few moments. Wallace had the feeling he hadn’t yet been dismissed.

  “Next time come to me as soon as you know there is a problem.” Klaus turned back to look at Wallace again and Wallace got that head-drilling feeling. “The sooner I know we have a contingency the sooner I can review budgets to see if we can handle the problem internally. Mr. Treble is spending a great deal of money on this project and will do what is necessary to keep it moving, but I would rather not impose on his largesse if we can act responsibly when something comes up. And next time, let’s try to get the design right the first time.” With that Klaus turned and walked away.

  Wallace watched Klaus go. He felt as if he was a sixth grader getting called on the carpet for not doing his homework. ‘Not impose on his largesse?’ Really? Did he think they were out buying sports cars for the engineers? They’d done their best; sometimes that was how engineering worked. Get the design right the first time? The best you ever got was pretty good the first time. It wasn’t unusual for a first try to be dead on arrival. That was just the way things went.

  Wallace was angry, but he did his best to get past his feelings. Klaus might be an asshole, but he was an asshole who got things done. He knew that Klaus would go scrounge money in the budget and then pick the robotics guys’ pockets to get Al his refab. In the process Al would have a chance to watch a real money guy handle a vendor and Wallace would be able to continue working with the engineers instead of going to meetings in which vendors would treat him like a prime sucker.

  Wallace pulled out his cell and called Albert.

  **

  “Hey Al, this is great!” Lucy yelled across the drone room at Albert. “Smooth as silk. Set the sight and the old teapot takes off and heads straight to the target. Much better than trying to line up the drone first. She stops on a dime, too. Real good shit! Next time let’s go for this first!”

  Lucy wasn’t looking his way, so Al grimaced and shook his head. Lucy had caught an important glitch but she was still a pain in the ass. Wallace must have an iron stomach to have her around. She was a good programmer and all, but the yelling was definitely hard to take. And he wished she wouldn’t call the drones teapots. There were superficial similarities, but a teapot was definitely not a highly complex semi-robotic device. He guessed he’d better get used to it, though, at least as much as Wallace. Especially after her catch on the drones, it wasn’t likely she was going anywhere.

  Moms and Dad for Alvin

  Lucy, Suzette and Robbie Kay were grinning like Cheshire cats as Wallace, Albert, and Klaus entered the room. Suzette was the team mathematician and course management specialist, and Robbie was the human pilot (the ship’s “captain”) and computer management specialist.

  The three men knew only that their programming team wanted a meeting. The e-note from Suzette included no additional information. The object of the meeting was still a mystery. Apparently there were some things that couldn’t be handled in the normal weekly roundups.

  Klaus, who had little time for games and mysteries, opened the conversation. “We are all here. What is the purpose of the meeting?”

  A voice from the computer interrupted. “Hello, Klaus. How are you?”

  Startled, Klaus was confused for a moment. “Who is that? Do we have someone phoning in to our meeting?”

  Suzette smiled impishly. “Well, yes, in a manner of speaking. Gentlemen, say hello to Alvin.”

  Klaus, Wallace, and Albert all looked mystified. “Do we have a new man on the team?” asked Klaus.

  The three programmers still had on their silly grins. Lucy shook her head. “No, Alvin isn’t a man. He’s an artificial intelligence. I guess you could say he lives in the computer that’s going to go into the moonship.”

  A light came on and Wallace spoke up. “Wait a minute. Are you guys saying that you developed an artificial intelligence to pilot the ship?”

  Robbie spoke up. “To be fair, only Suzette and Lucy created Alvin. I just talked to him a lot. It was a little tough at first, but now he’s a pretty good conversationalist.”

  “Piloting the ship turned out to be the easy part of the software,” said Suzette.

  “Alvin came about because we needed a p
rogram that could deal with maintenance and system failures with as little human intervention as possible. The software had to be heuristic, able to make decisions based on limited data in unstructured situations. The software then had to be able to make the appropriate fixes or control the maintenance drones to make them. We also wanted a system that would forecast the need for preventive maintenance in advance of failures to the extent possible.”

  “If this was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime flight, Alvin wouldn’t be necessary,” added Lucy. “We could wing it with human monitoring and intervention, continuing to control the maintenance drones from the ground. We realized, though, that the moonship wasn’t going to make just one run unless it was a failure. If things worked as planned, we wanted the ship to take care of itself to the extent possible. When we go interplanetary, we’ll really need a ship that can take care of itself. Thus,” said Lucy, “we have Alvin.”

  “I believe my parents have taken the correct approach to their needs.” Alvin’s contribution startled the entire team. “Indeed, Suzette is quite correct. Piloting the ship is relatively easy given its ability to change speed and maneuver efficiently. Not at all like the old rocket-driven vehicles. It’s really just a matter of taking frequent measurements of the positions of the Moon and the ship and making adjustments as needed. As I will begin with a rough estimate of the required trajectory, the rest should be easy.

  The more difficult part of my job will be the prediction and execution of maintenance needs as well as decision making in case of unanticipated failures. Even though maintenance and repair is likely to take a small fraction of the time I will spend on navigation, that fraction is at least as important. The problems will include a far larger number of variables and there may be situations in which the information available to me will include elements of uncertainty for which I have to compensate. Further, navigation errors will be correctable. Any errors made in maintenance and repair are likely to be extremely costly.”

  Klaus acted somewhat annoyed after Alvin’s comments. “Was it really necessary to develop a speech module for the ship?”

  Suzette responded to the question. “We didn’t develop a special module, strictly speaking. We bought a package that we integrated into Alvin’s intellect via his neural net. That was a lot less expensive than trying to build up Alvin’s communication system any other way. That was really the easy part. The hard part was teaching him what he needed to know about the ship and its workings. That took weeks. Frankly, his speech capabilities are a very minor part of his personality. If he needs speed of communication he will use his high speed network to display messages to the human crew back on Earth and his drones and other devices on the ship. His ability to vocalize is more about his social interactions than his job piloting and maintaining the ship.”

  “Do you think Alvin can pilot and maintain the moonship on his, er, its own?” asked Wallace.

  Robbie nodded. “We used the most recent ship simulations to train him. He’s also done well with the scale models. He’s at least as good as I would be as a pilot and far superior at monitoring and maintaining the ship. Don’t get me wrong, I’d really like to pilot ships to the Moon, but Alvin can do the job without me unless there’s a real catastrophe of some sort and a pilot has to improvise. Even then he has engineering capabilities at Albert’s level, expertise that I don’t have. In case of a genuine emergency I think I’d rather have him as pilot than me. Humans will only be necessary in case of a complete loss of power and under those conditions I’m not even sure a person would be much use.”

  Suzette leaned forward. “We want Alvin to train on the moonship so that he can be cloned into the interplanetary ships once they are available. There should probably be a human crew available, but we’d like to be able save the humans for emergencies. On the multi-month voyages, crew and passengers should be hibernating to save stress on the humans and reduce food and fuel requirements. Alvin’s our test bed. If he can handle months of cargo runs he should be able to handle a months-long run to Mars or Venus.”

  Klaus shook his head. “I’m not sure that having an AI as pilot is safe. It may not sell well to potential passengers to the Moon, either. What if it made a mistake in a real emergency? We might end up completely shut down.”

  “That’s why we want to do this now,” pressed Suzette. “We can afford mistakes during unmanned cargo runs. He can safely learn now. Once we have passengers and long distance flights he’s either ready or he’s not and there won’t be any opportunities for “live” exercises any longer. And we’re not going to leave him completely on his own even now. Robbie will be watching and paralleling his decisions on these cargo runs. The Moon is close enough that communications won’t be so lagged that they are useless. We certainly don’t want to lose the ship, but if Alvin is going to fail let’s let him fail now.”

  Wallace looked at Klaus, who seemed to be the only one having trouble with a ship piloted and maintained by artificial intelligence. “They’re right, you know. An artificial intelligence can be tested now. Once we have passengers, we’d better have enough data from the cargo runs to make a decision to commit human lives to an AI pilot. We might want to leave the maiden voyage in Robbie’s hands, but we should test out the AI on the subsequent unmanned cargo runs.”

  Klaus looked unhappy but he nodded slowly. “Now is the time if we think this is a viable option. I don’t think Alvin should be left alone on the maiden voyage, but the AI pilot should be tested as soon as possible after that.”

  After letting the humans thrash out his future, Alvin chimed in again. “That sounded like a positive decision to me. I’d like to be on board for the moonship’s maiden voyage but I’ll take the next trip if that would make everyone more comfortable. I’m ready when you want me to take command.”

  Wallace looked at the three tech types across from him. “By the way, when did the solar sailer become the Moonship?”

  Building the Ship

  “Okay, Al. we’re in position. Drone’s lined up and tethers are both attached.”

  “The next step is to reel in the tethers to get the tension equalized and hold the drones firmly in place against the sail ring while we move the two modules into place. Not interested in having the drones drift while we try to dock the pod.”

  “Rob, Lucy, tension up your tethers now.”

  “Aye, cap’n, rolling up the slack now.”

  The two drone drivers entered the command to equalize the tension on their keyboards and the tethers slowly began to roll up on their reels. It took just a moment for the slack to be taken up. The positions of the drones were stabilized against what the team called the sail ring.

  The ring was the large gimbal that enabled the ship to point its drive in directions other than perpendicular to the solar sail array. Even though the sun might be behind the ship, for example, the engines could be moving the ship right, left, up, or down from its original position. The ship could even be flipped over so that the engines pushed the ship in a direction directly opposite the sun, a critical feature needed to slow the ship down when it made orbital insertion around the Moon.

  With one drone on each side, the control and engine modules would be slowly moved together to lock into position on opposite sides of the ring. The idea was to pull the two major modules together without moving the center of gravity of the assembly, so the assembled components wouldn’t start to move around relative to the dock. Once things started moving, stopping any unwanted motion could be a problem.

  “ We’re at zero motion and nominal pressure on the tethers. Okay, set your tethers to reel in at a quarter meter per second. Start the pull on my mark.”

  Lucy repeated the command back. “Reel in at a quarter meter per second. Ready and waiting.”

  Rob chimed in. “Ready here.”

  “Mark.”

  The drones began to pull, and the distance between the engine and control modules began to shrink. Slowly the three major components of the ship began to come to
gether.

  A Little Publicity

  The people in the conference room represented the twenty nations that were signatories to the Lunar Compact. Aman thought of them as “non aligned” because none of them had close connections with any of the current major power space agencies. There were also about a dozen journalists, half from technical websites and half from moderately prominent newsites in attendance.

  A mixture of scientists, politicians, and journalists, it made a strange group. The media were there because a well-known and quite wealthy retired pro ball player had spent a ton of money on a spaceship. Perhaps more consequential to some of their readers, Aman was a wealthy black man contributing to scientific progress in a very public way. The scientists and the politicians were there to represent their countries and see what their countrymen had bought for their signatures on some rather obscure paperwork.

  Adam Treble went to the podium to make his announcement.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, a bit later today the solar sailer Edison will make its maiden voyage to the Moon. On its first voyage Edison will equal the speed of the early Apollo runs from Earth orbit to Luna. The trip will be made at a quarter the speed we will come to expect from solar ships like Edison, at far less cost in equipment and fuel than the Apollo missions. Assuming this first trip is successful, our next step will be to make a series of runs to carry cargo to the Moon. The first of these trips, and perhaps a few later, will drop a variety of probes to conduct in-depth research into the Moon itself. Once we know more about the Moon, we will send up robots and other machines, with some humans included, that will build facilities to house human researchers for limited periods. Assuming all goes well, we will return mankind to the Moon to stay.”

  The last line caused a little conversation among the politicians and scientists. They now knew what their countries had signed on to but they were still a little unsure about what it all meant. The journalists had questions. One of them rose to ask his.