“I have my brief to do when I get back from lunch,” Gwen said, “so I guess I haven’t reached my quota yet. Hey Raj, I hear that alcohol does a nice job of making you forget your troubles. They even do it with a lemon twist,” she smiled.
“Copy that,” replied Raj. “We better get back, or we will get detention,” Raj said returning the smile. They finished their lunch quickly and headed back to the consortium building.
As they entered the conference room, it seemed they were the last to get back. “I was just about to call out a security sweep for you two,” General Zhou smiled.
“Sorry we were late,” Raj apologized, “we lost track of the time.”
Admiral Johnson said half-jokingly, “I would like to hear that story!”
“That is probably not the brief that Dr. Baudelaire has prepared for us I believe,” Izzy said with a bite in her tone. “When you are settled, please tell us what the Plants, Animals, and Minerals section has been up to since we last met.”
“My apologies Chairman Rocha,” Gwen said, not knowing if she was being dressed down or was still kidding. “Colleagues; good afternoon,” she began. “The P.A.M. section has been busy on multiple fronts. The sheer numbers of insects and microorganisms, which are the largest of all the categories of life on this planet, have been understandably daunting to get a handle on. Alice projects that we will not complete this task before departure, and we are working hard to prove her wrong.”
“Environmental conditions on board the ship is running smoothly. There have been some unanticipated surprises that we’re dealing with. Most of these entail the use of the facilities over many years. For example, although our water recycling is pretty good, we have been experiencing a loss over years of use. It’s a slow, but steady loss. We do not know how we are losing water, since we are in a closed system, but we are still investigating. Sonny has found about half of the missing water, which was due to docking ships coming and going taking more water vapor with them than bringing aboard. There was loss due to vented air from air locks and other situations. Water is a necessary component for survival, and we do not want to run out of it. The amount of loss seems small, at about 0.000047%, but multiplied by the millions of cubic meters of just the air that fills the ship, that is a lot. Water from the lakes and streams evaporate to equilibrate the atmosphere. This is how we know we are losing water.”
“Another problem pertains to quality of life, not so much a requirement issue. It is the acquisition of protein. It was our initial assessment that life aboard the ship would be a vegetarian life. It is much easier to grow plants that give us food rather than maintaining storage for such foodstuffs. One of the ways that we were addressing this was growing algae. The recyclers take some of the solid waste and grow the algae in large vats and ponds which are harvested, dried, and processed for use as a protein supplement. The avoidance of this repurposed waste is such that workers sneak protein of their own from planet-side and trade the stuff around like currency. We cannot do this when we are underway. The larger issue here is addressing the carnivore side of our omnivore nature. Algae are not the only protein grown on the ship. We have planted soybeans, nut trees, legumes like beans and peanuts. Soybeans are a very versatile plant. It is used to make soymilk and tofu for example. All the food plants and greenery are multipurposed in design. They give us aesthetics, food, and cellulose, but just as importantly it is the lynchpin of our oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange. So, there are plenty of protein variety aboard ship, the problem is that many people miss meat. One solution is fish. Fish are easily managed and multiply quickly. We’re already keeping lakes and ponds stocked with a variety of fish, but they can also be farm raised in tanks for mass consumption. Fish could be just enough of a bridge to make it a worthwhile investment. Another avenue we are considering is cultured meat. Our scientists think they can painlessly obtain cells from a live animal and culture the cells into producing animal muscle to use in processed meats like sausages, hamburger, and chicken nuggets. If we could do this, and I’m pretty sure we can, then we should be able to make enough meat to have a variety of protein choices to satisfy everybody. It’s kind of exciting, really. This would also ensure that nobody on the planet goes hungry. We will keep you up to date."
"Another problem that was brought to my attention recently is salt. Salt is an essential mineral to our diets. Many other nutritional elements are in small enough quantities that they can be administered as supplements. However, the daily intake of salt is such that it would be difficult to administer as a pill, for example. What we need to do is ensure that enough salt is obtained through normal dietary meals. For a journey such as the one we are planning, especially since there doesn’t seem to be a definite destination, we would need to stockpile tons and tons of salt to feed to the residents aboard not sleeping. Recycling does return to us a high percentage of salt that can be put back into the diets. However, it is not a one hundred percent process. That small amount of loss ends up in the solid waste that is put back into the soil. Over time, we would lose a significant amount of our salt stores and could jeopardize the mission.”
“The other issue is storage. We would need large amounts of space to keep such stores of salt. What we have decided to do, as some of you already know, is to keep a physical storage locker of sorts of solid salt. We would also keep salt in the form of sea water. Our radiation mitigation protocols utilize a water jacket that surrounds the entire ship. What if we used sea water instead of ‘tap’ water in the jackets? The jackets are connected to the recycler that already recycles our water supply. The recycling system uses the jackets as an enormous reservoir. We could also use this as a reservoir for salt as well. Salt water will improve our mitigation of interstellar radiation a little bit over non-salted water. We have begun the process of ‘salting’ the existing water and switching to sea water from this point forward. We could ‘over salt’ the water giving us even more salt to store, however, it is not optimal for getting drinkable water back out of the highly saline solution. Humans have been desalinizing sea water for over a hundred years now and are familiar with that process so we’ll stick to that. In retrospect, it makes even more sense to use sea water, since sea water has many more elements to them than just salt. All life evolved from the sea. It is no accident that the proportions of elements in sea water are about the same as the proportion of the same elements in our blood and bodily fluids. Those trace elements can also be extracted for dietary purposes so we don’t have to bring as much of those elements as a solid. It is still a finite supply, but this way will allow us to stretch our use of those supplies much further. We’re also exploring protocols for the resupplying of these necessities. A possible scenario may be that we must go to multiple systems to eventually get where we are going. In which case, we need to identify planets that have resources that we can extract for our onward journey."
"We have been manufacturing the final version of the sleepers for about four years now. We have made them versatile enough that should we decide a slightly different process later, we can modify them without too much difficulty. They checked out safe to use for adults and children. Children were difficult since they are not done growing, and that presented major challenges. No pregnant women though. That was just too complicated to be safe. We couldn’t guarantee safety with children under five for the same reasons. Why take children at all? We will need children to restart the population. You can’t have the starter population comprised of aging adults. You must have children so they can grow to adulthood as the older population ages. Otherwise, the older population will age and die leaving too young of a generation to continue. It’s too great of a risk. The other benefit is that children are resilient. They adapt more quickly to new environments than older folks, and their bodies are also quick to adapt, heal, and grow. Our current production of these units is at about one thousand a day. Some quick math told us that we need to double that production if we are going to make and install fifteen million units before depar
ture. I have requisitioned the building of another sleeper plant a little larger than the one in production. This should give us time to complete installation before all the sleepers come aboard. We may be installing the last of them when boarding takes place, but we’ll make it. The sleepers will be positioned in the middle of the ship which we are building now.”
“Of the fifty-foot layer of soil in this section, twenty feet of that will be taken up with two levels of sleepers, with fifteen feet of soil above and below. Access to the sleeper levels will be through strategic entrances located in the basements of small buildings. The sleeper section will take up approximately two rings of the middle of the ship. Currently we are creating the infrastructure that the sleepers will fill, and even some installations have commenced to test the system environment. In general, things are going more smoothly now we have gotten a handle on our schedules again. With the ongoing research and development, we hope to have a lot of the bugs worked out before departure. No pun intended,” she smiled as she realized what she had said. “However, we do need to keep in the back of our minds that no matter how well we plan, there are going to be kinks in the system discovered after departure. Hopefully, Sonny and Alice will help us prepare sufficiently to survive the journey.”
“Thank you, Gwen,” said Izzy, “You’ve been a big asset to the team already in the short time you have been here. Now, Raj, if you’re ready, we will hear from the Resource section.”
“Thanks Izzy,” Raj replied. “Good afternoon all. Planet side mining and acquisitions are going about as well as can be expected. Interference from oppositions is low and we are making our quotas and more. Our engineers and metallurgists are ready to start making the special alloy for the FTL drive. We have made thousands of smaller FTL chassis for probes and fleet vessels, but this will be the mother of all creations. The parts must go together seamlessly and precisely so that the warp field is continuous and unbroken. This is easier to do on a small scale than a larger one. Mathematically speaking, the protocols we’ve worked out on paper will be proven in this one herculean attempt. We have confidence. Sonny and Alice have been checking our work and have tweaked a few things. It is really a matter of having the highest degree of manufacturing tolerances for the modular parts to go together seamlessly. For all the smaller craft, we made most of the FTL field generators in one piece, because they were only twenty or thirty feet long. We are attempting to make one fifteen miles long. Construction section suggested making a one mile scale ship that will serve as a test vehicle for its big brother. We could construct this ship quickly and test a larger scale FTL drive to see if there are any modifications to our much larger one that needs to be made. This will also test our manufacturing tolerances and assembly throughout the process. If everything works out we will gain a nice ‘little’ transport/exploration ship.”
“Off planet mining and exploration is going well. Someone realized that Saturn’s rings are made up of just dust and ice. This is a ready source of pulverized material ready for processing. We are designing ships that will fly into the rings at a slow velocity and scoop up material by the tons. This will be a very useful procedure when encountering any ringed planets in systems we my visit. It may even turn out to be the safest way to mine if the composition of the material is right. Mars and the Oort cloud explorations are yielding good material. Freighters have been coming back with comet material for the last couple of years. The processing plants have also been manufacturing food base and parts for consumer products to serve the masses. Combined with cultured meat, which is beginning to be produced in mass; more people are being well fed.
On the archiving human knowledge front; with the help of Sonny and Alice, we’re triaging this as much as possible. This falls into basically three buckets.
Immediately available knowledge. Essentially this comprises all digitalized kinds of data that can go directly to Sonny. This makes up about sixty percent of the total.
Intermediately available knowledge. Books, papers, artwork, and other artifacts that have not been digitized.
Difficult to obtain knowledge. Knowledge locked away in human brains, and knowledge locked away in legacy media of which there are no working devices to play them back.
Each of these categories is further triaged into the most to least important material. Hopefully, by the time of departure, we’re struggling with the least important of each of these buckets. Among the digitized data, there were many 3D objects that were stored as 2D pictures. We must go out and take 3D images these objects for proper archiving. Sonny estimates that we’re currently seventy two percent complete. The last twenty percent or so will be very challenging.” He nodded to the chairman.
“Thank you, Dr. Mahmud,” said Izzy. “And now I think that Admiral Johnson is up next. It looks like he has some interesting news to disseminate. Whenever you are ready, admiral.”
“Thank you, chairman Rocha,” the admiral acknowledged, nodding at the chairman. Leonard had been at this appointment for some time now, and he was well suited for it. Earth had not had any wars in many decades. There were many skirmishes, but no organized war since Earth had other things to think about. For mostly those reasons, military commanders did not have much in the way of field experience these days, and Leonard was no exception. He supposed that those experiences were concentrated with Security section mainly. Sometimes the Navy assisted in coastal skirmishes, but mostly the Navy turned their gaze upwards. There in space, it was very busy. They were still building a whole new frontier to serve them well for the biggest journey of their species history. Personally, he gave humanity even odds that they would make it or fail, depending on whether you were the ‘glass half full or empty’ kind of guy. There seemed to be an endless number of factors. It was not difficult to imagine that there might be factors that were unknown to humanity that would spoil the whole beautiful equation. He took more comfort in the knowledge that Alice and Sonny were always on the job to overcome these factors when they arose. Humanity could not have gone as far without them, that much was sure.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” he started. “I’ve got good news, and I’ve bad news. The good news is that some of the probes we sent out have returned. The bad news is that we may have to ‘settle’ for an intermediate world so that we can explore and find a permanent home without a gun to our heads. The best systems that have planets with an Earth-like environment are around red dwarf stars. This usually means that the planet must be pretty close to the star. The distance would be about like mercury’s orbit or closer. A big drawback to this is that to be close enough to get the proper amount of radiant heat, it is also pretty close for all kinds of other radiation. Another drawback is that many of these planets, because they are so close, are tidal locked. This means that one side of the planet always faces the sun, and one side is always dark. A fair number of these planets are several times larger than Earth. Humans could exist at the terminator in perpetual sunrise or sunset. What effects that not having a day and night cycle would have on us is somewhat understood. It may be a greater difficulty than we might think. We sent three more probes out eight years ago, and some hopeful information has come back to us.”
GJ667C c and f
“Both planets orbit a red dwarf in the Scorpius constellation about twenty-four light years away. Telemetry shows at least six planets in this system. Planet ‘c’ is situated on the inner edge of the habitable zone, and is likely a warm planet. The atmosphere of ‘c’ is comprised of oxygen and nitrogen, but with some heavier elements like argon in higher levels than here on Earth. Argon is acceptable since it is a non-reactive gas like diatomic nitrogen. Oxygen makes up about 22%, nitrogen about 69% and about 8% argon, plus some other trace elements. Its period is just twenty-eight days! A pretty short year! Its rotational ‘day’ is about thirty-nine hours. It’s just over two times the size of Earth with a surface gravity of about 1.4 G. The planet has extensive weather over most of its surface. The atmosphere is thick enough to keep the planet warme
r than it would be without it. There’s almost no tilt to the axis so ‘seasonal’ changes would be minimal to nonexistent. There’s some ice at the poles and enormous oceans of water with several large continents and many smaller ones. However, the ocean water is mixed with bromine salts instead of sodium chloride salts. We do not know if there is any ‘fresh water’ to be obtained. Telemetry from mini-probes sent down to the surface was limited. There seems to be primitive plants and animals present, but nothing definitive. In summary, this planet has some promising elements to it, but is offset by many things that would prove to be a major adjustment, if there was fresh water down there. It is likely too warm for permanent residency.”
“Planet ‘f’, sister planet to ‘c’ sits slightly further out and solidly inside the habitable zone. It has an axial tilt of twelve degrees so temperature variation is greater than ‘c’. The planet is roughly the same size as ‘c’ and its ‘year’ is a little longer at thirty-six days. Its rotational ‘day’ is forty-four hours with a surface gravity of about 1.3 G. ‘F’ also has an atmosphere and extensive weather which is more violent than ‘c’. This is most likely due to the temperature swings caused by the tilt of the planet. The composition of the atmosphere is 11% oxygen, 19% CO2, 16% helium and about 54% nitrogen. The planet is largely arid and dry, however, there is water. There are a few seas in the equatorial region, and substantial ice at the poles. The water has dissolved CO2 in it forming a weak carbonic acid much like a carbonated drink. No life found on the planet, however the survey was brief. This planet could be terraformed to convert the CO2 to more oxygen. If that happened, it’s uncertain how much colder the planet would get after losing its greenhouse gas. Currently, the equatorial zone is the only region warm enough to keep water liquid.”
The Journey of Atlantis_Leaving Home Page 12