by Doug Farren
Jay’s abrupt question did not bother Anita as much as it would have had it come from any other person. She knew Jay to be a man who went straight to the point and never beat around the bush. His tone of voice told her he was upset and would settle for nothing less than the direct truth.
She settled into a chair on Jay’s left and said, “You know that security for this project has been very tight. Now that the Starfire is nearing completion, it is beginning to draw some attention not only from the media but from the government and our competitors as well. I don’t think its true purpose will be discovered until our tests are complete, since the only people aware of it are in this room. I don’t want anyone to be given the opportunity either.”
Jay’s face showed his surprise. “Nobody else in the entire Starfire project knows what we are building? Just how the hell did you manage to pull that off? What about the captain? Isn’t he aware of what he’s getting himself into?”
Anita smiled as she replied. “Everyone on the project has been told the Starfire is a test bed for an advanced propulsion system that will hopefully allow us to economically make a round trip to Mars. Since this isn’t so far from the truth, the secret has been pretty easy to keep.
“The press and the Starfire project personnel have been told that the ship is an advanced scientific research vessel designed for long-term missions. I realized early on that eventually someone on the project was going to leak the story they've been given and the press will descend upon us. I am sure they will make a big deal over the possibility of another manned mission to Mars especially in light of what happened to the first mission. All of this excitement will prevent anyone from digging deeper and possibly discovering the Starfire’s true purpose.”
Kauffman was well aware of the tragic event to which Anita had referred. In 2033 the first manned mission to Mars had been launched. Months before, a robotic manufacturing plant had been launched, had successfully landed and had begun to manufacture the fuel to be used for the return trip.
After a five month journey, the seven person crew had flawlessly entered into orbit. One day later, the descent capsule, along with a crew of six, detached for its trip to the surface. Just as they were about to touch down, an unknown failure caused the ship the lean over to one side and it crashed to the surface. Due to the nature of this historic event, the landing and therefor the accident had been broadcast live to all corners of the Earth.
The crash, however, was not what had made the event so tragic. The tragedy was that all but one of the crew had survived and had been trapped on an inhospitable alien world. Shortly after transmitting their condition to Earth, the crew discovered a series of small fires aboard their ship, several of which were dangerously close to the fuel tanks. They quickly evacuated and managed to get away before it exploded, destroying much of their air and food.
The crew walked to the fuel depot where they were able to replenish their oxygen supply. Within a day they had cannibalized parts of the fuel factory and what was left of their ship and had constructed a crude shelter. The stranded crew, however, had no food and were well aware of the fact that they were destined to starve to death on Mars.
Four days after the crash, the crew failed to respond to the calls from the orbiting command ship. It is believed they either succumbed to a failure of their makeshift shelter or had decided to end their misery—nobody knows for certain.
The lone crewman in the command ship that had remained in orbit did not fare much better. The original plans had called for a three week stay on the surface and then, after refueling the landing craft, the crew would blast off and link back up with the command ship. The reunited crew would then have started their return trip to Earth.
A supply ship launched from Earth shortly after the crew had blasted off had already swung around Mars and was heading back towards Earth. The explorers were to have caught up with the supply ship, docked, transferred fuel and food, and then continued on towards home. Unfortunately, the landing craft also contained the engines needed for the return trip. The thrusters on the command ship were insufficient to allow it to break orbit. The person in the command ship found herself alone and stranded millions of kilometers from home.
She had plenty of food and water since there had been enough on board to supply a crew of seven for over two months. At first, she took the news as well as anyone could have hoped. Plans were quickly developed to send an emergency supply ship full of food and recreational materials to keep her occupied while a rescue mission was worked out.
After a month though, her behavior started to change. She became more and more belligerent toward the people back on Earth and would refuse to speak to them for days at a time. The last transmission was received 107 days after the accident. It was a text only message and said simply, “I’ve been invited to a party. See you all there.” The meaning of this last transmission has been debated ever since.
“I like your cover story,” Jay said. “I am, however, worried that the captain has not been told. I still don’t know how you managed to keep this a secret from the engineers and technicians who are designing and building the ship.”
“It wasn’t as hard as you might think,” Anita replied shifting her position in the chair. “As far as the engineers, technicians, and machinists know, they are working on an advanced propulsion system being installed on a ship that has been outfitted for a long mission. Practically all of the work they are involved in supports that story. Much of the equipment and drive components resemble those used in our more powerful plasma drives. They have no reason to believe that what we have developed is nothing more than an advanced version of a plasma drive.
“As far as the captain is concerned, he has been told that the drive system he is to test may be unstable and should be considered inherently dangerous. He picked his crew accordingly. I plan on briefing him and his crew as to their real mission at least a month prior to departure.”
“You’re the boss. So when are you going to show me this secret device that will solve our peak power problem?”
Anita stood up, smiled and said, “How about right now?”
Jay got out of his chair and followed. “What is it? A tiny fusion reactor? Some sort of high powered fuel cell?”
“Much better, but I’ll let the designer tell you about it.”
They took an elevator to a level below ground where they boarded a small subway. Advanced Space Technologies was a vast complex of administrative and manufacturing buildings spread out over an 800 square kilometer area located in a remote area of Arizona. All the buildings were linked by a private subway system.
A few minutes later, they exited the car and took another elevator up to one of the research and development labs. This one was much larger than any Kauffman had ever seen before, being about the size of a small aircraft hanger. A large concrete structure with several thick power cables leading into it occupied the center of the room. A stocky, 183 centimeter tall, African-American dressed in red coveralls noticed their arrival and headed in their direction.
“Hello Miss Kingston, is this the propulsion expert you mentioned?” the man said as soon as he was within easy talking distance. His voice had a deep resonating character which matched his appearance. Jay’s first impression was of someone who had once been a weightlifter at some point in his past. His hair was close cut down to mere stubble and the outline of the muscles of his arms could clearly be seen through the coveralls. His eyes, however, were those of a highly intelligent and seemingly very gentle person.
“Yes. Jay Kauffman I would like you to meet Tyrone Jackson. He’s the head of the superconductor research department and chief designer of this project. Mr. Jackson, would you care to give Jay a quick tour?”
“Of course!” He turned and started to retrace his steps. As they walked he asked, “Are you the same Jay Kauffman who wrote a paper about five years ago on advanced magnetic confinement fields for fusion power reactors?”
“I did write such a paper,” Ja
y answered. “I wasn’t too sure if anyone had ever read it.”
Tyrone suddenly stopped, turned around and extended his hand towards Jay. “I would like to shake your hand then because your paper was instrumental in solving some of the design problems for this project.”
Jay took the offered hand, which dwarfed his own, and managed to say, “I guess I’m at a bit of a loss. Just what is this project of yours?”
Tyrone looked at Anita who said, “I haven’t told him anything. I wanted you to have that honor.”
Turning back around, Tyrone said over his shoulder as he continued walking, “Then I shall give you the grand tour. Actually, you picked a very good time to visit. We are setting up for a full power stress test.”
The concrete structure they approached was shaped like the end of an upturned test tube except that it measured a full five meters in diameter. They passed through a massive steel door, through a short tunnel, then through a second steel door. The interior of the structure was less than two meters in diameter and no more than three meters in height. The walls were highly polished making it difficult for Jay to maintain his sense of bearing.
In the center of this small room stood a ceramic pedestal on which rested a solid donut-shaped object to which the cables were attached. The object was about thirty centimeters in diameter and bristled with instrumentation. The room was very cramped and Jay felt a bit claustrophobic.
“Behold the power accumulator,” Tyrone announced with a flare as the last person cleared the door. “This device is capable of absorbing vast amounts of electrical power. This particular one, which we are about to test, can store about two hundred mega-joules of energy in its internal circulating currents.”
Kauffman was impressed. The ability to store such a huge amount of energy in such a small space had never before been done. After thinking about it for a moment he said, “Obviously, this device uses superconductors to carry the current. How did you manage to get around the magnetic threshold problem?”
“The material we are working with is unique in that it is not susceptible to the magnetic threshold problem, at least insofar as we are able to determine.”
“That is amazing!” Kauffman remarked. “This thing must be one hell of an electromagnet when it’s fully charged.”
Tyrone smiled as he replied, “Actually, no. We’ve used the equations from your paper on magnetic confinement to create a magnetic field configuration that cancels out the external field. When fully powered, this device produces a magnetic field of only four gauss.”
“Would you mind putting that into non-technical terms for me?” Anita asked.
“Of course not,” Tyrone replied. “All superconductors, except this one, have a physical characteristic known as the magnetic breakdown threshold. In the presence of a magnetic field, either generated internally or externally, a superconductor will lose its superconducting properties. The strength of this magnetic field is known as the magnetic threshold. Below the threshold the material is a superconductor. Above the threshold it reverts back to its non-superconducting state. This principle is actually used to our advantage in our ultra-high power circuit interrupters. The material we use for those devices is a very good insulator when it is not superconducting and we can use a magnetic field to force the material to act as a non-arcing switch.”
“So why go to all the trouble of canceling out the external magnetic field?” she asked.
“For a unit of this size there probably is no real design reason. But, if this device is scaled up, the external magnetic field generated would represent a hazard to any nearby object that is susceptible to them. A strong enough magnetic field could even begin to attract the iron in the hemoglobin of your blood making it lethal.
“The design of the field coils requires extreme precision and needed to be tested at this scale to ensure we could do it. Now that we know we can, the only theoretical limit to the size of these devices is the strength of the device itself as it fights the effects of the magnetic fields.”
“That would make sense,” Jay said getting into the spirit of the discussion. “The stresses caused by such ultra-strong magnetic fields would be very high. I would very much like to see your design equations describing the field dynamics of your magnetic fields.”
The look on Anita’s face told Tyrone she had had enough of the technical talk, “I’m sure that can be arranged. We should get to the control room where we can watch the test.”
“Why such thick walls?” Jay asked as they turned to leave.
“Two hundred mega-joules is a tremendous amount of power to have stored in such a small device,” Tyrone replied, leading the way back out of the structure closing the massive doors behind him. “In the event of a failure, the accumulator could potentially release all of its stored energy within a fraction of a second. The result would be an impressive explosion which could quite easily blow this entire building apart leaving nothing but a small crater. That’s one reason I’ve told Miss Kingston we cannot risk testing a much larger version anywhere near a populated area.”
Tyrone stopped, turned around, and with a sweeping motion of his arm, brought everyone's attention to the concrete bunker they had just exited. “The safety structure is composed of multiple layers of ultra-dense concrete reinforced with spun monofilament carbon fibers. The interior of the containment is lined with four centimeters of glassified amorphous steel, the most resilient material we have ever been able to create.
“The roof of the containment is designed to channel the force of an explosion toward the floor. There are 24 pressure relief ports in the floor that will channel the explosive force into a labyrinth under the building to safely absorb and contain the released energies. We could probably set off a small tactical nuke inside the containment without it having much of an effect.”
“I take it you’ve had your share of failures?” Jay asked.
“During the early stages, while we were still becoming familiar with the material, we destroyed several prototypes. But even then we realized a failure could be deadly and we took the appropriate precautions. Once we learned how the material behaved under stress and we could get the manufacturing tolerances within spec, the devices have worked flawlessly.”
The control room was located within another heavily reinforced structure. Once inside, Jay asked, “What material are you using for the superconductors? I didn’t see any refrigeration equipment.”
“I was wondering if you had noticed,” Tyrone replied as he closed the door behind him. “The material was developed here in our research labs about five months ago. The manufacturing process is hellishly expensive but the end result is the world’s first true room temperature superconductor. I’m afraid the exact makeup of the material is still considered classified especially since we don’t yet have the patent rights on the process.”
Seeing the hurt look on Jay’s face, Anita spoke up and said, “Jay has the clearance—tell him.”
Tyrone appeared relieved and Jay had the feeling that Tyrone was glad to be able to finally share his discovery with someone else. “We have developed a process whereby hydrogen can be forced into a metallic state which is stable at room temperature. It’s an odd material since it does not melt at its boiling point but instantly reverts back to its gaseous state. It’s very brittle, oxidizes readily and is extremely difficult to work with. We actually have to heat it to within a few tenths of a degree of its melting point before it can be formed. You can imagine how hard it is to control the temperature closely enough to allow us to manufacture the coils. One small mistake in the temperature control and the entire coil evaporates.”
“Metastable metallic hydrogen!”, Jay exclaimed, a look of wonder on his face. “The Holy Grail of superconductor research for nearly a century. Congratulations!”
Anita couldn't help but notice the gargantuan smile on Tyrone's face following Jay's unrestrained compliment. Because of the secrecy required he had been unable to share his discovery with the rest of the
scientific community and had, so far, been denied the recognition he so deserved. She paid him well for his services but Anita was keenly aware that job satisfaction often included more than financial security such as recognition from one's peers. She was very glad she had decided to take Jay on this little demonstration.
While they had been talking, the other two technicians had been setting up for the test. “We’re ready,” one of them announced not taking his eyes from the control panel.
“Proceed,” Tyrone directed, suddenly all business. For the benefit of his guests he continued with a brief explanation. “We have calculated the maximum permissible charge and discharge rates of the accumulator and we are about to test those calculations. We will be charging the device up to its full capacity at its maximum rate. After a one second delay, the accumulator will be discharged at its maximum rate. The test will automatically repeat three times so we can gather a statistical sampling of the accumulator’s performance.”
As they watched, several of the indicators on the panel rapidly changed, paused, and then returned to their original position. This happened three times. The entire test required a little over twenty seconds. After the indicators had stopped bouncing around, the lead technician scanned his panel, consulted a computer screen, and then announced, “Test is complete; no problems noted.”
Tyrone clapped his hands together and loudly proclaimed, “Hot damn! She works just like we designed it.”
“Can you scale it up?” Anita asked.
“Oh yes,” an exuberant Tyrone replied. Pointing at the cement structure, he continued. “That is only a prototype for testing. There’s no reason why we can’t build them bigger. Give me the funding and about twelve more months and I’ll have something we can market to the large power companies.”
“I need two units capable of storing at least five-thousand mega-joules with the ability to deliver it at a sustained rate of at least fifty mega-joules per second,” Anita rattled off the numbers without hesitation. “Can they be built?”