by Paul Reaver
“Hang in there, John. I’m telling you what Angela would want.”
“Ok, Jeanne, thanks for putting up with me.”
“I’m here for you anytime you need me, John. You know that,” said Jeanne.
John clicked off the connection and mulled over the conversation. It had been a short call, but just what he needed. Jeanne was right. Angela would not want the accident to hold him back; she would want him to get on with his life. But there were times, like tonight, when he needed to get a little bit of the sadness he felt off his chest. Talking with Jeanne helped him do that; she was so matter-of-fact, and that helped.
He leaned back and let out a heartfelt sigh. He closed his eyes and recalled some of the many good times he and Angela had enjoyed. His wife had designed this house that he sat in, but they oversaw the building process together. On a few occasions he had thought about selling it, but two things held him back: he did not want to leave the house where he had enjoyed the company of the woman of his life; neither did he want to go through all that it would take to build another house with a sophisticated, hidden laboratory and workshop. At least, not for now.
He opened his eyes and mentally shook off the thoughts on which he had dwelled. Again, he made himself realize that Angela would not want him to stop moving forward, to create any pauses in what was a stellar career.
He changed the channel on the TV and watched a football game for a while. When he realized that Dallas was going to lose, he flipped off the TV and headed up to bed.
When he got up the next morning, the birds were singing, and the Sun was shining. He was in a decidedly good mood. He headed downstairs to fix some breakfast, and made quick work of some bacon, eggs, and toast. He knew it wasn’t the healthy breakfast he should be eating, but he did not indulge in such things too often. His approach was to eat such things in moderation and otherwise stick to a much healthier diet.
He retrieved the car and drove to work. He always smiled a little at the cloak-and-dagger routine he had to go through each day, but he also knew it was necessary. Once he had reached his office, he sat down and thought about everything that was going on with his team.
Suddenly, he had an epiphany! He could see a future beyond just completing all of his team’s current projects. They fit together like a glove. He could use combinations of all of them could for various purposes, but he had one particular idea in mind that would use the best of all the projects’ most exceptional attributes for one goal. Space exploration!
John made some notes on which source of science would be best for each technological need for space travel. He went over his list of technologies.
Cold Fusion:
Power for habitats, domiciles, and individual vehicles. This also had far-reaching potential beyond the use for space travel, both good and bad. John thought about this. First of all, on Earth alone, it could replace any other electrical power generation source, whether it used fossil fuel or otherwise, such as that derived from wind, water, or solar power. However, there would be no need to replace wind, water, or solar power sources because they were renewable. But electrical companies using fossil fuels that changed over to cold fusion electrical production would likely have to convert their method of calculating the rate they would charge their customers for electricity; they would be using a different method of power generation. As with many new technologies, at first there would probably be significant competition for companies building fusion-powered generators for the electrical companies; businesses always find a way to fill a void. And as with most other discoveries, the initial cost would be high. However, the cost would gradually reduce as the manufacture of such equipment became more finely tuned and widespread with competitive companies. So, the power companies’ reduction of cost per kilowatt-hour to their customers would be on a sliding scale that would take into account their costs to produce electricity and their competitor’s rates. This also added to the good/bad potential list for the electrical companies. As the price of fusion power reduced over time and as it changed from an emerging technology to an everyday technology, at some point its cost would be within easy reach of businesses at first, followed closely by homeowners. Ultimately this might appear to remove the need for electrical companies almost altogether. But John suspected that the emergence of the possibility for large-scale electricity production using fusion power would simply replace the electricity production now produced using fossil fuels. There were at least two reasons why this would be true. The first was that a large percentage of homeowners and businesses would probably not want to go through the process and expense it would take to convert their houses and facilities to self-sustaining electrical production. Secondly, many people and businesses want electric companies as a central source of electrical output because they not only make the electricity available with no effort on the customer’s part, they also support the infrastructure that brings the power to the homes and businesses. This means that if lightning strikes a pole and blows out a transformer, the electric company will fix it. Many, if not most homeowners and businesses, would prefer to pay for their electricity to obtain this support by the electric company. If a significant number of people chose to switch and produce their power independently, the evolution would be similar to what had happened with phone companies; as cell phones became more and more economical, their price point put them within reach of almost everyone. For the phone companies, it meant that, for the most part, payphones were no longer viable, though they still exist, albeit in significantly reduced numbers for those people who can’t afford a cell phone and yet still need to communicate. An even more significant change is the number of wired phones installed in homes where their presence was ubiquitous at one time. Most people do not see the reason to have both a cellular and a wired phone at the same time, though most businesses still use wired phones and will for the foreseeable future. But the effort and cost to make a home or business electrically self-sustaining using fusion power would be so much higher than merely changing a method of phone service; there is not a one-to-one comparison that can be made between phones and electrical power in this situation. Only time would tell how this electricity production scenario would play out.
For space travel, cold fusion would be an ideal way to provide power at almost any location in virtually any condition. It wasn’t as though they would choose a mission destination selected in a place that had an extremely hostile environment, especially at first. But for a mission to Mars, humanity’s next step beyond the Moon, fusion could provide all the energy a habitat located there would need. But first, they had to complete its development and perfect it. Fortunately, these goals seemed closer every day.
Invisibility:
At some point, this way to bend light (or any radiated energy) rays around an object would prevent the object from being seen. Though this might be the primary reason for using it, in the case of a spaceship, it would also protect it from radiation exposure. It would defend any object from detection by radar and other current wave detection technologies (since the waves would be “bent” around the object, hiding it), among other possible uses. Also, having the property of invisibility would lend itself well to military and scientific applications. The science benefits were relatively obvious. But without much thought, the ability to make any military asset invisible would have tremendous impacts; soldiers would not be seen; any type of vehicle would not be seen; rockets or missiles could be launched and never seen until impact. The exception would be their propulsion trail – they would have to mask the trail. The list was almost limitless. John was certainly not ignorant about the misuse of military might. But if he had to choose between the United States and any other country that had equipment and troops with these assets, the United States would be number one on his list to have them. For one thing, he felt that the U.S. would use such abilities as a defensive tool first, then offensively only if necessary. He was in a unique position to influence how to use this yet-to-be-perfected technology, but only
in the early stages. It was not as if he could withhold it until his organization reached an accord with the military on its use; Uncle Jim would know about it and be obliged to notify the powers that be up the chain of command to the president. He was not so naïve as to think he was the immovable object that stood in the way of the unstoppable force of the military, or that the U.S. could not misuse this technology. Still, he felt sure the President could be convinced to choose the right path with this tool. Also, other countries would undoubtedly develop the same technology; it would not take many years for a foreign country to establish the same or similar technology.
Antigravity:
This was the most logical way to provide a means to move from one planetary body to another. Yet another source of propulsion, this one had the unique attribute of being able to move an object (the obvious object being a spacecraft) from one planet or moon to another. Once they had constructed the equipment, the travel itself would be free! It would also theoretically be extremely smooth travel, as the property of gravity of the spaceship should be able to be gently increased and decreased. This would do away with the rough and tumble liftoff associated with traditional rockets. And due to the ability to raise or lower the gravitational pull between two objects, travel time to cover vast distances in space would be significantly reduced. However, this did not preclude the development of some version of warp drive, because such propulsion didn’t speed up how fast an object moved through space, not directly anyhow; it changed how an object moved through space. Using antigravity, a spaceship would move in a straight line from one point to another (planet to moon, planet to planet, etc.), albeit in a very short amount of time.
Warp drive:
This mode of travel, on the other hand, would allow a spacecraft to traverse great distances in much less time than antigravity. Since the simple explanation for warp drive is that it “folds” space, in essence, the spacecraft would not traverse the entire distance. It would, in fact, traverse a very small distance through the “folds.” Gravity would have no effect, but the technology and calculations required would be much more complicated than antigravity travel. Oddly enough, warp drive had arrived at John’s drawing board within the last few weeks. Given time, and his team’s scientific talents, they would accomplish the goal, and probably faster than anyone else would imagine. For now, they needed to finish the antigravity drive, and since they had made progress, that usually meant productive results would manifest themselves quickly. Warp drive, no matter how good John’s team was, was probably many years away from realization.
Quantum Mechanics:
There were almost no limits to the potential of quantum mechanics. That was the plus side. The downside was the fact that it was not well enough understood to be useful – for the most part. John was happy he had studied quantum mechanics in college, and because of that, he had an excellent grasp of how this science worked with the current level of knowledge. He knew that, at some point, there would be an application for quantum mechanics for space travel. They just needed time to develop the technology.
Time Travel:
Though this was not even on any project drawing board yet because it was essentially unknown, John knew that they might be able to at least touch on it with quantum mechanics. He planned to use their increasing knowledge with quantum mechanics to branch out into some type of time travel arena. He was not sure what that would be yet, but there were theories and technologies available that might open a path to moving forward into this fascinating science with such huge potential. Though time travel was not directly related to any functions that would positively affect his idea of space travel, it remained a tremendous goal to achieve. His mind wrestled with the thought of how to use time travel with space travel, and he came up with a couple of possibilities. However, he was concerned that he might create a paradox with the ideas he had, because he might meet himself in the future (or past, if it were possible to travel backward in time; so far, as he had already reminded himself, this was deemed impossible by the scientific community). Anyone who contemplated time travel would (or should) be aware that creating a paradox was a possibility, and must be avoided. The only real way that time travel would dovetail with space travel would be if he traveled to the future to a point where an advanced spaceship of the design he wanted already existed. He could then bring the information back to the present time and build a ship of his own with the same sophistication – that is, if he could duplicate the technology. One possible advantage of creating the ship in the present using technology from the future would be that it would tremendously advance space travel in the future. For example, if he went 50 years forward in time and discovered that a ship capable of intergalactic travel existed, he could come back to the present and recreate it. This would give space travel a 50-year jump in the present, and 50 years in the future, the science of space travel would have been advanced tremendously by that technology jump that was now in the past. This did not sit well with him, however. He would have to give it much thought and discuss it with his teams. It seemed all too likely that doing such a thing would create the very paradox that he wanted to avoid.
Nanotechnology:
Nanotechnology was coming into its own and gaining speed. The fact that nanotechnology worked at a sub-atomic level would theoretically allow it to manipulate any type of matter or energy in various ways, including spacetime itself. As far as space travel went, nanotechnology might enable many applications: extremely tiny machines to build, repair, and create things almost without limit. There are already some nanomachines in existence.
Teleportation:
Since John had discussed this subject at length with Jose, he knew what might be possible with teleportation on Earth and theorized what its role might be in space travel. How much it might affect space travel depended on how the technology developed. He divided his thoughts into what he was reasonably sure they could do with teleportation and what might be possible at some point in time. Fortunately, John’s team was embracing these technologies and rapidly expanding on them.
He wanted to record these thoughts while they were fresh in his mind. “Malcolm,” he said.
“Yes, John,” came the answer.
“Open a new file called ‘space travel’, please.”
“Ready,” replied Malcolm.
“Activate the brainwave receiver,” said John.
“Activated,” replied Malcolm.
“Begin recording,” John said, and mentally concentrated on the notes he had just reviewed in his mind. “End of transmission,” said John. “Please read the information back to me.”
Malcolm read back the notes John had sent him, and John felt extremely satisfied. With few exceptions, which he corrected, Malcolm had recorded all the information word for word (or should it be “thought for thought”?). When he had first started using brainwaves to communicate with Malcolm, there were far more mistakes and miscommunications. Since then, he had made much progress. With time there would be no mistakes in translation.
Chapter 5
John decided he wanted to touch base with Jose on the teleportation as it related to space travel. He went to Jose’s laboratory. When he went in, Jose was deep in thought, concentrating on something on his desk. He did not notice that John had entered the lab. As he usually did in such situations, so as not to startle the person, John quietly cleared his throat. Jose looked up at the sound, and smiled at John.
“What can I do for you, boss?” asked Jose.
“Jose,” John said, “there’s another aspect of teleportation I’d like to discuss and get your opinion on. It involves space travel. I suspect that this is an area that will most intrigue our government superiors and be of the most value to them. What is your opinion about teleportation and space travel?”
Jose said, “Well, if you could transport people to other planets instead of using spaceships, you wouldn’t need spaceships. But even if we could do that, we would have to go there first to make sure we were telepo
rting a person to a safe place, a place where they could make a safe “landing,” so to speak. This goes back to our earlier conversation, where I pointed out that we have to make sure two objects do not occupy the same space at the same time. So we’d still have to go to the destination the first time via a spaceship or using some alternate method of checking to verify that there is a safe reception place. Then we would need to put some kind of transponder there to allow for tracking the movement of the planet and destination in space. The transponder would also be there to verify that no other object was occupying the target area at the time of transport. Once the destination was verified as being available and continually confirmed by the transponder, we could use teleportation from then on to send as many people, or as much equipment, or anything we desire, to that location. The caveat is that if we can see the destination prior to teleportation, we would not have to go there first. Transporting to almost anyplace on Earth would fit into this category. So would transporting to the Moon, on the side we can see. We would know what the destination is and what it looks like.
“Again, here are my expectations: I think that sending any object of any size for any significant distance will require a great deal of energy. I think the reality for us will end up being that we can send someone from the surface of the Earth to a spaceship in orbit, a low Earth orbit of 1,250 miles or so. The prospect of this for me is exciting because it reminds me of the transport devices that they’ve used on TV science fiction shows and in movies. I love that stuff! This would essentially be the same thing. I think the ability to send any object further than into orbit would require more energy than would be feasible. But even if that’s all we could do, think of the advantages this ability would give us. We could build spaceships or space stations or satellites in orbit and bypass the need for huge rockets to send ships to carry astronauts and building supplies for any kind of orbital construction, or to put satellites in orbit. For interstellar travel, we are going to need much larger ships than anything we have built so far. Building them in orbit by teleporting people and building supplies will be the only way we can build spaceships that big and make it much more cost-effective. Having said that, just as with any other new technology involving energy, it will undoubtedly become more and more efficient as time goes on. This means that we could transport for much farther distances as the technology matures.”