Tony shouted “John – get off there!” Then the front of Barbara dropped abruptly and the anti coil that was already smoking emitted a brilliant flash as it hit the ground. John was wrestling with his seat belt amidst the flames. Ian Smith heroically rushed towards the wreck with the intention of helping the pilot, but just as he got there John freed himself and leaped off his seat, flipping off the main power switch as he jumped. Ian reached through the smoke and cut the engine of the leaf blower, picking up a minor burn on his wrist. Barbara was now fully on the ground with smoke pouring from the number 4 anti-coil. Part of the wooden 2X4 frame was starting to burn.
Judy and Tony rushed over to the shaken John: “Are you alright?” asked Judy breathlessly.
Tony put his arm around John and escorted him to the side of the building. “You had a close call there, are you hurt?” The assembly technicians finally came back with fire extinguishers, which quickly doused the flames. Everybody else stood still, horrified, with the sound of women sobbing and men cursing, for a few moments, until Steve called out:
“OK everybody, let’s get back to work!”
Slowly, Fred, Steve, John, Judy and Tony gathered around the charred wreckage of Barbara in a circle.
“It proves my point that we have got to have redundancy!” insisted Judy.
“It proves my point that a wooden structure was a bad idea – it should have been aluminum,” said Fred.
John put his hands to his cheeks, looking solemnly down: “I can see what happened now. The vibration from the blower motor caused the anticoil wires to chafe against their supporting mounts so that the insulation was worn through and the electricity could spark directly from one turn of wire to the next. These anticoils generate hundreds of pounds of force and the Litz wires are very delicate. We need to cushion them so that they can withstand all that mechanical stress. The vibration from the blower motor was the last straw. It seems so obvious now but I sure did not see that one coming.”
Tony said thoughtfully: “We got all the technical know how and understanding from Barbara that we needed to. The only thing we don’t have is a manned flight demonstration. We could always take Steve’s movie and edit it to just show the first few seconds. That would convince the investors that it was real.”
Steve was unconsciously wringing his hands. “We need another round of investment in three months. I am sure that just with the pictures we took today that we could get money, but the question is on what terms. Without a real manned flight the investors would put a lower value on our business plan and all our stock options would get diluted.”
John momentarily closed his eyes and then opened them and clenched his fists. “If we could get Charlotte assembled and working in two months, then that would do the trick. With a working Charlotte then we could get our next round of investment without much dilution of our options.”
“You want a dual processor, regenerative descent and a vertical dimension stabilizer loop all programmed and working in two months?” said Judy cynically.
John said: “Perhaps if we all worked flat out, like 12 hours a day for six days a week, then we could get it done. As a fall back we could have the regenerative power circuits built but just not use them if the software is not ready. The vehicle would still fly. The same thing goes for the vertical inertial stabilizer loop. We would fly it by hand just like Barbara and Annette if the software was not ready. Just leave the option open to bypass the vertical loop.” The others looked at each other. They all saw visions of favorite TV shows, time with spouses and all the other good things of life disappearing from their daily routine.
Tony especially valued his private time for thought and research; it had been part of his life style for the last ten years. “Do we really have to do that?” he questioned. “Surely what we have already is so sensational that the VCs will be standing in line to give us money.”
“I’m going to be here!” said Judy firmly. “Its only for two months and its in all of our best interests.”
“Then I’m for it too!” said Tony grimly.
“Count me in!” agreed Fred.
Each of them understood the wisdom of John’s desperate proposal. Any other choice would have involved loss of face to each other, their families and the staff, which was unthinkable because they all believed so intensely in what they were doing.
“If you are all going to be here then the rest of us are committed too,” said Steve. “I’ll call a company meeting tomorrow and tell everybody.”
Chapter 16
The next morning at Electrolev all 26 people in the company were jammed into the conference room. With only 12 chairs in the room, half the people were standing, shifting uneasily from one foot to another. With old world courtesy most of the seats were occupied by the women. Everybody was uncomfortable because after yesterday’s fiery crash of Barbara there could only be bad news of one form or another. The last to arrive were Steve and John, grim faced.
John stood at the head of the table. “You all saw my hair singeing experience yesterday. Obviously that was not supposed to happen. The good news is that before that ever happened; we got all kinds of calibration measurements out of the lift system so that we now know even better how to design a Levistar. The other good news is that it finally sunk in to us that we are producing hundreds or hopefully soon thousands of pounds of lift from little delicate threads of wire. It is obvious to us now that all these threads have to be rigidly fixed in place and supported in a compliant fashion so that they can’t be damaged by vibration like you all saw happen with Barbara yesterday. From now on each anti-coil is going to be potted in silicone elastomer. So we learned a heck of a lot from Barbara’s test flight. Another piece of good news is that we have movie footage of Barbara moving under her own power, and we can use that to reassure the investors to stick with us.” John paused and his brow furrowed. He looked around caringly at the crowd of anxious faces. “But here is the bad news: we are not just burning Levistars but also burning cash at a serious rate and more than half of the original investment been used to get us to this stage. We are having trouble getting all the supplies we need – for example Barbara used as much Litz wire as is produced in the whole USA in a month, and to get more we are having to bring it in from China, by air, which is incredibly expensive. Our big problem is that we are due for another round of financing three months from now. Let me reassure you, our present investors will for sure stick with us just on the strength of the Barbara flight video. But if we have not done what we said we were going to do then as far as they are concerned, we have started down a slippery slope in which we lose credibility. And when you lose that it means that they put less value on our business plan, which means that all of our stock options become worth less than what they would have been. The difference could easily amount to a hundred thousand dollars each for most of you, and even more for people like me who started off the whole thing.” Some people gasped, and the assembled group looked at each other uncomfortably, waiting for the really bad news.
John paused and took a deep breath, trying his best to make his normally dorky voice come out deep and resonant. “There is one path left to us that can preserve our credibility, and that is to get Charlotte flying before we run out of money. I think that we can do it, because nearly everything that we need is already on order. But it means that we have to assemble Charlotte and write the software to make it go in just two months. To do that, we will all have to make a sacrifice. I want every person in the company to work twelve hours a day, for six days a week, for the next two months. I will be the first one here and the last to leave each day. That way we can get done in two months what we were intending to do in three months. We will start tomorrow morning at 7a.m.! Any questions?”
There was a shocked silence, then several hands shot up. A young woman in a white coat spoke up: “I have to pick up my son from the child care at 6 p.m.! They don’t stay open any longer than that!” John cleared his throat. “There are bound to be some more
situations like this. We need to use the resources of the company to overcome the problem. Steve, I want you to work with each person who has a scheduling problem and find the best solution you can. The full resources of the company are there to help – we can probably help with temporary childcare and the like for just two months, but we can’t find temporary people to wind anti-coils or assemble inverters. So everybody who has a personal problem with the schedule go and see Steve after this meeting and he will work something out.” Steve nodded.
A male technician put up his hand, “Are we going to be paid overtime for all this?”
John frowned. “Everybody here is salaried so I am afraid the answer is no. Just think how in reality the value of what you get from your salary is going to be dwarfed by the value of your stock options when we go public.”
Julie Redbridge put up her hand. “I can barely manage on my salary anyway, and not to be there to look after my baby for four hours a day will be crippling. Surely you could move my shift and have a temp stand in for four hours a day. After all, its easy to find someone to be receptionist for a few hours a day!”
John nodded at Steve: “Steve, can you look into it please?
“OK, let’s get back to work everybody!”
Without any spoken word, John, Steve, Tony and Judy hung behind when the rest of the group filed out of the conference room. “How did I do?” John asked the others.
“You did the trick!” commented Steve.
Tony looked troubled. “We may have trouble getting all the material together in time for Charlotte in just two months’ time.” Looking at John he said: “Let’s get together with Beryl the purchasing manager ASAP and go over the scheduling of all the parts and material. We may have to find alternatives for any stuff that won’t make it in time.”
That evening Steve told his wife Suzanne about the two months of 12 hour days.
Suzanne folded her arms. “Are you nuts? – We’ve got five million dollars in our Ameritrade account and you are planning to work like a slave at Electrolev! This is supposed to be our greatest time with the kids away at college and we can do whatever we please! Are you sure that this is not some kind of hoax?”
“Suzanne, I really believe in this project,” replied Steve, slipping his arm around her shoulders. “This invention is going to change all of civilization as we know it. Only one in a million people have an opportunity to be in on something as dramatic and meaningful as Electrolev. Why don’t you come in to work sometime in the next few days and we can give you a demonstration of one of the Annette modules. That will make a believer out of you! Really this Barbara incident was just a temporary glitch and when Electrolev goes public we are going to be fabulously rich!”
Chapter 17
There then followed a period of all work and no play which most of the Electrolev staff forgot about afterwards with no trouble at all. Each of them was getting up extra early, usually before dawn, and staying till 7p.m. meant that it was getting dark again by the time they left. They had a great sense of camaraderie and shared purpose. Everybody in the company would come by the laboratory workshop to see the progress on Charlotte during the day. Fred Beller came into his own, coordinating the work of purchasing, electrical design and the fabrication of inverters and anticoils.
About half way through the two month dash Steve came into the warehouse lab. What a sight he came upon! The whole frame of Charlotte was already together, about twelve feet in diameter. Steve remembered his conversation with his wife last month in which he had explained how this project was such a rare opportunity to make a difference to the world. Looking at the scene before him, Steve felt that already all that sacrificed time and those long hard days had been worthwhile. As he walked in he saw Judy, clad in blue jeans and a red sweater, climbing over the frame and into the pilot’s seat and pushing a jump drive into a socket, while Fred Beller was going all around the vehicle snapping on flexible steel wires which were anchored in the concrete floor. Steve saw that the stabilization anticoils were now encased in aluminum cans about the size of a gallon paint container. Each one was filled with silicone elastomer and tightly screwed together, with thick leads coming out the top for the electric power. They had sturdy lugs for mounting them onto the airframe. Judy was plugging her laptop into Charlotte and surveying the software status. Steve marveled at the progress that had been made in the last four weeks. Two sets of four stabilization anticoils were now assembled on top of each other at the corners of an octagon. Around them the big main lift anti coils were laid in a channel having the form of a twelve foot diameter polygon – almost a circle, which surrounded the main frame.
Judy flipped some switches on the control panel and looked at Fred: “Ready?” Then she saw Steve standing watching and smiled at him. “Hi Steve - I’m working on developing the vehicle control software. We had a horizontal stabilization loop going great on Barbara, but now the challenge is to have that running at the same time as vertical inertial stabilization loop, all on same processor. What that means is that when we pull back on yellow height control here, instead of merely applying power it will move Charlotte up at a steady rate, or down as the case may be. Best of all, if you have the control stick dead vertical then it will put her in park – it will stop dead at that height. The hard part is that the horizontal stabilization loop is running at the same time on same processor, trying to keep the thing flat and level. OK! Here goes!”
Fred jumped back away from Charlotte. He winked at Steve. “Stand back, she might not have got it quite right yet.” Judy pulled back on the vertical yellow lever beside the pilot’s seat very gingerly. Charlotte rose up about a foot, with Judy sitting on top of it. Judy moved the yellow stick back to the vertical position. Charlotte came to a stop where it was a foot above the ground. Then it twitched sideways slightly, then back more strongly the other way, and started jerking backwards and forwards like a bucking bronco ride at an amusement park. Judy quickly flipped off the power switch and Charlotte flopped down onto the shock absorbed rubber caster wheels which were underneath it, with a couple of bounces.
“That’s what happened last time,” said Fred wryly. Judy grinned and stuck out her tongue at him, and retrieving her jump drive she unclipped her seat belt and clambered off Charlotte onto the floor.
“It’s tough one, but we get it right in few days,” she said as she disappeared back into the building. Steve and Fred smiled at each other. They both believed she would.
“Have you seen Charlotte recently? – I can give you a tour,” offered Fred.
Without waiting for an answer he climbed up onto the chassis of Charlotte in his blue jeans and stained polo shirt. “Do you like it? I think that it looks so much nicer now that we have got all the inverters and processor circuits covered up.” He lifted what looked like a floor panel on the top surface to reveal rows of electronic transformers and capacitors, plus a blur of smaller parts on circuit boards. “I’ve got all the batteries mounted in a big circle outside of the electronics and inside of the main anticoils. We are having trouble getting these huge batteries – it seems that we are in flat out direct competition with the electric car makers. Everybody wants lithium ion batteries but we have had to put up with nickel metal hydride ones because that’s all we could get on this accelerated time frame.” He lifted up another panel towards the outer part of the structure, showing neat rows of cylinders stacked end up in a battery compartment. “John says that Delia is going to have to have a battery management system to make all these cells pull together, but to do a quick demo with Charlotte I am personally doing a mix and match operation to select cells that will work together.” He wiped his hands. “Do you like it?”
Steve was actually choking up with emotion at the realization of so much ingenuity and so much hard work and cooperation coming together to make Charlotte in such a short time. Embarrassing tears flooded his eyes causing him to wipe his face with a tissue and blow his nose. “It’s awesome,” he replied, with total sincerity.
A Disruptive Invention Page 8