It was now December and it was after one of these visits that John and Judy used their rental car to drive around the vicinity of the Redstone Arsenal to get the feel of the area which was to become their home for the next few years.
John was driving. “It’s amazing how different this place is to Long Beach,” exclaimed John. There is so much agricultural land. In a way it reminds me of my parents place in Iowa.”
“Uh-huh,” said Judy with a shrug. I don’t like the way everything seems so messy and unkempt. You would never see overgrown vegetation along the roads in Long Beach.” In the months following Tony’s disappearance, Judy had become increasingly bitter and negative. She knew that most people were guessing that Tony was dead. She was performing her work function but she was certainly not a fun person to be with. Her whole life felt as if it had lost its purpose, and she only saw the negative sides of things. Her conversation hinged around the things that she disliked, which seemed to be many, and hardly ever got round to things that she liked, which were few and far between. A few miles from the Arsenal, they came to a cross roads with cotton fields on one side and newly erected industrial buildings on the other.
“What’s up with that stop sign?” complained Judy.
There was a stop sign facing them, which seemed to be strangely deformed. The center of it was missing and the remainder was pockmarked with dents.
“I think it’s been used for target practice!” replied John
“Oh my God!” was Judy’s response.
Suddenly they saw coming towards them a monstrous agricultural machine of some kind. It had arms and levers all over the place, and as it came towards them it took up the entire width of the road. A huge array of square tubes stuck out in front of it like the fingers of a giant hand. John swiftly made a right turn and the monster machine went straight over the crossing and continued on its way.
A little further down the road they saw a muddy field with a sign up saying “New Homes - $125,000 dollars.”
“Look at that,” exclaimed John. “I’m used to seeing numbers ten times bigger than that for any house, let alone a brand new one!”
“Maybe we should head back to highway?” suggested Judy. So John obligingly turned the vehicle around and headed north back towards route 565. On their right they saw woods posted with the words: “Defense Department live firing range – keep out.”
“These guys are really serious about security,” said John as they drove along. When they reached route 565 they turned east, and being Californians deep down they immediately felt more comfortable driving along an interstate highway, which they instinctively thought of as a freeway. Soon on their right they saw a huge array of rockets standing proudly beside the road. It was the United Space and Rocket Center. “Hey – We’ve got to see that!” exclaimed John. Judy shrugged and they turned into the Space and Rocket Center and joined the throng of tourists looking at the model space shuttle, the Saturn V rocket and other exhibits. “I think I am starting to understand why we are here,” said John. “If this represents what Huntsville is about then I feel like we belong here.”
“I not sure if we really belong here,” worried Judy. “I guess it does not really make any difference anyway, since here we are going to be, but let’s take a look and see things a few miles north.” So they drove about ten miles north, and found the countryside becoming increasingly rural. People were living here with much more space around their homes than anybody from Long Beach could have ever imagined possible. Even though there was lots of space, the lots were not well kept by California standards. They saw several homes where the grass in front was growing four feet high, and in each case there seemed to be an old rusting car buried in the middle of the long grass. Some of them were jacked up, others had wheels missing and yet others had gaping windows. Compared to the neatly manicured mini-homes of Long Beach it was a shocking scene.
“They say that they have about two thousand Ph.D.s in science and engineering living here,” mused John. “I wonder if this is how you have to live in Huntsville?”
“I worry if there is something about Alabama that makes you want to live in a big mess,” said Judy. “Maybe people living here all had Ph.D. degrees from Ivy League universities long ago and after ten years in Alabama, this is what you become?”
“I have another theory,” said John. “Tony once told me how he had worked for a year in Cambridge England, where there is an elitist university in the middle of an agrarian area. In that place you apparently had two completely different populations living in the same town, speaking theoretically the same language, but altogether ignoring each other. It was like the two populations inhabited the same space but each was oblivious to the existence of the other. My suspicion is that is just what is happening here – same deal.”
“I have been wondering how we are going to continue our helicopter training down here,” said Judy.
“I think that there is an army program right on the Arsenal that we can enroll in,” said John. “I heard that they have five helicopters stationed on the base.”
John and Judy thoughtfully drove back towards their hotel. Crossing Highway 565 as they went south, they found their way onto Wallace Avenue and shortly on their right they saw a sign: “Galaxy of Lights – open at 5.30”
“Everything here seems to have a space theme,” remarked John.
“Let’s get back hotel,” replied Judy. “The Holiday Inn gave us ticket for a free drink in bar. That will help us sleep and then we have to get up for early flight in morning to get back to civilization.”
On the plane back between Dallas Fort Worth and LAX, John and Judy were sitting in adjacent seats. John was writing a report on his laptop and Judy had idly flicked through the flight magazine for a few minutes before her eyes closed and she started napping. As her breathing became more rhythmical, she slowly leaned over until her head came to rest on John’s shoulder. For John this was rather delightful, and he studiously continued his word processing until Judy was woken up by the call to fasten seat belts and stow tray tables for landing. She looked at John with a moment of confusion. “Was I sleeping on your shoulder?” she asked. John nodded with a faint smile. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Please excuse me.”
Chapter 34
It took only four weeks, which felt like an eternity, but eventually Electrolev and all its principal staff were relocated into Huntsville. Nobody suffered financially. In fact the relocation packages were so generous that those left behind were in most cases disappointed. It was in early January that the core group of Electrolev gathered for the first time in the giant conference room of their new Huntsville premises to have a “Delia Meeting.”
All of them had continued to think about the project even while all their activities had been suspended for a couple of weeks.
John led off the meeting: “Welcome to our first Huntsville Delia meeting!. Isn’t it nice to talk about work again as opposed to flight schedules and real estate appraisals? Who wants to go first?”
Terry Mettle raised his hand. “I have a problem, and a possible solution. I have been test flying the modified Charlotte here inside the hangar, and although I am delighted with the helicopter type controls that we have got working now, there is still an issue. In fact it is essentially the same one that Judy highlighted on her first test flight. You can use the foot pedals to turn Charlotte round in the direction that you want to go, but she still keeps going sideways in the direction that you were going. You have to lean the cyclic stick over to one side in order to get her back going in a straight line again. The good news is that this works, eventually. The bad news is that it feels awful to a pilot. Most aircraft don’t keep going sideways once you have turned them around. I have been discussing this with the physicists and with John and Judy, and what I would like to see implemented is an inertial sensor with some integration software, so that the processor will know that it is going sideways at X miles per hour, and without you having to tell it, it will automatically co
mmand corrective thrust until that motion stops.”
Judy responded: “Well, we did discuss this, but it is not piece of cake. To start with I have to integrate outputs from inertial sensor to derive speed as distinct from acceleration. This integral will tend to accumulate errors so we will have to work out some way of automatically zeroing the thing out when we think it going straight. I am convinced that some extra hardware would be helpful while in atmosphere – like vertical stabilizer. So it is do-able, but it will take a lot of programming and a few experiments. The good news is that the only extra hardware is the inertial sensors – one X and one Y, and of course another freaking control loop to program. Plus maybe small vertical stabilizer. Now we are here in Huntsville I am looking forward to getting a ton of help after kick off meeting tomorrow, so manpower should not be problem. So basically the answer is, YES - we are on it.”
“Who’s next?” inquired John.
Ever since Tony’s shooting and abduction Judy’s mood and attitude had been growing darker and more negative, and it came out now: “Me” she said loudly and firmly. “This set of concepts that we put together for Delia has a god-awful flaw right in the middle, and I can’t believe I am only one to see it!” There was the sound of sharply drawn breath around the room. John’s face was a picture of fear and shock. Judy looked around, almost sneering at the assembled technologists. “Imagine that Delia accidentally fly into a thundercloud with immense turbulence and get tossed around. Suppose that she got turned up on edge like a penny balanced on a table. In that position none of the anti-coils would have any linkage with the gravitational field. The entire power system of the vehicle would be out of action! That sucker would start diving down edge first and there would be no mechanism that we have planned to stop it! It would plunge into ground at a thousand miles an hour or whatever speed it could get to! How’s that for problem?”
The Electrolev audience sat there stunned partly shocked by Judy’s negative attitude and partly shocked that such a fundamental problem could exist and nobody had noticed it before, when they had already got to a point where the United States Government had just invested a billion dollars in the project. Their collective self confidence, which had been verging on arrogance, was pricked in a serious manner.
Ian Smith was the first to speak up: “That’s a really good point, but I think we can fix it. Supposing we can detect the situation we just need to have some little thrusters on the top and bottom sides which can automatically push it back towards the right way up. Then the regular controls will stabilize it as usual. Let’s call it “Judy’s nightmare,” by the way.
Terry Mettle spoke up: “In the atmosphere, we could regain control if only it had horizontal and vertical stabilizers like an aircraft.”
John chimed in: “From the software point of view, to have thrusters that could be used in the same way whether it was in the atmosphere or out of it would be a huge simplification. All we would have to do would be to detect whether it was in or out of the atmosphere, and activate jets or hydrazine thrusters accordingly. Hydrazine thrusters are little controllable rocket engines that are ideal for turning around a vehicle in space. I will take personal responsibility for making sure that Judy’s nightmare is built into our plans.” He turned to his system design manager Terry Entmann: “Terry – can you take ownership of Judy’s nightmare please!”
The meeting went on for three hours. The concerns and status of each person and group were patiently heard out until everyone was working together on the same page. When all the business was conducted, John made the announcement that everyone was waiting to hear.
“As many of you know, we are here in Huntsville for the purpose of getting our efforts amplified at least ten fold, maybe a hundred fold, by a cadre of contractors which is being assembled as we speak. Tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. we have scheduled the very first meeting with the whole team of contractors. This will be a pivotal moment in the whole project, when we should all see for the first time the difference that a billion dollars can make. So please be here on time, all of you.”
Chapter 35
The following morning promptly at 10 a.m. the Electrolev staff gathered in the Huntsville RDEC conference center. The room had been set up with rows of seats in a semicircle around a front table, with seating for about for about ninety people. A large projector screen had been set up with a place for laptops to plug in to share graphic presentations. The lavishly furnished accommodation with carpeted floors and oak paneling was a far cry from the austere conference room at the original Electrolev facility. About forty men and women who the Electrolev staff had never seen before filtered in to the room. Everybody was wearing conspicuous ID badges.
James Harper came across to John Sykes and suggested that he be seated at the front table. “I think that we will spend the first hour just getting everybody acquainted with who’s who and where the project stands, and then after that we can get on to who does what. I have got the buses waiting outside.”
When people seemed to have stopped arriving, James stood up and spoke: “Ladies and gentlemen, since I am probably the only person who knows everybody here, I will handle introductions. In case someone missed it, I am Brigadier General James Harper of the United States Air Force, and I am the co-coordinator for the LeviStar project. First of all I want to reassure all of you that everybody here has a secret clearance or higher, so you may speak freely. As a starting point I wish to introduce John Sykes the President of Electrolev, who was the person who first realized the LeviStar technology.”
John stood up to polite applause, feeling both proud and shy. “Good morning everybody. I first want all of you to see Levistar technology with your own eyes. We have got a demonstration ready for you to see in the Electrolev hangar, so please step into the buses waiting outside to get over there.” When the buses arrived at their destination, everybody followed John inside. “I would like you all to stand near the wall over here,” announced John. Everybody clustered along the walls, with the crowd buzzing with murmurs of excitement. “This is Terry Mettle our test pilot.” Terry nodded and smiled. “Since we first started developing this technology we have been through a series of models. The first model that actually flew was A for Annette, and then the first attempt at a man carrying vehicle was B for Barbara, which did not work too well. In front of you here Terry is just getting into the vehicle that we call Charlotte. We are using Charlotte as a flying test bed to refine the technology. Our first intended product is code named Delia, and it is still on the CAD screens at present. You will see it when we get back to the meeting room. It is intended to be a surveillance, reconnaissance and rescue vehicle that should be attractive to security forces. All the things that we are learning from Charlotte are going to be incorporated into Delia, and you will hear all about that shortly. Terry, why don’t you go ahead and give a demonstration.”
While John had been talking Terry had been strapping himself into Charlotte and flipping on the inverters. “This prototype that we call Charlotte is nothing but a flying test bed for developing the technology,” repeated Terry. Then he pulled back on the collective lever and the vehicle with him on it rose six feet up in the air. He pushed the collective stick back to its vertical position. The assembled crowd of engineers who had never seen anything like this before stood there awestruck, unable to believe their eyes. “We have organized the controls so that intuitively they are like helicopter controls. I have got a collective stick here, and foot pedals which control the orientation. I can use the foot pedals to turn the vehicle around.” As he said that Terry made Charlotte silently rotate in midair in front of them. “Its propulsion system is all coming from batteries in the Charlotte generation, but the intention is that Delia will have a small jet turbine for use in the atmosphere and that will provide both electric power and thrust. When the vehicle is standing still like this, it is using only about 200W to maintain its position. If it goes down, much of the energy which it used to go up gets reclaimed and goes back int
o the batteries.”
Exclamations of “Oh my God!” and “Holy shit!” came from the crowd.
Terry continued: “On this version we have got a small electric blower which can be ducted out from whichever direction I choose. It gets operated by the cyclic control which is in front of me. I can move the vehicle around however I choose. With that he ponderously moved Charlotte, still at six feet in altitude, down the length of the hangar and back again. In the audience standing against the side wall of the hangar, the new team members were watching mostly with expressions of awe and wonder. The people were obviously staggered at what they were seeing and were murmuring excitedly amongst themselves. The Electrolev staff who had seen it all before were looking radiant and fulfilled, smiling proudly at the sight of all their dedicated work being appreciated. The exception was Judy. She was standing there with her thoughts miles away, thinking back to walks beside the Pacific Ocean with Tony. She looked sad and wistful.
When Terry was in front of the audience again he continued, “I can move it up to a height which is only limited by the capacity of the batteries, and then remain where I am with very little power being consumed. One of the nicest features is that I can put the collective control into park like this, and the vehicle just stays right where I put it.” At this point he was shouting from one hundred feet up near the roof of the hangar. Then he descended slowly and put Charlotte gently down on the floor. “If one can provide power and thrust, the vehicle can operate in near space. With a vehicle that has a pressurized cabin, you could take it up to 100,000 feet and just park it over a location of interest. We have learned that the bigger you make it the more effectively the thing works. So a large vehicle could have the top side just covered in solar cells and that would provide enough energy to keep it parked there indefinitely. Since today’s batteries could not hold the energy needed to lift themselves into space then for Delia we are proposing that the engine will provide a lot of the energy to take it up, so that when it comes down, the batteries will not be able to hold all that energy that is released and so we will dissipate excess recycled energy using a huge array of lights underneath.”
A Disruptive Invention Page 16