John reclaimed control of the meeting. “OK, thank you Terry. Now I am sure that all you engineering types are going to have some questions, so let’s answer them now while we have got Charlotte here to illustrate the answers.”
“How high can it go?” came from a balding man wearing a polo neck sweater.
“That all depends on how much energy you can store in it,” answered John. “A lithium polymer rechargeable battery can only hold enough energy to lift itself about 30 miles, and with the vehicle to lift as well you can only expect a fraction of that. However, if you run a power generator of some kind on board then you can go right up to the edge of the atmosphere. Then batteries can take you another thirty thousand feet. What I have at the back of my mind is that these vehicles work better the bigger you make them. I could conceive of a big vehicle with a small nuclear reactor on board which could just keep on going forever.”
“How fast can it go?” asked a young man wearing tan slacks and a brown shirt.
“Well, it all depends on how much sideways propulsion power you give it. While it is inside the atmosphere you can have a problem with the slipstream deflecting the vehicle up or down. For that reason Terry has suggested that we might as well put small vertical and horizontal stabilizers on Delia to help steady it and help it go in a straight line. Which reminds me, one of the issues that we only thought through yesterday is the fact that a vehicle like this could perfectly well travel sideways, and this could be a bit embarrassing. So we are planning a software function and sensors to detect this and correct it so it can normally only move in the direction that it is pointing.
“Something that I forgot to point out to you is that this mechanism is inherently unstable. Charlotte only stays flat in the way that you just saw because we have got software control loops constantly pushing it into a horizontal position. Also all its lift comes from the earth’s gravitational field, so if the vehicle ever got tipped over by accident then it would have no lift at all and would fall out of the sky. We are presently planning sensors and thrusters specifically to react to this circumstance. In the same vein the basic operation requires five inverters to operate, and if any one of these failed then again the vehicle would fall out of the sky. This is the reason why all these critical functions have redundancy built in.
“I suggest that we all go back to the meeting room now and we can go over more questions back there.”
Chapter 36
Back at the conference room, James Harper had each of the Electrolev staff stand up and explain what they did and tell their titles in the company. This took about 40 minutes. They all looked strangely Californian with the men having longer hair and the women wearing clothing which seemed tremendously casual and bright compared to the short haired, buttoned down appearance of the Huntsville residents. Next James asked the newly seconded experts to introduce themselves and their groups.
“Harold, let’s start off from where you are and move around in a circle,” commanded James.
A middle aged man with receding hair and a white shirt with grey slacks stood up. “Hi, my name is Harold Trimpop. I was the software manager of the group who wrote all the software for the last upgrade of the B2 bomber. I have a degree in EE from Caltech in 1985 and I have been writing software for flying vehicles ever since. My parents were part of the group of German scientists and engineers who came to Huntsville in 1946 and I was born here in Huntsville. So I really understand how you Electrolev people are feeling coming to Huntsville like this. I have brought with me my group of 25 programmers, who are all nearly as experienced as I am. Stand up gang!” At this point 25 men and women with ages between 25 and 45 stood up and smiled self consciously. Judy, Irena and Cynthia stood up and cheered, waving their hands in the air and crying out: “Whoo hoo – way to go! Yeah!”
Next a woman of about 40 with short cropped hair, tight fitting grey pants and matching grey top stood up. “Hello, my name is Tanya. I have a MS in power electronics from Georgia Tech and my bachelor’s degree was from Moscow University. I have brought with me a group of ten power conversion specialists. Our last assignment was the power converters for the FAST satellite system. Stand up people!” Seven young women and three men stood up and bowed and nodded. John Sykes and Terry Entmann stood up and clapped their hands above their heads, accompanied by cheers from the rest of the Electrolev staff.
The next person to stand up was a portly man of about fifty, with thinning fair hair. He wore white slacks and a brightly colored shirt. “Hello, my name is Anthony Elter. I do systems integration which means that I put together the airframe, the engines, the software and make it all work. I have brought my group of five system integration engineers with me. Our last task was the VH1 presidential helicopter. Stand up and take a bow fellows!” Everybody from Electrolev applauded the five men who stood up. “By the way James – you just made me realize – there is nobody here who does engines!”
“You are right Anthony,” said James Harper. “I’ll get that fixed by next week!”
Anthony sat down and a bearded man of about 40 years old stood up. “Hello everybody, my name is Reginald Tellman. I manage a group of 12 designers who design airframes. Our last assignment was the HH47 helicopter. Stand up people!” Seven men and five women stood up and waved at the meeting. Fred Beller and his mechanical engineer stood up and whooped and cheered and made more noise than had been made for any other participant while the rest of Electrolev applauded.
John stood up, his spine tingling with the excitement coming from the realization of how his efforts at Electrolev were now being amplified with resources from the whole United States of America. “The one thing that has not been mentioned in this meeting is that three months ago, the security of Electrolev was breached and the entire knowledge base of the company was stolen. Especially horrible was the murder of two Electrolev employees in the course of the robbery, and the shooting and abduction of Tony Shepard our first Chief Technologist, who was the fiancé of Judy Chen here. We believe that another nation, and we have no idea who it is, has all the knowledge about LeviStar technology that we had at that time.” The assembled engineers looked sad and some shook their heads. John continued: “So I believe that we are in a race to develop the vehicles that will give the USA the capability to come and go inexpensively to near space, before somebody else gets ahead with that technology.”
Anthony Elter put up his hand. “I am concerned that we may be making life unnecessarily hard on ourselves. I have already seen that Delia is a vehicle that can be suitable for terrestrial security and rescue functions, and also is capable of near space missions and surveillance. In truth these missions are quite distinct. For example, we are going to make a vehicle that could do air sea rescue ridiculously expensive by putting on board hydrazine thrusters that can function in near space.”
James Harper interrupted. “Let me answer that one. In a moment we will review Delia and its plans. I think we all have to recognize that this is a rapidly developing new technology and that at the moment our motivation is to get ahead in the technology race. So in the viewpoint of the Air Force, Delia is really just another test bed to demonstrate and develop the science. I am expecting that from this test bed there will be developed reconnaissance vehicles, rescue vehicles, police vehicles, fighter vehicles, bomber vehicles and so on. The possibilities are enormous. The whole nature of western civilization is about to change, and we are going to be the agents of change. It is an awesome responsibility. The threat that must drive us is the possibility that some other power seizes these capabilities before we do.”
There followed a few moments of silence as the whole room reflected somberly upon these words.
Finally John spoke up. “That’s a tough act to follow James! We have a lot of information to share in the next few days, so let’s get right to it with a review of the Delia project as we presently visualize it.” With that he put a PowerPoint slide up on the screen from his computer. “These are the main characteristics and speci
fications for Delia.” The screen showed these words:
DELIA
Weight 10,000 lbs
Inverter peak power 50 KW
Maximum altitude 110,000 feet
Maximum speed 1000 mph at high altitude
Cargo capacity 1000 pounds, in addition to crew facilities
Seating for 4 people.
Simple galley and aircraft type toilet allow for lengthy missions
Access hatch underneath, and emergency hatch on top in case it is ditched in water
Battery capacity sufficient to lift vehicle 30,000 feet
Regenerative descent capability
Jet turbine provides 100 KW maximum power, including thruster power and generator power.
Hydrazine thrusters for operation in near space.
Pressurized, climate controlled cabin
Avionics package of transponder, radio, radar etc
Camera for ground surveillance
Upper surface covered in solar cells will allow indefinite parking in near space,
Lower surface covered with incandescent lamps to allow energy to be dissipated radiatively
Whole vehicle parachute intended to save the crew in case of some catastrophic failure.
“This is here for discussion,” said John. “What I have not laid out is the software needed to make all this happen. As we proceed you will come to realize that this vehicle is inherently unstable. If the computers fail, it can fall out of the sky like a stone. Those of us inside Electrolev do not like to talk about it very much, but we learned all this the hard way. I literally got my butt burned when there was a system failure on the Barbara generation vehicle and I was the pilot. That was when we found out about the need for redundancy. It was lucky that bird was only two feet up when it happened!”
Anthony Elter put up his hand. “I think that you ought to bear in mind the possibility of unmanned vehicles, because left to itself Delia or its successors could stay up there literally forever. This technology is ideal for an unmanned vehicle. Somebody could really be controlling it from Colorado or wherever while it was hovering over Afghanistan.”
James Harper nodded seriously. “I think that you are right. I am already starting to plan out the developmental and strategic possibilities for this technology and that is an excellent one. There is no reason for a vehicle that could keep going for six weeks to return to ground after 3 days just because the crew toilet is full up. A UAV version of this is certainly on the cards. I will work that into the plans. That would be a surveillance only vehicle.”
John carried on: “Let’s get into the details now. Fred, would you like to put up the Delia drawings as far as you have them please.”
The meeting carried on for the rest of the day, with assignments being detailed and plans made to convene again in three days time. The next meeting would just be for the group leaders.
At the end John said to Harold Trimpop: “A few of us from Electrolev are planning to eat out tonight – would you and your wife be able to join us? “
“I would be delighted!” rejoined Harold. “And I know of just the place. Can we meet up here at 6 p.m.?”
John nodded and set about getting a group of his colleagues together.
Chapter 37
At six the dinner group was gathering in front of the Sparkman conference center as arranged. Steve Harmann was there with his wife Sarah. Harold Trimpop brought along his wife Hanna. John and Judy were there with a dignified professional relationship.
Harold announced: “I have made a reservation for us at the Biergarten Café. It’s only about 15 minutes away – we can all fit in my Dodge Caravan.”
When they arrived at the restaurant, Judy was immediately distracted by a display of classic dolls in an adjacent store window. “Now I have never seen anything like that in Long Beach!” she exclaimed. Then she saw a model gingerbread house in the window of the restaurant: “Oh, look at that – It’s so cute – it must have taken days to make it!” John and Steve exchanged glances – Judy had been so morose and depressed in recent weeks that it was heartening for them to see her expressing some pleasure at something. The loss of Tony had been hard on all of them but Judy’s ongoing state of mourning was dragging them all down, despite their sympathy.
When they were seated in the restaurant, Harold started off by saying:
“We can all relax and enjoy ourselves for as long as we like tonight, because there is no work in the morning!”
“What are you talking about?” queried Steve.
“I was watching the weather forecast before we came out,” explained Harold, “and we are going to get one to two inches of snow overnight. Neither the city or Madison County has any snow clearing equipment, and so when it snows the roads are a complete disaster. Also the population of Alabama never has a chance to get any practice at driving in the snow. So if you put all this together then the safest thing to do tomorrow morning is to just stay in bed!”
Judy interjected: “I haven’t seen snow since I was in Beijing – I’m looking forward to this!”
Hanna replied: “Well make the most of it because most likely it will all be melted by evening. At least it will not mess up our weekend!”
Sarah chipped in with: “I have once been skiing in the Sierras, but I have never actually experienced snow falling around where I live!”
Steve was trying to keep up a lighthearted conversation, and put in: “Where I was living last year you could go skiing in the morning and then go surfing in the afternoon, provided you drove fairly fast in between!”
John and Judy nodded sagely. “That’s southern California for you!” commented John.
While they all looked at the menu, Harold said: “Of course their Schnitzels are absolutely great, but my all time favorite is Bauernfrühstück. It translates as “Farmer’s Breakfast”. If you eat a plate of that then you will not be hungry for the next day and a half! All the same, leave some room for their incredible torte!” As he spoke Harold pointed to a huge glass display case on one side of the restaurant, filled up with mouth watering cakes.
Once they had all ordered Harold led the conversation again: “I wonder if you all realize how we are reliving history?”
“I’m not much of a historian,” said John. “What are you talking about?”
Harold continued: “At the end of the World War II the United States realized that the global projection of power was going to hinge upon the rocket technology that the Germans had developed at the Peenemunde research center. In the United States Government there were people who had the vision to understand that the major events of the next century – satellites, journey to the moon and planets, were all going to hinge upon the new technology from Peenemunde that only a handful of people understood at that time.”
“So you see analogy between that handful of people and we Electrolev people – we are the only ones who understand LeviStar technology the same as the Peenemunde engineers were the only ones who understood rocket science?” queried Judy.
“Exactly!” proclaimed Harold. “Back in 1946 they relocated the entire body of engineers from Peenemunde here to Huntsville where they could work safely in the protection of the Redstone Arsenal. There were 118 engineers and their families who moved here all together to follow a dream, and the whole United States space program has resulted from them following that dream. The similarity between what happened then and what is happening right now is incredible.” John felt the hairs on his scalp stirring as he reflected upon the way that history was repeating itself.
“Those 118 families brought with them a lot of German culture,” went on Harold, “which exists here in Huntsville to this day. This restaurant that we are sitting in tonight is here because there were German people brought here who knew how to cook, and a population of people who were looking for authentic European cuisine. So for you to be enjoying this German food here tonight symbolizes powerfully how history is repeating itself – all over again!”
Again John felt the
strangest sensation as tiny hairs rippled all the way down from his scalp and down the length of his back – the physical manifestation of the realization that he was a part of world history and simultaneously reliving it.
The meal at that restaurant that evening was great for everybody present. As they stepped out into the parking lot the first tiny fine flakes of snow were coming out of the sky. Suddenly there was a deep rumbling like distant thunder. “What on earth is that?” queried Sarah.
“Oh, don’t take any notice!” exclaimed Hannah. “The Arsenal has a duty to test all the munitions built for the armed forces, and to do that they have to explode a few of them. We hear it all the time. You’ll get used to it after a few months!”
A Disruptive Invention Page 17