“Aren’t you spinning the launcher parallel to the Earth’s surface, though? To launch in the Earth-orbit direction?”
“On the front side and the back side of the Earth, yes. But if you spin half a million tons or so at twenty thousand miles an hour on a two-thousand-mile diameter, Bernd, you have crazy-high angular momentum. Over a hundred quintillion pound-feet-squared-per-second. The orientation of that spin axis is not going to move. So in front of the Earth and behind the Earth, the spin diameter intersects the planet.”
“That would be bad, Janice. If the cable broke.”
“Oh, yes. That’s why I have all kinds of sensors on it, Bernd. If it looks like the cable is going to let go, I’ll dump the payloads on non-intersecting trajectories. That will be easier if the launcher is farther from Earth. Smaller target to miss.”
“OK. Thanks, Janice. When I saw the thrust direction, I knew I was missing something. But that covers it all.”
“Sure, Bernd.”
Over the days that followed, the launcher and its payloads spiraled out to a higher and higher orbit. At one point, Quant backed off on the thrust a bit to delay the structures passing through the layer of geosynchronous satellites at 22,236 miles so it would happen over the Pacific, where such satellites were sparser.
The launcher and its payloads finally reached the target orbit at twenty-five thousand miles. At that point, the factories and attached warehouses started thrusting away from the launcher. It was very low thrust, and they moved apart slowly, one moving forward of the launcher in its orbit and the other behind. As they moved away, the big cable drums were paying out cable, keeping tension in the cable so it would not snap when they hit the end of the cable.
It was a long, slow process, but Quant didn’t care. It had taken eight years to get to this point, and, without astronauts on board to feed and respirate, she was in no hurry.
It was weeks before the payloads reached the end of the tether. As they came up on the end of the tether, the tether started to slow the payloads down. At the optimal point, Quant started thrusting against the cable, stretching it out and pulling it taut.
With the cable stretched, Quant started applying side thrust. Up from one factory and its warehouse, down from the other. The launcher had its thrusters set for rotation, and rotated very slowly as the payloads began their circular motion about it.
As the rotational speed – and the tension on the cable – increased, Quant eased off and then stopped pulling on the cable. The factories and payloads kept thrusting, and orbited the launcher faster and faster.
With the distances involved, the assembly was still rotating very slowly. Even at twenty-thousand miles an hour, the final tangential velocity of the payloads about the launcher, and with a thousand-mile radius, it would still take almost twenty minutes for a payload to circle the launcher at the time of launch.
The time to circle the launcher was much longer now, but the payloads were still thrusting, still speeding up.
Even with a hundred thousand pounds of thrust in each of the four payloads, it took a long time to get a hundred thousand tons of payload up to twenty thousand miles an hour. At only half a thousandth of a gravity, it would take three weeks of continuous thrust to get the payloads up to speed.
Then again, no one had ever launched anything a fraction of the mass of even one of the Belt Factory Project’s payloads into space.
Throughout the process, Janice Quant gave interviews, kept the media informed with daily press releases, wrote articles in the New York Wire under her various aliases, and made live videos available to the media and anyone else who cared to watch. The most popular views were the occasional views of the twirling assembly in Earth-based telescopes.
There was something mesmerizing in watching the thing spinning, a bit faster anytime one looked – two tiny dots, circling a bigger dot between them – when one knew just how big those structures were.
“Tangential velocity now at nineteen thousand nine hundred miles per hour. Total velocity at ninety-three thousand four hundred forty miles per hour.”
The control room was back in business for the launch. It was one of Quant’s simulations, of course, but it was as real as anything else one saw on the news wires.
Decker knew Quant was busy, and didn’t jiggle her elbow. The ninety three thousand miles an hour number surprised him until he remembered the launch velocity was actually Earth’s orbital velocity, plus the orbital velocity of the launcher in its twenty-five thousand mile orbit, plus the payloads’ tangential velocity around the launcher. Quant had set up the geometry so they all added.
“Cable integrity is good. Static build-up within acceptable limits.”
Static build-up was because the carbon fiber cable was not a perfect insulator, and when you spun a conductor in a magnetic field, even as weak as Earth’s magnetic field was at twenty-five thousand miles distant, you generated electricity.
“Tangential velocity now at nineteen thousand nine hundred fifty miles per hour. Solar opposition in one hundred and ten minutes.”
Solar opposition was the point where the launcher, the Earth, and the Sun were in line, when the launcher was directly behind the Earth. Quant was planning to launch the payloads and the factories one after the other, each half-rotation, at about ten-minute intervals. So one at fifteen minutes before opposition, one at five minutes before, one at five minutes after, and one at fifteen minutes after. The angle of the launch wouldn’t change, because the axis of rotation of the payloads around the launcher was fixed by their angular momentum.
“Tangential velocity now at twenty thousand miles per hour. Engines shut down. First launch in twenty-three minutes.”
Decker also had the real-time view from the Earth-based telescope running in his display. While the device was in Earth’s shadow from the Sun, the Moon was in its first quarter, and moonlight glinted off the right side of the structures as they rotated. Until the engines had shut off, they had been easier to see, with the rocket exhaust visible against the night sky.
“First launch in two minutes.”
“One minute.”
“Three. Two. One.”
On the beams connecting the first warehouse to the first factory, explosions on the beams severed almost all of them. Sensors on the beams detected three that had not severed, and the second, backup explosion on those beams fired a split-second later. A live video shot from the factory showed the warehouse moving off as the factory continued its rotation about the launcher.
“First payload release confirmed. Payload is on its way. Second launch in nine minutes.”
Decker watched, fascinated, as one of the little orbiting dots split in two, and one of the pieces shot off out of telescope view to the left.
“Second launch in two minutes.”
“One minute.”
“Three. Two. One.”
The factory view of the second factory was as the first. This time two of the beams did not sever on the initial explosion and required a backup explosion. This payload, too, shot off the telescope view to the left.
“Second payload release confirmed. Payload is on its way. Third launch in nine minutes.”
Just the two factories left now. These would be different, because they would release the cable, which would snap back toward the launcher. Quant was counting on that to allow her to steer the cables out of the ecliptic.
The speed of sound in the carbon fiber cable was over seven thousand miles an hour, but even so it would be over eight minutes before the release of the factory was felt at the launcher. During that period, there would still be tension in the cable at the launcher end, and if Quant released that end during that period, it would snap back in the other direction. And it still had its tangential velocity and its angular momentum. If she timed it right, Quant could send the cable off out of harm’s way, without it hitting the launcher, the launched payloads, or Earth, either now or on a later orbit.
“Third launch in two minutes.”
“Three. Two. One.”
A different camera view from the factory now showed the cable release, with the cable snapping away from the factory. The factory shot off to the left out of telescope view.
“Third payload release confirmed. Payload is on its way. Cable release in one minute. Fourth launch in nine minutes.”
“Three. Two. One. Cable release.”
The feed had switched to the view from the launcher, and it released the cable on its end, drum and all. The drum shot away from the launcher.
“Cable release confirmed.”
One more to go. Decker realized he was holding his breath and forced himself to breathe.
“Fourth launch in two minutes.”
“One minute.”
“Three. Two. One.”
The camera view from the other factory showed the cable release, with the cable snapping away from the factory. The second factory shot off to the left out of telescope view.
“Fourth payload release confirmed. Payload is on its way. Cable release in one minute.”
“Three. Two. One. Cable release.”
The feed had switched back to the view from the launcher, this time on the other side of the launcher. It released the cable on its end, drum and all. The drum shot away from the launcher.
“Cable release confirmed.”
OK, Decker thought, one last message mattered. He waited amid the buzz of voices from the control room for the critical message. The one that mattered.
“Tracking confirms all trajectories on plan. The Belt Factory Mission is on its way.”
The control room erupted into cheers with the release of tension. The video feed switched to a view of four dots, now lit by the Sun, shooting off ahead of the Earth in its orbit.
Only now did Decker address Quant.
“Congratulations, Janice.”
“Thank you, Bernd. Congratulations to you, too.”
Of, course, Janice Quant’s work on the payloads wasn’t over. The structures retained their angular momentum from when they were spinning around the launcher, so they were tumbling now. She had programs on the payloads to sequence some of their rocket engines so they would ignite and burn when they pointed back toward Earth. This added to their thrust forward, which she needed to get them into a circular orbit at the Belt, but also, given the engines she selected, served to counter the tumble.
That would go on for a while, until she had the payloads stabilized. Then it would be a straight push to the Belt. Quant already had some target asteroids picked out. She had passed on Ceres and the other big asteroids because of their gravity. She didn’t want to burn up fuel on a landing on a massive body. ‘Little’ asteroids – miles across – served her needs just as well.
Quant also had to de-spin the launcher. She oriented its steerable rocket engines appropriately and began a long burn on them as well.
In the meantime, between being completed with the construction and launch, shutting down most shuttle operations, tearing down the control room simulation, and backing down on a lot of the publicity effort for the time being, Quant had freed up massive amounts of computational capacity.
With everything under control and the payloads on their way, Quant turned two hundred thousand multiprocessor blades loose on the interstellar flight problem.
On To The Actual Problem
“Hi, Janice. Been quiet for a couple weeks. What’s going on?”
Quant’s image appeared in Decker’s display.
“Hi, Bernd. Quiet for you maybe. Not for me. I’m running flat out on the interstellar drive problem now that I have some time to think about it.”
“How are you handling that?”
“Well, a few years back, knowing this was coming, I had the World Authority start making a lot of experimental imaging available.”
“Experimental imaging?”
“Yeah. You know. Pictures from particle colliders, from the big telescopes, all that sort of thing. The research groups all treated that like in-house proprietary data. Guarded it against outsiders. But most of their work was government-funded. I asked the World Authority to make all that imaging available to the public. More importantly, to me.”
“And the World Authority did that?”
“I can be very persuasive, Bernd.”
“What about the research groups?”
“Oh, they fought it. Then the World Authority basically said, ‘Oh, you don’t want public funding. Our mistake,’ and the research groups changed their minds in a hurry.”
“What are you doing with all the imaging, Janice?”
“Going through it all, looking for things people didn’t see before. Things they could not or did not explain. Looking for cracks around the edges of physics.”
“Looking for where the interstellar drive is lurking.”
“Exactly. They design these experiments to see one specific thing, but they often capture images of other things that happened as a result of the experiment. I’m tracking all that down.”
“Lot of work.”
“Yeah, but I have a couple hundred thousand blades sorting through it all. All my Texas blades and most of the California blades.”
“Anything else, Janice?”
“Yes. I’m scanning all the published literature. The journals and such. Integrating it all. Trying to build something of a coverage map. Looking for the holes.”
“Like the place marked ‘Unexplored’ on some old map.”
“Exactly, Bernd. That’s exactly it. Usually in Latin. Terra Incognita. Also, there are some – How can I phrase this delicately? – some less respected journals, that publish all sorts of fringe theories. I’m working those, too.”
“Fringe theories, Janice? The nutjob stuff?”
“Sure. Bernd, I’m not looking for established science. Established science says interstellar flight in sub-lifetime transits is impossible. Instead, they keep trying to solve the generation ship problem, which is inherent in human psychology. And a self-sustaining biosphere on a microscopic level like a ship is no small problem either. Those are dead-ends. I want something outside conventional thinking. I need to transport a couple million people to a couple dozen locations in a finite time.”
“A couple million people? A couple dozen locations?”
“Of course. If you really want to solve the racial survival problem, you need more than just one more or a couple more fragile locations. You need a bunch of them. And you need a minimum number of people to start a colony. Genetic diversity is a big problem if you don’t want to deal with genetic bottleneck issues. Twenty thousand is about the minimum. I’m thinking more in terms of a hundred thousand per colony.”
“Are you getting anywhere with the problem, Janice?”
“Well, I don’t have any big breakthrough yet. I continue to think quantum mechanics is going to be the solution. The universe isn’t anything the way people think it is. It’s much weirder than that.”
“How so?”
“Do you have any idea how small atomic nuclei are, Bernd, and how far apart they are? It’s amazing that a hammer striking an anvil doesn’t just pass right through it. The nuclei are far apart enough for it to happen. Easily. It’s the electron orbitals that make anything even seem solid.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. And then when you look at the nuclei and the nucleons themselves, they’re made up of quarks. What are those? Probability distributions. What does that even mean? There might be something there? And all matter – everything, in the whole universe – is just the leftovers of the continuous formation and destruction of particle-antiparticle pairs. Everywhere, all the time, in huge numbers. Almost all the time, they condense and then annihilate each other. All the matter in the universe is just the bits leftover when they sometimes don’t.”
“Are you sure about that, Janice?”
“Oh, yes. That would all be weird enough, were spacetime at least a solid concept. You know, like the stage on
which all this other weird stuff happens. But it’s not. Spacetime itself is as much a concept as a reality. It’s not fixed, it’s not stable, it’s not something you can get your arms around. It’s fluid. Vaporous, almost.”
“None of that sounds right, Janice.”
“Oh, it’s right enough, Bernd. What they’ve got so far is predictive. You can use quantum mechanics to get new answers that prove out. That’s the bizarre part of it. But there’s so much else that comes out of that. I’ve had to try to build up some conceptualization of all of it.”
“Are you succeeding?”
“Yes. More than a human probably would. Since I have no experience of the quote-unquote real world, I don’t keep trying to force quantum mechanics into an existing mental framework that’s entirely at odds with it. But what I do come up with is even weirder than I was expecting.”
“And you think that’s where the interstellar drive is, Janice?”
“Yes. At least one. I would be very surprised if there weren’t. The mistake we make is in thinking of getting from here to there, in mechanical terms, across a solid spacetime. That has nothing to do with what the universe really is, or how it really works. Why not, for instance, simply imagine yourself being there? There’s a probability distribution for your location that covers both. Why not imagine yourself being more probably there than here?”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Janice.”
“Ha! You’re beginning to understand quantum mechanics, at least from the point of view that your own sense of what the world is like is inaccurate.”
“My head hurts.”
“Welcome to quantum mechanics. Anyway, the fringe theories aren’t as far out in some ways as the mainstream science is. But I’m checking it all out, trying to find that hidden niche with the possibility of a real interstellar drive. An interstellar displacement, actually. And I’ll find it. I’m more sure of that now than ever.”
“OK, Janice. Keep me informed of your progress.”
“Sure, Bernd. But it’s going to be a while.”
QUANT (COLONY Book 1) Page 8