by Bob Blanton
“Maybe, but we wouldn’t want it to sink.”
“But if it were on the water, it wouldn’t take much speed over the wings to keep it floating,” Catie said. “Then we would just have to fly it like a boat up some ramp.”
Blake set his drink aside and linked into Catie’s comm so they could look at the same image. He drew a line labeled water, then drew a ramp coming up out of the water at a slight angle, then leveling off. “If we added a ramp like this to the airport, we could drive your floating Oryx up it, and then use the last five hundred meters to bring it to a stop. With two thousand meters, there’s plenty of room to let it slow down and sink to the runway.”
“Yes, then we could load it up to . . . , ADI, how much weight can we load on an Oryx if we land on the water?” Catie asked.
“Cer Catie, you could load the Oryx to three hundred percent of takeoff weight,” ADI replied.
“That makes almost a full load of polyglass,” Catie said. “Then we’d be able to balance the shipments, and they could handle all the polyglass and solar panels we can make. How long will it take to add the ramp?”
“We can make the beams and pontoons quickly,” Blake said. “It’s those damn plates that take so long. We won’t need to put a subbasement on that part of the runway, so we only need half as many plates, but it’s still two thousand meters of plates.”
“Too bad you can’t extrude them,” Catie said, “then you could really make them fast.”
“Hmm,” Blake mused. “Why can’t I extrude them?”
“You have all those holes to make,” Catie said.
“That’s not a problem,” Blake said. “You just put the plugs on a conveyor belt and cycle them through. It’s just that you have to expand the space so much to get enough plasma torches to speed things up, that you might as well just add two more lines.”
“Oh, we’re going to put the torches on a carousel when we do the solar panels. You only need a little extra room that way. At two-tenths of a second settling time, you get the extrusion rate up to ten millimeters per second. We do a fast return on the idle torches, so it only takes like five extra ones to cover the whole width of the panel.”
Blake spent a few moments thinking it through. “You know, that will work. Hey, we solved both problems,” Blake said. “We should collaborate more. I’ll start working on the airport tomorrow, and you have time to help with dinner.”
“Shhh, I’ve got other things I can do,” Catie said.
“I heard that,” Marc called from the kitchen. “Get in here.”
Catie slugged Blake in the shoulder as she got up and headed to the kitchen.
Chapter 3
Station Tour
“Hello, Leslie,” Samantha said as she greeted the reporter. “I see you’ve come prepared for a spacewalk.”
“No way I would pass up the chance to walk in space,” Leslie said. “This is my camerawoman, Becky Walsh.” Samantha and Becky shook hands.
“Come this way,” Samantha said, “and I’ll introduce you to everyone else.”
“Just a second, Sister,” Leslie said. She pulled Samantha into a hug. “How are you doing?” she asked. “Lots of excitement since you moved down here.”
“Yes, way more than when we were sorority sisters at Vassar,” Samantha said. “But I’m getting used to it.” She led Leslie and Becky over to the hangar. “This is Catie, our pilot and tour guide for today, and of course the Princess of the Realm.”
“How do I greet you, Your Highness?” Leslie asked.
“A handshake will do,” Catie said. “And please, just Catie. This is my copilot, Elizabeth Farmer.”
“Call me Liz,” Liz said as she shook hands with Leslie.
“And Natalia Ortiz is our security for the day,” Samantha said, pointing to Natalia.
“She also runs the environmental systems on the station,” Catie said.
“Do a lot of people do double duty around here?” Leslie asked as she shook Natalia’s hand.
“Call me Nattie,” Natalia said. “Nowadays, I only do the good gigs as security. But most people in Delphi wear multiple hats.”
“Well, our ride awaits,” Samantha said. She led them to the Lynx that was sitting just outside the hangar.
“Do we have to go to the big airport?” Leslie asked.
“No, this will take us all the way,” Catie said.
“Isn’t this one of your private jets?” Leslie asked.
“Yes, but this one is equipped with space engines,” Catie said. “It’ll take us right up to the station, and it’s a lot more comfortable to ride in than the Oryxes we use to haul cargo up.”
“Welcome aboard,” the flight attendant greeted them as they walked onto the Lynx.
“This is Jennie Baker,” Samantha said. “She used her seniority to get this flight. She’s been with MacKenzie Discoveries since we set up shop down here in the Cook Islands.”
“Hello, Jennie,” Leslie said. “So, you like going into space?”
“I try to get all the Lynx flights that take guests to the space station,” Jennie said. “I have a boyfriend who works up there, so it doubles the time we can spend together.”
“Now that’s what I call a long-distance relationship,” Leslie said, getting a polite laugh all around.
“Everyone, please take your seats,” Jennie said. “We’ll be taxiing shortly.”
“I’d like to sit up in the cockpit, if I may?” Leslie asked.
“There’s not enough room,” Catie said. “But we can give you a comm so you can hear and see what’s going on and ask questions. It’ll record the feed so you can edit what you want out of it.”
“That sounds like fun. How do we do that?” Leslie asked.
Catie handed Leslie a comm/phone device that all Delphi citizens and MacKenzie employees used. “This is a comm; it’ll patch you into Liz’s and my conversation, and Samantha’s,” Catie added after getting a look from Samantha.
“Like a conference call,” Leslie said.
“Correct. And these are specs,” Catie said as she handed Leslie a pair of wraparound glasses. “They will pair with your comm and give you sound, so you don’t need an earwig. The comm will record everything you look at. Together they’re like a HUD, a heads-up display, which shows whatever you want to have quick access to. You can put up a feed of what’s going on in the cockpit in the corner of the display, or you can set it so that it looks like you’re right in there.”
“Oh, let’s try it that way,” Leslie said.
“Okay, Nattie will set you up while we get ready to fly,” Catie said.
◆ ◆ ◆
“Oh my, that thing is huge,” Leslie said as the Lynx approached the space station. “What are the dimensions?”
“It is one hundred meters tall plus another thirty meters for the docking ring, that’s the section we’re approaching with the Oryxes docked to it,” Catie said. “The hub is two hundred meters in diameter. The first ring is five hundred meters; the second, seven hundred fifty; and the third, one thousand meters.”
“How many people live up here?” Leslie asked.
“Right now, we have about five hundred part-time residents,” Catie answered.
“Why only part-time?” Leslie asked.
“There’s not much entertainment, and a lot of people have significant others who work down in the city. We don’t expect very many permanent residents until things are more established up here,” Samantha explained.
“How many people could live up here?” Leslie asked.
“This section of the station will eventually be able to support between fifteen to twenty thousand people. Right now, it probably could accommodate one thousand. The final number will depend on how many children we have and how much space gets used up by manufacturing and shops,” Catie said.
“What do you mean by this section?” Leslie asked.
“We can stack four of these together to make a larger station,” Catie said. “We’ll have to see how muc
h space we need and how many people want to live up here.”
“Okay, and why do you say it can only accommodate one thousand now?” Leslie asked.
“It’s a long way from being finished,” Catie said. “We’ve only built out about twenty-five percent of the inner ring, none of the middle ring, and are just starting to build out the outer ring.”
“Why are you skipping the middle ring?” Leslie asked.
“We did the hub first, then the inner ring. We attached them together and spun it up, so the ring would have the same gravity as Earth, that’s where the residents are living now. We finished the second and third rings before we stopped the station and attached them. We did that last month. Now we’ve spun it up, but slower, so the outer ring has one Earth gravity. That means the other two rings have less. We want to get everyone moved from the inner ring to the outer ring as soon as possible since the inner ring now only has one half the gravity of Earth.”
“How long will it take to finish the station?” Leslie asked.
“Months,” Catie said. “The shell was the easy part; it wasn’t very labor-intensive. The interior work is a lot of labor. We’re building out the infrastructure at a steady pace, and accelerating the apartments for our one thousand residents.”
“Leslie, how would you like to do the tour?” Samantha asked.
“Why don’t we do the hub thing first, then we can go to the outer ring to see how you’re doing the construction, and then maybe we can see one of the living units,” Leslie said.
It only took another ten minutes before the Lynx was docked at the station. “Why don’t we do the spacewalk to start,” Catie suggested. “We can enter the station via the big cargo door. That way, you get the view of the vacuum manufacturing space as well as our jet manufacturing.”
Becky had brought an underwater enclosure for her camera so that she could use it in space. The same principle applied; the camera was enclosed in its own environment, this time protected from vacuum instead of water. Everyone got into their exosuit, the hard-shell part of the spacesuit. They needed the hard shell to protect them from any small meteorites or from something tearing the shipsuits they were wearing. The shipsuits provided the pressure on their bodies to allow them to avoid the bulky, pressurized spacesuits more commonly used by other countries.
“Nattie, why don’t you go through first, so you can catch Becky and Leslie when they come through and tie them onto your suit,” Catie said.
“We don’t get to fly around?” Leslie asked.
“You can have as much rope as you want,” Natalia said. “We just don’t want to have to chase you down if you get confused.”
They all exited through the Lynx’s airlock. Catie was the last one through; by the time she came out, Natalia was already reeling Leslie in. “What happened?”
“Oh, she was having fun flying around, but she doesn’t know how to steer,” Natalia said. “I let her try and figure it out on her own, but that’s not working. I disengaged her thrusters.”
“How’s the camerawoman doing?” Catie asked.
“She’s taking lessons from Sam,” Natalia said. “She seems to have it figured out. They headed over to the cargo bay.”
“Wow, that was fun,” Leslie said as Natalia finished reeling her in. “How do you steer these things?”
“Your exosuit has thrusters that are supposed to push you in the direction that you point your head and click the green icon,” Catie said.
“That’s what I thought,” Leslie said, “but when I tried to look around, it sent me in circles.”
“You must have it on auto-tracking,” Catie said. “Give me a second . . . Yes, see the flashing red icon in your HUD?”
“Yes,” Leslie said.
“Focus on it and blink. That will turn off the auto-tracking. You’re only supposed to use that when you’re in a hurry and know exactly where you’re going,” Catie scolded.
“Oh, I thought it just meant that it would automatically take me where I wanted to go,” Leslie said.
“Can’t do that if it doesn’t know where you want to go,” Natalia muttered.
Catie reached out and punched Natalia on the shoulder, not that it would do much good. Natalia weighed in at two hundred pounds, all of it muscle.
“Let’s go on inside the station,” Catie said as she helped Leslie reengage her suit’s thrusters. After Catie had Leslie fixed up, she led her to the hub to join Samantha and Becky.
“Did you have fun flying?” Samantha asked.
“Yes, but I got confused about the controls and had to be rescued,” Leslie said.
“Been there,” Samantha replied.
“This is the inside of the docking ring,” Catie explained. “It’s an extension to the hub that allows the various spacecraft to dock with the station. It and the inside of the hub do not rotate with the rest of the station. The station rotates around it like a big wheel, and this is the axle.
“All this space is for cargo handling,” Catie continued. “There are big bins where we store the material or gases that we bring up to use in the manufacturing process. You can see the seam here between the docking ring and the hub.” Catie pointed at an area with a raised band around it. “There is a big magnetic bearing in there that isolates the hub from the docking ring and allows the outer hub to rotate while the docking ring doesn’t so ships can dock. Also, if some ship bumps the ring, it won’t transfer to the station.
“Now this is the actual hub. Like I said earlier, it is one hundred meters tall with a diameter of two hundred meters. It’s actually two big shells, one inside the other. The outer shell rotates with the rest of the station, while the inner shell doesn’t rotate. That creates the microgravity environment, and it’s where we do our manufacturing. It’s one hundred eighty meters in diameter.”
“Why so big?” Leslie asked.
“The hub is for microgravity, and we want to maximize that space,” Catie said. “We just left enough room between the two for the transition from microgravity to the gravity side. There is a lot of low G manufacturing space on the outer hub we expect to use. But we won’t know what we need it for until we’ve learned a lot more.”
“What do you manufacture in microgravity?” Leslie asked.
“We’re setting up an integrated circuit plant to make computer and memory chips, as well as some other electronic circuits. We also manufacture our polyglass; think armor glass that weighs one fifth as much. We expect to develop and discover other things that require microgravity to make. This lower half of the hub is exposed to vacuum; all of the vacuum manufacturing space and labs are along the side here. The space we’re in is just big enough to fit one of our Oryxes if we want to load it quickly right where the cargo is stored for shipping. Usually, we just dock the Oryx at the docking ring and ferry the cargo out to it.”
“This is a lot of space,” Leslie said.
“Yes, we’re only using about ten percent of it right now,” Catie said, “but we expect it to be the first space that fills up. Above us is the enclosed microgravity manufacturing plant that we manufacture the Oryxes in.”
“I thought you made those in Delphi City,” Leslie said.
“We did, but we can do a better job if we manufacture them up here,” Catie said. “The hulls of the space station and our spaceplanes absorb energy more efficiently if we can integrate a superconductor matrix in them, and we can only do that in microgravity. That helps on reentry for the spaceplanes. For the space station, we collect all that energy to power everything up here.”
“I thought you would be using one of your fusion reactors up here,” Leslie said.
“They’re too big,” Catie said. “And we don’t need one. Right now, we have to beam energy off of the station because we don’t use enough.”
“Why do you have to beam it off, and how do you do that?” Leslie asked.
“The energy has to go somewhere,” Catie said. “All the solar energy that hits the station is absorbed and converted to ele
ctricity. We store as much as we can, but anything we don’t use or can’t store gets converted into this big plasma beam at the top of the hub. That shoots off into space where the energy dissipates into the deep dark. We can make the hull less absorptive by managing the superconductor array that is embedded in it. However, we don’t want the hull to get over fifty degrees C, so if we’re still not using enough energy, we resort to the plasma beam to get rid of it.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Leslie asked.
“We use a wide-angle beam, so the energy disperses quickly,” Catie said. "And we make sure there isn’t anything in the beam’s path."
“Let’s go through this airlock, and we’ll show you an Oryx being manufactured,” Catie continued. “Then, we’ll give you a tour of a couple of labs before we go into the gravity section.”
Leslie had Becky take lots of video of the Oryx being manufactured. She loved the way the plasma torch followed the form and sprayed its layer of polysteel onto the foam base. She carefully documented that they were using a modified version of the C17 electronics, ordered from the American manufacturer. After failing to get Catie to divulge any specifics about the engines, she agreed it was time to move on to the rings.
“Can we go to the third ring?” Leslie asked. “I’d like to show my viewers what it takes to build a space station.”
“Sure,” Samantha said. “This way, and we’ll go to the gravity section; then we can take an elevator to the outer ring.”
Natalia led them through the airlock and into the lab section. “These are the microgravity labs and manufacturing spaces for smaller items,” Natalia said, laughing at the thought that pretty much everything was smaller than an Oryx.
“Can I see the manufacturing facility for your integrated circuits?” Leslie asked.
“Sure, we can show it to you now, or on our way back to the Lynx. It’s all the way down at the other end,” Samantha explained.
“On the way back will be fine,” Leslie said.
“Okay, do you want to ride the zipline down, or take an elevator?” Samantha asked Leslie. Right then, one of the workers walked by, grabbed a line, and pushed off the wall. The line carried him down and away, using the momentum of his push to speed him along. He landed on the rotating floor of the hub and barely changed speeds as he started walking. He turned and moved to the doorway on the side of the long hallway he’d jumped into.