by Dan Eaton
Nina gave me the evil eye and spat, “Fieldwork?” back at me.
“All I’m asking is that you just spend some time with Bryce when he gets back. Let me sleep in and take Bryce loping a couple of mornings. Spend some time studying with him. Ask him about his trip, I know you’ll do that anyway. Give him a chance and I think he’ll actually relax enough to really talk to you.“
Nina looked like she wasn’t quite buying into the whole idea, although, she asked, “How long do I have to do this?”
“How about until Home Coming? You can gently end things after that. I’m sure Bryce will be a little hurt, however, he won’t be crushed and I wouldn’t be surprised if Myra lets him cry on her shoulder to get over you.”
Nina looked like she was going to explode. “That’s almost two months. I have to waste two months on this? How about we just go back to plan A.”
We loped along in silence for a couple of minutes.
“Fine, I just thought this was an opportunity for you to help Myra and Bryce while helping yourself. You can do it your way. I still have concerns about your plan so let me make a prediction about how I think your plan will pan out. I think you’ll spend the rest of your time here on the Moon, pushing your GPA as high as you can get it. You’ll return triumphantly to the Earth with an invitation to attend the Air Force Academy just like you’ve been dreaming of. After four years of hard work, you’ll graduate near the top of the class, if not the top, and then start your career as a pilot while working to qualify as an astronaut. You’ll start working on your Master’s degree and somewhere along there one of those fly boys is going to catch your eye. Since, by your plan, you’ll have little interpersonal experiences with the opposite sex, things will go badly and worst case is you’ll get pregnant, the guy will dump you, and your plan will be seriously derailed, maybe even to the point of you being out of a job. Don’t worry though, I will still have your back. I’m sure I can get you a job with one of my uncles at Papa’s restaurants in Sacramento.”
Nina looked at me and said, “So if all goes to heck, you think I’m going to end up a waitress?”
“Well, maybe. You’ll have to start at the bottom as a bus girl like everyone else, nevertheless, I believe in you.”
We loped along quietly for a couple of minutes and the Nina said, “If I say yes to this, will you stop hounding me about it?”
“Sure, at least until the next opportunity.”
“Okay, I’ll do it, but only if he says more than ten words the next time he tries to talk to me.”
We both started laughing and since it was almost 07:00 headed off to the cafeteria so we could get some breakfast before school.
With the fantastic views of the lunar surface behind us, I leaned back in my chair and started asking Sandy questions.
“Sandy, what exactly is that thing we built for Sunshine?”
“So, uh, it’s basically a fancy umbrella. Sunshine wants to put a mirror at the Lunar Lagrange one (LL1) point to reflect sunlight down upon the ESA’s Village’s solar array. The Village is located on the Mare Imbrium. That means they get two weeks of sunshine and two weeks of night during the Moon’s twenty eight day cycle. While the sun is shining they get plenty of power, however, during the lunar night they have to rely on power they can store up during the day. That’s been holding them back so Sunshine is hoping to make some money off them by lighting up the night.”
“I don’t get it. Wouldn’t it be easier for them to rely on a reactor or something all the time instead of trying to use solar power that’s only there for half the time?”
“It seems like it would be better if they could get a power source like a reactor, however, there’s several problems with that. While it’s a good answer technically, politically, it’s a real uphill battle to get a reactor shipped here from Earth. In addition to the very high cost, there’s the environmental concern that a launch failure could spew radioactive waste all over where ever the wreckage comes down. Finally, there’s the cost. Using solar is relatively inexpensive and the ongoing cost to maintain it, even with things like Sunshine’s mirror, are pretty low. A lunar habitat, or city, in the long term, has an economic advantage if it can use solar.”
I thought about it for a bit and then said, “Okay, so a habitat is going to want to use solar for economic reasons. What about all that talk about helium-3? I thought that was supposed to be the next big thing and give us all the energy we ever need and helium-3 is plentiful on the Moon?”
“Helium-3 is a game changing technology and we do have vast amounts of it available to us here on the Moon. What no one has right now is a cheap, practical helium-3 reactor.“
“But I thought—”
“Yes, there are a handful of experimental helium-3 reactors up and running now back on Earth. They are in big buildings with heaps of expensive infrastructure. It will take a while before someone gets around to building a practical helium-3 reactor and we may never see a cheap, practical helium-3 reactor. So even though we have lots of fuel I don’t think you’ll see a helium-3 reactor on the Moon anytime soon. I think it’s more likely you’ll see other kinds of reactors in use, long before you see helium-3 reactors used for settlements on the Moon.”
Sandy took a break for a minute and then said, “So, uh, don’t talk to anyone else about this. We may never see a helium-3 reactor here on the Moon. Not that it isn’t cool technology, however, I know some guys working for Denali that are building a prototype reactor for shipboard use. They’re using thorium for the fuel and the fuel cycles last an extremely long time. If Denali starts producing these reactors in quantity and others take to building them too, it may kill off any market for helium-3 reactors, if they get a long enough head start.”
“But Sandy, if helium-3 reactors are a better technology, wouldn’t people want them instead of the thorium reactors?”
“So, uh, history is full of products that were built with better technology, yet they lost out in the marketplace to inferior products. Being best or being first doesn’t guarantee a win if the other guy has a good product and excellent marketing he isn’t afraid to use.”
I took a break and got up to get a drink and a snack from the galley. Space sickness hadn’t reared its ugly head with me or Sandy. One of the guy’s on Arwen’s team was keeping a barf bag close, although so far, he had succeeded in not letting his breakfast fly. I sat back down and said, “Okay, I get how important lunar, solar power is and how the mirror will help the Village. Why do we have to haul it all the way out to the Lagrange point?”
“There’s not really someplace closer that would do. So, uh, think about this. The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth, so one face always is towards the Earth and the other is always pointed away from it. There isn’t a stable orbit around the Moon that would give us a geostationary satellite and if there was it’s possible the satellite would be shadowed by the Moon when we need it to be reflecting light back to the Moon. What we do have are the Lagrange points where things in Earth orbit feel the same pull from both the Earth and the Moon. The Earth-Moon L1 point is in space between the Earth and the Moon, so if we put the mirror there, it’ll stay in place with a little station keeping.”
“Won’t it also be in the Moon’s shadow?”
“LL1 is far enough away from the Moon that it’ll mostly be in the sunshine all of the time. Occasionally, just like the Earth, the Moon’s shadow will fall across it in an eclipse. The eclipse won’t last long and the events are very predictable. A habitat just needs a little storage capacity to get them through those times, which is a lot better than having to have enough storage capacity to get you through two weeks of night.”
We spent the rest of the trip with me asking questions and Sandy patiently explaining things to me. It really was a cool idea and I was looking forward to getting to LL1 and seeing the idea come to life. We had meals from the galley for supper and got to know Arwen’s team a little better. Brad Wetter and Deion Hampton were the team’s beam jacks that would h
andle the EVA work of assembling the mirror assembly and pre-positioning it. I never did figure out what exactly Demarco Bishara did, although, they called him ‘the safety guy’ and the final person on the team, Francisca Verhille, was the team’s computer expert. Francisca had written the control software that would maintain the mirror’s position so that it was always pointed at the solar arrays at the Village.
After supper, we talked for a while and everybody faded off to sleep in their seats. Commander Davies had selected a course that would leave the final maneuvering until the morning when everyone would be fresh. Breakfast was another pre-packed meal from the galley. We had all finished eating before Commander Davies initiated jockeying the CLT30 into the rendezvous at LL1. Sunshine had arranged for a small depot to be positioned at LL1 just prior to our arrival. The CLT30 gingerly approached the depot until a positive connection was made with the depot’s airlock.
First up, were me and Sandy. Sandy had me unstrap the cylinder from the pallet and check for any obvious damage. Then he had Arwen pull up a checklist that she and Brad went through to make sure the cylinder was ready for use. I wondered why Sandy didn’t have us doing it. Then I realized that in the future, it would just be the Sunshine team doing the work and we were just the backup in case they found something wrong. It took them a couple of hours to go through the list and make sure everything was ready to deploy. I noticed that after we had shipped the cylinder over to the fabrication side, they had added panels of metallic fabric between all of the arms we had so carefully folded.
The next step was for all of us to put our pressure suits on. Sandy had decided that since I had done so well with the emergency Sam had thrown at me during my suit test and since we were essentially just going to be standing around, I could remain in the passenger cabin and watch the remaining steps. Sandy and I carefully checked our equipment and then cross checked the other’s just to be safe. With everyone’s suits on, Commander Davies sealed the flight deck off from the passenger compartment and then signaled for Arwen to go ahead and open the hatch to Sunshine’s depot. No one expected any problems, though wearing our suits and having our helmets handy was insurance just in case there was an issue. Arwen entered the depot and fired up the life support and computer equipment. In the short term, the depot would be providing long term monitoring of the mirror including positional information of both the mirror and the depot. In the long term, Sunshine hoped to be supplying multiple mirror arrays to other lunar habitats and the depot would serve as a base for deploying them.
Once Arwen was satisfied that the depot was fully operational, Francisca joined her in the depot and they sealed the hatch. Demarco came over to us and said, “Alright gents, it’s time to get your helmets on and sealed up.”
After Sandy and I had complied, he checked us over and then floated back to check out Brad and Deion. Satisfied that everyone was safely sealed up, he informed Commander Davies and she began pumping down the passenger deck. I was wondering how they were going to get the equipment off the CLT30 when Yukiko showed up with a rod with a handle on one end. She floated over to the wall next to where the seats had been removed and inserted the rod into a hole along the vertical right seam that I hadn’t noticed before. She cranked the handle three times, removed the rod, and then repeated the procedure with the hole next to the vertical left seam. Finally, she moved the rod down to a hole in the center of the lower seam and cranked it. Once that was done, Yukiko moved back towards the center of the cabin before turning and facing the wall section. I could see her face through her helmet and she must have been talking on the radio to Commander Davies because I could see her mouth moving, although nothing was coming over the channel I was sharing with the others. Suddenly, there was movement and the whole wall section pivoted up and out creating a large opening in the cabin wall.
Brad and Dion took over and started moving things out of the cabin. They attached a cable to the deck and then attached the other end to the canister assembly. They moved the canister just outside the cabin and left it floating there. Next, they floated the cylindrical case marked as a maneuvering unit over by the opening. They pulled out their tools and carefully loosened the fasteners securing the two cylinder halves. With one half removed, Brad made a careful inspection of the unit and then attached a second cable to it. After he secured the other end of the cable to the deck, he pulled the unit out and floated it out the opening. He and Dion then joined the two pieces together
With the mirror now assembled, Brad pulled a longer third cable from his supplies and after attaching one end to the deck, attached the other end to a ring protruding from the end of the maneuvering unit. I asked Sandy what the third cable was about and he said, “So, uh, that ring is probably attached to a safety key that prevents the maneuvering unit from firing its thrusters until the key is pulled. I think Brad is getting ready to turn on the command unit and it wouldn’t do if something went wrong and it decided to start firing its thrusters right next to us.”
Sandy had guessed correctly because the next thing Brad did was to pull out a small terminal and plugged it into the maneuvering unit. He typed on the terminal for a minute and then we could hear him on the channel we were monitoring, asking Francisca to check things out. It took ten minutes, but eventually, Francisca got back to Brad and said everything was okay. Brad and Dion unclipped the first two cables and gave the mirror assembly a gentle shove out into the emptiness.
The cable played out until it stretched tight for just a second and the safety key was pulled from the maneuvering unit. Nothing happened and I was beginning to wonder if we were going to have to take the CLT30 and go chase down the mirror. Suddenly, there were exhaust puffs from the maneuvering unit and the mirror came to a stop relative to us about a 100 meters away. Francisca came back on the channel and gave us a running status as she had the mirror align itself to its target on the moon and then initiated the mirror deployment. As we watched, the mirror assembly began spinning around its long axis and the arms Sandy and I had so carefully worked on started unfolding aided by the spin. Eventually, the arms fully unfolded and locked in place and for the first time we could see the thirty meter dish that made up the mirror. The maneuvering unit let out several more exhaust puffs as it slowed the assemblies’ rotation back down to a stop and then took up station keeping.
Arwen came on the channel at that point and said, “I just received word from the Village that the solar array is illuminated. They’re forwarding their readings to us so we can start tweaking the mirror. I don’t want to jinx anything, however I think the first part of the mission can only be considered a success.”
I looked at Sandy and said, “That’s it? What did they need us along for?”
“We were along for insurance. If anything was amiss with the unit before it was deployed or if something happened when the mirror tried to deploy we would have been plenty busy. The Soviets had a Znamya project back in the early nineties where they set up a smaller sized mirror in Earth orbit. The first mirror test went fine. When they tried a larger mirror, they had problems with the its deployment. That setback led to the project being canceled shortly after. I think Sunshine was just being cautious for their investors and having us here was worth it to them just to make sure the odds were in their favor of having a success.”
The mug of coffee felt good in Myra’s hands despite the splint on her right hand. She’d earned the boxer’s fracture the splint protected the same way she’d earned these visits to Christine’s office, by hitting Bryce the night of her birthday party. This was her fifth session with Christine and she was nervous about it as she waited for Christine. Fortunately, Christine was good about relaxing her, although Myra didn’t know if that would still hold true today. So far, the sessions had just been the two of them talking. Given what had happened, Myra was mildly surprised she hadn’t asked more questions about Bryce. The first session, Christine had just talked to her about her arrival at NLH and how she was getting along. The second session was more
of the same with Christine inquiring about Myra’s relationship with her classmates, family, and anyone else that was important to her. The third session, continued that theme and then they got to the fourth session where Christine had asked about Jessie.
Jessie had been the closest person to her in the whole world. They were like twin sisters and then she died. Just a stupid tragedy on Christmas Eve. Jessie’s life was swept away by the flood waters that had overwhelmed the car in which she had been traveling with friends. Christine spent the whole session asking her questions about Jessie. At first it had been really painful, yet the longer she’d talked and shared memories of her friend, the better she felt. Then Myra got angry. Jessie had meant the world to her. Myra’s mom and dad dragging her off on this little adventure to the Moon was partly bearable at first, because Jessie and she could still talk together every day, still share their secrets, their hopes, and then Jessie died. She spent the rest of the session crying and raging against the injustice of it all. Christine had lost a coffee mug that day when she slammed it against the wall in her frustration. She’d left Christine’s office feeling emotionally numb and hadn’t been looking forward to returning there.
Myra still wasn’t. She tried to relax by standing up and looking at the pictures Christine kept on the walls of her office. There were several that were obviously of her and her family. Then, several of her in exotic locations that must have been memories of favorite vacations. Given the pride of place location in the center of all of the pictures were three unique photos. The first picture showed a younger version of Christine standing on a dock with a man in a Navy uniform. In the background was a submarine. The second picture was the same thing except the submarine appeared to be larger. She guessed that the man in the uniform must be the Captain of the sub, however, the two men were different, so it wasn’t like this was an uncle or older brother of Christine’s. She didn’t know what to make of those photos. The third picture showed Christine bundled up in some serious cold weather gear standing next to a sign that said Geographic South Pole. Behind her and the sign was an expanse of frigid white that stretched off to the horizon.