Day 16 of 30 2006 JEDCline
Day 16 of 30 2006 JEDClineEmplos Corporation, comprising all the people on board the dual space wheel, had their first vote, even though all 1,345 of them had only the one computer terminal to vote on. They supported Improy's goal of creating workable space worksuits made from their own resources. And supported Catalie's goal of creating a capability of building and programming computers from their own resources. A third goal was added by the other crew members, that of examining the one sample re-usable cargo vehicle that was winged for a return that had not happened yet, see if it could be made into something that could return people safely to the Earth's surface, and if so, see if they could make more of them from the huge collection of spent one-way cargo and bus modules that were lashed to the hub.
To create return vehicles, it would be very helpful to have more space suited workers, and computers to assist their activities. It would also be helpful to have more than the two docking airlocks. In the small world they inhabited, it was fairly easy to see that everything was affecting everything else, every goal was affected by the progress of the other goals. There was so much to be done, that in the next week's voting they chose to continue the 14-hour, 7 day a week workschedule, with the easygoing work style which included frequent breaktimes and frequent complete changes in the kind of tasks each person did during the day.
The computer and electronics technology development and the spacesuit technology activities were focused on first. Semiconductor materials processing facilities were created to utilize the endless hard vacuum outside, the intense energy influx in the direction of the Sun, and the deep cold sink when aimed at the space between the stars. They pulled the teleoperation electronics and mechanisms out of some of the habitat modules in which they lived; that equipment had been essentially forgotten following successful docking of each module, so they had many hundreds of them, sources of radio parts and computer chips, even as sources of raw material when not adaptable directly. From these modules, they first built short range transceivers so necessary for communication when in spacesuits.
The first prototype spacesuits were nicknamed "Cockroaches" for the use of cockroach exoskeleton material for making the more rigid sections of the suit. For the first ones they used fabric processed already from discarded plastic food containers, but soon they would have to also make fabrics out of other components of the chemical marvel that was the little cockroach, which busily consumed agricultural wastes to make more of itself, quite a materials processor in its own right. The first prototypes were tested by putting them into an airlock, pumping it down, and observing what happened to the sealed suit. From that experimental data, some areas of the components were strengthened for the next prototypes. Eventually, Improy assembled one of the "cockroach" spacesuits around himself, tested its radio link, went into the airlock, and had Catalie pump it down while chatting with him over the radio link. When it appeared that the suit was holding up with a motionless person in it, he then experimented moving some joints. That was where it showed problems next, as an elbow joint was stiff at first, then cracked, air escaping through the crack, and Catalie quickly re-pressurized the airlock; back to the drawing board they went, having more data to guide them. And soon they had a basic space worksuit created out of their own resources, even though these ones they made themselves did not have the servomechanisms and super strength rigid materials needed to amplify their motions while working in space. At least now, they could start doing work outside to make the new multiple airlock hard vacuum materials processing module, needed to start work on the potential return vehicle design.
As improved designs were created for the Cockroach spacesuit, the prototypes got tested more severely in the airlock, Improy's frolics sometimes creatively comical. He even added some style features, such as the two little tails the male cockroach has and a rooster's crest on the helmet. They were going to have a little fun while doing their project. The suits that had failed in test were easily recycled, just given back to the little cockroaches who promptly considered them food. This also meant that the suits would need to be kept away from stray critters, during normal usage, too.
When they had three of the working spacesuits, three volunteers went outside in them with Improy, Catalie staying inside the Embarcadero, monitoring progress. They did this every other day until the volunteers had learned the safety rules out there and their reflexes had learned to deal with free-fall inside the suit, what made it all work fairly smoothly. Only then did Improy introduce his new crew to the one sample of a vehicle designed for use as a return cargo vehicle, a one of a kind since apparently Ownma lost the means to build them when the epidemic struck.
It looked like it might get hot inside on the return, based on the small airfoil surface, as compared to that of the earlier Space Shuttle Orbiter re-entry vehicle. The thermal insulating tiles looked difficult to make in all those special shapes, and tracking of manufacture looked difficult for their meager computer resources. Of course there were no facilities for people inside, all of which would need to be added. The discarded one-way space busses that had brought all the people here, had such seating and air supply systems; perhaps a good start on the envisioned vehicle. So the making of insulating re-entry insulation needed to be somehow created. Perhaps they could do zero-g casting of foamed materials, the lack of gravity enabling bubbles to cool hard before they burst.
Their design activity produced essentially an add-on component to the space bus: a large swept back winged structure cast of foam into shape, complete with cradle for the space bus, and the foamed structure covering the nose and underside of the passenger compartment. As the foamed part would be made from the material of the fuel tank area of the original one-way space buss, it would take little from the wheel station's resources to build. The large winged area would, they hoped, enable the vehicle to have little heat to endure while it bounces on and off the upper atmosphere, going all the way around the planet several times to lose velocity, until the vehicle could make an easygoing lazy glide down through the dense lower atmosphere to a slow, but skidding, landing, since they had no landing gear.
Providing reaction engines and fuel for the de-orbit and semi-powered trip to the ground, was the next challenge they needed to solve creatively.
The original sample return vehicle was the only thing that had any fuel for de-orbiting, and probably only enough for its empty mass. The slowing needed to be enough to drop not just to a lower orbit, but one that got them into the atmosphere for slowing down for the landing. The most efficient way was to build a launcher along the outer shell of the hub, as long as possible, and use stored solar energy to shove the vehicle backwards to slow it, while also moving the space wheel into a higher orbit at the same time, a double win. But that would not in itself be enough delta-vee to drop to the upper atmosphere. And there had to be maneuvering reaction engine power to guide the process back home. They needed to be able to get in the right attitude when reaching the atmosphere to enable them to pancake along, bouncing and maneuvering so as to be headed the right way when coming down again each skip and bounce on the upper atmosphere while they gently used up kinetic energy. The only reaction mass they could tolerate expending was ground up fuel tank material, so they had to come up with an efficient mass launcher of fine powder derived from more of the fuel tank material. Modification of the docking thrusters and their fuel tankage would be nice recycle if it could be made to work.
So it was agreed to proceed with making a casting with the hollowed shape of the wings and cradling thermal shield and nose cone, which would be clamped together and have solar-melted air-bubbled material from fuel tank casing injected into it, in a vacuum; then it would be cooled by radiating into deep space until hard, then the mold would be opened to remove the foamed shaped return vehicle structure into which a passenger section of a former one-way space bus would be secured. The controls for the rudder and ailerons needed to be routed to a pilot's position, vision via one of the thousands of security cameras that had been in the former prison facilities, A simulator would need to be built to train to fly the thing, as none of them were pilots.
It would take a lot of time to do all this; but they had a lot of time, and needed a vision of survival.
They also continued to make the space dual wheel able to have long term survival, increasingly refining the balancing of the homeostasis of the huge complex of living systems and machine systems. Some people might elect to live out their lives there, even raise families to continue on.
But their resources were meager as compared to that of the 10,000-person Stanford Torus design for which this project was originally conceived to prepare for. There was just not enough diversity of knowledge, of people skills, of agricultural species. They were determined to do the best they could with what they had.
Meanwhile, the encounter with the space elevator tether grew closer. Improy was determined to make an effort to salvages something of it. Refinements of the telescope's observations had been able to determine that they were going to hit the tether dual ribbon almost flat-on, so they rigged up one of the space bus cylinders to spin easily on its central axis, and placed it so it would do the initial impact with the carbon nanotube tether. This blunt edge that could spinup to roll along the tether, assuming the impact would jerk the anchor end up out of the floating island's guideway, greatly exceeding it s range of accomodation. It the tether ribbons did not break, and they began to roll along the improvised pulley they had rigged for the collision, if things worked out, the drag on the tether would keep it from immediately losing in the GEO station from heading out and instead start to be dragged along with the wheel station, whose angular velocity was far greater that that of earth. So they would have to reel in the tether and everything that was in GEO now and the counterweight beyond GEO. If anything snapped, they hoped to have captured a big chunk of the super-strength tether, anyway.
Then the moment of impact came. Improy had worked until the last hour to orient the huge pulley along their orbital path, rigged to their hub's orientation calculated existing at the moment of impact. Then everybody was ordered inside, to watch through the telescope's signal sent to the station's viewscreens. The telescope could barely see the black line of the tether, which rapidly grew more visible, then there was a tiny shudder of the whole station. Impact, the pulley was spinning increasingly fast, so the tether had been uprooted and had not broken so far. Their luck held, and they began to reel in their big fish. But the tether pair snapped, up high, where the tensile loads were already approaching working stress limits; and the sudden overload from down below pushed the tether beyond its limits, and broke. Unbalanced, the GEO station unfortunately would get pulled up and away by the counterweight above it, lost. But Improy was able to reel in hundreds of kilometers of tether ribbon from above and below them, a fine resource for future projects. So something was saved from it all.
posted by Unknown @ 12:19 PM
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