Day 5 of 30 2006
Day 5 of 30 2006Lounging in the habitat module which they had made habitable as a 1/5-g shirt-sleeve environment, Catalie was in one of her rare philosophical moods. She mused outloud "I would think that people could rally around a project, like this one or the Space Elevator we worked on. But maybe the reality is that people only rally around other people. Even 'rally around the flag, boys' is actually rallying around those who are happening to be carrying the flag, the flag being more easily seen and identified as a direction to go toward, a symbol vaguely defined as 'here is where the goodies are, follow me'. A project has no ability of its own to get anything done. It is people that do things, not projects. The closest it gets is when an individual uses the project, as if a flag, to get people to rally around him. A project getting done is an indirect thing, then, at best. Even though it is the project, not the person pushing the project as if it were a symbol of himself, that fills the needs of people."
Improy was only partly paying attention, being engrossed in setting up an instrument. "So why did this space station get created?" he absently countered. "A project starts as a dream, a non-physical fantasy, yet is a map to where the goodies ought to be found. Isn't following the trails on a map, making it happen?"
A timer sounded, ending break time. The assembled their worksuits around themselves, pumped the air from the room back into storage, opened the bulkhead, and moved out into the well lit wheel interior. Moving around the rim at 1/5-g, it was more a hop, little different than Lunar gravity Moonwalks of the early 1970's.
They were still at the tedious task of removing all the interior bulkheads, stashing them lashed to the outside of the central hub, for now, just to get them out of the way. Their material would become raw material for fabricating things when the workers arrived and began living their lives here; but for now, the bulkheads were just in the way of progress. Arriving at the next sealed bulkhead, The both worked together to loosen each bolt just one turn; then paused as the remainder of the former propellant still in there was vented through the cracked seal, expanding down through the open channel to the spoke and out through the open airlock at one end of the hug. When no significant gas flow was observable, they finished removing the rest of the bolts, pulled the bulkhead off, and together hauled it down the rim until reaching the nearest spoke tube, attaching the bulkhead to the electric hoist's cable, and Improy rode it up so as to steer the thing so it did not swing against the wall of the spoke's interior. Catalie joined him where the spoke joined the hub, and they slowly pushed the bulkhead, now in free-fall yet with considerable inertial mass, out through the open airlock while a security line on it, took it outside and lashed it to the exterior of the hub. Then they went back in, reversed their path, back to the newly opened habitat module. They then inspected the module for damage, and opened all storage doors to vent any residual propellant. when the newly added 40 meter section gas level was down to nearly zero pressure, they headed for the next bulkhead. Since the space behind each module internal bulkhead, or behind each double bulkhead where two modules had docked together, was alternating fuel and oxidizer, so they wanted very much to have essentially all of the preceding chamber's gas gone, before letting in the other component of propellant into their space. Although the partial pressure would surely be far too low for combustion, they took no chances, for there were plenty of tiny sparks happening as switches and relays operated, such as those providing their lighting.
It was dull and repetitive work, yet needed to be done carefully, and in places laboriously. When they reached a juncture to the next spoke, they would open up that spoke all the way to the hub, shortening the distance needed to hustle freshly removed bulkheads up and out. There were six spokes to the wheel, so there were 21 modules to go through, each providing 3 bulkheads, before getting to the next spoke.
When they had three spokes cleared, it was time to change the activity for awhile. There were six of the modules which had airlock double doors built in where the inner bulkhead would have been, one door was sealed during the launch, serving the function of a bulkhead separating fuel from oxidizer during the ascent. So they returned to the originally cleared out section and sealed off the airlocks at each center point between spoke connections, and closed the airlock at the hub connection of the spoke, making an enclosed area. They filled this enclosure with air, and activated the life support systems for the almost 840 meter long livable habitat area. From then on they were able to return to this shirtsleeve environment for breaktimes and sleep periods, a very welcome improvement in their lifestyle.
They were able to utilize some of their rest periods for testing of the life support systems. One such was to activate heaters pouring a large amount of heat energy into the enclosure, equivalent to the heat given off by a thousand people, and watch the air conditioner system adapt to that situation without oscillation beyond tolerable temperatures. Such a situation could actually happen, if one 60 degree arc of the wheel became the only habitable section, and so all thousand of the personnel would have to cram into the 800 meter long section.
Catalie was first to point out that since there were only two kitchen - restaurant areas in the whole wheel, what if the only habitable area were one of the other 4 sections that had no food facilities? She had instinctively had them seal off a section which had been pre-equipped with kitchen facilities, since that was where they would have breaktimes and meals, as well as sleep times. "So what happens if it is not this section that survives a disaster, and everyone has to hole up in the next section? How will they eat? There is more to life than just working and hanging out motionless until ext time to work, you know." Improy paused, looking a bit startled. "Yes, they have inputs and outputs that occasionally need to happen, to live. even some private space and time for lovers to bond for sanity renewal ... yes, how will they have that if they are holed up in the machine shop area next door?" They included this insight into the next evening's report back to headquarters at Ownma's White Sands facility.
The reply came back several days later: since the launch system comprised of the airbreathing booster, the engine tug flyback module, and the habitat module had been perfected to great reliability during the construction launches, they had modified the basic habitat module to have no mass consisting of built in facilities, and was instead configured to be a one-way space bus for some 33 people each. Since the personnel were nervous about being launched into space and docking up there in a vehicle without a pilot, they were going to test the modified vehicle several times, so expect to have some modules show up which had porta-potties and bins full of prefab foods and drink, to be distributed to segments lacking in restaurant facilities. Each of these test modules, assuming they arrived as planned, would have to be unloaded, and the empty cylindrical module lashed to the wheel's hub for later use as raw material. "And, the third launch once the system has proved reliable, will bring up 33 brave souls who are wiling to fly without a pilot, and join you as early crew members, living in the section you have proven out responsively livable. Get ready for company."
When a porta-potty shipment arrived docked temporarily with the hub a few weeks later, Catalie noted in the log that there was an unusually long time between arrival and actual docking clamp activation. Improy grunted some comment about it was because the vehicle considered it beneath its dignity to be ferrying outhouses, probably projecting his own feelings about having to tote them manually all the way to positions within the wheel's circumference. But Catalie put it on her worry list. A second delivery of the "one-way space bus" system also had a similar unusually long stabilization time before the now essentially automatic teleoperated docking, human operators no longer needed to pay attention to the docking process.
Both of them were in the Embarcadero, as they called the port control facility, watching as the first shipment of live people hove into view, video links showing a bunch of tense-looking people inside the cramped passenger area. The automated docking, however, was taking a very long time to lock together. The video link showed people's heads and bodies being swayed a bit in their seats as the positioning thrusters jerkily fired again again. Catalie exclaimed "the docking feedback loop is phase shifted by the shifting masses of the passengers!" "and the system is in oscillation mode." Improy saw it was so, and checked to see how much thruster fuel remained. None, actually. They looked out at the space bus module, just less than a meter from the docking port, but now out of docking positioning fuel.
He bolted for the airlock, dragging his worksuit along with him, got into the midsection of the airlock, assembled the suit and sealed it before the air was pumped out of the airlock midsection, the outer door opened, and he saw the nose of the huge cylinder had drifted another meter away and twisted at a 5 degree angle, getting worse by the second. Connecting his safety tether to the station, he scrambled over to the storage to get some of the tie downs used to lash the bulkheads to the outside of the hub. Clamping one end of one of the tiedowns, he jumped to the nose of the 10 meter diameter space bus, ran the tied down rope through one of the still closed docking clamps, secured it. He radioed Catalie to tell the passengers that h=they were going to stay up here for now anyway, but how to get them connected and inside was yet to be determined. She radioed back that the perspiring passengers inside were visibly relieved to know that they were not going to become part of a meteor re-entering the atmosphere after all; it was not designed to return gently to Earth.
Improy went back inside and de-suited, crisis over for the moment and he had been on excess adrenalin long enough. "The mass of that thing is far more than our worksuits can control", he pointed out to Catalie, once he had stabilized his heart rate. How can we get it back aligned with the docking port, and brought against it to fire the docking clamps? They have no airlock or spacesuits in there, they have to come through the docking hatch." They were silent for awhile, thinking. Improy asked, how much air they had left in there ... no one knew, but not likely much, as it was not intended for long term occupancy. And the porta-pottys delivered before had no need for oxygen. Not likely this one had extra oxygen either. They watched the tense faces inside the module, on their computer terminal screen.
Back in his worksuit, he went into the airless part of the hub, and disconnected three of the winch hoists that were used to haul up bulkheads thorough the spoke tubes. Back through the two sets of airlocks, and he used more tie-downs to fasten the winches to the hub and each of their winch cables to the flanges that had held the nose fairing during the lift up her through the air. Thanking the urge of designers for standardization of connectors, he was able to find power outlets for the three electric winch motors. Opening the outer airlock door inward, he toggled the power of the three winch motors until one part of the 40 meter long tube bumped against the port area, then he carefully toggled the remaining winch motors, pivoting the huge tube slowly around, against the docking port, hoping the inertial mass would not tear out the initial contact winch tiedowns. The lashup held, the tube was held to the docking port. But Improy was captive inside. He told Catalie to get in her worksuit quickly, and depressurize the whole section, fast! Then open the inner airlock hatch, let him in, then close the two airlock hatches and tell ground control to fire the docking latch assembly. He scrambled into the open inner hatch, swung it closed again, began the pressurization of the section. By the time it was up to pressure, the docking was activated, and the outer airlock was opening. Then the inner opened, and they looked in to see a bunch of wide-eyed sweating half asphyxiated people, who wasted no time getting loose from seat belts and straggled tumbling in free-fall into the Embarcadero.
posted by Unknown @ 8:03 PM
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