Building Up - jedcline's 2006 NanoWriMo

JEDC's 2006 NanoWriMo day 1 of 30

Looking up into the clear equatorial Pacific sky intently, Improy could see nothing but blue and more blue. The radio direction finder had tracked it down to where it was now 30 meters somewhere above the floating artificial island made of a converted pair of surplus deep sea oil rigs. It ought to be visible by now, he thought. At least it was finally over the platform, the instrument indicated.

The implications of the existance of the tiny object there were impressive. A month ago it had been high overhead, 36,000 km, 22,300 miles, over his head up there, as it began its decent as the weighted end of a 120 GPa strong tether material being lowered. Another tether with a heavier weight on its end had simultaneously been de-spooled in the opposite direction from the satellite, to balance the forces on the satellite from pulls up and down from tether masses in motion in a gravitational field. But the one interesting to Improy right now was this one on the downward tether's end. It meant that there now existed something that had never existed before in the history of civilization's great construction works: a continuous physical structure spanning the gap between high Earth orbit and the Earth's surface ... well, almost was so, and would be so when the object on the end of the tether got captured and secured here. The carbon nanotube tether filament itself was far too small diameter to be visible, of course. Even the 3 cm diameter shiny sphere was hardly visible against the bright blue sky over the Pacific Ocean, hardly telling of its recent journey across tens of thousands of kilometers of the hard vacuum of space, and then its dip down through the high atmosphere, all the way down to be paused here, as if uncertain if it really wanted to make the landing.

So he sent a beamed command straight up, which was received by the satellite far overhead in GeoStationary Earth Orbit. The satellite immediately obeyed and its solar panels pulled in energy to slowly unlock and restart the immense pulley drums, now almost empty of tether fiber. They slowly payed out two paired triple strands of single fiber carbon nanotube from its remaining turns on the drum, one set of strands going upward while the other triple wound strand went downward. The drum with the upward strands wound on it was much smaller than the drum despooling toward the ground, as the upward strands went a shorter distance and also had a counterweight on it, the earth's constant rotation angle's centrifugal force on the counterweight far beyond GEO delicately balancing to equality at the GEO machinery.

Down far below there, on the Earth's watery surface, Improy waited a bit impatiently for the propagation inertial wave of immensely tensioned falling strand travel across the 36,000 km to where he was intently staring upward. He had been doing similar juggling for the past two weeks, and he was about to finally achieve his goal.

His gaze shifted over to where the still rough outline of where the third oil rig had been months ago, when this same kind of scenario had been playing out when a chunk of orbiting debris from a war-destroyed GPS satellite had severed the strand below GEO, and the falling carbon nanotube impacted that other floating oil rig island section, sawing it in two with the meteoric microsaw blade. After that happened, all but he and his co-worker had left the island; the necessary technique and equipment had been proven anyway by that time, so now just the two of them were daring the fates.

It would be dawn tomorrow morning before the positioning would have stabilized enough for the capture attempt, so he calmed his impatience by going through the checklist and equipment calibrations for the big event. He wondered if he would be able to sleep this night, already tensed for action tomorrow; his shift would begin with the usual overlap of half an hour when their shifts swapped, and would be timed to do the hoped-for initial capture in that time. With only two of them, and half an hour overlap at each end of their shifts, it still made the workday 13 hours long for each of them. Meantime, he knew that if the tether overhead got severed again, his partner would sound the alarm and they could hopefully prepare to survive it again. That was not likely to be happening again, was an improbable event last time. It is just that the memory of the impact last time was too impressive even now.

Below deck, Catalie was a bit impatient to get on with her duties, yet it was important to have one's 12 hours well spent in rest, rejuvenation, and self balancing. Her turn to shoulder all the responsibility would come soon enough. And one needed to be in the best shape possible, to cope with what was expected to happen and the things unplanned that might happen too.

In fact, this second attempt would not have happened at all if it had not been for her efforts. The improbable event of a severed tether at such a critical moment, causing the loss of the tether, part of their floating island, and three crewmen, had shaken all of them. The breakage had flung the GEO drum satellite out into distant space, while the earthward tether segment came violently down, so at least the space again was clear for another conventional launch vehicle lift of the backup Tetherdrum robot satellite into GEO. But Ownma Corporate management had been all too eager to call it quits; she did not understand that. If they were so easily swayed to end the project, why did they start it in the first place? The lost resources were insignificant in relation to the massive wealth of the Corporation, so cost was not the real problem. Therefore, it surely had to do with politics or multiple motives. She never could comprehend the motivations of the rich and powerful, who bent their human intellect not for the advancement of the ecosystem and civilization base upon which they thrived, but instead on acquiring ownership and power over all they could possible grab by any means. What a wast of talent, was her opinion. Yet, fact of life, that those guys were the boss. Power and wealth must be as addictive as the hardest of illegal drugs, to get people to do that kind of thing, ignoring the often harsh consequences to such a vast group of people and living ecosystem. Surely their higher education had taught them that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" and thus ought to have enabled them to bypass that problem; but no, they just got sucked into it as if they had been taught no wisdom along with the raw facts.

Time for her shift to start finally arrived, and she climbed up to greet the late afternoon sky. Half an hour they had to transfer over the duties of the task, and little time was left for companionship. Improy pointed up into the sky, and yes, there was a flicker of reflected sunlight off of something in the sky. They inspected the autorecording log of position of the object, found the expected shrinking average separation as well as the rhythmic rise and fall of their own position with the lunar tides. There was enough general pattern in the log's curves, so that another correction would be sent to the GEO satellite overhead about midnight, which hopefully would result by midmorning the next day of the centering of the glittering tiny object's position over the vertical shaft in the floating platform, within which the tether end attachment would ride up and down with the tides and waves, as the project began its next phase.

The next morning the two of them stood watching the three cm diameter tetherball, seeming to hang from nothing, the microscopic tether with which it was suspended invisible against the blue sky. Inside the tiny tetherball was just a high powered ID tag, which was briefly powered up by a continuous beam of energy, which was received and converted into energy to power a transponder pattern modulated transmitter while it was receiving the power beam, sending its identification signal out for radio position location. It signal was only to show where the end of the tether was at, providing the data by which it had been guided to where it was now, on average over its target on the floating island.

Improy picked up his fishing rod, which had been outfitted with a capture snare loop fishing line, and he brought the end of the fishing rod up near the tetherball, which was not standing still due to all the motions involved from wind and waves and tidal action. Back and forth the snare loop went, while he got a bit of practice with the sport. Then a couple more intent motions, he had the tetherball snagged on the poles fishing line. Catalie documented the moment of capture in the facility log, and marked the video recording moment. As simple as the thing was, it was a historical momentous event, in reality. It was the instant of the first connection of the earth surface and high earth orbit, by a continuous physical structure!

He transfered the fishing line down into the vertical tube, while Catalie went below deck to connect it to the plunger that was the next phase of the connection permanently to high space locations. Then he transmitted the command to the GEO satellite overhead to again lower the tether, this time some ten meters worth. Going below deck too, he did a QA check of the work Catalie had done as the last part of her shift. With ten minutes to spare, they celebrated together in happy embrace, and each had a small glass of red wine to toast the achievement, all alone far out here in the vast Pacific Ocean.

The next day, they had the end of the carbon nanotube dual triplet strand tether locked into the vertical shaft. All work done on it would be done remotely, as the end of the tether rode up and down the tube in response to the everchanging environmental conditions. The next step was to begin the unwind process, to separate the two triplet helix strands from each other, which would begin down here, and gradually unwind all the way up to GEO. The 120 GPa strength nanotube material was plenty strong enough to bear its own weight to GEO, thus enabling a very simple scaling technique.

But first the remaining tether material on the drum in GEO would need to be despooled downward until its final loop was all that was on the drum, which thereafter would act as a pulley. The untwisting of the original nanotether needed to be finished after that, ending with two parallel nanotethers consisting of three wound strands of monofilament carbon nanotube material. That done, a strong splice would be done at the bottom joining the two triple-strand tethers to form a continuous single loop between ground and GEO. The electric motor on the drum - now pulley - in GEO, powered by solar energy, would pull the belt around, and another strand of carbon nanotube would be fastened on at the bottom and would be pulled up alongside the rising side of the belt between the pulleys. Gradually the girth of the tether belts would thus be increased until it was able to carry useful payloads to GEO, solar powered lift at that. Much easier than use of climbers, and far more energy efficient.

posted by Unknown @ 5:51 PM