Live Free or Die, Second Edition, page 22
“Seventy-five hundred metric tons of iron,” Nathan said. “Six hundred of nickel. Twenty-two of aluminum, of which we plan on using two to make the big mirror. Seven and a half of copper. And about two hundred kilograms of various high value metals including gold, platinum group, lots of osmium, comparatively, and silver.”
“Damn,” Steve said, whistling.
“It didn’t actually pay for this trip,” Tyler said. “But as an applied science project it was very successful. Especially given the low metal content of the asteroid. Now we have to figure out how to pay for this ship on an ongoing basis and keep doing it. One reason to get, frankly, the grunts up here instead of you guys is that it’s time to take that step. It’s time to get people off the mud ball and up in space. And this is how we’re going to pay for it.”
SEVEN
“This is going to be interesting,” Dr. Foster said.
All four tugs were positioned alongside the spinning ball of nearly pure silica. There was still some admixture but it was pretty pure. Pure enough for a decent mirror.
The problem was, it was spinning very much like spinning a ball of yarn. As long as there were multiple vectors to the spin, the ball would never spin out into a plate to make the mirror. And it was going to be a big mirror. Even with the blown-off volatiles and extracted “other,” the ball was still nineteen million cubic meters, a sphere three hundred and thirty-one meters in diameter. The resulting mirror, depending on the thickness they eventually got, was going to be about seven thousand meters in diameter and able to pump nearly one hundred billion watts of sunlight.
That all assumed they could get it down to a single vector of spin. And even then they were going to have to “push” it up to a higher speed on that vector to get the mirror to spin out. Last problem was that if they spun it too hard, it was liable to break up into a thousand spinning pieces of glass.
It was a tricky problem.
“Before we do this,” Tyler said. “Is there any way we can use the array to help? I’d like to cut down on fuel costs.”
A Gorku tanker had dropped by earlier in the week and tanked up the Monkey Business. The price tag had caused Tyler to nearly have a screaming fit. Pure He-3 cost like crazy. And even with the efficiency of the conversion plants, they were using a lot of He-3. Somewhere down Tyler’s “space-stuff to-do” list was a refinery around Jupiter. And not far down the list.
“Well, not that I can think of,” Dr. Foster said. “We can use the BDA to put some photon pressure on the eyeball. But it’s a zero sum game. Actually, a losing game. Because we’re having to recharge the BDA capacitor as it is. So the net energy is a loss.”
“It’s even losing heat,” Dr. Bell said. “It’s pretty pure silica in amorphous state. The SAPL tends to go right through it.”
“Well, here we go,” Dr. Foster said. “Engaging tractor on Paws Two and Four…”
“Huh,” Steve said, rubbing his chin.
“‘Huh’ at a time like this is not a helpful comment, Astro,” Tyler said. “‘Huh’ is right up there with ‘oops.’”
“I was just thinking about the eyeball,” Steve said. “It sort of looks like a gemstone.”
And it did. The silica ball was an immense blob of glass with only the slightest trace of color. And most of that was from diffraction of the laser that was keeping it warmed.
“It is,” Dr. Bell said. “It’s the biggest damned almost quartz crystal anybody has ever seen. If we just let it cool it would be the biggest damned quartz crystal anybody has ever seen.”
“Be fun to carve it into a skull,” Tyler said with a chuckle.
“I was just thinking,” Steve said. “The separators pull stuff apart practically at the atomic level then stick it back together using gravity and heat. If we just took the monatomic aluminum and a bunch of oxygen…”
“Add enough heat and you’ve got the biggest sapphire in the universe,” Dr. Bell said excitedly. “Speaking of a really good material for mirrors.”
“We’ll take transparent aluminum under advisement,” Tyler said. “What’s the status?”
“I’ve attached One and Three,” Dr. Foster said. “This is something that the comp has done before. Based on the results we have so far, it says the secondary rotation should be out in about an hour. You don’t want to know how much fuel it’s going to use.”
“An hour is better than I’d expected,” Tyler said. “I hate waiting.”
* * *
“And all the secondary motion is out,” Dr. Foster said. “We now have a ball spinning in a flat plane.”
“More like an expanding disk,” Nathan said. “It’s already starting to expand.”
“Hit it with the full SAPL,” Tyler said. “You’ll need to—”
“Run the laser over it carefully,” Dr. Bell said. “Or we’ll get tumbling again. Full SAPL…on.”
“And that’s got it,” Dr. Foster said. “We’re not even going to need more spin to it.”
That was apparent on the view screen. With the additional thermal energy the already molten glass was becoming less viscous and quickly shifting from a blob to a very definite disk. And as the edges spread out and the rotational velocity increased, the “pull” on the glass got stronger and stronger.
“Do we have any clue if this is going to hold together?” Tyler asked. “I’m starting to worry that when the rotational momentum gets high enough it’ll just pull apart.”
“I’ll slow it with Two and Four,” Dr. Foster said. “They’re in the best position.”
Slowing the disk caused the center to start to flatten out but the expansion was still increasing.
“We can…shape this,” Tyler said. “Like a potter shapes a pot. Use Two and Four to apply some pressors to the outside edge. See what happens. Carefully, mind you. Also we’ll want to be careful with the SAPL. Both deconfliction and to not heat it too high or too low.”
Over the course of the next two hours they played with the glob of glass, forming various shapes on the basic concept of a disk but never letting it get too large.
“Okay,” Tyler said. “This was a good exercise but it is costing fuel like crazy. Let’s just expand it. Carefully.”
“Applying more SAPL,” Dr. Bell said.
“Expansion rate of one meter radius per minute,” Dr. Foster said. “Rotational momentum increasing… More SAPL to the center, less to the edges.”
“Aye, aye, Captain!” Dr. Bell said. “Inner thirty percent only.”
“Need to bring it out some more,” Steve said. “You’re getting a bulge along the middle section.”
“Rotational velocity now two hundred kilometers per hour. We’re pulling some serious G at the edges.”
“More SAPL to the axis,” Dr. Bell said. “And the bulge is going…going…gone…Full SAPL sweep…”
“Radius now two hundred and twenty meters,” Dr. Foster said. “Rotational velocity two hundred and thirty…Expansion of three meters per minute. I’m getting some wobble.”
“Damping it out,” the computer said. “Paws adjusted to manage wobble.”
“Cut the SAPL,” Tyler said. “That’s what’s causing it to wobble.”
“If we cut the SAPL it’s going to cool,” Dr. Bell said.
“Not fast,” Tyler said. “It’s in full sunshine. Hell, as big and thin as it’s getting, solar wind may be causing some of the wobble. We need this thing straight or this was an exercise in futility.”
“It’s going to be straight,” Dr. Foster said. “But I think we cut the SAPL just in time. Look at it.”
The disk was now expanding at an enormous rate, getting thinner and thinner.
“Come on, baby,” Dr. Bell said. “Hold together.”
“Withdraw the Paws,” Tyler said. “We don’t want them perturbing the material.”
“Damn,” Dr. Foster said.
The center of the disk had separated and the spinning glass was rapidly turning into a shape like a spare tire.
“Damnit,” Dr. Bell said. “Sorry. I probably applied too much laser.”
“What now?” Dr. Foster said.
“Leave it,” Tyler said, disgusted. “If we can figure out how to get out the now enormous rotation, we can melt it again and try again when we’ve got a better feel for doing this.”
“Cut it,” Steve said. “I mean, you might want to back up just in case and not be in the way if it comes apart totally. But if you cut it, it turns from a rapidly spinning disk into a less rapidly spinning cylinder. The longer it gets under those conditions, the slower it’s going to spin. And it’s going to be easier, less energy intensive, for the tugs to slow it.”
“Just cut it?” Tyler said.
“If we can,” Dr. Bell said. “It’s pretty transparent.”
“Never know until you try,” Steve said. “Scrape the outsides first, though.”
“Get off more of the impurities?” Dr. Foster said. “Good idea. Heavy metal contamination on the edges might have been the deciding factor in its failure. Modeling this is—”
“Hell with modeling,” Tyler said. “The Right Stuff’s right. We’ll cut it, damp the spin, melt the sucker and start over. Next time, though, with lower rotation and more control of the expansion rate. Dr. Bell, I believe you are the SAPL man.”
“We want to make sure there’s complete deconfliction,” Steve said. “It’s going to snap open. It’s possible it’s cooled enough it’s no longer completely amorphous. And even if it is, there’s going to be enormous acceleration effects as it expands. That’s where the potential energy of the spin is going to dump.”
“So we don’t want to be in the way,” Tyler said. “Got it. Comp, get the Paws and the Monkey at least one hundred thousand clicks away. Far enough, you think?”
“Far enough,” Steve said.
“We need to keep it hot,” Tyler said. “Keep the SAPL on it at thirty percent power. What’s its temp?”
“Fourteen twenty C,” Dr. Foster said. “It peaked at two thousand.”
“Keep it at least twelve hundred,” Tyler said. “Fourteen is probably about right for now. Viscosity neither too high nor too low. Just right. When we’re all in position, we’ll cut that sucker and see what happens.”
* * *
Moving the ships was a short matter. But then they figured out that they’d need the BDA array farther back as well. That was both for safety reasons and because it was going to need to follow the now rapidly spinning ring of glass, keeping the beam on one point on its surface. So the tugs were sent to pick up and reposition the mirrors. The mirrors could, technically, do that on their own. If Tyler had wanted to wait.
“Okay, comp,” Tyler said. “You’ve got this, right?”
“To the limits of system accuracy,” the computer said. “The satellite packs on the Big Distributed Array mirrors are not terribly precise. I cannot guarantee continuous power on one spot.”
“And if it gets diffused the whole thing is going to tumble,” Dr. Foster said.
“Like I said,” Tyler said. “We’ll see what happens. Computer, you have my permission to fire.”
“Firing,” the computer said.
The crystal ring had hardly been visible against the star background. It was optically extremely pure. When the SAPL hit it, though, it flashed into light.
“That is really pretty,” Dr. Bell said. “I hope we’re recording this. Because it’s really pretty.”
The ring was a blaze of glory for a moment as the full power of the SAPL attempted to follow its rapidly spinning path and then…
“Separation,” the Monkey said.
“Whoa,” Steve said. “And ouch.”
The flashing ring had, indeed, separated. At a hundred different places. Shards of crystal were now flying away in every direction.
“Comp,” Tyler said. “Can you track all of that?”
“Yes,” the computer said. “The pieces that are large enough to be a major hazard. And there are some that we simply should pick up. But most of the rotational velocity was expended by material which is now in retrograde solar orbit. No great danger. Others have been kicked into higher orbit and are headed for outer system worlds or towards the VLA. The material twisted as it broke. At least one piece, one hundred meters long and four meters wide, is headed for your home world. It will arrive in…seventy-three years and ten days.”
“Right,” Tyler said. “Put the Paws on garbage duty. Just…put it back in one place as best you can. Okay, people, what have we learned here today?”
“We don’t know enough about making mirrors in space,” Dr. Bell said.
“We don’t know enough about making big glass mirrors in space,” Tyler pointed out. “We can probably make a small one. Next.”
“If we’re going to be doing complicated stuff, we need better tracking systems,” Steve said. “On the BDA mirrors especially.”
“Comp, do you have cycles available?”
“I’m not that busy tracking if that’s what you mean.”
“Are there better systems for the BDA available on Glalkod?”
“Yes,” the Monkey said. “Much better.”
“Add that to my next shopping list,” Tyler said grumpily. “Standard satpaks for the VLA, better ones for the BDA.”
“We need better mirrors, period,” Dr. Foster said.
“We’ll have to talk to AMTAC,” Tyler said. “It’s about time for their next upgrade, anyway.”
“I’d say that we need better modeling,” Steve said, “but the truth is a lot of this is going to be trial and error.”
“I have already modeled the failure,” Monkey said. “The primary problem was an unnoticed concentration of low-density, low-viscosity impurities that remained at the center of the silica. It was those impurities, not the basic process, which caused an unexpectedly low surface tension for its temperature. In a similar situation, with some refinement of analysis of the composition of the material, I could probably control the SAPL such that there is not a failure. Again, this was a new situation for me. But having seen the failure and modeled it, and spent some cycles communicating with Parva, the Gorku AI, I now have sufficient information to do the same process successfully.”
“And we now have one more lesson learned,” Tyler said.
“What?” Dr. Foster asked.
“We have to spend more time looking in our crystal ball.”
EIGHT
“Mr. Vernon Tyler?” the guard at the gate said, surprised. He was looking at the ID but clearly didn’t believe it.
“Last time I checked,” Tyler said. It for some reason floored people that he often drove himself. He didn’t know why, but he still found it funny. He looked at the guard’s face, though, and realized that this was one who had had his humor bone surgically removed. “Yes. I am Tyler Vernon.”
“You’re going to have to be escorted, sir,” the guard said. “If you could park in visitors’ parking, please?”
It was called Phantom Works in a more or less direct rip-off of Lock-Mart’s Skunk Works. Being honest, though, Boeing had had an advanced projects group around for years. One of the first such groups had invented the B-17, at the time the cutting edge of heavy bomber technology. They just didn’t get the really cool name until Lockheed revealed Skunk Works.
Technically, it was distributed throughout all of Boeing’s many, many facilities scattered around the U.S. And there were people who worked for Phantom Works at other locations. There were people who worked for Phantom Works in various university research centers. The joke was that there were people who worked for Phantom Works that didn’t even know they worked for Phantom Works. Because, you know, it was that secret.
But most of the advanced design work was done at the main Boeing facility in St. Louis where, at this point, over three thousand engineers, scientists and various worker bees turned the future into reality.
And today was the big day. They’d finished his shuttle.
Well, they’d finished the prototype of the design structure of his shuttle. An actual shuttle was, you know, two iterations away. At most. Give or take.
Tyler parked the car and sat on the trunk until a golf cart driven by a familiar figure came through the gate.
“Astro,” Tyler said, shaking the former astronaut’s hand. “Good to see you again.”
“Good to see you, Ty,” Steve said. “Welcome to Phantom Works.”
“Shhhh…” Tyler said. “Somebody might hear!”
“There’s a sign,” Steve pointed out.
“It’s supposed to be Seeecret,” Tyler said, getting in the golf cart.
“What goes on is secret,” Steve pointed out. “So we’ll have to wait until we get inside to discuss it.”
“Or we can just comm it,” Tyler commed.
“Our security people hate these things,” Astro commed back. “Every time we go in a shield room they freak out. They take away a guy’s Blackberry but you can’t exactly take away an implant. It’s not so bad here anymore. But every time I have to do a brief somewhere else their people have conniptions. Speaking of Connie, how’s it going?”
“Like clockwork,” Tyler commed. “The nice part is that we can just transfer the material straight to Gorku ships off-planet. The Horvath are, I’m told, having a fit. Especially since asteroid 6178 1986 DA turns out to be relatively high in palladium. We’re getting about point two percent by weight. Which doesn’t sound like much. But we’re stripping ninety-six tons of base nickel iron per week. That’s three hundred and eighty kilos a week. And that’s not counting the rest of the materials. I’d say it’s a gold mine but it’s better than a gold mine. It’s a palladium mine with a side of nickel, iron, copper and every damned thing else you can imagine.”
“So, are you making your nut is the question?” Steve asked.
“Not really,” Tyler admitted. “But that’s because of the cost of the mirrors. Getting them into space is easy. We just ship most of them up in the milk run from Glalkod and they shove them out the door. We’ve gotten better lift and drives for the BDAs, by the way.”
“Heard about that,” Steve said.
