NaNoWriMo 2014, Day Twenty-Eight

Today is traditionally the day on which the Christmas lights start going up in the Willett household. Should I try to “win” NaNoWriMo with three straight days of 10,000+ words per day, or should I cut my losses and start putting up the Christmas lights?

FYI, the first 20% of the lights look wonderful tonight. (I shudder to think that this “writing” thing might have made me delusional and psychotic enough to skip the first day of Christmas light season. GOD, WHY DIDN’T ANYONE WARN ME OF THIS HORRENDOUS POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECT?!!)

Actual note relating to the story – the re-written (someday, I hope) Chapter Three will introduce the characters and setting for Ceres Station. The basic structure I see for the overall structure of the story is to have three intertwined story lines; 1) Saturn with Cronus; 2) Earth with GEO, LEO, the Lunar colonies, and the L-5 stations; and 3) Ceres. Ceres will be the primary major industrial & population hub outside of Mars orbit, spearheading exploration of the outer system, i.e., the asteroids, Jupiter, and Saturn.

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be this year’s thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

CHAPTER TEN

On the surface of Ceres, in what were quickly becoming the outer system’s shipyards and docks, the Saturn Resupply Mission was quickly taking shape. Unlike the years of planning that had gone into the SaSEM and JuSEM missions, the resupply missions were being readied to launch in just weeks.

The discussions regarding the cargo manifests had been vigorous and confrontational. Everyone had different ideas of what to include and how much of it, but including everything would have required a ship ten times bigger than was available. The time necessary to design and build a new ship just wasn’t there, so they were making do with what they had on hand and could spare.

Jean Duris could have stayed in her warm and reasonably comfortable office buried deep under the ice and rubble, but that would have made her an administrator rather than an astro. Out here where a mistake could kill a great many people, astros didn’t listen to administrators. Ship captains and station commanders needed to be astros in order to succeed as ship captains and station commanders.

As she exited the surface air lock and began to lope along the path to SaReM, she automatically checked her suit systems. She knew that somewhere the telemetry from the suit was being relayed to PEGGY, who would let her know if anything was amiss. She also knew that astros who bet their lives on having an AI in charge of their suit systems every second became dead astros.

The modification work on the cargo shuttle was almost done. She could see the two additional liquid fuel engines that had been attached and the work underway to attach the massive fuel tanks for them. The shuttle’s ion engines were steady, slow, and reliable, but this ship had to get to Saturn faster.

Duris keyed her radio. “PEGGY, give me an update on the progress in the modifications being done to SaReM, please.”

“Commander Duris, the engines are now completely attached and are just awaiting completion of the fuel lines and other control systems. The fuel tanks are on schedule to be completed in ten days.”

“And the cargo status?”

“The primary cargo has been loaded and secured. The master AI has been pre-loaded with all of the information it will need to run the Rhea mining station, based on our current information on the system being constructed and the conditions on Rhea. The ten tugs have been programmed and fueled as well and are onboard.”

“I wish that we could have sent more tugs. It’s going to be a bitch of a supply line to maintain out to Saturn. I hope that ten will hold them until we can get the next ship to them.”

“Commander Duris, the current model being run by CeresOps shows that there will be a margin of over sixty days in the estimated capacity of the Rhea mining mission and our ability to get the next shipment of tugs to them. In addition, the second ship will be able to carry considerably more tugs due to the lead time available to manufacture them and the additional mass and volume available due to the fact that the second ship will not be carrying a primary AI system. Would you like me to prepare a report of that model’s structure and conclusions for you to review?”

“No PEGGY, I believe that you and CeresOps have done your job correctly. My concern is that the overall situation is very fluid and volatile. We don’t know what we might learn later will need to be on that second ship even if it means bumping off some of those tugs.”

“Your point has been noted, Commander Duris.”

Duris had now reached the construction headquarters center near the ship. It had a pressurized volume that had originally been intended by its designers to be used as an office and rest area. In practice, the time and hassle necessary to repeatedly have people going in and out through a lengthy airlock cycle made it much easier for the workers to simply stay outside. The airlock doors remained open and unlocked for rapid access in case of an emergency or suit malfunction. Once inside and locked down, the room could do an emergency repress in less than sixty seconds.

On the surface where the actual “alfresco” work office was, Duris met up with her engineering foreman. William Schultz hated being called “Bill” or any variation on “William,” “Will,” or “Willy,” so he had become “Bubba” somewhere in his far distant past. No one knew where his dislike for the common nicknames or his choice for his preferred nickname came from.

“Bubba, what can you show me today?” Duris asked.

“Well, the two new engines are being tested by the propulsion geeks, but so far everything looks good. You can see that the LOX and liquid hydrogen tanks are almost done. You know that you’re going to clean us out of our fuel stocks to launch this thing, right?”

“I know. We’ve got enough to do this mission, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s going to be tight on the next shuttles to come in who need liquid fuel. The ion propellants are fine, but it’s going to take a while to replenish the cryogenics. We really could use that second plant to increase our capacity.”

“We’ll get going on that as soon as we get this ship off. You know what a Goridian knot this whole mess is, system wide. The fabricated parts for the refining plant expansion are on their way from Goddard. Until then we’ll have to make do with what we’ve got.”

“I understand. ‘The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes longer.’ But doing the impossible all day every day is getting boring.”

“How are we doing on increasing the cargo capacity?”

“That’s tougher. There’s a lot of weight involved between pressure walls, hatches, plumbing, ducting, ventilation, monitoring systems… The list just goes on. I still think we could do a lot better if we were to minimize the amount of cargo that needs to be kept in a habitable space and maximize the things that can just be strapped onto the framework.”

“The manifest is still being juggled,” Duris said, “but I think that’s the way it’s leaning. We’ll use the existing pressurized volume plus whatever else you can give us fast to store the primary AI and as much biological stock as we can spare, then max out the rest of the available launch mass with the tugs and the gear that can handle vacuum.”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” PEGGY broke in, “along those lines we have a new recommendation from the AI Council on one of the items to fill out that mass. They want us to include all of the durathin sheeting that we can spare, along with the equipment necessary to shape and bond it.”

“Why the durathin, Peggy?” Duris asked. “What would they need to use it for?”

“That relates to your earlier concern about the timing of the second resupply ship to Rhea, ma’am. If that ship is delayed, the water ice and other frozen volatiles being processed can be stockpiled on Rhea by enclosing them in envelopes or balloons of durathin. That will minimize sublimation and evaporation so that the materials will be ready to ship down system immediately when the tugs do arrive.”

“Makes sense, but how much do we have to spare?”

“We have over a million square meters stockpiled. We have enough cargo capacity on SaReM to send approximately two-thirds of that if we bump a few of the other raw material shipments. We might find ourselves in short supply of durathin before another shipment can arrive from Goddard, but it is the opinion of the AI Council that the tradeoff is necessary. I have placed a copy of their report in the system for your review.”

“Wait, what does ‘if we bump a few of the other material shipments’ mean? I thought that we had already determined that those were all vital to the mission.”

“The current levels of prime fabricator stock, trace elements, heavy metals, and biological mass have been increased from our original estimates because of the requirements necessary to maintain a human presence at Rhea station. If we reduce them back to their original values, we will have the mass necessary to send all of the requested durathin.”

“So you’re saying that they’re not going to leave the station manned on Rhea?”

“I do not know of any change to their current plans by the Cronus command staff.”

Duris looked at Schultz and saw that his expression matched hers, eyes open wide and lips pursed in surprise.

“PEGGY, let’s cut the crap. The AIs are suggesting we leave the Rhea station human staff without the resources they need to survive. They’ll either have to abandon their station or face an almost certain death. Correct?”

“Commander Duris, it is possible that they would be able to find some of the resources they need in situ. It is also possible that they will choose not to stay.”

Duris let the silence stretch on as she thought through the math of the orbital mechanics, available mass, and need to juggle too many variables to solve the problem.

“Anything else you really have to show me right now, Bubba?” she asked.

“No, Jean. We’re good for now, if you can get back out here in the next couple of days. In the meantime, do you want me to start recalculating the dynamics for that modified cargo profile?”

“Not yet. Leave the raw materials and biologicals as they are for now. Figure out how much durathin we can add to fill out to the max launch mass and send me the figures. I think it’s time to have another frank and candid discussion with a built in twenty-eight minute delay. We’re not going to leave those people to die, nor are we going to leave a critical and untested link in our supply chain on cruise control.”