The Ship: The New Frontiers Series, Book One

by Jack L Knapp

  “I’ll work on getting an airplane as soon as you have the aviation impellers ready.”

  “How big an airplane, Frenchy? I’d just as soon start small, maybe just use two impellers. We’ll keep the regular engine or engines in place. Maybe a twin engine craft, say something equipped to haul five or six passengers? I’ll need that much lift for the batteries and two to four impellers, depending on room inside the fuselage.”

  “You’re talking about an airworthy plane, not a junker.”

  “You want to get out and walk if something breaks during that first flight?”

  “Well, no. But what about a military trainer? Say something on the order of a two-place dual-control instruction job? The government sells those from time to time. They are sometimes repurposed by hanging weapons on and using them as ground attack planes. That’s what some of the countries in Africa do. But maybe we can get one cheap.”

  “That might work. Look into gross lift capacity and see if it’s enough for at least one battery pack and two impellers. I think we need to install them in pairs, for balance as well as reliability. Mount the battery pack in the fuselage and if there’s no room for the impellers, maybe hang them under the wings in pods?”

  “Won’t be very aerodynamic, Frenchy. I’ll talk to Will about it, he’s the expert. But if it can fly with them hung under the wings, I’m okay with that. How about we leave the engine shut down after we get things rigged up, run some taxi tests using only the impellers before we fly? They don’t care whether you’re rolling along the ground or flying at ten thousand feet. I’m sure Will’s going to insist on a good checkout before the plane flies.”

  “You’ll get it, Morty. Will’s got a pilot’s certificate, so he should be the guy in charge of this if he’s got the time. He’ll need a transition course on whatever plane we decide to buy. I’m sure he’ll want to handle it, considering how much money he’s invested. Besides, he spends too much time chasing women and gambling. Work will do him good. I’ll talk to him.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The factory campus continued to change. As soon as the buildings were accepted, crews prepped spaces for travel trailers to house the people who would live on site. This temporary arrangement would work until permanent dwellings could be built.

  The construction people had finished their latest project, grading, leveling, and compacting an airstrip and adjacent parking area. They finished Friday afternoon and moved their heavy equipment to the next work site, the factory’s parking area.

  Will landed a leased Piper Super-Cub on the new airstrip early Monday morning. After taxiing to the parking area, he and Frenchy deplaned and tied the plane down to the stakes that the construction crews had installed before moving to the parking area. The plant would eventually need extra hangars, larger ones, to house airplanes as they came off the assembly line, but for now the tiedown points would do. The two finished closing the plane’s doors and cargo hatch just as Morty drove up in the Gator.

  “Didn’t expect you fellows this early. Something wrong?”

  “Not exactly. Is Chuck available?”

  “He’s probably asleep by now. They work nights in the hangar, but if you need him I’ll wake him up.”

  “Why don’t we just head for the hangar? We can meet there. This mostly concerns the two of you.”

  “Okay, if you’re done with that plane, hop in. It’s likely to be a little crowded, but we’re not going far.”

  The Gator bumped its way along the dirt road to the hangar. Morty popped out, still spry despite his advancing years. Frenchy looked at him appraisingly. Morty had to be in his late seventies, maybe in his eighties, but you’d never know it considering how alert his mind was and the way he moved.

  Morty punched in the gate combination and they went inside. He locked it behind them as the trio headed for the hangar door. This too had a lock and Frenchy noticed that it required a different combination. The door locked automatically as soon as it was closed.

  The lights in the hangar bay were on, but no one was working.

  “Maybe they’re in the break room, having breakfast. If not, I’ll wake up Chuck. We don’t need Lina or Mel for this.” Morty headed for the break room. Frenchy and Will slowed and looked around as they crossed the hangar. The Bedstead and Bedstead II, the ‘King’, occupied the open space, the smaller Bedstead parked nearest to the rollup door.

  “They’ve been busy. That big lifter looks almost ready to fly. Why don’t we take a look at it while Morty finds Chuck?”

  Will nodded and the two walked over to the King, which now mounted four of the large aviation-model impellers, one at each corner. The impellers were similar in external appearance to the ones on the improved Bedstead. The impeller mechanism and the gimbaled mount were inside sealed fiberglass globes, the only difference being that the ones on the King were larger. A rolling metal table stood near the forward end and several tools lay about on the table’s surface. Cables snaked through holes in the deck, waiting to be connected to the pilot’s control panel.

  “If that’s all they have left to do, this thing will be flying by the end of the week.” Frenchy pointed to the cables. “Those go to the computer inside the chassis, between the upper and lower decks. That’s been in place for a couple of weeks now, waiting for the shop to deliver the impellers. The computer is linked through other cables to plugs at each impeller station. At a guess, they’ve been running checks to make sure nothing has been cross-connected. As soon as they mount the control panel, they’ll hook up the rest of the cables, calibrate the computer system, and run a quick test. It looks like everything else is ready.”

  Will glanced up as Morty joined the two. “They’ll be along in a minute,” he said. Will noticed that Morty looked tense, an expression he’d worn since he came from the break room. Glancing behind Morty, Will saw Chuck. His face was red and he looked somewhat disheveled. Well, maybe he’d been asleep. But why would that upset Morty?

  Moments later, Lina approached from the break area. Her face was pink.

  Oh, ho, thought Will. I wonder if Frenchy noticed? But a glance saw the same bland expression Frenchy usually wore. His poker face was intact. Will smothered a grin and turned to look at the King. Picking up one of the cables, he examined the plug carefully until he had his mirth under control. Their business, he thought.

  Morty cleared his throat. “What did you want to talk about, Frenchy?”

  Frenchy looked directly at Morty, never sparing a glance at the others. “We’re going to have to change directions slightly. I had hoped to be hiring a manufacturing crew, beginning next month, but for now that’s on hold. We’re going to an automated production system instead. It will take a bit longer at first, but we’ll turn out more units faster when it’s running. We’ve got time, because I just got the notice that we wouldn’t be getting as many battery packs as we wanted.”

  “Really?” asked Morty. “I didn’t have a problem.”

  “That’s because you were only ordering them a few at a time, or so they said. We’ll eventually be ordering thousands of the larger units, and producing those is an order of magnitude more difficult. That puts us in direct competition with people who want them for homes and cars. The battery cells are essentially the same, they’re just packaged differently. Voltages and current availability are different too, because of the number of cells and how they’re connected to each other.”

  Morty nodded. “So what do we do now?”

  “We continue with small scale manufacturing and work out any production bugs that crop up. The King, Bedstead II, will be ready for testing soon. We’ve got enough battery packs for that, they’re identical, so we can swap the packs between the lifters and the plane. We can still fly the King, even with only two packs, if we have to. I’ve found an airplane for testing the aviation system. We’ll install the battery packs inside the cabin, two to start with, maybe more later on. The plane’s a used de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter. Plenty of lift, in other words. It’
s configured for passenger use at the moment, so we’ll pull the passenger seats to make room for the batteries. Will wants to mount the impellers under the wings, probably inboard of the two turboprop engines. After we’re satisfied the impeller system is reliable, we can swap out the turboprops for turbo-generators.”

  “That’s disappointing, Frenchy. Not the plane, that sounds fine, and your plan sounds good, but I hoped we’d be farther along by now.”

  “The battery problem is out of our hands, but I’ll keep pushing. We’ve still done a lot, Morty. You’re the one who told me quality comes first, and that takes time. Anyway, I consider this an opportunity not a real setback; while we transition to automated manufacturing, we’ll be building our own green power plant. I’ve been working on that, and most of the ground work is done.”

  “A power plant?” Morty looked dubious.

  “We need the power, you know that, and we can sell the excess to the grid. That will help our cash flow and at the same time it’s a security measure. Speaking of security, I need to talk to the person in charge. The opposition will stop at nothing, and the guards need to know that.”

  “I already talked to one of the shift leaders, Frenchy. She said she’d pass the information on. I didn’t authorize an increase in the number of guards, though. Do you think we need to do that?”

  “I thought about what Morty said, back in Chicago, Chuck, but alerting them to the changed situation is probably good enough for now. Anyway, if the opposition manages to interrupt getting commercial power out here, that would increase our expenses because we’d have to stay on generators for the near future. If they control our power, it also gives them the ability to shut us down or at least put us back on our own generator system. That would drive up expenses, and we can’t afford to spend money we don’t have to. How much do you know about solar panels and wind turbines?”

  “Well, as much as anyone I suppose. Anyone who’s not in the business, I mean.”

  “We’re about to be in the business, Morty. We’ve filed an amended charter that changes the company’s name. Our original documents were filed in Delaware, so we’re staying with them. As soon as they approve the change, we’ll be Eastern New Mexico Green Energy. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds fine, but it won’t get a spaceship off the ground.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Morty. Payments from the power station will keep the company afloat. It’s going to take time to build your ship. Just look at how long it took NASA to get the Shuttle off the pad. Another advantage, we can sell power without worrying about secrecy, which we can’t do with the impellers. Anyway, New Mexico will shortly require power companies to use more renewable energy. In part this is economic, because the costs to generate renewable energy are falling. The electric producers won’t take advantage, because they’ve got investments in coal, gas, and nuclear generation. They’ll hang on to those as long as possible to keep from spending money on new equipment. The new regulation forces them to begin closing some of the older, less-profitable plants, so I’m hoping we can take advantage of that. They can build their own green installations, but it might be cheaper for them to buy from independents like us.

  “PV panels have dropped to maybe half what they were a few years ago, and we expect that by the time we’ll have to replace the first ones, the costs will be as low as ten percent of our initial costs. We’ll tie the PV system in with twenty generating fans to start with, expand to fifty or more if the demand remains strong. Green power is coming, Morty. We might as well jump in while we can.”

  “Those things are expensive, aren’t they?” asked Morty.

  “We’re projecting three and a half to four and a half million for each two-megawatt generator. That includes the ground anchors, the foundation, the tower, everything. It only takes about three weeks to install a unit, but there’s also build time to consider. Anyway, as financing becomes available, we’ll contract for a generator and a company to install it. I think we can get financing this time, there’s nothing controversial about a power plant. The power plant contractor works out of Amarillo, but he’ll be buying concrete from suppliers in Clovis and Roswell, maybe even Lubbock and Las Vegas. The foundations take a lot of concrete, but I’ll let the contractor worry about that. Still, it can’t hurt our reputation with the locals. They’ll be upset that we’re not hiring as many assembly workers as we originally intended, but buying supplies locally will soften the blow. That’s how I pushed through that earlier change, by reminding New Mexico’s people how much money I’d be spending. The power company has agreed to tie in their new 345 kilovolt line, although they weren’t happy that we’d stop buying from them at some point. I sweetened the deal by promising that we’d sell through them after we began producing excess. Anyway, they’ll upgrade their existing lines to provide commercial power, so we’ll buy from the grid until the wind generators and PV plant are online, and after that we’ll stop buying and start selling.”

  “I guess if that’s what we’ve got to do, that’s what we’ll do. I’m disappointed, but I suspect you know that already. Still, as long as we’re moving ahead, something is better than nothing. Switching to automated manufacturing and diverting resources to the power plant really slows us down, though. Too bad about the battery packs.”

  “Dad, any reason we can’t begin working up the design of a spacecraft?” Lina asked. “I’m about finished with what I was doing on the King. I’ve got the software I need, so I can work on the design while you deal with getting the power plant off the ground.”

  “Sure, you go ahead. Work with Morty, he’s got ideas about what he wants. Morty, I might be able to buy scrap aircraft aluminum from that company in Roswell. Maybe we can get enough of it for you to start building your spacecraft. One thing, though, that idea you had of using small nuclear reactors? That’s on hold. I sounded out Los Alamos when I was checking on the green power system requirements, but they didn’t want to talk to me. There’s one other option I’m looking at, although it’s going to piss off a lot of officials in this country. I started by asking the Chinese if they could allocate more of the rare earths we need for batteries, and they weren’t interested at first. Then I mentioned that we might be building marine systems and airplanes, and that got their attention. Shipping is a concern for them, since their economy depends on trade. More ships are better, as far as they’re concerned. When I casually mentioned that we might be interested in nuclear powerplants, you could see the lightbulbs go on over their heads.”

  “You didn’t mention what we were doing, did you?” asked Morty.

  “No. I just said we were interested in maritime operations and that we were interested in using nuclear-electric power in cargo ships. The new models are safer as well as cheaper, and they really perked up their ears when I mentioned small reactors. They’re doing something with those, no idea what. I told him that we would use a standard size and shape, meaning that we could carry more cargo than the NS Savannah did. That one was only a demonstrator anyway, and because of the hull design it could never haul enough to compete with diesel-powered freighters. I explained that our ships could haul the same amount of cargo at reduced costs. As soon as I mentioned that, the Chinese representative did everything but kiss my hand!”

  “Be careful, Frenchy. You don’t want to let them know how we plan to use the reactors. My main aim was to get the impellers out where humanity could use them in an emergency and we’re doing that, but we won’t make much money unless we get a jump on everyone else.”

  “Trust me, Morty, I won’t tell them anything. I’m well aware of the money issue too. Those things are expensive! That’s another reason we want money coming in. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now, at least for you. Will, anything you want to add?”

  “Not yet, Frenchy. I’ll get checked out in that Twin Otter as soon as it’s delivered. Shouldn’t have any problem landing it on this strip, even without paving the runway. The Twin was designed for short takeoffs and la
ndings on unimproved runways. I’ll meet the pilot in Clovis and he can check me out before he catches a flight back to California.

  “I’ll get it here as soon as I can. We’ll need our own refueling facilities, though. The turboprops use low-sulfur S10 diesel fuel that’s not yet common in New Mexico, so we’ll need our own supply.”

  “I’ll see to it, Will. We don’t want the fuels to get mixed up. Tell you what, I’ll put a tank and refueling shed here on the side of the parking apron.”

  “Fine, Frenchy. We’ve now got a plan and a management staff, so we’re almost ready to transition to stage two. You handle the power plant negotiations and financing. Morty and the engineers produce the impellers and pass them to Chuck for testing. I’ll manage the aircraft division. Panit is responsible for managing the factory campus, while Trent is in charge of marine operations. Jim is familiar with how the impellers work, so he’ll captain the ship during the shakedown trials. He’ll turn the ship over to Trent as soon as he’s satisfied and return here to assist Morty. Trent will hire a captain and crew for the Tesla, which is what we’re calling the ship, and his people will start hauling cargo. It’s a good plan, but I think it should be discussed the next time we hold a meeting of the board. There won’t be a problem, but we need to keep things official.”

  “You’re right. I’m more used to financing things than running them. I’ll call a board meeting for...not next week, we’ll be working on getting the King flying and the Tesla launched for her shakedown cruise. How about two weeks from now?”

  “Works for me, Frenchy,” said Will. “If that’s everything, then, maybe we should think about heading back for Clovis?”

  “You get the plane ready, Will. Morty, I’ll see you later. Chuck, why don’t you and Lina stick around for a few minutes. I’d like to talk to you.”

  “I’ll see you later, Frenchy. Will, if you’ve got a minute, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”