The Ship: The New Frontiers Series, Book One

by Jack L Knapp

  “Too tight. The budgets aren’t because of need or consideration of the work being done. The reasons are political, because one party or the other believes they can pick up some sort of political advantage. They don’t like funding agencies they don’t approve of, even though a previous Congress set those up in the first place.”

  “Shame, really. It makes you wonder how much longer the republic can endure.”

  “Or whether it should.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know if things are really that bad, but sometimes I wonder.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chuck was away for most of the next month, working at the ranch during the week and returning to the factory Friday afternoon. A team of four lived at the ranch full time. Working in the afternoons, after they’d finished work on the photovoltaic array, they rebuilt Morty’s original rabbit-chaser, then improved it. They’d begun by swapping the front steerable wheel for the steering gear and front axle from a junked Ford roadster, then switched out the rear axle with one from a front-wheel-drive Chevrolet. The original plywood frame had proved unable to handle the loads, so that had vanished. The new body had begun life as a Volkswagen microbus. Two impellers had been added, and the battery packs to run them now filled the rear of the bus, the batteries forward of the rear axle, the four impellers to the rear. The original engine compartment had been gutted to make room for the devices. The four now used the strange little vehicle to commute back and forth to Clovis and Roswell on weekends.

  Chuck shook his head when he first saw the contraption. Remind me never again to leave engineers with too much time on their hands, he thought.

  Chuck used the Twin to commute from the factory to the ranch; Will flew with him as copilot Sunday evenings, then took the Twin back to the factory. He flew to the ranch on Friday afternoons to bring Chuck back to the plant.

  Chuck’s weekends were spent flying the ship and improving his relationship with Lina. Most of his flights were in the left seat, with Lina as copilot. Three weeks after beginning this arduous schedule, Chuck and Lina flew the ship to orbit, remaining there for more than an hour. No new checks or experiments were conducted, at least not officially. No log entry took place during that time; Lina answered a question by explaining they had practiced operating in zero-gee conditions. This answer raised a couple of eyebrows, but since the flight went off without a hitch, no more was said.

  The photovoltaic system was finally finished; it now powered the ranch and the cavern. The microbus was locked in the barn after the batteries and impellers were removed and stored in the cavern. The four engineers who’d built the PV plant were flown to Clovis, where they caught flights to other locations. They were on vacation, the first in a year for some of the men. Chuck flew back to the plant and told Frenchy the job was finished.

  In celebration, Frenchy invited Chuck, Lina, Will, Mel, and the newly-hired Dolph Petterson out to dinner. Frenchy chose the Cattle Baron Steak House in Roswell and reserved one of their smaller rooms. Chuck wondered what the new man did and why Frenchy had invited him along.

  The steaks were excellent, perfectly cooked, and drinks were replenished quickly. The party soon relaxed and conversation flowed freely. Chuck noticed that Dolph had little to say; perhaps it was because he was new, not yet part of the team who’d worked so hard for so long to get as far as they had.

  “You’re probably wondering about Dolph,” said Frenchy. “He’s the new head of the Plans and Projects division.”

  “I didn’t know we had one,” Will said. “What does this division do?”

  “Pretty much what Dolph wants. So far, he’s the only one assigned to it.”

  “Frenchy, I thought we were doing our own plans. Except for the opposition you and Will experienced, the only thing that slowed us down was lack of money. No offense, Dolph. I’m just trying to understand,” said Chuck.

  “I understand, Chuck. I wanted to call it the Department of Philosophy, but Frenchy wouldn’t let me. He said that would sound weird, so we settled on Plans and Projects.”

  “So why do we need this, Frenchy?”

  “Let’s let Dolph tell us what he thinks, Chuck. I think you’ll understand then.”

  “I’m not here to develop your device, Chuck. I’ve got other ideas. Part of it has to do with the company’s future, part of it has to do with earning money. The company needs money, a lot of it, to finish the projects you’re already working on.

  “Let’s start with your insistence on secrecy, then talk about money. I’ll ask questions, you tell me what you think. Socrates invented this, but it’s the best system I know of for people to educate themselves.”

  “Okay, I’ll start with the secrecy. My grandfather understood that if we want to make a lot of money doing this, we need to get to space first. Not just a one time, short trip, but actually start working out there. Not like the space station, they’re like lab rats in a can, except the can’s in space. As for money, if DARPA ever gets their collective butts in gear, our money problems are over.”

  “Chuck, how long has it taken and how much money has the company spent so far developing your invention?”

  “Well, it’s mostly grandpa’s invention. I helped, and I gave him a few ideas in the beginning. As to how much money, we’ve spent millions. I don’t know how many, maybe Frenchy does.”

  “Ben has the exact figures. But you’re right, we’ve spent millions and so far we’ve only made a few hundred thousand from our marine operations.”

  “Just so. And now you’re hoping a government agency will fund your future activities. You’re handing them control over your product.”

  “No, we’re keeping that in-house. We’ve only talked leasing.”

  “When you only have one customer, you’re at that customer’s mercy. I’ve got a better idea. You mentioned leasing; why?”

  “It gets the impeller system going and we keep control. Impeller driven planes, ships, submarines, maybe those landing craft too, we expect to earn millions from that.”

  “Who are you going to hire to operate the craft, where are you going to find the mechanics and repairmen you’ll need? Frenchy has described what it takes to build a device in general terms, but control is at least as important. What about hackers? Can someone slip malware into your computers?”

  “Not possible. The computers aren’t online.”

  “But where do the computers get their programming? Don’t tell me you hand-program each of the computers that control your machines.”

  “No, we use...damn. The original computer is online, the one I used. I’ve got an anti-virus program, but that’s only as good as the virus definitions.”

  “Right. You need to record a master file on a separate hard disk drive, make sure it has no surprises in the program, then lock it in a vault. Use it only to create other programs, record them on thumb drives or whatever, then use those to program the new computers as you install them. And you’re correct, never connect those computers to any sort of remote system.

  “Second, let’s talk about money. That also has to do with your security idea. I agree that you shouldn’t give away information on how to create the drives, but if you lease them to anyone, especially the government, they’ll soon know all there is to know. From there, someone will insist on a competitor getting the information. Governments hate monopolies.”

  “So how do we stop this, Dolph?”

  “Don’t lease anything, don’t rent it, don’t sell it. Keep it in-house. That means you’re going to have to shut down your New Mexico plant and move your operation offshore. Maybe the Cayman Islands, maybe find your own island or even build one.”

  “You don’t think small, do you? Build our own island?” said Will.

  “If you put yourself at the mercy of any nation, that nation controls your future. Maybe not immediately, but the option is always available if they decide to go that route. Only if you own your own extra-national country are you really in charge of your own future.”

&nbs
p; “Dolph, you sound like some sort of anarchist,” said Mel.

  “No. I’m simply being a realist. You might be able to buy a national government, but the temptation is always there to stop taking your golden eggs and go directly to the goose. Governments change. The official that offers you sanctuary today may die or be deposed. As soon as the US government understands just how powerful this revolutionary system of yours is, they’ll take control of it.”

  “You mentioned money, Dolph. Most of our funds are tied up in what we’re already doing, the factory, the generating station, and the test units. You’re suggesting we abandon those things?”

  “No, keep them, but distribute your manufacturing operation and control it from a place they cannot touch.”

  “Maybe the moon?”

  “Eventually, Chuck. Meantime, while you’re waiting for DARPA, there’s a better way to make a lot of money. How much do you know about Japan’s nuclear power system?”

  “I know a lot of it got wiped out by an earthquake, Dolph,” answered Lina.

  “Right. But not all, and Japan is only one example. But it’s a way to make a lot of money over the next few years and not be dependent on any nation.”

  Frenchy listened to the exchanges taking place, and smiled. Chuck smiled back at him and nodded. Maybe Dolph wasn’t as crazy as he sounded.

  “Keep talking, Dolph.”

  “How much weight can your ship lift, Chuck?”

  “With two people aboard? Maybe two tons, maybe more. It’s big and that makes it heavy. Not much, in other words.”

  “Could you increase the number of impeller units?”

  “We’d have to attach them externally, but it could be done. We’d need more fuel cells too, and that means more on-board fuel.”

  “Is there any reason you can’t put the fuel cells outside the fuselage? Attach them in the same way you attach the impellers?”

  “We could do that, I think. The cells are in stainless steel housings, and for that matter we could put the pumps and most of the plumbing outside the hull. But why? That would leave the ship empty, nothing behind the pilot’s cabin but the lifter arm for handling cargo.”

  “You’ll need to keep that manipulator arm, but whether you mount it internally or externally doesn’t matter. The idea I’m trying to get across is that you want to leave the cargo bay empty, except for reinforcing it longitudinally. Your cargoes are likely to be heavy.”

  “Keep talking, Dolph.”

  “The Japanese government has a problem. They’ve got a lot of spent fuel rods, still dangerous, just not powerful enough to operate a reactor at full efficiency. The Japanese are pretty desperate to get rid of those fuel rods. They call that high-level waste, and most developed nations are stuck with a lot of it. Right now, they’ve got those rods in huge concrete pools, waiting for someone to figure out how to dispose of them safely. The disposition is also a political problem. Vitrification is a first step, blending the spent fuel with glass, then enclosing it in a stainless steel tank. There may be other steps involved, but you get the idea. Suppose we offered to haul that spent fuel into space and dispose of it?”

  “There’s already too much junk in space, Dolph. The Japanese might not care, but the Russians, Chinese, and the US Government would throw a major fit if you tried to put those tanks in orbit. Anyway, just because it’s in orbit doesn’t mean it’s going to stay there. There have been several crashes where satellites fell to Earth. At least one had nuclear material on board.”

  “That might be another source of income, disposing of old satellites before they can break up, but not by leaving them in orbit. The obvious place is to send them to the Sun.”

  “I don’t know; I just don’t like the idea of something hitting the Sun like that comet hitting Jupiter. That left pockmarks that were visible for a long time.”

  “Won’t happen, Will. First, you’d only need to fly the tank or used satellite past the first Lagrange point and release it. It doesn’t even need to be very exact; gravity will pick it up and accelerate it toward the Sun like a comet. Most of it will never strike the Sun’s photosphere; it will vaporize at some point. No material can survive solar temperatures. First it melts, then turns into a plasma when it’s close enough. That plasma, ionized protons and electrons, will differentiate according to the mass of the nuclei. All of it will eventually be pushed away by the Solar wind. It’s the ultimate dispersion method, scattering the nuclei throughout the solar system.

  “How long will it take, to pick up a cargo in Japan and fly it past the Lagrange point? Or at least near there.”

  “A day, maybe as much as a week depending on how much acceleration the ship can achieve. You’re shooting for something like what a jet airliner does, take off and accelerate up at less than a gee of acceleration? Instead of leveling off like the airliner does, just keep going up? Never go into orbit, since you’re under constant acceleration until you reach the release point. You could direct the impellers to keep you on a straight line, but why bother? If you go faster, you just spiral around Earth, getting farther out each time you go around. You’d need to time the course so that you release the spent fuel toward the Sun.”

  “But wouldn’t it keep spiraling, Dolph?” asked Lina.

  He sighed. “No. It wouldn’t be accelerating after it was released. From there, any acceleration would come from the Sun’s gravity. The resultant spiral might take months to reach the Sun, but regardless, it would be effectively disposed of. The space truck then reverses course and begins to slow down, spiraling back toward the Earth.”

  “Dolph, each trip is going to take a lot of fuel. You would need a lot accelerating to the Lagrange Point, even more to slow down and control your descent through the atmosphere.”

  “Right. You’d want to stop at a filling station.”

  “What filling station? There’s nothing out there but satellites!”

  “Just so. You’d need your own, maybe a couple of dozen of them eventually. Perhaps a hundred, who knows? Simple, automated systems, a tank to hold the water, a photovoltaic array to generate the DC current to electrolyze it, pumps, compressors and tanks to store the hydrogen and oxygen. You might even need a fleet of service craft to haul water up to the stations, perhaps deliver hydrogen and oxygen to stranded spacecraft. Think of something like airborne refueling planes. If a station is running low on fuel, call for a water tanker. But it might be even better for an outbound ship to enter orbit long enough to top off the fuel tanks, then boost the cargo past the Lagrange point before turning for home.”

  “You’re talking about a lot of ships. Who would operate these?”

  “The company, or a separate company that’s part of your overall system. One that concentrates on space operations. That will keep your system secret a lot longer than if you leased it or sold it to someone else.

  “That brings up the next topic, education. You’re eventually going to need a lot of people to operate your ships. They’re not going to be easy to find, and you won’t know whether you can trust them. That means you’ll need your own school system, and it will have to be distributed to any nation that will allow you to set up a school under your rules. Make the schools different, not like any other school system. Concentrate on education and avoid distractions. Students would live on campus during the week, perhaps go home to their parents on weekends, assuming they have parents that you consider trustworthy. Some of the students might live in the dorms the entire time. You should discourage contact with non-school society if possible. That’s the only way to keep drugs and crime out, and you should also beware of intrusion by religious figures.”

  “How would you do that? They’re everywhere.”

  “Simple. The students keep it out, on pain of summary dismissal. One mistake, the student is publicly dismissed. Control bullying too, more zero tolerance. Make education free, include classes in philosophy and arts as well as science and engineering. You want well-rounded students with the broadest knowledge base possi
ble. As for the cost, it will all be paid for by the company’s profits. The space trucks will earn an enormous amount of money and never need to go into deep space at all. Make the schools about education. Those who can’t keep up with the science-based program, turn them to a different track, maybe hydroponic farming or whatever, or dismiss them if you must with no possibility of return.”

  “That seems overly harsh, Dolph.” Lina frowned when she said this.

  “It is, and yet it’s not. Eventually, you want to send people on extended voyages to the outer planets. You don’t want bullies as part of your crew, you don’t want people who are controlled by their vices. Individual differences, absolutely allow those, but not differences that would keep anyone from functioning as part of a team.”

  “Holy cow, Frenchy! Where did you find this guy?”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Mister Goldman? Senator Byington would like to speak to you if you have a moment.”

  “Certainly, I’ve always got time for the Senator. Put him on.” Sol’s first thought was that this was another effort to get him to increase his donations, either to the senator’s campaign or to his party. He resolved to say no this time; after all, what had the senator done for him lately?

  “Sol, how are you? I just wanted you to know I haven’t forgotten about that request we talked about. I wanted to let you know that I’ve finally gotten a response, actually three of them. The agencies are willing to help, but at the moment their hands are tied. Legally, there doesn’t seem to be anything they can do. That company, it’s now a holding company, all they’re doing is spending money. It’s legal too, they’ve crossed the T’s and dotted the I’s.

  They’re not selling anything yet. I know the company contacted DARPA, but the Defense Department people dug in their heels when Transportation and the FAA sent them a request. I reckon it might be time to rein them in, the Defense people I mean, but they’ve got so many fingers in so many pies that it might be difficult. A lot of companies, some in my state, are manufacturing everything from trucks to MRE’s, so I’ve got to be careful. Anyway, it looks like our best approach is to watch and jump in as soon as there’s an opening. I’ll know when they start selling whatever it is they’re making and I’ll be ready to call for hearings. The Marines want them to build assault craft, I’ve found out that much, and as soon as they sign the contract I’ll have a reason subpoena the company officials. It’ll slow them down, maybe even stop them. Transportation is looking into what they’re doing, so are the aviation people, we’re bound to find something. If we can throw enough obstacles in their way, they might just give up and quit. Maybe sell off whatever they’ve been doing if it looks like they won’t be making any money. If that happens and you decide to invest, I might be interested too, so don’t forget to let me know before you finalize any deals.”