NFI: New Frontiers, Incorporated: Book 2, the New Frontiers Series

by Jack L Knapp

  “Just so. Financing for our contract with you can still be arranged, but this has strategic implications. Our finance minister pointed out that you have offices in a number of nations, but almost all are in the West. I wonder if you might consider investing in Japan?”

  “We did. The problem, Mister Watanabe, is that Japan’s technical products are costly. As for establishing a base here, Japan has limited open space, which means land for a base would be costly compared with other locations. There’s also the question of security. Your people have experienced violence recently.”

  “I see. I have little room to maneuver regarding costs. We still have the nuclear material issue, but our earlier efforts were here in Japan so the costs did not impact our foreign trade balance. By employing your company, we hoped to save money as well as reduce the environmental impact. This would do much to placate our citizens. The government has pointed out, however, that our national debt and balance of payments would be severely affected. Money transferred to you would have to be made up from domestic operations, which in turn would slow future development here in Japan. The projected sum is considerable.”

  Watanabe cleared his throat. “Such were the discussions we believe convinced Mister Haruka to act as he did. We believe he added the nuclear materials from an extra fuel rod to the mix that went into the canister. The uranium, plutonium, and byproducts from fission are much heavier than silica. His actions not only added weight, they made the canister more dangerous due to increased radioactivity. He endangered our people as well as yours.

  “We can ensure this never happens again. In the meantime, the effect on our economy remains unresolved. We take an unusual step in explaining this matter in such detail, but we are in your debt due to the danger your employees experienced.”

  Watanabe’s expression changed from apologetic to pleading. “Are there no unfilled needs that we can solve? We have excellent heavy industries as you know, we also are an island nation with access to the Pacific, surely there must be something?”

  “To be honest, I can’t think of anything. The only thing we don’t have a source for at the moment is small space-capable fission power plants. We use fuel cells, and Japanese companies produce them, but your products offer no real advantage. They’re no better than what we currently use. Fuel cells also won’t work for the interplanetary ships we hope to build.”

  “May we have a moment to confer, Mister French? Perhaps something might be done.”

  The conference-within-a-conference lasted more than fifteen minutes. A great deal of low-voiced argument ensued; whatever the topic, there was no agreement among the men. Finally, Watanabe gained control. The rapid flow of Japanese caused the interpreter’s eyes to widen; up to this point, he’d been quiet, bored with having nothing to do. Frenchy glanced at him, but the man said nothing. Whatever was going on, he did not want to tell the two Americans. They sipped water and waited.

  “It is possible we may be able to help you. We have excellent scientists and engineers, and some are experts in designing nuclear units. Experimental work has been done on units similar to what you describe. It will take time, there’s no certainty that our scientists will succeed, and the work will be costly. Can you guarantee purchase of such units if we can build them to your specifications?”

  “I can. How many are you talking about?”

  “How many do you need, Mister French?”

  The negotiations continued for a few minutes more before both were satisfied with the arrangement.

  “We have a final question, Mister French. Can you assist in financing the costs of development? Perhaps by transporting our fuel rods at a lower cost per unit?”

  Frenchy glanced at Will, who nodded back.

  “We can. We’ll reduce the charges per shipment to half what you agreed to, the other half will be our contribution to the research effort. Let’s say you match what we lose by reducing our fees, thus splitting the cost. We can offer something else; we will build ships that can carry unconverted fuel rods, reducing your costs even further. The new ships will have additional shielding around the cargo bay and between the fuel rods, so the fuel rods can be loaded directly from your storage pools and safely disposed of in space. I believe you already have equipment to handle fuel rods, so that should require no additional costs. But no more overloading, that has to be clear. My ship commanders will jettison the cargoes if it happens again.”

  Watanabe stood, then bowed assent. The others rose and bowed in turn.

  Frenchy and Will shook hands with each of the men before leaving. Neither cracked a smile.

  Until they were back in their hotel room. There the smiles turned into wide grins. “I wonder what kind of booze is available, Frenchy? I think we deserve to celebrate!”

  #

  Chuck’s meeting with the engineering staff did not go as expected.

  “Here’s the problem. You need machinery that can operate on the moon, in vacuum. You say you want an electrically-powered backhoe, but there are problems with that, starting with energy density. Batteries just aren’t that efficient. They’re also expensive, you’ve got to haul them a long way, and how would you recharge them? You want to use electricity from a power plant you haven’t built yet. Not good engineering practice, Chuck. A critic might even call the idea dumb.”

  Chuck shook his head at the chuckles. “Okay, so how would you do it? Will’s idea is a potential gold mine, it’s just too good to give up. There must be some way, short of lines of men with shovels digging ditches on the moon.”

  “Why not use a diesel backhoe?”

  “What, a diesel engine in space? Diesels breathe air, and the moon is pretty short of that!”

  “Maybe, but let’s explore the idea of no air. What part of the air does a diesel use?”

  “Oxygen, of course, lots of oxygen. The more fuel you burn, the more oxygen the engine consumes.”

  “We already hydrolyze oxygen from water, that’s how the refueling stations work. We could set up a station on Luna that would do the same thing. We can easily haul water to provide the raw material, that’s what we do with the refueling stations, although we might not have to. There may be water on the moon, we just have to find it. It will be ice, of course, but melting it is easy. A pressurized container with a simple concentrating lens is more than hot enough when the sun is up. Maybe use a Fresnel lens, molded from the new transparent metal? If we can’t find ice on Luna, we already have a base in Iceland, that gives us access to the North Atlantic. Think icebergs and the Titanic; icebergs are fresh water, so there would be no desalination problems. There’s also Greenland, which would probably be willing to sell us ice from their icecap. That’s fresh water ice, easy to mine, easy to transport. I’ve got a few ideas about that too. Have you considered a system of barges? They’d need their own power plants and impellers, but control could be exercised from a crew module in front. It wouldn’t be remote control at all, just signals to operate the power and propulsion system on each barge. They could be joined in an extended line or clumped together in bunches, whatever looks best in practice. Each module would need to be self-sufficient except for control, but that could come from the flight computers in the crew module.”

  “Wow, I can see that working. How large were you thinking of?”

  “A hundred tons, a hundred thousand tons, I don’t think it would make a difference. Assembly of the barges would be a problem, but that’s just cut and try engineering. Easy money.”

  “You don’t think small, do you? Okay, eventually maybe we mine ice on the moon, but we can haul a lot of ice from Earth in the beginning, cheap. We land the ice on the moon, maybe leave it packaged in the transport barge. Now what?”

  “We already have refueling stations. We upgrade that design to a larger one, maybe two or three of them, and park them on the moon near where you want to build your electrical plant. Feed them water from melted ice, you get oxygen and hydrogen by electrolysis. I think a diesel engine would work better, but we
can look at a hydrogen-oxygen engine if we have to. But let’s consider diesel. It wouldn’t even have to be a four-stroke unit. A single-cycle power plant could work, since you’re burning diesel with pure oxygen. Give me a minute to get this on paper.”

  Pencils came out and the yellow note pads were soon covered with drawings and formulae. “Two cylinder or four cylinder?” caused another intense discussion.

  “What about weight? At one sixth Earth weight, you spud in your bucket and your backhoe lifts off the ground. What about that?”

  “Yeah, but the materials are also one-sixth weight.”

  “Doesn’t matter, it’s extracting a bucket-load from the ground, whatever that’s like. You have to rip the bucket through the dirt or whatever before you can lift it. Sometimes you only get half a bucket, maybe only a few scrapings if the ground is hard.”

  “Hmmm...could be a problem.”

  “Maybe make it heavier? How about powered augers, say one at each corner? They bore into the ground, so they could anchor the unit. Reverse them when you’re ready to crawl forward.”

  “Okay, that’s doable, but more weight on the machine would be simpler and you wouldn’t need to waste time emplacing the augers. Tracks, you think?”

  “Absolutely. How are you coming with that engine?”

  “Got a first approximation. Four cylinders, because it might not be as efficient as I think, but here’s the way it should work. No intake valves, just direct injection into each cylinder. Each stroke is a power stroke. Timing is important; the oxy has to be injected while the cylinder is halfway up in the reverse stroke. That’s how you get the heating effect, from compression. Inject the diesel fuel when the piston nears the top of the cylinder, after the oxy is hot. Ignition takes place, the mix expands and pushes the cylinder down. No exhaust valves needed either. Near the bottom of the stroke, openings in the cylinder wall allow the gases to escape. Most of them will be cleared out because they’re escaping into vacuum. Gases cool by expansion, so you channel the expanded exhaust gases past cooling fins molded into the engine block. It’s like what happens using air cooling, but using exhaust gases instead of ambient air to cool the engine. No need to worry about pollution, nobody’s breathing the exhaust, and it won’t even need a muffler. The engine would be self contained, modular, and much more powerful for its weight than any conventional diesel. It will probably need a heavy flywheel to smooth out the revolutions, though. I think we can do this. What do you think?”

  “I think you guys are nuts, but I like it! If you can make this work, you’ll have a nice bonus coming. Maybe a paid vacation in Finland; Frenchy likes the place. It may have something to do with the saunas.”

  “Saunas, you say? A whole month up there? It’s next door to Sweden, and for that matter Denmark and Norway aren’t far. And you did mention bonuses...?”

  Chapter Four

  Alexander Zlotov, a deputy minister of Roscosmos State Corporation, was tired of the discussion. He had come up through the Russian Federal Space Agency, then transferred to Roscosmos when the RFSA had been dissolved. The name was different, but things hadn’t changed much, if at all.

  He dismissed his visitor and lit a cigarette. The military always wanted more than the RSC could deliver, but were never willing to pay for the development costs. Probably it wasn’t the man’s fault; no agency was truly flush, thanks to the worldwide petroleum glut. Low oil prices had forced a temporary change in the usual three-year fiscal plan. The new one-year plan might serve to ride out the downturn, but no one could predict what would happen when the spending caps were lifted. Most expected inflation to increase, but where it would stop no one knew. The president insisted on holding tight to the nation’s gold and foreign currency reserves, meaning that the central bank was unable to support the sagging ruble. The conflict in Ukraine simmered, a military buildup in the Middle East was underway, and both sucked more money from an already-anemic budget.

  The telephone’s ring interrupted his musings. “Sir, I’ve been contacted by a Chinese official. He would like to meet with you on a matter that concerns both our nations. He would also like a representative of the United States and the European Union to be included. He suggests that he could speak to an American contact, a staff member in the office of one of their senators, and hopes that you might speak to someone in the EU.”

  “Curious. Why me? And why would he want to meet with all those people? Did he say when?”

  “He hoped that you would suggest a date, but asked me to tell you that sooner would be better. He is concerned about an issue that affects space policy of both our nations.”

  “Did he say where he wants to do this? I’m not interested in going back to China. The place is too crowded, too polluted. Let them come here.”

  “Sir, that might not be possible. If the press found out...”

  “I see what you mean. Well, not there, not here, and certainly not in the USA. No, this proposed meeting might not even be possible. Can’t he send a message through the diplomatic pouch if he’s concerned about security?’

  “He said that a face-to-face meeting was necessary.”

  “You’re remarkably well informed, Evgeny! What’s going on here?”

  “I’ve acted as a conduit before, minister. Your predecessor often used my contacts.”

  “Deputy minister, Evgeny. Why was I not told of this?”

  “I believe it was in the briefing papers, sir. Our superiors know of my experience.”

  “You’re saying I should have read that stack of boring documents, aren’t you?”

  “No sir. I would never suggest that.”

  “Well, no matter. Do we have a place where a low-level meeting might be conducted without being spied on?”

  “Similar meetings have happened in Baku, sir.”

  “In Azerbaijan? Backward place! Why there?”

  “It is quite isolated, sir. Very little of interest to the press goes on there. The Chinese official who contacted me, Chu Dien, has been there before.”

  “Meeting my predecessor, I suppose. It’s not that far from Moscow, so transportation wouldn’t be a problem. We’ve got enough left in the budget to cover the trip, I expect. I would only be gone a day or two, three at the most. What of the European? Do you have a suggestion?”

  “I do. He’s German, a man named Willi Kraenkel, but he works for the EU. Some sort of financial analyst, I believe.”

  “We do a lot of business with the EU, so we don’t want to upset that. Neither of us would enjoy what might happen, Evgeny. With that caution, go ahead and see what you can arrange. I’ll want at least a week’s warning, preferably two. No surprises, Evgeny.”

  “I’ll see to it, sir.”

  Deputy Minister Zlotov looked after him sourly. Uppity clerk. Who did he know? More important, who was using him, and for what?

  #

  Chuck met the chief engineer of NFI’s spaceship design section in Rovaniemi. He was using Frenchy’s office today; Frenchy was in Reykjavik and wasn’t expected back for two days.

  “Afternoon, Chuck. I was reading your proposal. That’s quite a change you’ve got in mind, and that idea of hauling ice to the moon by linking barges together is intriguing. If we can make it work.”

  “I have confidence in you, Pete. So what do you think of the proposal.”

  “Not much, to be honest. Putting the hatch on the bottom, that’s not difficult, but I’m curious why.”

  “It makes it easier to load and discharge cargo, Pete. We can also do without the two flight crewmen, reducing costs per flight. It also reduces the chance of the crew being exposed to radiation. We’re not like other ships, we can hover, and the flight computers allow very precise control. What I’d like to do is package four fuel rods with insulation between them. The copilot would open the hatch, the pilot hovers over the package and descends until the copilot is able to engage the locks, then lift high enough to close the cargo hatches. I was thinking you could work with the Japanese to design the
fuel rod pack, then have your guys make up a dummy so the crew has a chance to practice loading it. I wouldn’t want to try the first hookup with a live cargo.

  “There’s another reason; there was a problem during the first flight. Will thought about dumping the cargo...it was heavier than outlined in the specifications, and had it been only a little heavier it could have crashed Gypsy...but Wolfgang was the pilot, and he wanted to keep going. He got away with it, but next time? Far better to dump the cargo than have it and the ship crash in the ocean. Or over land, for that matter.”

  “You’re talking about a single-use ship to haul only one kind of cargo. Why even bother with a hatch? Suppose we make the cargo bay modular, so that when loaded it becomes part of the ship. We’d have to strengthen the dorsal frame and the two lateral frame members, but we’d save weight if we could eliminate the handling arm.”

  “Wouldn’t that increase the expense, dumping a special-purpose container.”

  “It would, but how many would you really dump in space? I hear rumors that you plan on discharging cargo elsewhere.”

  “You know about that, do you?”

  “Yeah, engineers talk, you should know that. That one-cycle diesel? They’ll never get it to work.”