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freespace2dotcom wrote:Funny, I always thought the kiss method was "keep it simple, stupid" oh well.
"Descent autopilot!? I don't need no steenking descent autopilot!"
AphelionHellion wrote:*has a terminal case of ADD*
I'm afraid I haven't really been working so much as... er... not working. Gahh! I can never finish what I start. Or intend to start!
Perhaps we should do some brainstorming (I hate that word but I can't think of a suitable replacement) to figure out what part of the story we're working on? I admit I liked the "snippet exchange" we all had earlier... I wonder though in practice how we turn that sort of thing into a coherent plot?
DocHoliday wrote:What's ADD? Me ignorant...
Aphellion wrote:Story? Jackson? Sound?
AphelionHellion wrote:Haha. Well, it's true that I'm not very good with math ADD = Attention Deficit DisorderIt was sort of a joke, sorta serious. I do wonder if I have it, on occasHey, look, a bird! I actually like this "free form" idea for coming up with new "chapters". Sorta like decentralized file sharing ('cept no one's trying to shut us down). "Organic".
We boarded the Orbit (I took that name as a good omen) Airlines flight 219 that afternoon. Linda and I settled in for the long flight down to Florida while Trevor with much groaning and stalling eventually started in on some school work. I was impressed by the skill of the captain. Fairbanks wasn't a small airport but the Boeing 737 was a huge plane. I would have been nervous trying to take off from a minimal length runway like this especially covered with snow but our captain did a perfect job, pulling the plane up with plenty of runway left and we climbed smoothly to our cruising altitude. The flight was a comfortable one. The air was calm and stable and the big jet was like sitting in the Ritz after a few months of pushing tiny bouncy bush planes all around Alaska. I plugged my headset in and relaxed to some tunes. About an hour into the flight Trevor shut the book he was working on and tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention."What's up pal." I asked. I'd almost been asleep."I gotta do a report for school and it has to include information from an expert. I started to do it on wildlife management and was going to talk to Ranger Mike but I decided last night to do it on the history of space flight instead."Why wasn't I surprised at this development."Have you checked the internet and library?" I asked."Yeah, I'll do that down in Florida but I still have to do the part where I talk to an expert. I have the stuff about Mercury, Apollo and the early days of the Space Shuttle but I wanted to get you to tell about the Space Planes and Orbital ships." "Well actually I first trained for the Space Shuttle. It's been since then that NASA developed the space planes and other stuff. Most of it after I had retired from the Air Force.""But you do know about the space planes don't you? Otherwise you wouldn't be going on this mission."It wasn't like I had a lot to do in the next few hours. I put my headphones up and gave Trevor my full attention."Since you know about the early days of space flight I'll hit that lightly and give you the rest of the story. After proving we could send people into space and get them back safely as well as visit a neighboring satellite NASA decided the next step in exploration was to establish a more permanent residence. This was the International Space Station (ISS). To build this they needed something that could carry a large payload and was also reusable. A space going truck kind of like my Caravan. This was the Space Shuttle. It was just the tool they needed and flew many flights with a perfect safety record until Challenger blew up in the 80s. That grounded the shuttle fleet until a fix was engineered and implemented. Years after that however another problem developed when the orbiter Columbia disintegrated on reentry.It was clear by then that the shuttle fleet was getting old and a new means of transportation was needed. Unfortunately there were funding problems and economic times were much bleaker than during the early days. There just wasn't enough money in the budget for a new space vehicle so they struggled on with the existing Space Shuttle. During those flights however an experiment was carried into orbit that would change the face of modern space exploration. A small company called Space Tech Incorporated was trying out a new technology in microprocessors. Their innovation was the creation of semiconductors in hard vacuum. On Earth it was a difficult task. The equipment and facilities required made research in this field cost prohibitive. With this in mind the board of directors of Space Tech scheduled an experiment to fly on a shuttle mission where this technology would be tried in the near perfect natural vacuum of space. Extra cost would be almost nothing since the conditions already existed for just this sort of technology. The experiment was such a success, yielding a semiconductor so pure that microprocessor manufacture would be turned on it's collective ear if only a way could be designed to mass produce them in space. Space Tech approached a couple other computer hardware and component manufacturers and they formed a group who planned to fund a module on the ISS to test the feasibility of the new technology.The module was built and orbited a couple years later and proved the concept admirably. The only problem with manufacturing microprocessors in space was the cost of launching the raw materials to the facility. Finished microprocessors were small and easy to transport but the bulky raw materials were a different matter and most of those resided on the wrong side of the gravity well. To ship heavy materials up for manufacture into light easily transported products was the exact opposite of what was needed so Space Tech went in search of a new source of the raw materials for their manufacturing. The answer was the Moon. There the needed ores were in abundance and easily mined and there also were the perfect conditions for the new manufacturing method. Space Tech approached NASA with a proposal for funding if NASA would engineer the necessary transport to and from the proposed facility. With a large influx of funding NASA went to work with the same fervor that prevailed during the Mercury through Apollo days and immediately decided that the shuttle concept was too unwieldy and had safety issues so they pulled plans for a space plane called the X-21 out of mothballs and set to work building it to replace the old shuttle fleet as the "pickup truck". With adequate funding the pace of innovation went fast and furious. Most of the space craft were already on the drawing boards and many potential problems solved years before. In fact in a couple cases the available technology outpaced the production of space craft. NASA had been operating without funding for so long that some of the designs had to be reworked to take advantage of innovations and advances that the original designers had never dreamed of.With the ease of conventional flight into space came an expanded interest in commercial space exploitation. Companies who had looked on with doubts became believers when they saw the first production run from Brighton Beach Manufacturing. Microprocessors of such complexity and integration that if they could be manufactured in bulk would revolutionize the computer industry. Space Tech was well on the way to becoming a leader in the manufacture of these components. A full sized production line was set up on Luna and workers hired and trained. Shipments were planned at first for every six months when a small fleet of the newly designed space craft were dispatched to rotate workers to and from the complex and carry it's wares to the markets back home.The X-21 was the first but not the only transport to come of this renewed interest in space utilization. If the X-21 was the pickup truck then the Shuttle A was the eighteen wheeler. Purpose built in space the Shuttle A was never intended to touch the atmosphere. It's place was hauling goods and workers from Earth orbit to the Moon and back. The Shuttle itself was only a module with quarters for a command crew (tractor trailer with sleeper?) that was attached to cargo and fuel pods for the transport. When a shipment was complete then the module would be attached to similar pods on the other end of the 200,000+ mile assembly line and the resulting contraption would make the return trip. Another ship to come from this era was the Delta Glider. This vehicle is the "passenger van of space". With minimal payload capacity the DG Mk4 was intended as a cheap transport for injured or sick workers from ISS to KSC or to take needed specialists up into orbit where they would board a Shuttle A for the flight to Luna. The DG Mk4 proved so successful that an improved version called DG II or GSNDO is just now being phased in and the old Mk4s phased out. The DG is perfect for the job of flying from Earth to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).With a truck and a passenger van only a sedan was needed or maybe a better description would be a VW Beetle. This is the little Personnel Transport Vehicle (PTV). This little gem is simply a cockpit and engine. The passenger is expected to stay seated for whatever length the mission is, usually only a couple hours or at most two or three days. This is space transport at it's simplest. The drawback of course is passenger comfort and no payload capacity other than one human and the needed consumables. The advantages however are very high thrust to weight. A PTV although never used for it could conceivably launch from Earth orbit to Luna but at considerable cost of comfort to the passenger who would be stuck in the tiny cockpit for the entire trip.A final manned vehicle called the Dragonfly was also developed. The Dragonfly is a space tug. Meant only to move cargo and space station pieces around in LEO and Lunar orbit. It carries a two man crew and uses Reaction Control System (RCS) only for flight. The Dragonfly will dock with a cargo pod or station component and using it's vectored engines to compensate for offset thrust, push it from a station to a waiting Shuttle A or back to the station.A number of unmanned rockets have been developed but I won't go into those since that would take quite a while to run down. The mission I will be going on will give me a chance to fly two of the mannable vehicles. I'll launch from KSC in a new DG II along with two technicians a copilot and one passenger and rendezvous with ISS. The parts are presently in route on an unmanned rocket to ISS where they will have a Shuttle A pod attached and the craft readied to take our little crew on to Luna. Once the parts are delivered I'll take a Shuttle A back to Earth orbit and the DG II back down to KSC."Trevor looked thoughtful for a moment and then looked directly into my eyes and asked the question I had been expecting yet dreading to hear him ask soon."Is it going to be dangerous? Tell me the truth." He said loudly enough that the lady across the isle looked our direction and then quieter, "I know it's normal to smooth things over. Make them seem less scary to the kid but I want to know, no I have to know for real. Is this going to be a dangerous mission?""When have I ever treated you like that?" I returned. He shook his head slightly but his eyes stayed glued to my own. "I've never lied to you before and I won't lie to you now Trevor, In space flight there's always a risk involved. Any time you are flying on the cutting edge of technology there's a chance something will go wrong. Much less chance of that now that we aren't sitting on top of what amounts to the contained energy of a small atomic weapon of highly flammable material and then lighting a fire to it but even now there's always a chance of something going wrong. Every detail of a space flight is meticulously planned in advance. We have the best equipment and most advanced training possible. Every eventuality has been carefully thought out but there's still no guarantees. Realistically however your mom was right in what she said back in Coldfoot. The risk is probably less on this than it is flying small planes up in Alaska and you've flown with me enough to know what those are. If something happens there'll likely be some warning and time before anything becomes deadly for either a rescue to be attempted or for us to fix the problem ourselves. There's also the fact that my whereabouts are known down to the inch at all times and some of the brightest people in the world are on the comm with me 24 hours a day to come up with a solution. In fact they've been working for years thinking of possible problems and how solve them before they even happen. I have all that going for me but I can't say it's perfectly safe. I hope that's a good enough answer because I can't explain it any more clearly."Trevor looked at me with a serious expression as if he were taking my measure and finally said, "Yeah I guess so."
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Topic: Ideas for DG-III story (Read 31261 times)
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