Tiona (a sequel to "Vaz") (19 page)

“Don’t forget that chlorine gas is pretty corrosive. Not sayin’ chlorine is the problem, just that distillation might not solve it. We really need to try to figure out which molecules are actually the issue before we start firing random solutions at it.”

***

In a funk about Ronnie, Tiona slept in. When she finally got up and headed downstairs, her mood had not improved. Lisanne said, “Hey, good to see you up. Your dad’s all in a twist about the big saucer and hoping you’ll come help him troubleshoot.”

Darkly, Tiona said, “He’s going to have to wait.”

Lisanne grinned, “You hung over from that New Year’s party you went to?”

“No!” Tiona said irritatedly, as she set out a bowl of cereal. “I drank about one and a quarter beers. No hangover for me.”

“You sound disappointed that you
don’t
have a hangover. There must be something else wrong?”

“Yeah, Ronnie’s acting like an
ass
again,” Tiona said, getting strawberries and milk out of the fridge.

Lisanne felt bad for her daughter, but she didn’t like Ronnie so she couldn’t help but feel good for her as well. She sat down across from where Tiona was building her breakfast. “What did he do this time?”

Not taking her eyes off the strawberry she was viciously chopping up, Tiona said, “Drinking again.” She sighed, “He was so much nicer when he was sober. Played better too. Of course he thinks that ‘being sober stifled his creativity.’”

“A lot of drunks
think
they are doing great, but it’s just because they don’t even notice their own mistakes.”

“Exactly! I tried to tell him that but…”

Lisanne waited for her daughter to continue, but when she didn’t, she ventured, “But he didn’t want to hear it, huh?”

Tiona didn’t say anything in response. She poured milk on her cereal sat down and scooped up a spoonful that she put in her mouth. Then around the mouthful, she said, “No!”

Lisanne let her shoulders sag a little, then said, “Lots of times the guys who seem talented and exciting and handsome etcetera turn out to be crappy relationship material…” she trailed off.

Tiona rolled her eyes, “I’ve heard this sermon before. It’s not like the guy
you
chose is ‘great relationship material.’”

Lisanne barked a laugh, “No, but I went into our
relationship
knowing
that. I also didn’t think I’d somehow magically change him into the guy I’d
guy
always pictured in my dreams.”

Tiona stared at her mother for a moment, “Why
did
you marry him, Mom?”

Lisanne stared back for a couple of seconds, then said in a quiet throaty voice, “I know he’s not the easiest person to live with, and he surely can’t be the easiest person to have as a father. But I
do
love him.” She looked directly at Tiona “And never doubt that he loves you in his own way. He might not be able to display his emotions like other people, but he
does
love his family. As to why, like I said, ‘because he’s an astonishing genius.’” She winked, “
And
because I hoped he’d stoke me with a couple of amazing kids.”

Tiona made a disgusted face, “Stoke you! Where did that come from?”

Lisanne laughed, “I was quoting my high-school aged daughter.”

“
I
said that?!” Tiona said, looking horrified.

“It was a stressful time.” Lisanne shrugged, “Like the teenage years are for most people and you had the extra issue that we couldn’t figure out what was going on with your dad.” She gave a little grin, “I’m sure you’d
never
say something that rude today.”

Tiona got a distant look in her eyes, “I sure don’t
remember
saying that.” She turned back to her mother and grinned, “But it
was
kind of a stressful time.” She winked, “Maybe all that stress made you dream an episode in which your incredibly sweet daughter acted as if she were rude?”

“Maybe,” Lisanne laughed. She got up and walked around to give Tiona a hug. With her ear close to Tiona’s, she whispered, “I’m sure you couldn’t actually have said anything rude when you were a teenager. I
must
have dreamed it.”

Tiona put a finger to her chin in a “thinking” pose; then pulled it away with a smile, “Yeah,
that’s
probably it.”

“Now that you’ve finished your cereal, are you going to go see what’s up with your dad? Or should I take him some Valium?”

“I’m going. I’m going…”

Down in the basement, Tiona found Vaz with CAD/CAM drawings up on every screen in his lab. “Mom said you were looking for me?”

Vaz murmured something to his AI; then spun quickly in his chair, looking excited. “Yeah! I wanted you to look over the plans I’ve drawn up for the big disc.” He frowned with a slight look of worry, “I’ve already ordered quite a few things that I feel very sure of. But I didn’t want to order the big items until you’d looked at the plans. Maybe you’ll see an issue that I’ve missed?”

“Okay…” Tiona said doubtfully. “I’m not really qualified as a structural engineer, but I’m happy to look.”

Vaz said, “Yeah, I’m not an engineer either. I’m just over-designing everything rather than trying to cut anything close.” He turned back forward, “Here, let me show you…”

Tiona watched in amazement as he took her through his design. The basis of the entire thing was a half a meter thick by eight meter disc. It was divided into six 2.66 meter circular membranes arranged hexagonally like a honeycomb around a 2.66 meter opening in the center. The membranes at the top and bottom of the big disc would propel dark matter and could be powered individually for attitude control. The area between the six discs was also covered with membrane and could also be powered to make it into one huge eight meter disc with a 2.66 meter hole in the middle. The empty space between the top and the bottom of the big disc had storage tanks for water as well as an electrolysis system to break water down for oxygen. There was also a large activated charcoal air filtration section with multiple canisters of soda lime to absorb CO
2
. The 2.66 meter opening in the middle of the big disc allowed access for service and passed plumbing and wiring up and down. Vaz had tested putting a hole through the center of several of their discs and said it had only a small effect on efficiency of thrust. A hole in the center certainly didn’t cause the big problems that a corner on the outside did.

Rows of half meter discs were arranged perpendicularly inside the big disc to provide forward, lateral and rotational thrust if needed.

Suspended underneath the main disc was a ten megawatt fusion plant, based on the patent Vaz had licensed to GE. The water, boron, and layered metal necessary for shielding contributed five of the eight and a half metric tons of weight of the overall craft. However, Vaz had calculated that the big disc should be able to produce about 95,000 pounds of thrust while only using a little over 70% of power from the fusion plant. Since this would produce accelerations over five gravities, he didn’t ever expect to run the plant full out, although he’d designed the power runs and the structural strength of the craft to be able to tolerate full power and thrust with a substantial safety margin.

Mounted on top of the disc was a living area with five acceleration seats arranged in a fashion that reminded Tiona of the inside of a big SUV. Around the seats was storage, a small food prep area, a closet with a camping toilet and a little airlock in the back! “Dad! This is
way
more than you need to go up to the stratosphere, or even to LEO, to test the dark matter thrusting hypothesis!”

Vaz looked a little embarrassed. “Well, it seemed kind of silly to design something that could
only
do that. Why not design something that could do more?”

Tiona frowned, “How long would that water last, using it for both oxygen and for drinking?”

Vaz eyed the drawing, “A liter of liquid water breaks down to produce 600 liters of oxygen gas and that’s enough to support a human for a day. I figured three liters per day for drinking. Those tanks
could
hold 4,000 liters which would last five people for 200 days or six and a half months. I think 800 liters for one month with a safety margin of 10 days is a lot more reasonable”

“And there’s enough space for five months of water with enough soda lime and food too?!”

He nodded, “But you wouldn’t be able to do five G’s if you loaded it that full. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to be in that little space for five months.” He shrugged, “Or wanting to do five G’s for that matter. Really, no one would want to be on board for even a month, but I thought it should always be stocked for at least a month to be conservative.”

Tiona exhaled a long breath, “Holy crap dad! Where would you be able to go in a month at one gravity of acceleration?”

He frowned, “You’d have to accelerate for half the time, then flip over and decelerate for half the time. With one day accelerating you’d go 23 million miles and then after one day decelerating, you’d be at 46 million miles which would be far enough to get you to Mars when it’s in the closer parts of its orbit. A six and a half day trip would take you 480 million miles, which is about the range to get to Jupiter. Nine days to Saturn, 13 days to Uranus, 16 days to Neptune.” He frowned, “It seems like Uranus would be the answer to your question since I assume you’d want to be able to go there
and
come back in your thirty days.” He frowned, “But, it would take twenty-six days for the trip there and back and you wouldn’t have much time to do anything after you got there.” He shrugged, “You wouldn’t have a very good safety margin either, so you
definitely
should fill some of that extra tankage.”

Tiona arched an eyebrow, “Pluto?”

“Eighteen days.” He frowned, “On average. Its orbit is
very
elliptical.”

Tiona got a distant look in her eye, “Wow, I’ve just been thinking of this as a way to test our hypotheses. I hadn’t been thinking of it as a way to explore our solar system. And in a flying saucer no less!”

Vaz blinked, “I looked up your ‘flying saucers.’ They’re
fictional
.” He looked a little irked, saying “fictional” like it was a dirty word.

Tiona’s eyes twinkled as she grinned at her father, “I know! But now
you’re
designing a real one!”

“Function drives design,” he said exasperatedly. “Circular membranes work a lot better so
of course
it’s circular.” He frowned distantly, “I’ve been thinking that maybe corners set up vortices in the dark matter or something,” he mused. His eyes re-focused on Tiona, “Anyway, corners sap the power so it’s much better if it’s circular!”

Tiona put a hand on his arm, “I know Dad. I know. Still, we
are
building a flying saucer. Maybe the little green men were constrained by the same physics when they built their flying saucers.”

Vaz frowned, “Little green men?”

Tiona waved the question away, not wanting to go there and get her dad irritated again. “Never mind Dad. Let’s finish looking at your design.”

Over the next couple of hours the two of them went back and forth through the drawings. Tiona didn’t contribute much other than some valves on the plumbing that closed in weightless conditions. She didn’t want stuff floating up out of the camping toilet, and since her dad had plumbed it so that it could be flushed to space, she didn’t want it flushing when the saucer wasn’t moving. She didn’t want
that
stuff exploding out into a little cloud around the saucer and sticking to the outside! She also pushed for separating the tankage into sections. “If we get a micro meteorite puncture, we sure as hell don’t want
all
of our water to disappear!”

Tiona watched in amazement as her dad worked with his AI and its CAD/CAM program to rapidly make changes in the design. He and his AI found off-the-shelf components and very quickly adapted the design to use them. Using off the shelf products would markedly reduce the amount of custom fabrication needed and thus the amount of time required to build the entire project. As she sat, watching him scroll back and forth through a cross-section of the entire project, she suddenly asked, “What about protection from space radiation? I mean, you’re shielding the passengers from the radiation produced by the fusion reactor, but what kind of protection are they getting from cosmic rays and solar events?”

Vaz stopped what he was doing and turned to look at her. “Um, mostly reduced exposure. I mean…” he paused, gathering thoughts, “because it goes fast, it doesn’t have to be in space for very long. Reducing hours of exposure can be a lot more effective than reducing the amount of radiation per hour.” He shrugged, “Since we don’t have to worry
too
much about weight the capsule is made out of steel and the walls are filled with polyethylene, both of which help. If you were going to be out for a really long time though, it would probably be worth trying to design some electromagnetic shielding since we have plenty of power.” He blinked, “I don’t think we should try to do that for this iteration though?”

Tiona shook her head, “No, you’re right, the length of exposure will be a lot less than current astronauts are getting.” She lifted her chin at him interrogatively, “How are you planning to navigate out in space?”

“Um, it wouldn’t be as critical as current space navigation since we have power to burn. Essentially, you could just point the saucer at the moon and apply thrust until you were halfway there, then flip over and slow down. It would be very inefficient and require lots of adjustments because the moon would have moved, etcetera, but with so much power and thrust available you’d still get there. I’ve installed laser range finders and small radar emitters so the AI can make sure we’re slowing down fast enough that it doesn’t crash into things. It’ll be able to use GPS when it’s near the earth and NASA’s SpaceNAV/X-NAV system when it’s far away, but I really haven’t been worrying too much about navigation. I thought we’d just take it up into space for a test flight or two and then sell it to someone.”

Tiona grinned at him, “Okay, we do a test flight to the moon and a test flight to Mars.
Then
we sell it.”

Vaz’s eyes widened, “I don’t think
we
should go that far! I don’t
want
to go that far.”

Tiona reached out and poked him, “Oh, come on. There aren’t any strangers out there to set you off!” Slyly she said, “Not like the Caribbean.”

Vaz stared at her for a moment; then directed the topic elsewhere. “Besides, um, the University is part owner of this technology. They might not want us flying off with it.” After a moment he continued earnestly, “We could just give it to NASA?
They
could figure out the navigation.”

Tiona laughed, “First I think you’re the one with the bold vision, then I find out you want someone else to be bold with your vision!”

Vaz looked a little embarrassed, “Let’s just build it. If it works, then we can figure out what to do next.”

“You’re really going to build this thing?”

Vaz frowned, “Why not?”

***

The airlock opened and Zack stepped in taking off his helmet. “How bad is it?”

Knowing that Zack was asking about the thrust, Ralph simply said, “311 Newtons.”

“Oh geez,” Zack practically moaned. “What is that, seventy percent?”

Ralph nodded, “A smidge less.”

“The mission fails if we get under what, fifty-eight percent?!”

Ralph nodded solemnly. Actually the “failure thrust” was a moving target which was slowly dropping because of the time they’d had thrust above the failure level already. But fifty-eight percent was close enough. Telling Zack that it was actually fifty-six percent would just piss him off.

Zack slammed down his helmet, “We’d just as well give up and start heading back! There’s no way we’re going to capture this rock with this little thrust. Have those idiots back in Houston figured out what’s wrong yet?”

Ralph slowly shook his head.

“I’m calling them and telling them that we’re going to bail then! They need to start calculating a burn to get us back.”

Ralph pursed his lips. Talking to Zack when he was in this kind of mood was always difficult. Giving him bad news when he was in this kind of mood was even worse, but he guessed it had to be done. “I’ve been running some numbers…” he paused, waiting for Zack to shift his attention.