Warp Speed (11 page)

Sara worked that company over pretty good until they produced a line of to-spec products. They managed to get a final line output of about eighteen thousand boards a day with about five and a half of a percent quality control. This meant that we had to throw away about a thousand boards a day. That leaves us with seventeen thousand boards in a day. This meant that nearly a half a million boards are just thrown in the recycle bin. We all considered the problem, but just didn't have the manpower or the resources to worry with that little amount of quality control. Each board cost about a dollar to make. So the final cost of the cube would be about eight million dollars plus the half million plus that we have to throw away. It would've taken at least a half million dollars in man-hours to figure out how to reduce the quality error.

'Becca was about to make the wrong decision and spend some money to fix the problem. I would like to say that I caught the mistake. But it was Johnny that figured out that it would be better just to bite the bullet on this one. It was a good call. Johnny had spent all those years on construction jobs learning how best to use resources. It's easier for a contractor to throw away a half of a two-by-four that cost three dollars than it is to spend an hour of labor at ten dollars an hour trying to find a use for it.

Our biggest issue with the energy collection cubes, or ECCs, was safety. All of the bad boards had the potential of building up explosives energies. Sara figured out that a very high electric discharge through a board would basically weld the concentric spheres to each other and short out the circuit. This rendered the Clemons Dumbbells into a smoking pile. 'Becca pointed out to her the following very important information.

"Electrical Technicians Corollary Number One: Electronics runs on smoke. Once the smoke is removed from them, they will no longer function properly." Using this corollary, Sara could then conclude that the boards would no longer operate as an ECC subcomponent.

We thought there was an error in this corollary once when a recycle bin exploded and blew a hole in the storage room wall into the adjacent ladies room. The niece of the company president happened to be in there at the time. She was okay, but messy, wet, and scared and . . . no, wait a minute, she was
really
messy.

After investigating the accident (ha! pardon the pun) Sara and 'Becca found that that board hadn't been shorted out (Sara likes to say "electrocuted").

'Becca started in on the vice president of the company.

"You may be able to get away with a half million bad boards a year." She stopped and took a hit off of her albuterol inhaler. She caught her breath and continued, "But you can absolutely not get away with one single board not being shorted out! Ever!"

Had OSHA ever gotten wind of what we were doing, there would've been hell to pay. Fortunately, all of this effort operated under the DARPA money and everyone working on it was under at least a Secret clearance. The person who had made the mistake of not shorting out the board was fired, probably because of the company president's niece.

'Becca and Sara kept the ECC effort running smoothly from then on. We expected to have the ECCs delivered in a little less than a year and a half. Jim, Al, and I were working the spacecraft design while Tabitha and I were working the mission plan. The spacecraft was coming along pretty good. The problem was that we couldn't figure out how to put the warp field generator or WFG on top of the ECCs and have it fit in the Space Shuttle payload bay.

"Then there is the problem with the bus, the C and DH systems, the ACS, and the comm systems. Where do they go?" Al was fairly frantic by now.

"What if we distribute all of that around the ECCs?" Jim said.

I put in my two cents. "I don't know about you guys but I think that would create a whole new research program for distributed spacecraft systems." I decided we needed an expert's opinion. "Tabitha! Hey, Tabitha, you got a sec?" I yelled down the hall.

She put her head in the door. "What's up!"

"We still can't figure out where to put all of the systems. I mean, we finished the WFG a month ago but have no idea how to attach it to the ECCs and get it in the Shuttle," Jim told her.

"Much less the other systems." Al added.

"So don't attach them," she replied and turned back toward her office. "Haven't you guys ever heard of EVAs? Sheesh. What do y'all do in here all day anyway? Anson, you didn't think you were just going along for the ride did you?" She said this very sarcastically as she went back down the hall. We just looked at each other with our chins on the table.

"Okay, is it just me, or does everybody else feel really stupid about now?" Jim asked.

"Don't beat yourselves up. She practically built the last few modules of the ISS on extravehicular activities herself. It
was
very obvious to her what to do." I laughed. "Amazing," I added as I shook my head back and forth.

The main design problems were finally worked out. We would build the thing on orbit from three subsections. The subsections consisted of the warp field generator, the energy collection cubes, and the spacecraft bus. We bought a bus from one of the commercial spacecraft bus manufacturers and then tailored it to our specific needs. We decided to separate the three ECCs by one hundred twenty degrees and place the WFG in the center. The WFG would be encased in a cylindrical composite container about one meter in diameter and about three meters long. We then decided to suspend the ECCs from the WFG cylinder by support booms. Attached to one end of the WFG cylinder will be the spacecraft bus. The communications antenna attached to the outside of the bus will deploy to one meter in diameter once the spacecraft is powered up. The attitude control system (ACS) and the other science instruments all will be packaged in a cube-shaped container at the base of the rectangular-shaped bus. Two small spherical pressure tanks were added on each side of the science box to house the fuel and oxidizer for the ACS. Small arcjet thrusters were then placed all around the spacecraft. The final design was in three easy to snap together chunks.

That is what I thought, anyway. Then, six months later I tried to put a full-scale mockup together in the full EVA gear in the neutral buoyancy tank at NASA Johnson Space Center. Tabitha ended up having to help me. It was a two-man, uh two-person, job for certain. She would be the only other astronaut on board not already tasked to the max for other jobs and who was "read onto the DOD/NASA program need to know list." Unless you consider flying the Space Shuttle a job. I hadn't known it, but Tabitha had continued to fly more than fifteen hours a month all this time to maintain her currency. I had to start flying with her at least four hours a month. I say that like it was a chore. I love to fly. I got my instrument rating by the time I finished undergraduate school and had been to more fly-ins than you could shake a stick at. But this was
really
flying!

We would get our hours by flying back and forth between Houston, Texas or Cape Kennedy, Florida and Huntsville, Alabama. Fly out to Houston to do some more training. Fly back to Huntsville to keep the construction, testing, and integration of the spacecraft components in order. Then back to Houston. Then back to Huntsville. Then to Kennedy for payload integration meetings and training. Every now and then there would be a flight out to Pasadena, California to JPL or to Baltimore-Washington International to Goddard, HQ, or other government entity buildings. We were burning the candle from both ends, the middle, and from several other places.

Things were rather chaotic during that time. Tabitha and I tried to run or do Kardio Kickboxing type workouts together as often as we could. I got on the road bike and went to karate every chance I got, which wasn't often. Mountain biking and fighting were completely out of the question now though. No way I was going to risk an injury that would scrub me off the spaceflight mission.

Between Jim, Rebecca, and myself we were able to cover my classes at the university, but we did have to schedule quite a few make-up sessions. The chairman of the physics department saw what was happening and suggested that I take a leave from teaching until after the mission. That was a load off my mind. He assured me that my job would be there as long as I wanted it. Why not? What university wouldn't want to boast having an astronaut on the faculty?

The first ECC was completed by June. To celebrate, Jim and Rebecca got married! They had asked Tabitha and me about it beforehand.

"We don't have a lot of money for it and neither of us has any family to speak of," Jim was saying. "Think we ought to do a small church thing or just elope or what?" 'Becca wasn't too keen on the elope idea for some reason.

"I don't know. Its y'all's wedding," I responded, helpfully.

"'Becca, what do you want?" Tabitha asked.

"I just want something to remember," she said.

"If you had a formal kind of thing, who would you really want to invite?" Tabitha asked. We had some ideas of our own. But we hadn't spoken a word of it to the kids.

"Really, just Sara, Al, Johnny, Jim's folks--but they won't come--a handful of people from the dojo, you would be a bridesmaid, and I was hoping Anson would give me away." 'Becca looked sheepishly at me.

Jim chimed in, "He can't give you away and be the best man, too!"

"Sure he can," 'Becca said giving Jim a look that he better start getting used to.

"I would be honored," I said to both of them. Then I asked them, "Are you sure that is all you wanted to invite? Can you give me a number?"

She counted on her hands for a second and said, "I don't know--fifteen or so?" She shrugged her shoulders and looked at Jim.

"Tim. Don't forget Tim," Jim replied.

"Okay," I said, "Let's assume twenty." I looked at Tabitha. "Colonel, you have any bright ideas?"

"Don't colonel me!" she started. "Look at this." She handed them brochures from a cruise line. "The big dolt there and I did some checking. If we have a party of fifteen to twenty-five go on one of these three-night, four-day things it would only run us about two hundred seventy-nine dollars per person. Then you two would swap boats when it returned to port and then do another four-night, five-day cruise for your honeymoon."

"Yeah and they have wedding services either on the boat or on one of the islands. They take care of everything." I added.

'Becca was almost in tears. She grabbed her inhaler and took a puff. She had hardly used that thing in months.

She wiped her eyes and said, "That's beautiful but we can't afford that." Jim said the same.

"I'm sorry, did I forget to mention that it's on us? We already talked it over and we want to do this for you. Bob and Alisa said they would pay their own way and so did some of the other karate folks. And I have some money just lying around collecting dust anyway," I joked.

Tabitha smiled, "Goofball! I do have one request. I would like to bring my daughter along."

'Becca was crying full flow now. "I would love to meet her. In fact she can be a bridesmaid, too!"

Jim punched me on the shoulder. "When you get back from outer space, I'm kicking your ass!" He laughed.

That's pretty much how the wedding went. Almost everybody but Sara paid his or her own way and we got a good deal on the price of the cruise. Tabitha and I covered all the other stuff. We ended up splitting about seven grand between the two of us and most of that was the open bar! Jim and 'Becca seemed happier than I had ever seen them. As a second wedding gift, I gave them each a bonus and a new pay scale. After all, the company was doing a lot more business now, mostly because of them. I had planned on giving them raises earlier for graduation presents, but we had been so busy that administrative details were falling behind. The bonuses were the retroactive raises plus a little. We were all very emotional and 'Becca had to take a hit of albuterol. The ocean air seemed to help 'Becca's respiratory condition and she didn't use her inhaler but that once during the whole cruise.

We all had a great time. When we stopped at Key West, I made a point to visit a certain restaurant and tip the bartenders well. We all needed the short break, anyway. My mind was fried from the round-the-clock hours we had been putting in. I could tell Tabitha's was also and she looked even more beautiful in a bathing suit and smile, although I'm not upset with the way she looks in her colonel's outfit or her astronaut gear.

I didn't mention her daughter, did I? If you can imagine Tabitha twenty years younger, there you go. Same bright red hair, same big brown anime eyes, and the temper and spunk to match. Instead of the Texas accent that her mother sports, Anne Marie grew up in Florida where Tabitha's parents had moved for retirement and to be close to Tabitha when she launched. I fell in love with her from the moment I laid eyes on her. Although Tabitha and her parents had done a bang-up job raising her, you could tell that she didn't have a father or big brother figure in her life. Maybe that's why we got along so well.

At one point I showed her how to get out of a chokehold; she wanted to see more. So, I gave her a plastic butter knife and told her to stab me in the stomach with it. After she said, "Uncle!" I helped her up off the deck of the promenade and asked her if she wanted the knife back. Jim told me to quit showing off. Anne Marie stuck her tongue out at him and held onto my arm.

She kept asking me, "Could you whup that guy? What about that guy? Him?" I told her that that wasn't why I learned karate. Then she pointed at Bob and asked if I could beat him. "He don't look that tough," she said. I laughed and so did 'Becca, who was eavesdropping in on our conversation.

I reassured her that I and three or four other guys couldn't "whup" Bob in a million years. Jim and I have tried several times. We always went home rubbing our knots, bruises, and bumps wondering just what in the hell were we thinking.

"You ever heard the expression, I'll put knots on your head faster than you can rub 'em?" I asked Anne Marie. "Well, believe me, he can."

After kissing the bride "so long" and shaking the groom's hand, Tabitha, Anne Marie, and I left the Port of Miami and I drove up to Titusville near the Cape to see Tabitha's parents. We stayed at her parents' for another two days, Tabitha took care of some business at NASA, and then we flew from the Cape back to Huntsville. A few times Tabitha let me fly the trainer. Pretty cool! It wouldn't be long before I would have enough hours in the trainers to be rated to fly it since Tabitha is a certified instructor.