Day 27 of 30

NanoWriMo2005 jedcline
The Ark of 1984’s Future

Day 27 of 30

The 3Musketeers Political Corporation’s Space Carousel Escalator to GEO management was having another difficult decision, that of how best to provide the huge rate of delivery of ribbed panels to GEO from the Moon.

A non-tapered anchored tether either through L-1 or L-2 would require bringing huge amounts of carbon fiber tether material from GEO to the L1 or L2 balance point, then de-spooled in both directions carefully balanced until the tether could be secured on the lunar anchor point, then unbalance it slightly to provide more weight on the side away from the Moon, so as to provide the margin of upward bias to maintain it in place. The bias would have to be greater than any conceivable load combination below the Libration point. All the mass of the aluminum for the ribbed panels would have to be lifted up the tether space elevator, a huge mass flow. If something were to temporarily halt the mass flow, all the bias in the tether’s outward stretch would fall on the tether itself. If the tether were to break somewhere on the lunar side, the Lagrange point facilities and the outward counterbalance would all go flung out away from the Moon, and especially if through L1, it could head for the GEO belt, wreaking havoc. That could not be risked. Even a tether through L2 was at such risk.

And a fiberglass tether space elevator either through L1 or L2, made of lunar fiberglass and therefore not needing much Earth resources to build the tether, would need to be tapered to maintain constant stress in its crossection, widest at the Lagrange point. But it too would have the same risks in case of breakage.

The technology for the gigawatt lasers, needed to beam power to the elevators, did not survive the Great Famine, so they would have to have to build tracking solar reflectors aimed at the receiver on each elevator. The heat re-radiators on the electric tractors climbing up and down the tether would be huge, too, and that would be more weight lifted that was not payload. And the elevator could only operate half of each month during the lunar daytime.

The elevators would need to be built in pairs, joined at the Lagrange point by a bridge, to shuttle over the lift tugs to go up one tether, down the other. There was the risk of tethers lashing about under changing loads, and hitting each other could be disastrous.

Therefore they decided to build another carousel space escalator, but this one on the Moon, anchored at the Earth-facing center of the Moon, and lifting loads up to L2 above the far side of the Moon, from where reaction engined propulsion would be used to tug it over to GEO and place it into the ongoing construction slot.

That meant that L2, the Lagrange libration point above the farside of the Moon, where the gravitational attraction of the Moon and Earth beyond the Moon, was balanced by the opposite direction centrifugal force of the angular velocity of the Moon’s 28 day rotation around the Earth, would become the major materials assembly plant for the GEO space cities, and for the next generations of satellite solar power plants in GEO and Total Recycling Plants there.


Using the engineering designs for the original lunar StationBase1, another lander was prepared at GEOSoaceDock1, which was then moved over into lunar orbit by the same old GEO-lunar orbital transfer vehicle. At the correct place in the orbit, it initiated decent, and landed close to the center of the Moon, as seen from the Earth. An new crew, of course, and upon landing, they went through the same routine of bulldozing out a hole for the StationBase, rolling the basic shell in, and bulldozing to cover it back up, leaving trenches for the next sections, and access to the airlock.

But this time they brought their own rover vehicle, as there was no Apollo lander site to cannibalize for one here. Besides, they got to build one that they could work inside, as a shirtsleeve environment, easier to handle things inside, but put more distance between the operators and the working surfaces of the Moon than would spacesuits, which had advantages and disadvantages. It was an engineering prototype, so was heavily telemetered back to GEO as it went about setting up the basalt melt reflector for the new brick factory. It had cranked out a half dozen basalt bricks before the lunar day terminator passed them and the 14 day night began, and the crew retired to the buried initial part of lunar StationBase2, running on minimum power from the batteries, time to rest and rehash how things had proceeded so far, and get ready for the next 14 day effort out on the surface.

The two lunar StationBases had direct voice communications on the old AM band, the earth station’s signals too weak to interfere much. But for high data rate exchange, they had to bounce their communications off of GEOSpaceDock1 communication link. They got their internet connection from there, anyway.

Among other things, the telemetry was providing wear rate information for the moving equipment in the lunar environment, from which to predict which spare parts would need sending on the next supply mission.

Instead of the exploratory lunar ore roving prospector and ore processing plants, their lander carried a pair of rocket propelled vehicles, each carrying a spool of tubing containing micro sliding armature segments, and a socket assembly. From GEOSpaceDock1 a one-way vehicle was launched to lunar L2, and once it had arrived at L2, it settled in with an orientation aligned to the lunar orbital plane.

Similarly, at lunar StationBase2, a trench was dug at lunar dawn’s arising’s solar influx energy availability. inside it was placed the launcher for the two rocket propelled despoolers, each aimed in opposite directions along the lunar orbital plane. The launcher was encased by the basalt bricks as fast as they became available, welded in place together by molten lunar glass. The bricks were piled high above the launcher, weight that might be needed.

This was to be a completely experimental space carousel escalator, to gain data about stress levels in the overall structure, to then be used in a scaled up version. Another version would be scaled up from that one’s data, and that one hopefully would be fully able to carry the loads for the building of the ribbed shell structures for the full sized wheel-like Stanford Torus space settlements in GEO. It in turn would be used only to build a thousand of the cities, then it would be shutdown to defer to the next version, designed and built with the experience gained by then, for use in the long haul, continuous running for the next 20 years.

But for now, they needed to put the first one up, only a few millimeters in diameter. It would be easier than on earth, since there was no atmosphere to impede vehicles. The two despooling launch vehicles were readied, aimed in opposite directions, They were to be guided from the two Holovision stations, one by Idealiana at lunar Stationbase1, the other by Artesiana in GEOSpaceDock1’s Holovision nook.

It was time to launch. Idealiana got into her Holovision nook, and merged it with one of the despooling launch vehicles over in the trench at lunar StationBase2. Artesiana’s virtual presence was neighboring; they each felt like pilots in large spaceships made of transparent parts and colorful energy flows among the parts; the spool looked like the fish line spool of a fly casting fishing rod to her, the centerline of the coiled tubing being along the line of deployment, the coil lying across the line of deployment perpendicularly. Through the nook’s link, Idealiana and Artesiana looked at each other, waved at each other; they too looked like glass artwork with colorful energy flows of vast yet coherent complexity, to each other, as their own bodies did to themselves. Artesiana closed the switch for activation at her site, then when Idealiana closed her corresponding switch, the launcher at lunar StationBase2 activated, firing their rockets while also being fired by an explosive charge like a pair of bullets so as to gain a high velocity quickly, and they were off. Their task as pilots was to fire the lateral thrusters so as to continually stay as close as possible to the machine-visualized optimum trajectory; the fish line-like tubing was being laid out as planned, and was in freefall as soon as deployed. The vehicles velocity was quite high at first, slowing as they gained velocity, traveling at opposite directions around the Moon, ever climbing higher. Higher and slower, flying to keep crossing the optimal line, the target coming into range, the docking port in the waiting L2 facility in the sights, it must be hit exactly center and within microseconds of when the other vehicle struck the other side of the L2 facility. Closer and closer to L2, a few kmps too fast, slowing, the resulting deformation in the deployed tubing within predicted acceptable limits. Bulls eye target right on, then an impact that was more sensed than felt, as the two spacecraft rammed the L2 docking ports almost simultaneously from opposite directions. The section of tubing within the L2 facility filled in the gap.

At the time the two teleoperated spacecraft were launched from the trench at lunar SpaceBase2 site, the electromagnetic drivers began pouring the micro sliding armature segments into each of the tubes being even then just begun to be emplaced ever higher around the lunar globe, the mass streams being in opposite directions in the two sections of each tube. so by the time the tubing pairs had rammed into their sockets in the L2 facility, the armature segments were also arriving up the tubing from both sides. The leading armature segments passed by each other in the L2 segment, then began their plunges down around back toward the lunar surface StationBase2 facility. When the armature segments reached their starting point at the launch facility, their positions were sensed and their velocity was normalized as they traveled through the synchronous electromagnetic mass driver. When the feedback oscillations calmed down, the carousel was declared up and running. and idealiana and Artesiana disconnected from their Holovision nooks, and went for well-earned break times.

The first lunar space carousel was operating. The telemetry was monitoring the dynamic stresses as the feedback positioned system strove for stability, and it all was a learning exercise; it would not lift anything itself. Its life experience would provide the reality data for designing the next version, which would include a lift capacity as an added set of variables. For now, job well done.