Fenrir: Chapter 19

[seawasp]

The project's well under way...

 

Chapter 19: Drones and Detonations

Time to Launch: 599 Days

     "My God that thing's huge," Stephanie exclaimed, then bit her lip. "And my God, I must sound like such a dork."

     "According to Werner, the engineer in charge, most people say something like that when they first see it," York said. "I know I did, though I think I used not-for-broadcast language."

     Seen from the air, the drive plate was a gargantuan, dully-shining circle of steel with eight massive arched features that were to be the attachment points for the main "shock absorbers" that would turn the sudden impact of the nuclear detonation into smooth acceleration. The plate dwarfed even the largest construction machines around it. As the helicopter dropped lower, Stephanie saw little black dots that looked like ants on the plate, with white plumes coming up from them. "What… oh, those are the inspection robots."

     "Yes, and so far so good.  Keep your fingers crossed; IIS says they're a little more than halfway done and so far we've seen no significant flaws."

     "We're safe here, right?" Stephanie asked. "I mean… we've seen more than one crater…"

     York nodded. "I wouldn't recommend just walking into the center of some of those, but we're not in danger of radioactive contamination here. We picked the construction site pretty carefully."

     The helicopter – a modified Bell 429 – slowly dropped toward the marked landing area; dust was blown up, momentarily obscuring the location, and the pilot paused in his descent; after a moment most of the cloud dispersed, and the copter settled to the ground.

     The drive plate was even more impressive from ground level, a dully-shining hill of solid steel six feet thick at the edge. Nearby was the blocky form of IIS's MIROC, the side towards the drive plate open.

     A side door opened and Peter Flint emerged. Stephanie hadn't ever met him before, and the simple head-shot she'd seen didn't convey the cheerful energy of the spare form of the engineer. His blue eyes twinkled as he approached, a bright smile on his face – whose lines showed that smiles were a lot more common than frowns for Peter. "You must be Doctor Bronson," he said, shaking her hand firmly. "Woman that started," he waved his hand around, "all this."

     She felt her answering smile as she answered, "The Fens started this, really. I was just the person who saw them first."

     "Suppose that's true enough," he answered. "Came out to see what's going on first-hand – I like that in a supervisor."

     "Well, if nothing changes I'm also going to be a passenger, so I'm here to start kicking the tires, too."

     He nodded, looking more serious, and ran a hand through short-cropped blond hair that was well on its way to white. "Prototypes need a lot of that," Flint agreed. "Sorry, sir, forgetting my manners," he said, turning to York. "Peter Flint, International Inspection Systems."

     "York Dobyns," York said, shaking hands. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Flint. I presume everything's going well?"

     "No changes, which is a good thing," Flint said. "Keeping everything I got two of crossed that I won't find a darn thing worth talking about."

     Stephanie saw one of the inspection robots rolling steadily in their direction. "Dr. Flint –"

     "Just Mister Flint, really, but just call me Pete. 'Most everyone does."

     "Then call me Steph. Pete, why is there steam coming from your inspection robots?"

     He laughed. "Does make them look old-fashioned, doesn't it, like they're little locomotives? But that's actually the active cooling system. They carry a big insulated tank of water, run the water around cooling everything, and then blow the heat out as superheated steam. So long as I can keep topping off the tanks with water, they can run a lot longer before they have to come in. Liberty, there, is just about out, so she's heading in for a cool-off and refill, and she's being replaced by Yonbuk; expect Big Ben will be back in in about an hour."

     The names caught Stephanie's attention. "You named them after bells?"

     "Right the first time. They basically go around making every piece of metal they're on ring, so it made sense." Pete looked at the compact autonomous drone with a proud paternal air.

     "Did you put in your application to the onboard people, Pete?" asked York.

     "Sure did. I know, I'm pretty old to be going out, but then, that just means I'd better try to catch this bus out because I don't have much time to wait around. And I think my Bells, there, will be the best choice you have for all-around maintenance and service."

     After a few more questions and answers, Stephanie and York bid farewell to Pete, leaving him to watch over his little robots. Stephanie looked at York as they walked over a bright new concrete path. "Can we take people that old?"

     York shrugged with a wry smile. "Old like me, you mean?"

     "I… sorry, Dr. Dobyns, I-"

     "Relax, Steph," he said with a deep chuckle. "I know perfectly well I'm past my prime, and I'm sure Pete does too. But if we're in good enough shape, I don't see why not. Have to pass all the physicals and stress tests, but I'd guess our friend Mr. Flint there will be more likely to pass them than I will. I," he said, slapping his admittedly expansive midsection, "spend a lot more time at a desk than hiking around."

     Entering the Carpathia Construction Command Center, naturally immediately dubbed "C4" by site residents, Stephanie breathed a sigh of relief; she could swear she heard a hiss of steam as the vastly cooler air within hit her sweating face. "God, it's hot out there."

     "Even hotter than usual. And of course, we were close to the plate, and that's not going to finish cooling to reasonable temperatures for a while."

     Her phone buzzed; she glanced down at it. "Almost time for the Drive Systems status review."

     "I know. They've set aside Conference Room 3 for us."

     "Just let me hit the bathroom first," she said. "Don't know how long I'll have to be sitting; we've got three more meetings after that."

     And that is an improvement, Steph noted to herself as she freshened up. The President's advice had been, as usual, sound. York had been happy to serve as the main filter between her and the rest of the Carpathia project, helping her avoid both time wastage in meetings she didn't really need to attend and involvement in inter-departmental arguments that could be resolved without her involvement. He helped her decide priorities – and in their infrequent free time, both of them studied all the issues surrounding Carpathia so that they could at least sound knowledgeable.

     Dr. Eva Filipek was already visible on the teleconference screen when Stephanie entered; the Secretary of Energy had been given the responsibility of overseeing the development of the ICAN-II based nuclear pulse drive system. Steph gave her a wave and sat down. Amazing how blasé I've gotten over talking to people running the country. Or other countries, even.

     A few other people popped up on the screen as the meeting time was reached, and Stephanie took a breath and looked up. "Thank you for coming promptly. I know it's been a while since I have had a full debrief on your work, and we're all very busy running as fast as we can, so I'll try to make this brief. Charlotte, what is the status at CERN?"

     Charlotte Goddard was the engineer in charge of the refit of CERN's accelerators, most notably the LHC itself, for antimatter production, and coordinated with the other accelerator centers around the world. "Antimatter production is finally underway," she answered. "Taking into account the efficiency of transfer to the storage, we are making approximately ten nanograms of antimatter per day. Combined with the other accelerators, we should be able to make twenty to twenty-five per day. We can probably double or even triple that as time goes on and we refine the techniques."

     She looked to York. "That sounds very good to me."

     "It's excellent. If storage can keep up, that would give us nearly thirty micrograms. If I recall correctly," he looked to Eva, "that would be enough for thirty thousand pulse detonations, yes?"

     "Correct, York," Eva said. "Each detonation will require just over one nanogram of antimatter, based on our current figures. I also have updates from the drive charge manufacturing side."

     Drive charge manufacturing. A fine euphemism for "bomb production." "Good updates, I hope?"

     "So far, yes." An image of an object, shaped roughly like an old-fashioned railroad lantern, appeared on the screen. "MatterPrint thinks they have overcome the problems they were encountering in the multimaterial printing stage. If their next run pans out, Carpathia can be equipped with additive manufacturing capability to manufacture drive charges to spec, varying the exact amount and configuration of U-238 and lithium deuteride to allow for a wide range of yields."

Eva continued, "Each one would then be fitted with the detonation plug," a smaller object shaped like a thick rivet inserted itself into a small side port, "and fired."

     "The detonation plug holds the antimatter?" Stephanie asked.

     "Yes. That would be inserted immediately before firing, as the plugs will not be able to hold antimatter for long; we're working on the details, but as you need superconducting materials to maintain the magnetic confinement and we can't reasonably put high-powered cooling equipment on the plug, the plugs are only going to function until they heat up above the critical temperature. Thirty seconds, maybe a minute, depending on exact circumstances."

Eva pointed to a cutaway diagram. "In concept, the plugs are also very simple. They are effectively just enough circuitry to detect an encrypted detonate command, a bundle of superconducting coils, and a small cavity that holds a nanogram of antimatter – antiprotons, to be exact. When commanded to detonate, the magnetic field is collapsed in such a way as to inject the antimatter directly into the uranium core, triggering the nuclear reaction."

     "So we would assemble a large number of the drive charges, but only insert the plug just before firing. Makes sense anyway; without the plug inserted they're basically harmless, right?" Eva nodded, so Stephanie went on, "That will be automated?"

     "Definitely," York said. "Manufacture a selection of charges, automatically dispense one based on Carpathia's current acceleration requirements, detonation plug's inserted, then charge is ejected through the port; detonation command is sent as soon as the charge reaches optimum distance."

     Stephanie nodded, thinking. "What happens if the dispenser or detonation plug insertion goes bad?"

     "Short answer is that we're triply redundant. If any of the BIT – built-in-test – indicators are anything less than perfect, the ship switches to one of the other drive charge assemblies and we do maintenance or repair on the first, and even then there's a third waiting in case the second fails. Systems inside those are also going to be doubly-redundant where feasible."

     "Eva, what if the detonation plug fails to detect the detonation signal?"

     Dr. Filipek paused before answering, her eyes going momentarily distant as she thought. "Worst-case, the charge won't detonate until the plug warms up past the cricital temperature," she said at last. "Which means we would get a much-reduced push. I suppose if you also had a flawed charge somehow, you could get no significant detonation at all; nuclear explosives tend to be quite finicky about their geometry and such."

     "So not terribly bad in almost any case," Stephanie said. "But if a detonation plug failed containment before ejection?"

     Eva and York winced. "Well, as you obviously guess," York said, "that would be Egon Spengler levels of bad. There will be a lot of safeguards for that, of course. But that is, I agree, the most obvious disaster scenario, short of being attacked by Fenrir."

     Stephanie shook off the vision of Carpathia going up in a self-generated nuclear explosion. "Just keep me in the loop about exactly how we will prevent that," she said finally. "But overall, sounds like we're on-schedule."

     Feeling, at last, as though this might actually be possible – that Carpathia might really launch – she leaned forward. "Now, let's look at the progress on the main drive shocks…"

 


Things seem to be going smoothly....