From: Brandon Devlin
Subject: JotD
Date: Pisces 34, 0031 20:13
To: Tyler Cody
(CLT): 4 min 47.30 sec
Hey Ty,
How’s life treatin’ you these days? Better, I hope. Better than up here, anyway. I’m sure you saw the news flash the other day.
But hey, don’t believe everything you see and hear on the tube. That asteroid wasn’t much bigger than a semi. I saw a video of the broadcast and if I hadn’t been here in the flesh, I’d think we were goners, too. It did take us a smidgen longer to repair than I thought it might (most of three days), but we came up with a workaround that’ll knock your socks off. And, we got Carl his first spacewalk out of the way in the process. The kid aced his mission and is now a veteran and certified space cadet. How about that?
Tom and I talked him through a procedure of stripping insulation from the outer hull. This will allow us to super heat a little water on one side of the ship to produce steam and chill it on the other, so it condenses back. We built a damn good steam-powered electric generator on the hydroponics deck. It’s really a combination system drawing on solar and geothermal energy. It’s cranking out almost as much power as both of the solar panels, before the accident. Sometimes, the old ways are just as good as the new. Only, let’s not go back to the paddle wheel boats or steam engine cars. Ha, ha (We are leaving the panels attached, JIC).
I’d like to keep this gadget operating once we’re on the surface of Mars, but we’ll be experiencing day-night cycles, along with possessing a planetary atmosphere, so it won’t work properly. Well, that’s why we brought along the RTG.
Hey, and specking of electricity, you heard about Ben Franklin and his kite, didn’t you? Well the way I heard it, Ben was out in the back yard one day with a kite and he couldn’t get it off the ground. His wife hollered out the kitchen window, “Ben, what the heck are you doin’ out there?” He said, “I’m tryin’ to get this here kite up in the air, but it won’t go.” She said, “Well, you idiot, what you need is some tail.” Ben shouted back, “I told you that this morning and you told me to go fly a kite.” Ba DUM bum
Catch you later,
Brandon
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