“Brandon, how’s our electrical power supply holding up?” Tom asked, after about three hours of flight.<\/p>\n
“Battery power is reading eighty-one percent,” Brandon replied.<\/p>\n
“Then let’s get those solar panels deployed. When you’re ready, fire the bolt for release,” Tom ordered. Any time you are working with exploding bolts, the best rule to remember is: the fewer the better. For example, if there are four bolts which all have to explode at the same time to release something, Murphy’s Law says one of those bolts will fail. The breakaway shroud surrounding the entire spacecraft, holding the solar panels tightly to the side of the Hab, is hinged on one side and clamped with a single exploding bolt on the other. Behind that bolt is one very strong spring designed to send the shroud flapping away from the Hab, mimicking the wings of a giant seagull.<\/p>\n
“Firing bolt,” Brandon reported, pressing the proper keystroke sequence. The related indicator light on the panel went green, signifying a successful firing. A mild tremor could be felt, but barely. “Shroud away,” he announced. Sally and Jackie approached the nearest porthole to watch it flutter away. Carl was quick to point out that the Hab was still wrapped with solar panels, and the ladies wouldn’t be able to see anything until they were completely unfurled.<\/p>\n
“OK,” Tom laughed. “Then it’s time to inflate those struts.” As the two solar panels are each the size of the Hab (top to bottom and wrapped tightly around), their total area is just over 488 square meters. Five inflatable tubes run the length of each strut, spaced equidistantly from the top to the bottom. By inflating these struts the way one might blow up an air mattress at the beach, the solar panels unwrap themselves from around the craft and spring straight out from the Hab, like a pair of wings. In the vacuum of space, the contents of a dozen small nitrogen bottles will be all they need to accomplish this task.<\/p>\n
“Carl; Jackie; make your way to the deck and prepare for rotation,” Tom ordered. “We are ready to release the clamps on the booster.” The rest of the crew was already strapped to a wall or seated at the workstations; their feet firmly anchored in the floor-mounted stirrups. Jackie took hold of a chair back and flipped herself over it slowly and gracefully, coming to land gently in the seat as her feet slipped into the stirrups. Carl, on the other hand, pushed off from the ceiling with a little too much enthusiasm and bumped the chair-back hard with his shoulder.<\/p>\n
“Ouch!” he yelped and turned a bit red-faced, while righting himself in the seat. Tom looked over to Brandon, flashing a little grin. Brandon just raised an eyebrow and permitted himself a slight smirk in response.<\/p>\n
Sally glanced around, checking to see if everyone was in place and in a very businesslike voice reported, “All is secure, Commander.”<\/p>\n
“Tom,” he said. “Just call me Tom. We’re merely six people living together for the next two-and-a-half years in a vessel the size of a small yacht. No need to be so formal when we’ll all be getting so close, so to speak.”<\/p>\n
Sally shyly smiled, becoming a bit more relaxed, “We’re all ready, Tom.”<\/p>\n
“That’s better,” he replied. Then in his best Scottish brogue called out, “Release the Kraken! Er, I mean release the clamps.”<\/p>\n
Brandon fingers danced quickly across the keyboard, entering the appropriate code. The ship shuddered slightly before jerking hard. “Whoa!! We must have developed a little slack in the tether,” he noted.<\/p>\n
“That would be my guess,” said Tom. “Let’s put some tension on it and keep the slack out. We don’t want that tether to snap. Power-up spin to five percent and begin the reel-out.”<\/p>\n
“Powering up to five percent,” Brandon reported, while he moved the joystick on his right, ever so slightly, and throttled it up to a setting of 50 meters. In a matter of seconds, the crew began hearing soft sounds throughout the ship, with the ring of an occasional screw or pen or thump of a shoe, slowly falling to the floor.<\/p>\n
Tom glanced over at Sally, “I’m glad everything is secure.” They all started laughing, as Brandon moused over to the music program, clicking on his preselected cut: the chorus of an early 70’s Billy Preston tune.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
Back on Earth, 6:00 p.m. (seven-and-a-half hours after launch): “Good evening and welcome to CNN News. As the world intently watched this morning, the first manned mission to Mars got under way, precisely on schedule, at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time. The crew of Bolo One reports all is ‘Go for Mars’ and they have separated from the booster rocket. They are now reeling out the tether, and starting their rotation sequence. This will provide the artificial gravity needed to maintain good muscle strength during the long journey to the Red Planet<\/p>\n
“Their mission entails a six-month journey to Mars, with a year-and-a-half stay on the Red Planet’s surface. This is followed by a six-month trip back home, an undertaking far exceeding anything humanity has ever attempted. As the gravity of Mars is a third of our own, it is vital that the crew have some form of artificial gravity, especially for the return trip. Without it, the crew of three men and three women would arrive back home too severely weakened to stand and possibly worse, the return could prove to be fatal.<\/p>\n
“In other news, on the south side of Chicago this morning, a crack team of U. S. commandos conducted a daring, predawn raid on a suspected al Qaida terrorist cell, taking fourteen suspects into custody and confiscating several hundred pounds of explosives and more than twenty weapons with ammunition.” The anchorman paused a moment, hearing something in his ear-bud. “We have breaking news: a related early morning operation provided information leading to another terrorist cell and resulted in the death of two suspected operatives, Abu al-Zawahiri and Jamal al-Masri. No U. S. forces were injured (the bruised ribs under the flack-jackets, as a result of the light-load rounds from Jesus’ gun might dispute that, but no serious injuries). We will be back in a moment with sports and your weekend forecast, but first a word from First Galactic Savings & Loan: Making your savings astronomical\u2026”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Brandon, how’s our electrical power supply holding up?” Tom asked, after about three hours of flight. “Battery power is reading eighty-one percent,” Brandon replied. “Then let’s get those solar panels deployed. When you’re ready, fire the bolt for release,” Tom ordered. Any time you are working with exploding bolts, the best rule to remember is: the fewer the better. For …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":150,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chapter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}