Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (30 page)

The Senator exhaled loudly. “Okay,
but you’ll have to explain that to me.”

“Yes sir. I will.” Jeff paused for
a moment. “Sir, you must be hungry. We have lunch prepared, perhaps we should
adjourn to the dining room and pick this up again later.”

“Yes indeed, that sounds good. This
is a lot to digest.” He glanced around the room. “And, thank you, all of you. I
will readily admit that I had my reservations. I honestly did not believe there
was any way it could be done. But it seems you found the answer. Most
impressive.”

“Thank you Senator. Let’s eat.”

After lunch they returned to the
projects room where Susan held up a garment on a hanger that looked rather like
a speed skater’s spandex suit with tiny ribs. “Senator, first we will need you
to change in to this. This is the cooling and ventilation undergarment. It is
made of breathable spandex and contains over 300 feet of micro-tubing that will
carry chilled water to keep you comfortably cool. Otherwise, the suit can get
unbearably hot, even in the void of space.”

“Alright. Okay, no photos. The last
thing we need is a United States Senator in spandex on the cover of the
National Inquirer.”

Susan grinned. “No photos, sir. We
promise. Normally we would wear a disposable diaper underneath as the suit’s
life support system is good for up to seven hours and when nature calls… well,
that’s how we deal with it. But you won’t be in it for that long, so we can
skip that part. Just leave your shorts on.” She showed him to the lab. “You can
change in here, sir. The zipper goes in front.”

A few minutes later the Senator
reappeared. “How’s this?”

The attending crowd applauded.

Susan smiled. “Looks good on you
sir.”

The Senator nodded to the applause
and turned to Susan. “I’d wager it looks a lot better on you.”

“No sir, not really. Alright, now
we have a stepstool here for you that will make getting into the suit a bit
easier. This is a rear-entry suit and can be a little awkward to get into if
you are not used to them. The only advantage of a rear-entry is that it can be
adapted to a rear-entry port so that one can back up to the port, lock the
rear-entry portal into place and exit the suit directly into the pressurized
habitat. This eliminates airlocks and dramatically reduces – in an alien
planetary environment – the amount of dust brought in that has collected on the
suit. You may recall that the Apollo lunar missions had quite a problem with
moon dust.”

“Yes, I remember. They said it
smelled like gunpowder, or something like that.”

“That is correct sir. That may have
been from salt perchlorates in the regolith, which Mars is also known to
contain. We have not decided yet whether or not we want to use rear-entry
ports. Yes, they are convenient and certainly cleaner, but they are also
dramatically more expensive, complex and, shall we say, finicky. We intend to
have a dirty side and clean side to the habitat regardless, so it’s probably a
small matter. Nevertheless, we favor the Mark III suit for planetary usage because
of its high operating pressure. At 0.56 atmospheres, the suit doesn’t require
the several hours of pure oxygen prebreathe that’s necessary with, say, the EMU
as used on the shuttle and ISS – a significant advantage if we’re going to
regularly be going outside.”

“Understood. How much does this
suit weigh?”

“With the Portable Life Support
System – or, PLSS – attached, around 74 kilos.”

“What’s that in pounds?”

“About 163 pounds. Sorry Senator,
we tend to use metric and Avoirdupois measurements around here in a rather
haphazard manner.”

“That’s quite alright, doctor. At
least you know the difference.”

She smiled. “The good news is, at
least for us, the suit only weighs around 62 pounds on Mars. So for someone
like Jeff who weighs about 175 pounds, on Mars, even wearing the Mark III suit,
he’ll still weigh 25% less than he does here on Earth – without the suit. That
will make physical work on the planet considerably easier.”

“And Senator,” Jeff grinned, “you
just know who’s gonna have to mow the lawn up there.”

The Senator laughed. “I have to
say, you folks have a delightfully cavalier attitude about this.”

Susan tilted her head and looked at
him. “Sir, in case you don’t know, we’re looking forward to going. This is
going to be the adventure of… well, I was going to say, a lifetime, but it’s
more like, all time. We can’t wait. This is going to be fun.”

“Doctor, you know, I believe you.
Alright, how do I get into this contraption?”

“Sir, just step up here, grab on to
the bar, and swing into the back of the suit. Once your feet are in the boots,
bend forward and duck in, then stick your hands and arms into the sleeves and
gloves.”

“I’m guessing that’s not as easy as
it sounds.”

“You’ll be fine, sir. It’s not that
hard.”

The Senator followed Susan’s
instructions and a moment later was standing upright in the space suit. “Well,
that wasn’t so bad.”

“Alright sir, now I’m going to
connect the undergarment to the PLSS and close up the back.” She attached the
suit cooling tubes, closed the back of the suit and attached the PLSS. “The
PLSS weighs 33 pounds, so you’ll feel some weight on your back here.”

“Umph”

Susan grinned. “How you doing
there, Senator?”

“Uh, it’s heavy. But I’m fine.”

“Okay. Now we’ll put your ‘Snoopy
cap’ on, that gives you communications and some additional light, and connect
it to the suit. Now sir, give me you hand and reach right here on the chest
control panel and push this button. There, that powers up the suit. All that’s
left now is to put your helmet on.”

“Wow, I feel the, uh, undergarment
cooling down right away.”

Susan nodded. “It’s pretty quick.
There’s a thermostat right here on the control panel that allows you to adjust
the temperature. I’d recommend leaving it alone. It may feel a bit cool now,
but the suit will warm up very quickly.” Susan picked up the helmet off the
table and held it in front of him. “Ready?”

“As ready as I’m going to get.”

“Alright sir. Now once I put the
helmet on, the suit will control your atmospheric environment. In space or on
Mars, the suit would normally bleed off some pressure as the air lock is
decompressed to adjust down to an operating pressure of 8.3 psi from the cabin
pressure of one atmosphere, or 14.7 psi. Sir, that’s like taking off in an
unpressurized aircraft at sea level and climbing rather quickly to 15,000 feet.
Your ears pop but otherwise there are no ill effects as the high oxygen
concentration more than compensates for the lower atmospheric pressure – rather
like mountain climbers using bottled oxygen. However, here on Earth, the
internal pressure will remain at right about one atmosphere, otherwise the suit
would kind of collapse around you. Also, you won’t be in the suit long enough
to notice any effects of the high oxygen concentration. Alright?”

Senator Landers nodded. “Let’s do
it.”

“Okay sir, here goes. Oh, I’m
wearing a Bluetooth communications piece that is connected wirelessly to the
suit so we can communicate.”

He nodded, and Susan placed the
helmet over his head and locked it into position.

“Alright sir, can you hear me?”

“Yes, just fine.”

“Okay, let’s give the suit a minute
to adjust, and see how you do.”

The Senator grinned from inside the
Mark III and gave them a ‘thumbs up’.

Susan nodded. “Alright sir, you’re
on the PLSS, and free to maneuver. The room is yours.”

The Senator began to slowly walk
around the room, reaching out and touching things, bending over and testing his
mobility. “It’s funny, except for the weight, I don’t really feel any
different. It’s surprisingly easy.”

“Sir, people have literally done
cartwheels in a Mark III suit. And in lunar or Martian gravity it would be even
easier.”

The Senator stood and turned back
to look at Susan. “NASA rejected these, didn’t they?”

“Yes sir. They issued a new design
requirement for an entirely soft suit; hence, the M-suit. Apparently they had
leftover budgetary funds. The Mark III is a good suit Senator, certainly good
enough for us. And it’s already been built.”

“So, how far can I go in this?”

“You’ve got about seven hours of
oxygen, plus a 15-minute reserve.” Susan pointed south and smiled. “The beach
is that way.”

Gabe walked over to Susan and spoke
to her earpiece. “Senator, I’m going to need that suit on Mars, I’d just as
soon you didn’t go swimming in it.” She stood in front of him, looked through
the helmet visor, smiled and winked.

He raised his hand to the visor and
gave Gabe a salute, then walked back to the stand and backed up to it. “Okay,
doctor, great fun but this thing is heavy.”

“Alright sir, won’t take but a
second to get you out. Hold it right there… good. Okay, let me switch the suit
off and remove your helmet.”

Twenty minutes later the Senator
was back in street clothes and shaking everyone’s hands. “That was great. I’ve
been on the Science and Space Subcommittee for sixteen years and I’ve heard
about space suits in countless hours of testimony. Never thought I’d actually
wear one. Thank you all very much.”

“Our pleasure, sir. Any time.” Jeff
said.

“Those are rather expensive, aren’t
they?”

“Oh, about ten million apiece. Give
or take.”

“Amazing.”

“Well, there’s a lot that goes into
them, sir. And, considering their purpose, it’s probably one place you wouldn’t
want to scrimp too much.”

“Good point.”

“Sir, if you’d care to accompany us
out to the carport, we have one other piece of hardware to show you.”

“Certainly. I have to admit that
one of the aspects of the space program that I find most interesting – even
entertaining – is all the neat toys.”

Jeff smiled and nodded. “Then
you’ll probably like this one.”

As they walked through the foyer
and down the hall beside the kitchen, the Senator said, “I’m also anxious to
get a tour of this house. You must get plenty of exercise just walking around
here.”

Jeff laughed. “Yes sir. Getting
from my office in the 2
^nd
floor west wing to Chrissie’s office in
the lower level east wing requires advanced travel arrangements.”

Senator Landers chuckled. “Sounds
like the Capitol building. How big is this place?”

“14,400 square feet on four levels,
give or take.”

In the carport Jeff pulled a tarp
off the rover. “This is the prototype of our Mars rovers, built for us by the
Stanford Racing Team, the same folks that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge.
It’s nothing more than a very highly modified Kawasaki Mule.”

“It certainly looks familiar. I
have a Mule that I use for roaming around the back 40 at home.”

“Sir, this morning you asked how we
manage to keep the mission cost so low, this is one example. It took Boeing a
year and half to develop the Apollo Program lunar rover at a cost of $38
million. It took NASA six years at a cost of $2.5
billion
to build the
MSL. Starting with an off-the-showroom-floor Mule and technology derived from
Stanley
,
their DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle, with some technology updates from the Mars
Science Lab rover,
Curiosity
, SRT built this in four months at a cost of
around $500,000.”

The Senator groaned. “Jesus. And it
works?”

“Oh, yes sir. It works very well.
The lunar rover had a top speed of about eight miles per hour, a maximum range
on non-rechargeable batteries of around 30 miles, and needed someone to drive
it. This has a top speed of 25 miles per hour, terrain allowing, runs on a
refuelable internal combustion engine, providing virtually unlimited range, and
is capable of entirely autonomous operation.”

“Autonomous? You mean remote
control?”

“No sir, I mean completely
autonomous. Just give it a set of commands, and it will go off and do what it’s
told, and return; no further communications required. It has its own navigation
system, terrain and object recognition, and collision avoidance. It can even
refuel itself. Further, on Mars both its load and towing capacities are in
excess of 3,000 pounds. Gabe?”

Gabe stepped forward. “Senator, the
rover’s two redundant computers utilize the RAD750 CPU and VxWorks realtime
operating systems, same as
Curiosity
,  though with some program
modifications and an order of magnitude more memory. We communicate with it
using an off-the-shelf Hewlett Packard iPAQ. Immediately upon arrival, the
rover will have two primary missions. First will be to survey our landing site
and provide us with on-the-ground detail with which we can select the actual
location for establishing our base of operations. Once that is established, the
rover will collect our cargo drops, which will be scattered over some distance,
and stage them at the site for final assembly once we arrive. Thus the
necessity for fully autonomous operation.”

“And it can actually do that?”

“Yes sir. Allow me to demonstrate.”

“Please. This I have to see.”

“Alright, sir. We have placed a
small trailer down in the ravine on the west side of the property. What I am
going to do is direct the rover to go down there, retrieve the trailer and
place it over there in the parking area, then return here. As the rover will
have to be capable of identifying objects and orienting itself to them – such
as a trailer – we have licensed a system from
EUA Robotics in
England that was designed for their explosive ordance disposal robot that
allows it to do much the same thing; identify ordinance and disarm it.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“Now, on Mars there
is no GPS, so we’ll have to use a combination of inertial navigation and
terrain following guidance. That system is still under development but coming
along nicely, and should be ready in a few months. But for now, we’re using
GPS. I’m now giving the rover the approximate location of the trailer and the
location it is to be moved to. The rover will have to find its own way down
there, identify the trailer, hook up to it, and tow it back up here. Now, as
its forward movement is blocked, the first thing it will do is backup to get
some maneuvering room, so we’ll want to stand out of the way.”