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hundred AUs in radius. It would take some time hopping around the solar focus
to get images of all of these star systems. Three hours one way, there then a
day or so of observation, then three hours back. Let's assume two days per
star system. That means that it would take about a hundred days to look at
each of our local stellar neighbors. I decided to start with the closest and
move outward. That is once we got the telescope
system working properly.
So, we zipped out to the solar focus in line with Alpha Centauri, which is the
closest star to Earth.
Tabitha popped open the hatch that enclosed our telescope secondary system. It
took Jim and me another five or six hours before we had the system functioning
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the way we wanted it to perform.
There were several planets in the Alpha Centauri system but there was no hint
of any planets that could support life as we know it. Using a visible
spectrometer, we could analyze exactly what elements were in the atmospheres
of these planets. None supported our kind of life. No water, chlorophyll, or
oxygen.
Slightly disappointed, we warped back to the Moon. This time we decided to tax
the ECC's to ninety-nine percent. Using most of the energy we had available
enabled us to deepen the Alcubierre warp. We only shaved off about half of the
trip time. In other words, it took about thirty-three times more power to
increase our warp speed by a factor of two. Obviously there was some nonlinear
function involved here that I hadn't counted on. My solutions to the Einstein
equations were only accurate at low warp speeds. Between twenty and fifty
times the speed of light, something else was going on. I'm still thinking
about that. Jim suggested that spacetime might be quantized like the
excitation levels of an atom and that there is some Moor's potential well that
we have to overcome. Interesting idea. Like I have said before, Jim deserves a
Nobel Prize.
We had proven that there was no life around Alpha Centauri. The next step was
to look at Barnard's
Star, which is only slightly further out. Barnard's Star is about six light
years from Earth and is a faint red giant or M class star on the
Hertzsprung--Russel diagram.
Using the solar focus telescope system, Jim brought the star system into view
at low magnification and stopped out the bright spot caused by Sol, and by
Barnard's Star. An array of planets came into view. Two were fairly large gas
giants, one of which was twice the size of Jupiter, and three were planets in
the realm of Earth-like in size. The spectrometer computer dinged at us and
said that oxygen and chlorophyll had been detected. The light from Barnard's
Star had illuminated the planet's atmosphere and the wavelength bands that get
absorbed by oxygen and chlorophyll had been absorbed and not reflected off one
of the planets the spectrometer instrument enabled us to measure which bands
of light were received by the telescope and which ones weren't. But which
planet?
We zoomed in on the inner three planets one at a time. The first planet was a
barren rock much like
Mercury. The second planet closest to Banard's Star was blue and green and
looked like a Mars-sized
Earth. We spent hours zooming in on the planet. There were oceans, mountains,
trees, and even grass.
We saw no artificial structures of any sort. There was life there, but most
likely not intelligent life.
The third planet was mostly like Venus.
We bounced back to Moon Base 1 and began discussing who was going to visit
Barnard's Star. We decided that we were all going. We were too valuable to
America to risk getting lost in space, but we didn't care. Was that selfish?
We knew we could get back.
We had one problem. At fifty times the speed of light, the trip would take at
least fifty days there and fifty days back. That's a little more than three
months. Tabitha and 'Becca were pushing two months pregnant. The
Einstein was very comfortable for few hours, just like a minivan is
comfortable for a ten-hour drive to the beach. But you can't live in a minivan
for three months. We had to build a real starship. We would just have to be
patient.
The crew split up into three groups. Tabitha and Sara and I made up one group,
Annie, Al, and
Margie made up the second, and Jim and 'Becca made the third group. We took
turns. One week you got to bounce out to the solar focus and continue planet
hunting. One week you got to work the starship construction project. The third
week you watched over the military research and development aspects of our
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Moon Base 1 operations. Each team alternated through the three jobs. There
were over a hundred and fifty personnel on the Moon Base now but we were the
original brain trust. We felt an obligation to making sure it functioned and
continued all of its missions, not just the really fun ones.
Tabitha, Sara, and I took the first watch designing the starship. We took
blueprints from the
International Space Station habitat modules and began redesigning them. Our
idea was to build three habitat size modules, just a little larger, and
connect them side by side, then lay two on top of those three, and then one on
top of the two. So we would have a pyramid of six cylinder-shaped modules. We
would then attach the
U.S.S. Einstein to the middle cylinder module in the bottom line of three.
Remember that the
Einstein doesn't have rocket engines in the back of it where the Shuttle does.
In fact, this is where the loading ramp is located. We could retrofit
Einstein fairly easily to the new configuration. There were two side doors
also so loading and unloading wouldn't be a problem.
Tabitha and Sara went about setting up the contracts Earthside to get
construction of the modules under way. It would take about a year to complete
the modules. We contracted the same aerospace firm that built
Einstein
. We decided to have them go ahead and build the retrofit faring that would
connect the little warpship to the habitat cylinders.
A few days later, Annie had the idea to put a retrofit faring on both ends of
the cylinders so that we could dock one of the other warpships to the other
side. This way, we could land and then split up into two teams to cover more
ground more quickly. She had the contracts modified to allow the new designs.
Occasionally, Jim and I would compare notes on the warp field and energy
anomalies. We still hadn't quite put our finger on a solution to the nonlinear
energy requirements for fast warp speeds. But we were new to warp theory. We
had only been doing it for a year or so. We also compared notes on pregnancy.
Tabitha hadn't had a lot of trouble with morning sickness. 'Becca on the other
hand was miserable. I told [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]