Pegasus In Space
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Talents #3
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Pegasus In Space». Краткое содержание книги:
For an overpopulated Earth whose resources are strained to the breaking point, there is only one place to look for relief: straight up. With the successful completion of the Padrugoi Space Station, humanity has at last achieved its first large-scale permanent presence in space. But there are those who, for motives of their own, want Padrugoi to fail. Standing in their way are the Talented, men and women gifted with extraordinary mental powers that have made them as feared as they are respected--and utterly indispensable to the colonization effort. Now, as sabotage and attempted murder strike the Station, it's up to the Talented to save the day. Only who is going to save the Talented?
Pegasus in Space is the tale of Peter Reidinger, first Tower Prime!
It seemed like five minutes, not the sixty-five that had really passed, when Johnny hailed Peter back to the cockpit.
"I think you've had enough excitement for your first flight," Johnny said. "I just want you to observe the next couple of burns."
Peter grinned. "That's fine with me, sir." He strapped himself back into the engineer's seat and walked through the OIM-2 preburn checklist.
In his mind, Peter called up the carefully memorized schematics of the Limo's construction. Limo-34, part of the three-oh series, was the fourth of its class completely assembled at Padrugoi. The Limo one-oh series had been mostly assembled on Earth, with only bolt-together occurring in orbit. The Limo two-oh series crafts were about 70 percent complete when brought up from Earth.
Because they had never had to be lifted from Earth as nearly completed craft, the Limo three-ohs looked the least like a traditional spacecraft than anything since the Lunar Module of ancient Apollo days. For all of that, Limo three-oh still bore a striking resemblance of plan to the US Space Shuttle-but stretched.
The long cargo compartment was almost exactly twice the length of the old Space Shuttle's cargo compartment because it was constructed from the original Space Shuttle tool-and-die set. There were no wings because they were not needed; Limo was never intended to reenter the Earth's atmosphere. At the rear of the lengthened cargo bays, where the wings might have been mounted, there were instead the spacecraft's fuel tanks. Stubby landing pads were located under the fuel tanks-with the forward pair sticking out from the front of the crew compartment. Instead of the black heat tiles and white heatresistant felt covering, the Limo gleamed all over with protective gold Mylar covering. The forward compartment was a modified version of the Space Shuttle shirtsleeve crew section-nearly half again the length-and there were three EVA airlocks.
The Limo didn't require the three huge Space Shuttle Main Engines and that, right there, saved a lot of mass. For its engines, Limo-34 had two OMS kits-Orbital ManeuveringSystems-at the rear and a series of maneuvering thrusters on the ship's nose. The OMS kits were another Space Shuttle hand-me-down and included both the large 26.7-kilo Newton thrusters and a series of smaller maneuvering ones. And the Limo did not need a tail. Instead, the designers had mounted an antenna array in the same spot. As a safety precaution, the Limo designers had made the entire rear section of the Limo-tanks, antennae, OMS, and all-to be ejectable.
"Of course," as Lieutenant Liu had remarked to Peter when he had explained this feature months ago during his training, "all you'd have left then is enough life support to keep you alive until you could get to the life pods and enough maneuvering thrusters to stop the ship from tumbling. If you were lucky."
Peter didn't need Xiang Liu to tell him that any crew that had to jettison their propulsion system was quite obviously not lucky.
While the first burn, OAM- 1, had required only 76 percent of full power for just a little over a second-and a thrust of a bit more than a tenth of standard gravity, OIM-2 would require the Limo's two main engines to use 95 percent of full power for nearly two seconds-but again at the same thrust.
The burn went perfectly. Except that MPU Five and One both went out.
"What is it with these things?" Liu muttered angrily under his breath, as he pulled the two failed units off-line and opened the access panel to them. It took him the better part of half an hour before he got MPU One back on-line. He spent the next thirty minutes working with Bat Singh as they tried to troubleshoot MPU Five.
"Computers report high oxygen readings," Peter told Johnny.
"Accept their change," Johnny said. "They reported the same problem about half an hour ago and I took their advice. We're feeling no pain, are we?"
Peter had to agree. He yawned. Maybe the stress of the mission was beginning to get to him.
"Liu, Singh, cover up that access panel and get into position. We're coming up on TLI-3," Johnny ordered. "After that we'll coast on up to good ol' Luna for five days and drop ourselves in on Colonel Watari." He switched on the Limo's intercom and called the passengers. "Everyone strapped in back there?"
When he got no response, Johnny sent Sergeant Singh back to check up. The sergeant came back in a few minutes with a big grin on his face. He yawned hugely for a moment, then excused himself. "Sorry, sir. Everyone back there is all netted into their bunks and asleep."
"Can't blame them," Johnny said. "Passengers usually crash about now-although they tend to gawk down at Earth until TLI."
"Three minutes until TLI-3," Lieutenant Liu reported.
Peter checked his engineering panel again. "Computers are reporting that the oxygen levels have crept back up."
Johnny yawned and nodded. "I see it. I'm correcting it."
Oxygen levels were very special in space. The Limo's environmental control system regulated oxygen by partial pressure. On Earth, while total air pressure was one standard atmosphere, oxygen made up only 21 percent of the air and so the partial pressure was 21 percent of one standard atmosphere. In space, rather than building spacecraft capable of handling Earth's standard atmosphere, a lower pressure was used with a correspondingly higher percentage of oxygen so that astronauts could have the same amount of oxygen.
Fires consumed oxygen when they burned and a fire in pure oxygen could burn much hotter and faster than the same fire in a standard atmosphere. Until the Apollo 1 disaster-when one such disastrous pure-oxygen fire in the Apollo capsule had claimed the lives of three astronauts-the United States had used a pure-oxygen system. Afterward, to avoid such disasters, the US switched to a mix of oxygen with just enough nitrogen to prevent explosive fires.
If the oxygen pressure got too high, it could cause euphoria and loss of concentration as well as damage to nerves, especially eyes. If the oxygen pressure got too low, the astronauts could be asphyxiated.
Spaceflight was still a tricky and expensive proposition. Because of that, any spacecraft on any flight was subject to intense scrutiny. Since the days of the US Space Shuttle, there had been ways to keep in contact with ground stations regardless of the shuttle's position above Earth, and in modern times, those methods had been considerably improved. Tracking Data Relay Satellites, or TDRSs, ringed Earth and provided continuous telemetry and communication between spacecraft, Padrugoi, and Earth.
Limo-34, by virtue of its crew and mission, was subject to even more scrutiny than most.
Commander Sakai had made special arrangements to get a data feed to his console and had monitored all the problems the Limo had experienced.
While he had followed many Limos in their flights to the Moon, there was something about this one that bothered him. He couldn't put his finger on it, at least not enough to call it to General Greene's attention or suggest to Admiral Coetzer that the mission be scrubbed, but there was something. He scratched his head, trying to make sense of it.