'City of Fresno'

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

City of Fresno #104

Following our usual meagre breakfast, I thought to ask Jack Morley, the rota's Duty Steward, how they were reporting their 'Aladdin's Cave' finds. He hesitated, shrugged, admitted, "Ad-hoc, Jake. We 'CC' our notes. Uh, I believe you and A-M have documented those two 'Xanadu' cargo pods ?"

"Just the six wells' front crates' survey sweep," I cautioned. "No 'big stuff' found."

"Any chance you could do the same for us ?"

"Umm..." I took a breath, asked, "What about those access ways' crates and cartons of 'System Spares' ?"

As the ensuing, rather embarrassed silence extended, Anne-Marie sighed, began shaking her head. She said, "Jake, Jake, Jake, I think you've found another, 'Some-one Else's Problem'..."

Seems I had.

I couldn't just go galloping off to explore. No, this needed 'formal' approval. The Stewards replied with a delighted chorus of, 'Yes, Please !!', as did Lieutenant 'Logistics' Baxter. Lt. Richards and the Engineers gave their conditional 'okay', provided both I accompanied a Steward who'd pre-posted that session's 'search area', and we used 'Due Care'.

In trade, I was added to the 'Diner Hygiene Refresher' queue. Happens I'd qualified during my 'Rock Hopper' training. I'd partly maintained the necessary skills, as I preferred to reload 'Big Mac' myself. To put it politely, I did not entirely trust the usual pre-packed, freeze-dried Exo-suit 'liquid' meals. 'Too Bland' was, at best, dispiriting. 'Too Beany', 'Too Cysteine' or, worst, 'Too Spicy' could produce distracting if not actually distressing gastric 'Alarums and Excursions'. Yes, the Exo-suit's excellent systems easily handled, quelled such 'On Duty' consequences. More than scant few 'Bean Farts' in a mini-hab or 'Redstone' accommodation module, though ? Such could seriously, seriously strain friendships and crew morale...

So, day after day, I 'volunteered' a couple of hours in our Pod end's 'Diner Utility' area. Then, I 'tagged along' with which-ever off-duty Steward was exploring their Pod's by-ways. First, of course, we back-tracked and documented 'searched' areas. Scanning their 'Non-Diner' boxes and cartons, mostly locally-relevant spares, progressively populated my new data-base. As an incentive, the file credited search team members.

After that caught up with the on-going search, subsequent progress was 'Survey Plus'. Unless something was simply too good to leave in place, we just logged our 'Non-Diner' and 'Diner' finds with their locations. Most 'Diner Goodies' were 'obviously' useful, though few would be needed before our 'Ponics were in full production. Some seemed to make no sense. Seen through the prism of 'Community Catering', though ? Safe in the data-base, they could be recovered at need.

The many, many 'Environmental System' spares were a very different matter. I had extensive experience of such from 'Big Mac', that 'Rock Hopper' work-pod plus mini-hab, helping with 'Redstone' accommodation, 'Lending a Hand' for Chaparral's 'Deep Shelters', then helping strip those 'Evac' pods both on Chaparral and aboard Fresno. These gave me an 'uncommon familiarity' with systems both large and small.

The un-subtle style differences between these decades-old Berthing and Evac Pods' facilities and more recent designs were compounded by our Pods' heavy, heavy emphasis on non-disposables. These gaskets and filters were unashamedly 'over-built', intended to be repeatedly swapped out and re-furbished. Fixtures, fittings, connectors could be readily dismounted, sanitised and re-used. A remarkable proportion were even 'Tool Free'. Yes, yes, I approved of such attributes: They totally suited systems that might have to sustain 'too many' under-skilled evacuees for a long, long time out in the 'Deep and Dark'. And, yes, 'fail-soft', such that systems would degrade progressively, be readily restored to 'good enough' function.

The cruel down-side was such refurbishment and re-use could still only go so far. Even with much enhanced workshop facilities boot-strapped from the Engineers' current 'Boutique Bistro' provision, even supplemented by equipment re-purposed from the Evac Pods, re-work had its limits. I reckoned we'd about a decade as-is. Eventually, we'd need a lot of completely new parts. By then, we must, must have a robust production 'pipe-line': Source multiple raw materials, process those to 'stock', have procedures, templates and 'tooling' to reliably craft those many, many replacements.

Okay, a decade would seem ample 'lead time'. Yet, in my opinion, despite sundry teams briskly tackling assorted aspects, there was a scary, scary zoo of potential failure modes. Our grand, if as-yet nebulous plans could so easily unravel. Murphy lurked, his infamous 'Gaggle of Gremlins' the bane of Gantt charts...

Yes, 'Cometary Volatiles', 'Ponic bedding and 'some' minerals could be gleaned from 'Halley-type' Oort and Kuiper iceteroids. Yes, Saturnians and sub-Jovians were sufficiently numerous that we should be able to discreetly collect Fusor fuel. Though Space is BIG, asteroid 'families' have characteristic spectra reflecting their content. After calibrating Fresno's sensors for local variation, spotting rocky-iron or nickel-iron candidates would be tedious rather than difficult. Our nimble Rock Tugs could easily venture within a system's 'Ice Line', grab a 'few' kilo-tonnes.

Gleaning other Metals and semi-Metals might be much more problematic. We knew star-dust, rich in alumino-silicates, would resist easy extraction of those major constituents, and probably lack many of the trace elements we craved. For example, as Anne-Marie had cautioned Lt. Richards, getting Boron for Coffea and robust laboratory glass-ware would be difficult. Yes, we could re-work some of the newly-found 'Diner' pots, but there were limits. Sufficient probably needed a 'Terrestrial-ish' planet with 'some' volcanism and hydrology. What were the chances of finding such un-claimed ??

Certainly, certainly we did not want to rile any locals: Needing to urgently decamp, to run and keep running was not a pleasant prospect. Again, as we could *some-what* track the 'wake' of such FTL travel, there was no guarantee any locals could not do much, much better...

I shivered...

[kdahm]

So, day after day, I 'volunteered' a couple of hours in our Pod end's 'Diner Utility' area. Then, I 'tagged along' with which-ever off-duty Steward was exploring their Pod's by-ways. First, of course, we back-tracked and documented 'searched' areas. Scanning their 'Non-Diner' boxes and cartons, mostly locally-relevant spares, progressively populated my new data-base. As an incentive, the file credited search team members.

He's supposed to be resting and recovering, not inventing new jobs. Mush less walking around everywhere, clambering over things, and intensively using his brain power.

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

Ha ! This is leisurely, almost recreational activity compared to Jake's previous intensity.

As draft of #108 delayed by adverse sub-Jovian weather, #105 is stuck in FIFO buffer...

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

City of Fresno #105

Day by day, Fresno headed towards our first target star, that non-Transiting orange 'K4', originally about five light-years distant. Minimal 'Limb Doppler' cautioned that Fresno's view angle lay within twenty degrees of either pole. Even without 'Orbital Doppler' to flag a 'Hot Jupiter', there was just enough Astrometric parallax data to exclude even a 'Warm sub-Neptune'. And, without such big planets 'close in', there were probably one or more further out. In fact, we had a fair chance of finding a rocky inner-system planet, perhaps two, with insolation in range between the equivalents of Mercury and Mars. Be such fried or frozen, bare or broiled, we could probably glean some resources to supplement gas-diving our hoped-for 'Saturnian' beyond the system's ice-line.

Though I estimated we'd passed our journey's mid-point, Fresno neither switched to 'cruising mode' nor began to brake. The ship continued to very warily accelerate. Yes, this would let the Bridge Team and Engineers 'get a feel' for this region's inter-stellar density. Yes, it certainly reclaimed some of the time spent doing those extended trial runs, offset the delays due our iceteroid's remarkably extensive dust cloud.

I now routinely helped 'Behind the Scenes' in our local Diner, assisted the Stewards' on-going Berthing Pods' 'By-Ways' survey. One bonus was my blood stress 'indicators' tumbled. Doc. Meredith was delighted, but I was less sanguine. I knew Fresno had a bunch of issues out-standing.

Anne-Marie's first, half-experimental 'Ponics potato crop continued to mostly run later than hoped. There were still too few hygiene-trained 'Apprentice Baristas' for full 'Menu-scale' preparation of precocious spuds so, after a delicious 'Proof of Concept' trial, 'Earliests' were simply chitted, re-planted.

Between 'Community Work', I extended my notes and notions for 'Edge Case' geology and its gleaning. Our 'Citizen Science' teams exploring the possibilities of iceteroids' stardust kept sending me nuggets of useful data. Their cometary alumino-silicates, plus a generous complement of 'rocky-irons' and 'irons', were major ingredients of 'Terrestrial-ish' planets. Sufficient internal heating, from tidal stirring, gravitational settling, assorted 'Hot' isotopes and/or magma-ocean forming impacts, would progressively cook, re-work that mix. The denser nickel-iron and its mineralogical 'fellow travellers' would segregate inwards to form a core. This left a variously depleted / augmented but silicate-rich 'mantle' and its further evolved 'crust'. Depending on insolation, atmosphere and volatiles, secondary and tertiary processes then developed, some 'prompt', some on 'geological' time-scales...

A serious problem for 'Terrestrial-ish' gleaning would be our utter lack of machinery for non-trivial 'Civil Engineering': How could we manage without the usual site-suite of 'medium' and 'heavy' Rippers, Dozers, Trenchers and Back-Hoes ? Graders, Bucket-Loaders and Dump Trucks ? Some tasks initially seemed impossible without massive 'Rock Grubbers'. We didn't have 'tooling' such as drilling rigs, carbide / diamond bits or drilling mud. We lacked even the makings for 'safe' explosives used to work a 'face' or precisely pulverise a 'bench'. And, to be honest, we dared not manufacture more than trivial quantities of 'active' materials aboard Fresno: Far, far too many ways for such to go very, very wrong.

At the 'light' end, I was fairly sure Fresno had a pair of small, skid-steer 'front-loaders' to complement the ubiquitous pallet-trucks. Perhaps such 'front-loaders' had accessories such as buckets and blades ? Yet, though useful, those were still an order of magnitude too small, too few...

What work-arounds could we devise to 'Break Ground' ? Level a site ? Strip over-burden ? 'Slice and Dice' a massive ore formation ? Follow a rich mineral seam ? Time and again, I kept circling back to water-jetting. Which, of course, came with its own environmental and logistical issues...

Surprisingly, the more I studied jetting tech, the more obvious its advantages became. Provided 'boil off' and other loss could be tolerated, a similar approach to my initial iceteroid slicing presented itself. For instance, to free material from a massive 'face', first use a traverse with twin jets to cut two long, deep adjacent slots or 'kerfs'. By analogy with bench carpentry, cross-cut this narrow 'body' to a thick comb, each 'wafer' easily broken out. The resulting 'notch' was now wide enough for deeper and yet deeper passes of those jetting nozzles. Several such notches might be cut in parallel, then orthogonal. A diagonal approach, removing a big wedge, provided access to cut free the back of these neat, almost 'ashlar' blocks. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat...

I knew the Engineers would not welcome a sudden demand to urgently scale any 'Boutique Bistro' provision for water-jet cutting to 'Industrial Quantity'. Beyond crafting sufficient seriously tough nozzles, the prototyping and serial production of such specialised high-pressure pumps might need 'significant' lead-time. Plus, yes, deploying to work-faces would surely need integration to mobile 'Jumbo Derricks' or modern equivalent...

I sent these musings to the Engineers. Though much probably matched their own thinking, they would surely appreciate my early warning, devise and progress contingency plans...

[jemhouston]

Idle engineers are dangerous.

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

Not a patch on bored 'Field Geologists'...
Fingers beginning to *twitch*...
Gotta trace that stratum, map that intrusion, swing specimen hammer !!

[jemhouston]

Not a patch on bored 'Field Geologists'...
Fingers beginning to *twitch*...
Gotta trace that stratum, map that intrusion, swing specimen hammer !!

I'm not denying I would do that, but I'm not confirming it either.

[Belushi TD]

Not a patch on bored 'Field Geologists'...
Fingers beginning to *twitch*...
Gotta trace that stratum, map that intrusion, swing specimen hammer !!

I'm in this post and I don't like it.



Belushi TD

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

City of Fresno #106

Several days later, without fuss, Fresno eased from that wary acceleration to 'coasting'. A week after that, following our usual dour breakfast, Fresno announced a routine 'net-down'. It would mark the start of this leg's braking phase. We should experience a smooth transition to an axial ¼-g supplementing the Berthing Pods' centrifugal whirl. Warily, the ship did so. Nothing dramatic occurred. Beyond adjusting tables, bunks and gait for the gentle 'slope', it was 'Business as Usual' while Fresno decelerated.

My Nav' augment, comparable to the instruments in 'Big Mac' or a generic 'Deep Space' Work Pod, lacked the facilities to fully monitor Fresno's Field Poles. Still, as days passed and their 'baseline fuzz' gradually grew due to rising 'inter-stellar' density, then the Hexagon Stages' 'Auxiliary Poles' again awoke, I knew we were approaching that K4 system.

The 'By-Ways' survey went better than expected, such we actually finished searching all the listed access-way locations. There might be more materiel 'walled up' within equipment enclosures, but the data-base had provision for reporting such serendipitous discoveries. Lt. 'Logistics' Baxter was delighted. The Stewards, Engineers and Lt. Richards were delighted. But, with my Catering / Hygiene 'Refresher' course still weeks away, I was bored, reduced to running laundry washes earlier than necessary...

After two more days, another after-breakfast 'net down' brought us out of 'Over Drive'. Within moments, outside views were available. There wasn't much to see: We were still about five Light-Hours, about Pluto-distant, from the K4 star so, as yet, that was but a very bright speck. 'Below' us, ecliptic-plane planets, if any, would be no more than side-lit flecks lost among so many background 'Field Stars' of the 'Milky Way'. Even the Saturn-dwarfing ring system of 'Mighty Antar', that 'Almost a Brown-Dwarf' consort to now-distant 'Solstice', would still be scant few pixels to these 'ordinary' cameras. There'd be a lot more data after Fresno deployed 'serious' optics, began mapping.

"Lt. Svenson will do a sweep, then Fresno goes further in ?" Anne-Marie surmised.

"Probably," I agreed. "Auroral Radio-frequency emissions should soon flag every Gas Giant, Sub-Giant, Neptunian and Terrestrial planet with a 'global' magnetic field. Snag is that magnetic field might be too strong, corral Jovian-strength radiation belts..."

"Another 'Goldilocks' ?" Anne-Marie shook her head. "Plus, like Sol-System, perhaps some without ?"

"Yeah, exactly. A day or three should show enough motion within ice-line for preliminary visible and infra-red blink comparison. Count 'Inner System' planets, dwarf planets and biggest asteroids. Estimate orbits. Fresno's telescopes collect detail and spectra from 'Interesting' hits."

"For you and the 'Tuggers' to glean ? I'll make a shopping list..." She sighed, added, "Jake, I'm off to puzzle and pamper those still-petulant Crew 'Ponics..."

I did several hours 'Behind the Scenes' in our local Diner which, as you'd expect, was a-buzz with discussion of this first star-system. We expected 'several' planets. With no near-by Binary or 'Common Motion' partner to toss too many planetesimals 'Out of the Pram', there should be ample ingredients. Hopefully, the lack of a 'Hot' or 'Warm' giant meant such had not spiralled in through the primordial nebula, gorging as it went. Sol-system apparently escaped such fate when an orbital resonance developed between Jupiter and Saturn, arresting both but starving Mars. This was the Nice 'Grand Tack' Hypothesis: Extraordinary, oft-challenged but un-falsified...

I returned to our suite to find a 'Missed Video Call' notice. It was, of course, Lt. Svenson. "Mr. Kinson, thank you for returning my call. As yet, this system shows no evidence of technology or occupation, but the 'Terrestrial' planets seem anomalous."

"Ooh ! What have you found ?"

"That... That is the problem." His expression was sour. "Outer-system, beyond the ice-line, there are two clear, radio-loud sources, plus a possible weak third, all 'natural'. Telescopically, a generic sub-Jovian and a Neptunian, each with a multiplicity of small moons. Certainly no 'Galilean' or 'Titan' equivalents. Third, if confirmed, may be a distant, 'Out of Plane' trans-Neptunian, a cold 'Kuiper Object'...

"In-system, though, is radio-quiet, and 'Blink' comparisons have yet to find anything sizeable. Could you suggest cause ?"

"That is odd: I so hoped this K4 would have several interesting inner planets. " I allowed myself a moment. "Hmm. You may just be unlucky with those 'Blinks', too many masked by back-ground 'Field' stars. Against that, Sol-system has four 'Terrestrials', but only one, Earth, is naturally 'Radio-Loud'...

"I've read that several 'Sylvan Alliance' systems have similar ratios...

"Okay: Auroral whistlers need some atmosphere plus a global magnetic field. Perhaps hard vacuum, like Mercury ? Too-small, too-cool internals to sustain a geo-dynamo, like Mercury or Mars ? Too-slow a rotation, due mega-impact and/or solar tidal, like Mercury or Venus ? Mega-impact stalled any prior geo-dynamo, again Venus ? Common enough failure modes...

"Plus the null-hypothesis: Perhaps this system's 'Planetesimals' simply did not 'Go Large' ??"

"Not even one full-sized 'Terrestrial' planet ?" The Lieutenant's face tightened oddly. Clearly, I'd confirmed his suspicions. He hesitated, asked, "What could cause such ?"

I replied tangentially, asking, "Does star spectrum show enhanced 'Metals' ?"

"Upper end of usual range--" He back-trailed, asked, "You suspect the star 'ate' it ? Them ??"

"Possibly. Perhaps a growing super-Earth spiralled all the way in ? Or star 'swept up' too many of the sub-Jovian's 'Pram Tossings' ? Or too much debris from 'Planetesimal' mega-collisions ?" I shrugged. "Another possibility is multiple legacy 'Kirkwood Gaps': What if resonance with that Neptunian repeatedly shifted the sub-Jovian's orbit ? Not a full-on 'Grand Tack', how Sol's Jupiter starved Mars, but enough to thwart the last, crucial stages of 'Planetesimal' aggregation ?

"Or, a low probability, perhaps orbital resonance with the sub-Jovian progressively ejected the 'Terrestrial' planets, with one now that 'Kuiper Object' ?

"Up-side, there may be several inner-system 'Dwarf Planets', think 'Ceres' and 'Vesta'. Perhaps a 'Mini-Mars' or two ? Down-side, expect minimally segregated, 'primitive' geology."

"The-- The whole inner system could be an asteroid belt ??"

"That is possible: Don't be surprised if further 'Blink' comparisons are busy, even *very* busy..." I shrugged. "Still, with a bit of luck, spectra may find some handy nickel-iron asteroids, collision fragments from former 'Planetesimal' cores. Tugs' ice-slicer turrets should be able to carve off useful chunks: Slabs and billets to delight the Engineers, lots of geology samples to study, perhaps some trace elements to pep up the 'Ponics ?

When Lt. Svenson made no reply, I added, "I take it Fresno will head for a wary parking orbit, not too near the sub-Jovian ? Clear of most moons, yet convenient for Tugs' gas-diving ? Also, for high resolution scans of the inner system ?"

"Yes." He nodded politely, agreed, "They're priorities."

"If practicable, out-bound, could Fresno swing past that weak third source ? The possible 'Kuiper Object' ? We don't have much data on such. And, if out-cast from inner system, may yet offer useful gleanings..."