July 2029, Rocket City, Sazhou, Liang Nation
Daphne Braun imagined the human habitat capsules they planned to place in Valles Marineris on Mars. Michael called them "capsules."
"The people living in the capsules won't just be doing research, right? What other engineering tasks will they be responsible for?" Daphne asked Michael.
"Their primary task is to become as self-sufficient as possible. That includes drilling into the depths of the canyon floor to extract ice and produce oxygen and hydrogen, solving the problems of drinking water, oxygen, and energy," Michael replied.
Daphne looked at the explorer before her, who was like a hero in her eyes. She guessed that Michael's capsule project on Mars was about more than just testing how people could survive there. His goal had to be to establish a Martian settlement that could keep expanding.
She asked, "Your plan will require a lot of transport capacity. The Hunter-5 Rocket can carry a heavy payload and be reused, but that still won't be nearly enough to meet the settlement's supply needs."
That was true. It wasn't just that the rockets lacked enough capacity; building a launch site on Mars would also be very difficult.
"You must have thought of a solution already. I'm curious—did you come up with it with the help of your external brain, VESSEL?"
"This time, I really didn't. It was designed by our company's chief engineer, Dr. James." Michael recalled VESSEL's answer, shook his head, and said with a grin, "As for the transport capacity problem, VESSEL's answer was VESSEL itself."
"The key to solving the transport bottleneck in the Mars colonization plan is actually the word VESSEL?" Daphne asked in surprise.
As the owner of Acebe Space Technology Company, Michael Max had many ideas that seemed almost fantastical to ordinary people. Dr. James, the chief engineer who shared the company's culture, was even more so.
Dr. James proposed building a transfer station near Mars's geostationary orbit. Instead of making the much more difficult trip to and from the Martian surface, the transport ships launched by the Hunter-5 Rocket would dock with the station in space.
The station in geostationary orbit would be connected to the Martian surface by Carbon Fiber Tubes and support structures, creating a Martian version of a space elevator.
Daphne Braun was a professional astronomer. Though she didn't know the engineering details, she knew that building a Martian space elevator would be extremely difficult.
One option was to extend it upward from the Martian surface at the equator for about twenty thousand kilometers. The other was to build a huge artificial object in orbit, twenty thousand kilometers from Mars, to act as a stabilizer. Both options were clearly very difficult.
"Building it upward from the surface would mean transporting the construction materials to Mars, which brings us right back to the original problem. That obviously won't work." Daphne continued as if solving a riddle. "And building a sufficiently large, stable artificial object in geostationary orbit, twenty thousand kilometers above Mars, is impossible too!"
Michael smiled mysteriously and said to Daphne,
"Building an artificial anchor weighing hundreds or even thousands of tons really would be impossible. But our brilliant Dr. James came up with a naturally occurring anchor. It's called Phobos, the equivalent of Earth's Moon."
"Phobos—the Fire Moon!" Daphne cried.
Mars had two moons, both with eccentricities close to zero, meaning they orbited Mars in nearly perfect circles. Their orbital inclinations were also close to zero degrees, so they orbited almost directly above Mars's equatorial plane. They happened to lie directly above the theoretically optimal locations for building a Martian space elevator.
Phobos had a semimajor axis of about 23,000 kilometers and orbited Mars once every 30.3 hours. Mars's rotation period was 24 hours and 37 minutes, so Phobos was slightly above Mars's geostationary orbit.
Docking a transport ship with Phobos, "floating" above Mars, would be far less difficult than landing on and launching from the Martian surface, and would greatly reduce transport costs.
Daphne was sharp and quick to spot the problem. "Phobos's orbital speed is slower than the rotational speed at the Martian surface. Even if it lowered a space elevator toward Mars, it still couldn't connect stably to the surface. There'd be a difference in speed."
Dr. James had thought of that, too. The space elevator lowered from Phobos would be nearly twenty thousand kilometers long. The end near the Martian surface could be weighted down, but it couldn't be connected directly to a fixed base on the ground because of the difference in speed.
Near Mars's equator, the surface's rotational speed was about 240 meters per second, while the end of the space elevator facing Mars would move at 200 meters per second. That left a speed difference of about 40 meters per second, westward.
Michael took Daphne's hand and gently prompted her. "Are you assuming the space elevator's connection base on the Martian surface would be fixed in place?"
Daphne suddenly understood. If the docking base moved rapidly westward across the Martian surface—meaning it continuously moved west relative to Mars's rotation—then, at a speed of exactly 40 meters per second, it could dock stably with the space elevator.
"Forty meters per second—that's 144 kilometers per hour. Are you planning to make the docking base an electric sports car that can do 144 kilometers per hour? It must be a Nikola, right? Ha ha!"
Even after guessing the answer, Daphne Braun could hardly believe Dr. James had come up with such a daring and ingenious solution. After a moment to collect herself, she thought of another problem and asked,
"The Martian atmosphere is thin, and the dust storms are not only intense but also last a long time. Even if the base were built on a sports car, it would have a hard time withstanding such harsh weather."
Michael told Daphne that Dr. James's plan took those factors into account. The space elevator's lack of a rigid connection to the ground had another advantage: when a dust storm came, the structure could be shortened, keeping its end farther from the Martian surface.
The rapidly moving platform would need "rails"—a track—but there was no need for the track to circle all the way around Mars. That would be far too expensive.
The Martian equator was about 21,000 kilometers long. Dr. James planned to build less than 4,000 kilometers of track, so on days without dust storms, the space elevator would dock with Mars for one day every seven days.
Daphne Braun was a formidable expert in her own right, and she immediately understood the thought Dr. James had put into the plan. She exclaimed,
"Less than 4,000 kilometers? Are you planning to build the platform's track inside Valles Marineris, where it runs at a slight angle to the Martian equator, so it'll be better protected from Martian storms?"
Michael Max stood up and poured them each a cup of coffee. He gazed at his clever and beautiful girlfriend, wanting to say something but stopping himself.
A few months earlier, he had learned about Nikola Tesla's Superluminal Wave Theory and signed a nondisclosure agreement. He couldn't reveal his true plan to anyone, not even the woman he loved.
Michael knew that even if they built an ingenious space elevator, it still wouldn't be enough to transform Mars into a second Earth where humans could live. To achieve that goal, they had to build a Superlight Wave Power Station on Mars. The Martian space elevator was only a supporting project.
The biggest problem troubling Michael Max was how to build a structure 180,000 kilometers tall on Mars. The raw materials had to come from Mars itself; transporting them there wasn't an option.
The materials would, of course, have to be extracted from the soil on the Martian surface. But with current technology, humans had only managed to collect soil samples from the pitiful depth of ten centimeters.
There was another purely engineering problem. Even if they could manufacture standard support components on the Martian surface for the power station's structure, they would still need precise, reliable connectors to join them together. Put simply, they needed screws and screwdrivers.
Daphne broke the brief silence and suddenly asked, "How are you planning to connect the space elevator's standard components?"
Michael made a strange face. "Didn't my external brain give me the answer? Use VESSEL."
Daphne asked, puzzled, "VESSEL? Literally, it means a container, a ship, or a blood vessel. None of those meanings fit. Of course, the building where we had our first date is also called VESSEL. Does it mean a sky ladder?"
"It might mean a sky ladder, but I don't think that's all. It could also have something to do with my other company's supplier for Nikola electric vehicles."
Daphne was completely baffled and looked at Michael in confusion.
Michael said, "Nikola electric vehicles need screwdrivers of all kinds during manufacturing. One of our suppliers is a well-known maker of screwdrivers and pneumatic equipment."
The screwdriver manufacturer Michael Max was talking about was a renowned company in Fusheng Nation. Its product brand was called:
VESSEL.
A poem pieced together:
Layer upon layer, jade-like peaks gleam cold and bright — Ming, Li Se
Still I recognize the auspicious rainbow and lightning winding round — Qing, Chen Tingjing
The Wind Cave and Star Rock should be within reach — Ming, Gu Lin
Wheels roll back and forth all day, busy without rest — Song, Liu Zai
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