July 2029, Rocket City, Sa State, Liangguo
Daphne Braun imagined the human habitation module placed in Valles Marineris on Mars. Michael called it a “capsule.”
“The people living in the capsule won’t just be doing scientific research, will they? What engineering tasks will they shoulder?” Daphne asked Michael.
“Their foremost task is to achieve a self-sufficient life as much as possible, including drilling for ice and extracting water from deep beneath the canyon floor, producing oxygen and hydrogen, and solving the problems of drinking water, oxygen, and energy,” Michael replied.
Daphne looked at the explorer before her, a man who was like a hero in her heart. She surmised that the capsule project Michael wanted to carry out on Mars could not be aimed merely at a survival experiment, but at establishing a Martian settlement that could continually expand.
She asked, “Your plan requires enormous transport capacity. Although the Hunterbird 5 rocket has a large payload and can be recovered and reused, it’s still far from enough compared with the material needs of a settlement.”
Yes—not only was rocket transport capacity insufficient, building a launch site on Mars would also be extremely difficult.
“You must already have thought of a solution. I’m very curious—did you come up with it with the help of your external brain, VESSEL?”
“Not this time. It was designed by our company’s chief engineer, Dr. James.” Michael thought of the answer VESSEL had given him, shook his head, and said with a chuckle, “As for the transport-capacity problem, the answer VESSEL gave me was itself—VESSEL.”
“The key to solving the transport bottleneck in the Mars colonization plan is actually the word VESSEL itself?” Daphne asked in surprise.
As the boss of Esbay Space Technology, many of Michael Max’s ideas seemed almost fantastical to ordinary people, and Dr. James, the chief engineer who identified with the company culture, was even more so.
Dr. James suggested building a transfer station near areostationary orbit above Mars. The transport spacecraft pushed by the Hunterbird 5 rocket would dock with the transfer station in space, rather than travel back and forth to the far more difficult Martian surface.
The transfer station in synchronous orbit would be connected to the surface of Mars with carbon-fiber tubes and auxiliary supports, forming a Martian version of a space elevator.
Daphne Braun was a professional astronomer. Although she did not understand the details of engineering, she knew that building a Martian version of a space elevator would be extremely difficult.
One method would be to extend upward from the Martian surface at the equator for about twenty thousand kilometers; another would be to build a massive artificial object in orbit twenty thousand kilometers from Mars to serve as a stabilizer. Clearly, both were extremely difficult.
“To build upward from the Martian surface, you’d have to transport building materials to Mars. That just brings the problem back to where it started, so it’s obviously unworkable.” Daphne continued asking as though solving a riddle. “But building an artificial object large and stable enough in synchronous orbit twenty thousand kilometers above Mars—that’s impossible too!”
Michael smiled mysteriously and said to Daphne:
“Building an artificial anchor hundreds or thousands of tons in mass is indeed impossible, but our genius Dr. James is using a naturally formed anchor. It’s called Deimos—the equivalent of Earth’s Moon.”
“Deimos, a Martian moon!” Daphne cried out.
Mars has two moons. Both have eccentricities close to zero, meaning they orbit Mars in almost perfectly circular paths, and their orbital inclinations are also close to zero degrees, almost hugging the Martian equatorial plane as they orbit. They happen to be located directly above the theoretically optimal construction sites for a Martian space elevator.
Deimos has a semimajor axis of about 23,000 kilometers and orbits Mars once every 30.3 hours. Mars’s rotation period is 24 hours and 37 minutes, which means Deimos is slightly higher than areostationary orbit.
A transport spacecraft docking with Deimos “floating” above Mars would be far less technically difficult than landing on and returning from the Martian surface, and transportation costs would be greatly reduced.
Daphne was professional and sharp, and immediately pointed out the problem. “Deimos’s orbital speed is lower than the linear velocity of the Martian surface’s rotation. Even if Deimos lowered a space elevator toward Mars, it wouldn’t be able to form a stable connection with the Martian ground. There would be a velocity difference.”
Daphne’s question had also occurred to Dr. James. The space elevator lowered from Deimos would be nearly twenty thousand kilometers long, and the end near the Martian surface could be given additional counterweight, but it could not be directly connected to a fixed base on the Martian ground, because a velocity difference existed.
Near the Martian equator, the surface’s rotational linear velocity is about 240 meters per second, while the linear velocity of the end of the space elevator pointing toward Mars is 200 meters per second. There is an east-to-west velocity difference of about 40 meters per second.
Michael took Daphne’s hand and gently prompted her, “Are you assuming by default that the space elevator’s connecting base on the Martian surface must be fixed?”
Daphne Braun suddenly understood. If the docking base moved at high speed from east to west across the Martian surface—that is, if the base, relative to Mars’s rotation, continually retreated from east to west—and if that retreat speed happened to be 40 meters per second, then stable docking between the base and the space elevator could be achieved.
“Forty meters per second, that’s 144 kilometers per hour. Are you planning to make the docking base into an electric sports car with a top speed of 144 kilometers per hour? It must be a Nikola, right? Haha.”
After Daphne Braun guessed the answer to the riddle, she still could hardly believe Dr. James had managed to come up with such a bold and ingenious plan. After calming down slightly, she thought of another problem and asked:
“The Martian atmosphere is thin, and its sandstorms are not only fierce but also last a very long time. Even if the base were built on a sports car, it would still be very hard to withstand such harsh weather.”
Michael told Daphne that Dr. James’s plan had taken these factors into account. Another advantage of the space elevator not being rigidly connected to the ground base was precisely that, when sandstorms struck, the space-elevator structure could be shortened, its end kept far away from the Martian surface.
The high-speed moving base platform would need “rails,” in other words, a track. It was completely unnecessary for the track to circle all the way around Mars, because the cost would be too high.
The circumference of the Martian equator is about 21,000 kilometers. The track Dr. James planned would be less than 4,000 kilometers long, allowing the space elevator to dock with Mars for one day every seven days when there were no sandstorms.
Daphne Braun was also an expert among experts. She immediately grasped Dr. James’s painstaking intention and exclaimed:
“Less than 4,000 kilometers? You’re planning to build the platform track inside Valles Marineris, which forms only a very small angle with the Martian equator, in order to better resist Martian storms?”
Michael Max stood up and poured each of them a cup of coffee. He gazed at the clever and beautiful girlfriend before him, wanting to speak but stopping himself.
A few months earlier, he had learned of Nikola Tesla’s superluminal-wave theory and signed a confidentiality pledge. He could not reveal his true plan to anyone, including the girlfriend he loved.
Michael knew very well that even if the ingenious space elevator were built, it would still be impossible to transform Mars into a second Earth suitable for human habitation. To achieve that goal, a superluminal-wave power station had to be built on Mars, and the Martian space elevator was only an auxiliary project.
The biggest problem troubling Michael Max was constructing a 180,000-kilometer-high structure on Mars. The raw materials used had to come from Mars itself; relying on transport would not work.
Those materials would, of course, have to be extracted from the soil on the Martian surface, but at present, due to technological limitations, humanity’s sampling depth for Martian surface soil was a pitiful mere ten centimeters.
There was also a purely engineering problem. Even if standard support components for the power-station structure could be processed and manufactured on the Martian surface, those components would still need to be connected with precise and reliable connectors. To put it plainly, they would need screws and screwdrivers for fastening.
Daphne broke the brief silence and suddenly asked, “How do you plan to connect the standard components of the space elevator together?”
Michael made a strange expression and replied, “Didn’t my external brain already give me the answer? Use VESSEL.”
Daphne asked in confusion, “VESSEL? Literally it means a container, a large ship, or a blood vessel. None of those meanings has anything to do with this. Of course, the building where we had our first date was also called VESSEL. A heavenly ladder? Does it mean a heavenly ladder?”
“It may have that meaning. I don’t think that’s all, though. It may also have something to do with another company of mine—a supplier for Nikola electric vehicles.”
Daphne was thoroughly bewildered and looked at Michael in confusion.
Michael said, “Nikola electric vehicles require various types of screwdrivers in the manufacturing process. Our company’s corresponding supplier is a well-known manufacturer of screwdrivers and pneumatic equipment.”
The screwdriver manufacturer Michael Max spoke of was a famous enterprise from Fushengguo. Its product trademark was:
VESSEL.
&
Chapter-ending cento poem:
Stacked into clustered jade, cold light is born. Ming, Yi Saek
Still one knows the streaming rainbow, auspicious lightning coiling. Qing, Chen Tingjing
Wind caverns and starry crags should be reachable. Ming, Gu Lin
Carriage wheels go back and forth all day in haste. Song, Liu Zai