Nov 7, 2011

Chronicles of the Arc-Ship Salvation

This is the first entry in the personal log of Caira Flannigan, ships engineer for the Arc-ship Salvation, employee of the Eden Foundation.
I don’t think I could possibly be more excited. This ship is amazing, I can’t believe I am going to be living on it, and I am even more amazed I get to work on it, and get my fingers into the most intimate workings. I’m one of the ships engineers, there are about 50 of us right now. When we are going we will share the work fairly evenly, but right now we all have specific areas assigned to us. I’ve got the environmental systems. It’s not the most glamorous, but it’s probably the most visible part. Comparatively speaking I’ve got the easy job. Don’t envy the bastard that has to get the gravity right. Now we mostly float around. Lots of magnetic shoes for now. There was a time when they thought about just going with loads of magnets instead of trying to engineer a rotational gravity simulator. But honestly, a ship full of magnets is just a bad idea. So we wound up with a ship that isn’t exactly a looker but is definitely impressive. It looks like a… well it’s a long steel tube, our jokes and nicknames have become old now. We’ve got it set up to start around moon gravity levels, and slowly ramp up to earth gravity, to give everyone a chance to adjust. Most of us have become so used to the low gravity that to just jump right back to normal some of us might break our legs. We will probably run at normal gravity for a while but we also plan to, very gradually, ramp it up. We suspect that the gravity at our final destination will be higher, and we think it’s better to adapt to slightly higher g-force than to be potentially too weak to manage. That’s the thought anyway. Today we don’t have to worry about much more than going from about .5G to 1G. But like I said, that’s not my area yet, so I don’t have to worry about much more than the results. For me, I have to worry about lights, oxygen, water, and unfortunately, waste disposal. The problems you’d never think about, are now a big deal. Where do you get food? How do you produce more air? Can you manufacture water? Where does the trash go?
These problems nearly killed the entire project. But it’s all manageable. We were stuck thinking about synthesizing elements. But we forgot that most of these things are organic. They don’t need to be synthesized. If we have enough plants, and air and water they will cycle, and be mostly self sustaining. We just have to maintain the ratio, and make sure everything is moving. The earth itself provides us with the perfect model. So we just needed to make sure we had ways to replicate those natural systems. This was, in and of itself, a major feat of engineering. Have you ever TRIED to set up a farm in space? We have to get the gravity up a little more before we get the animals in here, no one wants floating cows. I could spend a few hours outlining the systems we set up, and honestly I would like to but that will have to wait. But I’m sure all that will be published before we leave, wouldn’t want to take our secretes to the far side of the universe. Without leaving a note, always leave a note.
Back to my problems, I have to go solve a few. Just got a note about the lights. Apparently we forgot to make sure that we had enough lighting that completely simulates the full sunlight spectrum. Including the UV parts. You never think about Vitamin D until you don’t get it. It shouldn’t be a big problem. We already had that lighting for the plants in the farm, just need to make sure we get spread around the rest of the ship. Someone is going to be changing a light bulb or two. By someone I mean all my assistants and the construction crew we still have on sight.

Caira Flannigan

03/16/2218

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