Why are People Here?
“The hum was noticeable for the first month or so, then I ignored it for the next three years, but after that I noticed and learned about it. ‘Squilla is constantly collecting power from the sun and that electricity has a particular hum to it. This hum changes based on what the ship is doing, for instance right now I can tell from the slight off resonance every 30 seconds that a power unit somewhere among numbers 12-36 is getting ready to eject its power module for travel to earth. Some of those units have been jamming recently so I should probably start heading over to that section since it will take 6 hours to get there.
“Most people on earth don’t know how big these sun catchers are. Those who have stood next to one on the launch pad are amazed at the size and bulk of the ships, but that doesn’t even begin to show the size of the ship. It took 2 months to unfold the capsule into the ‘Squilla that I know. My quarters and work area barely cover 0.3% of the square feet and they didn’t cram me into the broom closet, I have more space than I know what to do with most of the time.
“It takes a while to get to the other parts of the ship for multiple reasons. Obviously it is big so it can take a while to walk places, but that isn’t the main reason for slowness. My areas are in the middle of the ship and have several counterbalancing mechanisms for when I move around; out on the collection units there are no such things. So when I move around out there, I have to have the bots counter my weight and movements. This is most easily done by tethering myself to a small tug bot with a ambistring, setting my destination inside the tug bot and the main bot controlling computer, and then relaxing until I reach my destination. An ambistring allows for having multiple types of tethers using only one; it can be a rigid rod, a slightly flexible spring-like connector, or it can be a loose, whippy rope. While traveling the tug bot controls my velocity very precisely and so I set it as a rigid rod. Once at my destination, I switch to the spring for most work so that I can do some work but it doesn’t require the main bot controlling computer to do too many calculations since that takes a lot of power. Occasionally I have to use the rope to do things quickly and in ways I can’t explain to the bots. The tether also acts as a connection between the computer and myself. It monitors my oxygen levels (the only areas with atmosphere are my living and working areas), my commands, and my movement and relays it to the computers as needed.
“The bots could move faster and the computer could calculate faster, but that involves more energy usage. Although they said I could use as much energy as I wanted up here, they sort of glossed over the real truths of the situation. I can use a lot of energy up here, but a lot of that energy is used in staying alive. It takes quite a bit to maintain my recycling of elements in the living quarters to keep me alive; the computers that control everything need their feeds of power. After that the quotas of energy shipment must be met; finally if there is any power left over I can use it. Usually, there is plenty for my needs; it seems that my drop in power usage for my toys that I brought along was anticipated. For the first two years I ran my toys all the time, but at the end of those years I began to grow tired of my toys and I also noticed that my power quota increased at about the same time. Curious, I dug into the power controlling computer’s coding and found that this increase in quota and decrease in my power usage was pre-programmed. After several more years, I have long since stopped counting, the power usage and power shipping balance has shifted so that I have to be careful of how much power I use. Even now I am turning down the contrast on my pad screen to lower power consumption so I can write a bit longer.”
With all those bots and computers on board the ship, you may wonder why the Arts bothered to put anyone in space on the ship. People used more energy, required more resources, and weren’t as expendable. It was almost unknown during Kopper’s time and little known today that the first sun catcher was designed to be run by bots alone. The first two had been sent up before the change was made. Inevitably the bots needed some human decisions to be input every now and again, so the control room had a side room of people that monitored the sun catchers and their bots. Unfortunately, the sun catchers had a few problems that meant this system didn’t work. First off, the program was not widely known about. Most of the Arts knew they were launching ships to collect energy off-world, but that was all that was allowed to leak out. The people working on the project were not allowed to discuss even the minutest thing with other people with regard to the program, including that they worked on it. So nobody was a hero or even interesting. Second, the time delay was fairly bad and so you had to wait for a long time to see if your command had been accepted and what effect it had on the situation. So the bot controllers became distracted in the wait time between commands. Third, a vast majority of the time the bot controllers on earth weren’t needed, so they tended to fall asleep or do other things while “working.” New people couldn’t be trained to take the place of the bot controllers because then what would the current bot controllers do for work and still be monitored to not talk about the program and further, there weren’t a lot of people qualified and eligible to take those jobs.
This all calumniated into a situation where a bot controller was busy sleeping (he claimed thinking) when an alarm went off on the first sun catcher (the controller claimed the alarm didn’t sound or flash on his computer terminal). The error was a simple jam in the ejection of a power unit that was ready to be sent to the transfer station in orbit around the earth, but the bots couldn’t see how to clear the jam without damaging the collector station. In those situations they were required to get human input to approve the damaging and subsequent repair of the module. This error occurred at the beginning of the controller’s shift. The relieving controller came in and asked how things were, because he was supposed to ask, not because he actually expected anything to be happening. So when the first controller stretched and said everything was fine, the second controller believed him and settled into the chair to do some reading on a tablet he brought, all without either of them ever turning on the screen. For power saving reasons, the screen turned itself off after 10 minutes of no use and auto-woke up when an alarm came in. Unfortunately, the programmers never anticipated that an alarm would not be noticed and so after the alarm was ignored for 10 minutes, the screen and sound went blank and silent.
Midway through the second watch, the controller decided to see if there were any good solar flares that day and so he woke up the machine to find a glaring red error on it. Just then, the second alarm rang saying that because of the jam, the power was overloading on the module and it was going to explode if something wasn’t done. The controller immediately set to work on directing the bots clearing of the jam and dissipation of the power build up. Unfortunately, he didn’t get a full assessment of the situation until he was mid-way through what he thought was the proper procedure. When he noticed the disconnected power coupling, he changed the procedure, but forgot about the time delay in commands. So while he thought a bot was in one place, it wasn’t there by the time his new command arrived at the sun catcher since during that time one of his previous commands had arrived and been carried out. So instead of the bot correcting the problem, the bot fell into the space between the power coupler and the jammed power unit shorting the two together. The resulting explosion sent the sun catcher into a spin that the controller and now the rest of the staff in the area watched in delayed video. The controller tried frantically to get the bots to correct the problem, but the force was too great to overcome with the current energy and propulsion systems on board the sun catcher and so it slowly spiraled into the sun.
The next launch of a sun catcher was scrubbed. Three years later a new sun catcher was launched with a two person crew. Everyone thought that would be a solution. If people were aboard the ship, then they would care about what happened to the ship and wouldn’t fall asleep on the job. Their heroism would be acknowledged on their return with a parade and they would be set up with whatever they wanted for the rest of their lives. In order for the project to be economical (in both funds and power collection) the ship was required to be in space for 30 years. This long time dictated that the crew selected was required to be in their early to mid-teens. Perhaps the selection process and testing wasn’t as rigorous as it was later or maybe having two people was just a bad idea. In any case the disaster that befell this sun catcher was less expensive in energy collection losses, but more expensive in another way.
The two teenagers were friends when they launched, but after six years of collecting a fight broke out. Urgently, they requested that they be allowed to return, that this just wasn’t working out. Those who held the highest positions at the Art Energy Collection Commission decided that it would be worked out and they should remain in space. For three more years both remained on board the sun catcher and were successful in maintaining the ship. After that, nobody is quite sure what happened. It is known that one of the now twenty somethings tried to modify an escape pod to make the journey to earth and re-enter the atmosphere.
The pod was seen on radar when it entered orbit around the earth. A ship was sent up to retrieve it, even though it was expensive to do so. Just as the ship was about to retrieve the pod, the pod fired its jets and began its decent into the atmosphere. This was a surprise since the amount of fuel that should have been left in the jets after the trip from the sun catcher should have been close to nothing, but the jets fired and the pod dropped toward the earth. Perhaps if the pod hadn’t been pursued by the retrieval craft and been damaged by a last ditch effort to retrieve the pod into the larger craft it would have survived the trip. But the pod was damaged by the mechanical arms sent after it and moments later it entered the upper atmosphere and broke apart.
As soon as the pod was spotted, the sun catcher program began to try to contact the sun catcher to find out what was going on. On the day after the pod was destroyed, the remaining person on board contacted them to say that he was unsure what happened to his partner, they hadn’t been talking for three years or even seeing each other for the past two. So he was unsure when his “friend” had left or what had been done. Despite further attempts at communication, that was the last words that sun catcher exchanged with command. The remaining crew successfully completed his 30 years on board the vessel, sending back more energy than anticipated. Command was happy with this and also relieved that the crew member that had died was the one with no family so there was no explaining needed. Upon return, the remaining crew member was again questioned without success.
After the urgent request for both of the crew to return to earth, the program was switched to only having a crew of one on each sun catcher. This decision was re-enforced each time there was a new launch since the production of the originally two member craft always steadily increased. Those at command hailed the remaining crew member as a hero and claimed the program was a success, even though all of this was still said behind closed doors. A parade was arranged for that first crew member that died and some other reason was given for the heroism. An even bigger parade and more elaborate story made up when the second crew member returned. His family tried to re-attach themselves to this man, but he only “spoke” through written messages and quickly made it clear that he wanted his reward. So the Arts gave him a small cabin by a lake and got him a dog. He died at the age of 120 and records show he never talked to another person again.
“Most people on earth don’t know how big these sun catchers are. Those who have stood next to one on the launch pad are amazed at the size and bulk of the ships, but that doesn’t even begin to show the size of the ship. It took 2 months to unfold the capsule into the ‘Squilla that I know. My quarters and work area barely cover 0.3% of the square feet and they didn’t cram me into the broom closet, I have more space than I know what to do with most of the time.
“It takes a while to get to the other parts of the ship for multiple reasons. Obviously it is big so it can take a while to walk places, but that isn’t the main reason for slowness. My areas are in the middle of the ship and have several counterbalancing mechanisms for when I move around; out on the collection units there are no such things. So when I move around out there, I have to have the bots counter my weight and movements. This is most easily done by tethering myself to a small tug bot with a ambistring, setting my destination inside the tug bot and the main bot controlling computer, and then relaxing until I reach my destination. An ambistring allows for having multiple types of tethers using only one; it can be a rigid rod, a slightly flexible spring-like connector, or it can be a loose, whippy rope. While traveling the tug bot controls my velocity very precisely and so I set it as a rigid rod. Once at my destination, I switch to the spring for most work so that I can do some work but it doesn’t require the main bot controlling computer to do too many calculations since that takes a lot of power. Occasionally I have to use the rope to do things quickly and in ways I can’t explain to the bots. The tether also acts as a connection between the computer and myself. It monitors my oxygen levels (the only areas with atmosphere are my living and working areas), my commands, and my movement and relays it to the computers as needed.
“The bots could move faster and the computer could calculate faster, but that involves more energy usage. Although they said I could use as much energy as I wanted up here, they sort of glossed over the real truths of the situation. I can use a lot of energy up here, but a lot of that energy is used in staying alive. It takes quite a bit to maintain my recycling of elements in the living quarters to keep me alive; the computers that control everything need their feeds of power. After that the quotas of energy shipment must be met; finally if there is any power left over I can use it. Usually, there is plenty for my needs; it seems that my drop in power usage for my toys that I brought along was anticipated. For the first two years I ran my toys all the time, but at the end of those years I began to grow tired of my toys and I also noticed that my power quota increased at about the same time. Curious, I dug into the power controlling computer’s coding and found that this increase in quota and decrease in my power usage was pre-programmed. After several more years, I have long since stopped counting, the power usage and power shipping balance has shifted so that I have to be careful of how much power I use. Even now I am turning down the contrast on my pad screen to lower power consumption so I can write a bit longer.”
With all those bots and computers on board the ship, you may wonder why the Arts bothered to put anyone in space on the ship. People used more energy, required more resources, and weren’t as expendable. It was almost unknown during Kopper’s time and little known today that the first sun catcher was designed to be run by bots alone. The first two had been sent up before the change was made. Inevitably the bots needed some human decisions to be input every now and again, so the control room had a side room of people that monitored the sun catchers and their bots. Unfortunately, the sun catchers had a few problems that meant this system didn’t work. First off, the program was not widely known about. Most of the Arts knew they were launching ships to collect energy off-world, but that was all that was allowed to leak out. The people working on the project were not allowed to discuss even the minutest thing with other people with regard to the program, including that they worked on it. So nobody was a hero or even interesting. Second, the time delay was fairly bad and so you had to wait for a long time to see if your command had been accepted and what effect it had on the situation. So the bot controllers became distracted in the wait time between commands. Third, a vast majority of the time the bot controllers on earth weren’t needed, so they tended to fall asleep or do other things while “working.” New people couldn’t be trained to take the place of the bot controllers because then what would the current bot controllers do for work and still be monitored to not talk about the program and further, there weren’t a lot of people qualified and eligible to take those jobs.
This all calumniated into a situation where a bot controller was busy sleeping (he claimed thinking) when an alarm went off on the first sun catcher (the controller claimed the alarm didn’t sound or flash on his computer terminal). The error was a simple jam in the ejection of a power unit that was ready to be sent to the transfer station in orbit around the earth, but the bots couldn’t see how to clear the jam without damaging the collector station. In those situations they were required to get human input to approve the damaging and subsequent repair of the module. This error occurred at the beginning of the controller’s shift. The relieving controller came in and asked how things were, because he was supposed to ask, not because he actually expected anything to be happening. So when the first controller stretched and said everything was fine, the second controller believed him and settled into the chair to do some reading on a tablet he brought, all without either of them ever turning on the screen. For power saving reasons, the screen turned itself off after 10 minutes of no use and auto-woke up when an alarm came in. Unfortunately, the programmers never anticipated that an alarm would not be noticed and so after the alarm was ignored for 10 minutes, the screen and sound went blank and silent.
Midway through the second watch, the controller decided to see if there were any good solar flares that day and so he woke up the machine to find a glaring red error on it. Just then, the second alarm rang saying that because of the jam, the power was overloading on the module and it was going to explode if something wasn’t done. The controller immediately set to work on directing the bots clearing of the jam and dissipation of the power build up. Unfortunately, he didn’t get a full assessment of the situation until he was mid-way through what he thought was the proper procedure. When he noticed the disconnected power coupling, he changed the procedure, but forgot about the time delay in commands. So while he thought a bot was in one place, it wasn’t there by the time his new command arrived at the sun catcher since during that time one of his previous commands had arrived and been carried out. So instead of the bot correcting the problem, the bot fell into the space between the power coupler and the jammed power unit shorting the two together. The resulting explosion sent the sun catcher into a spin that the controller and now the rest of the staff in the area watched in delayed video. The controller tried frantically to get the bots to correct the problem, but the force was too great to overcome with the current energy and propulsion systems on board the sun catcher and so it slowly spiraled into the sun.
The next launch of a sun catcher was scrubbed. Three years later a new sun catcher was launched with a two person crew. Everyone thought that would be a solution. If people were aboard the ship, then they would care about what happened to the ship and wouldn’t fall asleep on the job. Their heroism would be acknowledged on their return with a parade and they would be set up with whatever they wanted for the rest of their lives. In order for the project to be economical (in both funds and power collection) the ship was required to be in space for 30 years. This long time dictated that the crew selected was required to be in their early to mid-teens. Perhaps the selection process and testing wasn’t as rigorous as it was later or maybe having two people was just a bad idea. In any case the disaster that befell this sun catcher was less expensive in energy collection losses, but more expensive in another way.
The two teenagers were friends when they launched, but after six years of collecting a fight broke out. Urgently, they requested that they be allowed to return, that this just wasn’t working out. Those who held the highest positions at the Art Energy Collection Commission decided that it would be worked out and they should remain in space. For three more years both remained on board the sun catcher and were successful in maintaining the ship. After that, nobody is quite sure what happened. It is known that one of the now twenty somethings tried to modify an escape pod to make the journey to earth and re-enter the atmosphere.
The pod was seen on radar when it entered orbit around the earth. A ship was sent up to retrieve it, even though it was expensive to do so. Just as the ship was about to retrieve the pod, the pod fired its jets and began its decent into the atmosphere. This was a surprise since the amount of fuel that should have been left in the jets after the trip from the sun catcher should have been close to nothing, but the jets fired and the pod dropped toward the earth. Perhaps if the pod hadn’t been pursued by the retrieval craft and been damaged by a last ditch effort to retrieve the pod into the larger craft it would have survived the trip. But the pod was damaged by the mechanical arms sent after it and moments later it entered the upper atmosphere and broke apart.
As soon as the pod was spotted, the sun catcher program began to try to contact the sun catcher to find out what was going on. On the day after the pod was destroyed, the remaining person on board contacted them to say that he was unsure what happened to his partner, they hadn’t been talking for three years or even seeing each other for the past two. So he was unsure when his “friend” had left or what had been done. Despite further attempts at communication, that was the last words that sun catcher exchanged with command. The remaining crew successfully completed his 30 years on board the vessel, sending back more energy than anticipated. Command was happy with this and also relieved that the crew member that had died was the one with no family so there was no explaining needed. Upon return, the remaining crew member was again questioned without success.
After the urgent request for both of the crew to return to earth, the program was switched to only having a crew of one on each sun catcher. This decision was re-enforced each time there was a new launch since the production of the originally two member craft always steadily increased. Those at command hailed the remaining crew member as a hero and claimed the program was a success, even though all of this was still said behind closed doors. A parade was arranged for that first crew member that died and some other reason was given for the heroism. An even bigger parade and more elaborate story made up when the second crew member returned. His family tried to re-attach themselves to this man, but he only “spoke” through written messages and quickly made it clear that he wanted his reward. So the Arts gave him a small cabin by a lake and got him a dog. He died at the age of 120 and records show he never talked to another person again.
posted by Unknown at 9:10 AM
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