The next week went by rather quickly for Alexander. The station was starting to take shape with his new construction robots being run through their initial tests.
He did have to make some design iterations and launch those replacement parts into orbit, but overall they were working out well. Then engineers would continue to monitor their work for the remaining time they were in the system, but they said they didn’t expect any major issues.
Alexander hoped that was true. While the robots had some ability to repair each other, they wouldn’t be able to do much if the central processors died on them or if the track wheels broke off and the machines floated away. The clamping system should prevent that second scenario from happening, but it was still a possibility.
With the station well in hand and the final railgun turrets going up outside the facility, Alexander was able to finally free up production time for his engine. Technically, he was manufacturing three different engines, all scaled down to one-tenth the size. That was still quite a large engine to build. The engine cones alone measured two feet across.
It was a testament to the ridiculous amount of power these engines produced that a mere three of them could push something the size of the Zephyr along at nearly 3.6g with the ship's average cruising speed being 1g.
One g of acceleration didn’t seem like much, but when it was constant, it added up fast. The design specifications of the Zephyr listed an upper limit of .4c. As far as Alexander could tell, that had a lot to do with material limitations used in the ship's construction. The static field, which ships used to deflect debris, might also be a limiting factor on how fast ships could safely travel but he wasn’t entirely sure that was the case. While he could build and replace the field generators, he didn’t have much knowledge of how the field functioned. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the money to purchase a learning module to explain that specific technology before he left the STO sphere of influence.
The engineering course he was learning from stated pulsed fusion wasn’t able to accelerate past .4c, which made no sense to Alexander based on what he understood of physics. He knew that weird limitation wasn’t based on material considerations because the next part of the course discussed plasma ejection and how early models managed to get to .6c before fusion instability and inefficiency caused the drives to go offline.
At least that issue he could understand.
From speaking with the Hawks’, specifically, Chief Engineer Aria Sullivan, he learned that plasma ejection technology was still in its infancy. Alexander thought it had been around for some time, but apparently, it was only invented after the Coalition war ended. So the issues they were having were understandable. Fusion reactors were delicate things at the best of times. The fact that someone figured out a way to pull out plasma from the reactor without destabilizing the reaction was a monumental achievement in and of itself. Each new generation of engines would slowly reduce these issues and improve efficiency. With enough time and effort, reaching near light speed shouldn’t be a problem for the technology.
With that being said, he needed to know why pulsed fusion was restricted. It wasn’t until much later in the module that he learned why pulsed fusion had this bottleneck. The fusion process for pulsed fusion took place in a combustion chamber, but this chamber was open to space through the exhaust nozzle. When these types of engines neared .4c, a resonant hum started to form inside the combustion chamber. It wasn’t enough to damage the chamber, but it was enough to disrupt the fusion process.
That didn’t mean people had given up on the older technology. He knew people were looking into the issue thanks to his exchanges with Dr. Lund.
Still, .4c was nothing to scoff at. It meant those three engines could push the Zephyr across a system the size of Sol in a little over three days. And that was at a standard cruising speed of 1g. If they had to push it to the ship’s maximum acceleration of 3.6g, they could do the crossing in 1.2 days. However, that sort of acceleration for that long would have some serious drawbacks on anyone aboard the ship, assuming they survived.
As far as he knew, humanity hadn’t discovered inertial dampeners or anything that could reduce the effects of gravity on a person. Then again, Alexander had assumed artificial gravity plating wasn’t real until he saw it. So maybe some of the fancier ships had it or it was a military secret and he just wasn’t aware of it.
He realized he was getting off track again. The engines were powerful, so powerful that he couldn’t test a full-sized version on the planet without a specialized test facility. The scaled-down engines he printed consisted of an Omni, a Sinorus, and his new design. All of the designs he chose were from Class 4 engines to ensure the numbers were comparable.
Alexander had planned these tests weeks in advance. There was a pit, much like the railgun pits, outside the facility specifically designed and built for these tests. In a perfect world, these engines would be tested in a vacuum, but Alexander didn't have the time or patience to build a vacuum chamber long enough to keep the exhaust gasses from melting the lining. He thought about coating a chamber in that heat-absorbing gel, but it was only rated for 3500 degrees Celsius. That was nowhere near enough to keep the plasma from melting everything around it. The pulsed fusion drive burned at nearly twice that temperature.
He suspected his pit would probably be rather worse off after these tests but that was fine. He had plans to incorporate liquid cooling into the walls as well as electromagnetic containment to keep the plasma from getting too close to the walls on future tests. He figured if it was good enough to keep ship thrust cones from melting from the obscene temperatures involved, it should be good enough to keep his pit intact.
Right now the pit consisted of a simple steel liner with fire-protective matting stuck to the inside of it. The test rig had a mounting platform that allowed the engine to face straight up and a sensor plate that measured thrust. This design ensured the engine wouldn’t go flying off if there was some catastrophic failure with the mounting.
It was also the most simple and straightforward design he could come up with. Alexander didn’t want to waste a whole lot of time and resources on these first tests especially since he didn’t need exact numbers. With the engines being scaled down, he wouldn’t be getting those anyway. The only thing he cared about for this initial test was a side-by-side comparison of the three engines.
Before he could do that, he was running the parts that he could through the testing station he had built. It was a scaled-down version of the one he used on Petrov Station. While he couldn’t afford to take a testing station with him when he left, due to cargo space concerns, he did purchase the plans to build one. He just hadn’t needed it until now.
As the parts were running through the diagnostic tests, he moved over to the printer and pulled off another set of finished power banks. Ideally, Alexander would build a fusion power plant to supply the needed power to operate these engines. But he still didn’t have the capabilities needed to do that. So he resorted to printing out dozens of power banks.
The tests wouldn’t run very long, so he didn’t need to sustain the fusion reaction that turned the fuel into thrust. It would probably still take the power supply’s complete charge to run each test though. So long as it worked, he was fine with that. The power banks were rather quick and cheap to manufacture.
That left the last issue he needed to overcome, fuel.
Matthews had stated he would provide fuel if Alexander needed it, but he wanted to do this on his own. Finding water was easy. The facility had twenty-four wells that went down to a buried aquifer.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Converting this water into rocket fuel was a bit more challenging. He already had the designs for a processing plant thanks to Na though.
Turns out it took a lot of energy to convert good old H2O into D2O and T2O.
That meant more power banks. And a secure storage tank for the rocket fuel after it was ready. As a bonus, the fuel would come in handy when he finally built a fusion power plant for the facility. It wouldn’t be as good as what ships used for their reactors, but it would get the job done.
Building the insulated and lead-lined tanks was taking longer than printing and testing the individual parts for his scaled-down rockets. Building the tank wasn’t something Alexander was willing to rush though. He didn’t want to worry about the radioactive liquid causing issues around the facility or making people sick.
He looked over at the robotic arm that was welding two of the tank sections together. It was nearly complete and he would have to take the crane and remove it from the work area soon. The storage tank diameter was so large that it barely fit through the closest opening to the outside. He would have to roll it out himself since there were no delivery vehicles low enough to hold it without hitting the top of the door.
It did highlight another problem he was going to have to resolve at some point. Mainly, how was he going to build full-scale engines without them getting stuck in his workshop?
He knew the far wall of his workshop faced away from the facility. The easiest option would be to cut out that wall and put in a large door with an overhead crane. It went on his to-do list.
It seemed like every time he marked something off that list, two or three more things got added.
The machine beeped to let him know it was complete and Alexander rolled the dual-layer ring section out of his workshop and down the hall to the transport path. It made quite the racket as he went, but there were few people in his section, most having decided to move to the quieter areas after he restarted production. He couldn’t blame them. If he needed sleep, a noisy assembly line that ran all day every day a few hundred feet away would be extremely annoying.
The walls and doors were sound dampened, but with so much production going on, the large entry was left open most of the time as the transport carts retrieved items and zipped down to where the parts were needed.
Once outside, Alexander filtered out most of the glare from the star. He was glad he figured that nifty feature out after arriving here, otherwise it was often too bright to work outside during the peak hours of the day.
It took him ten minutes to roll the ring next to the secondary pit near the engine test site. A simple overhead crane with a hand-operated chain ran on rails that passed alongside both pits. He didn’t want to expend a lot of resources for what was likely to be a temporary site.
After hooking the crane to the lifting points on the ring, Alexander pushed the unit into place over the pit. This was the last ring section going on the storage tank. The next part to come off of the assembly line would be the top. He lowered it almost in place before he headed down the spiral stairs that ran along the outside of the pit. Each level had a landing and he looked down at the one below where one of his automated robots was welding the outside layer together. He was already glad he had designed the robots for multiple applications.
Before putting in the guide pins, he examined the inner weld. There were no issues as far as he could see, but he did note that the robot was almost empty of inert gas for the welder. That was one major downside of welding in an atmosphere.
He pulled out his tablet and sent an order to his storage. Soon one of his carts would be along with a fresh supply of gas. He was starting to run low on the supply Jasper brought him on the last trip. Alexander hadn’t expected to go through it so fast, he would likely have to build a machine to harvest the gas from the atmosphere sooner rather than later.
Another item got added to his list.
Alexander didn’t have any plans for a machine like that, but he could probably figure it out. It wasn’t like they could be too complex, people were filtering atmospheric gasses back when he was human.
As he was adding the alignment pins, he saw the orange flashing light overhead that indicated his delivery had arrived. He finished putting the last pin in before heading back up. On the back of the cart were two seventy-five-pound cylinders full of argon. Since he didn’t want to have to come back out here until the top was completed, he grabbed both tanks and lifted them as he walked back down the stairs. He didn’t even need to stop the robot, he simply set one canister down, removed the empty one from the cart attached to the back of the robot, put a full one in its place, and then did the same for the nearly empty one.
There was no pause in the welding and no sign that it had lost shielding. Alexander went back up with the empty bottles and put them back in the cart. It drove away and he finished lowering the new section into place.
***
It was finally time to test his model engines. Three days had passed since he finished the fuel storage and checked it for leaks. The processing plant had been pumping out fuel ever since, so he had more than enough to do his initial tests.
The first engine, the Omni design, was already in place and ready to go. Unlike the time Alexander stood outside the railgun pit to watch the tests, he was well secure in a bunker a few hundred yards away for these.
Today he was observing everyone else work and taking Jasper's words to heart by delegating tasks. The group of people who had signed up and trained for this were going through the last-minute checks. Alexander could have done this all himself, but if he ever wanted to compete with companies like Omni or Sinorus, he needed skilled and capable people behind him.
Of course, Lucas, and Gabriella had shown up for this important milestone. Damien was busy with the Hawks, ensuring the last-minute training was completed with his new security teams. It would be up to that rather dour man to continue the training once the mercenaries were gone. Alexander had no issue with the man taking on that role, while Damien wasn’t very likable he was focused.
Alexander knew why Lucas was here, the man was curious about anything technological, even to the point of staring at him sometimes. However, he never did ask about the robot body. But why was Gabriella here? He didn’t have a good read on the woman as he had only met her a handful of times. But she didn’t come off as all that interested in technology or him in general.
It's possible she was just here to report back to Damien. He didn’t mind, it wasn’t like these tests could be hidden.
“Green across the board,” someone said.
Lucas looked to him for the next steps, but Alexander simply smiled back. He had given the man an itinerary. If Lucas wanted to be the head of testing – which it sure seemed like he did – the man would need to figure some things out himself.
Seeing that Alexander wasn’t going to give him a hint, the younger man sighed and dug around in his pockets until he produced a crumpled sheet. Alexander wanted to frown at the abuse Lucas put that poor sheet of paper through. Did the man not realize how hard it is to find suitable material in an alien world to make paper?
…Now that he thought about it, probably not. It wasn’t like anyone used paper in this day and age. Alexander just liked the nostalgia factor of it. Plus it was way easier to make paper than it was to make a new tablet.
After smoothing out the paper and glancing at what was written, the man tucked it away again. “Shunt fuel to the engine storage tank.”
One of the operators pressed a few spots on a tablet and a red bar appeared on the holo display against the wall. Once the bar was full, the man disconnected and purged the line. It retracted behind an armored plate. Alexander had designed it this way to prevent any sort of explosion from back-feeding into the storage tank and bursting it apart.
Any explosion would be bad, but the small amount of fuel in the engine would only spread the radioactive liquid in a small area. If the storage tank bursts, the entire area could become slightly more radioactive. At least the fuel wasn’t explosive or flammable in its unfused state. That would be a nightmare.
“Test fire in five!” Lucas called.
After the countdown, Lucas pressed the ignition button. He could see people look around as a tingling sensation crawled along their skin. Even he could feel it.
“It’s just the energy discharging into the fusion igniter,” he stated calmly. True to his word, a few moments later, a ghostly blue flame shot from the open pit where the engine was resting. Less than a second after that, the sound of the engine firing rolled over their bunker, causing a bit of dust to rain down.
He made a note to have the control center moved a lot farther away when he got around to testing full-size models.
The blue flame lasted fifteen seconds before it burned through the tiny amount of fuel it had been provided.
Alexander recorded the results, and the next two tests were prepped and run over the next eight hours.
The results were not what he expected, and he returned to his shop a bit annoyed. The Omni engine outproduced the Sinorus engine, there was no surprise there. But he thought his design changes would have had him way above either of the engine manufacturers or at least close. Turns out he wasn’t nearly as proficient as he thought he was.
His engine performed so poorly that it failed halfway through the test. And the time it did run for, it produced only a third of the thrust of the Sinorus engine.
Alexander had skipped over his first three designs and tested the fourth iteration, and the first that the simulation software said would work. It did work if you could call that poor showing ‘work’. After arriving back in his shop, he marked that design as non-functional and began printing the other five. If none of them worked, he would need to step back and reassess what he was doing wrong.