I should have gotten something out to ya'll yesterday.  Unfortunately (or fortunately depending upon your point of view) I caught up on sleep yesterday, so other things got left behind.  Instead, here's a snippet for ya - somewhere in the middle, I think. . .

            I pulled up a screen and set it up where we could observe the crew on the hull as they trekked to the controls to elevate the docking arm into place.  They were followed by one of the hull bots with a selection of tools that might be needed for the job – everything from powered drivers to magnetic lock downs and sledge hammers – the mag-locks so they could anchor themselves into place and the hammers to perform that most ancient of repair techniques – percussive maintenance.  AKA hammering the shit out of a recalcitrant piece of equipment until it either submits to your will or it breaks.   

            The plan was for them to go to the first docking arm, and start raising it.  Once it was locked into place, they’d start on the second one, and we’d get Ockhart and Lindgren suited up and ready to go out on the hull – they’d head for docking arm four, then go to docking arm three.  While they were getting docking arm four in place, we’d be running static tests on one and two, and helping Clark and LaForce get unsuited.  If something failed, we’d notate it and once Rachelle and Tony were finished, Jane and I would go out on the hull and correct the failures from one and two while three and four ran static tests.  If anything failed on them, we’d go work on those as well. 

            In the interim, they’d reached the first docking arm.  Both of them set their safety lines, then grabbed a set of mag-locks off the bot.  Once those were in position, Clark reached out and opened the hatch on the side of the lock base and paused.

            “Commencing raise on lock one.”

            “Roger that, make it hard,” Ops came back, giggling.

            I’d hoped we were going to avoid the obvious jokes, but I guess not.

            “Making it hard,” Clark said, throwing the switch and laughing.  The docking arm started rising from the cradle, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed.  It took about a half an hour for the arm to rise completely out of the cradle, and then Mick and Jonathan could start the next phase of the process.

            “Arm is up and locked,” LaForce called over the net.  “Initiating phase two in three, two, one. . .”

            We could feel the hydraulic transfer pumps kick in through the hull.  Outside, the docking arm started extending to full length, the arms slowly moving outward until they reached the locking point.  This was probably the longest part of extending the arms time wise – the pumps were designed to work at very low pressures, allowing the materials of the arm to extend slowly so as not to tear the outer surfaces.  And while it slowly extended, we waited.

            “Pete, Jonathan here.”

            “Send it.”

            “Hey, just had a thought – while we’re waiting for the foreskin here to finish peeling back, we could move on and start the process over on arm two.  Then once we start phase two on it, come back over here and plug in the electronics on this one.  It won’t save a lot of time but it will keep me and Mick from going stark raving nuts.”

            We were half an hour into an hour long process.  They still had three hours out on the hull, and the idea made sense. 

            “Good idea.  Go for it.”

            “Roger – we’re moving over to arm two to start the process,” he said, reaching down and unlatching his safety line.  Clark did the same and they started the slow shuffle over to arm two, robotic minion in tow.  Arm one continued rising into the void, and the boards showed everything green so far.

            Rachelle drifted over, pulling her hair back into a not at the nape of her neck.

            “Hey Pete, I’m going to go raid the aft commons area.  You want anything?”

            “Couple of coffees would be nice.  And if one’s on top, one of the meal packs with the bacon cubes in it would be good.”

            “Right.  Coffee and bacon coming up,” she said pushing off through the center of the shaft and up into the ship.  Lindgren was snoozing in the corner, and Jane was hanging from the ‘ceiling’ reading something on her tablet.  Howard and Davidson were off to the far side of the bay, playing something on their tablets, while monitoring traffic outside the ship with one ear.  Out on the hull, I could see Clark and LaForce had reached the area of dock two and were setting up to start the process all over again.

            Ockhart dropped through the hatch and tossed a packet in my direction.  I reached in and pulled out a coffee, and looked in to see six packs of bacon cubes – no meal packs, just the bacon cubes.

            “Hey, what gives?  Did you rat fuck the meal packs,” I asked.  “Not that I’m complaining because you know, bacon, but . . .”

            “Nope,” she said, tossing another packet at Jane, who caught it without even looking away from her tablet, “but someone has been rat fucking them hard down here on the aft end.  So I grabbed you some bacon out of the open ones, cleaned up the mess and at least sorted the rat fuck pile into some order.”

            “Nice.  Thanks for cleaning up someone else’s mess.”

            “No worries.  Meal packs, water and coffee were all that was in the area, by the way.”

            “Ja,” said the Admiral, cutting in on the conversation.  “They haven’t moved the other supplies into the area yet.  And it pains me that the cleaning bots couldn’t keep the area clean.  I reported it, but since we’re so shorthanded at the moment, it wasn’t considered a priority to clean it up.  I thank you for doing so,” her avatar said, bending at the waist in Rachelle’s direction.

            “You’re welcome,” she said, grinning back and dropping a slightly off kilter curtsey.

            “Ahh, someone who understands formality,” the Admiral said, grinning.

            “Well, momma did try to make a lady out of me,” she said, firing back a sandwich from one of the meal packs. 

            I checked the time, and looked over at her.  “How long you think it will take you to get suited up?”

            “Bout five minutes to pull on my suit, then however long it takes to get the over suit and bottles attached.  With three of ya’ll helping probably about fifteen or twenty minutes, why?”

            “Just trying to get an idea of when we need to start the process,” I said, “and Tony appears to be dead to the world over there, so I couldn’t ask him,” I said, grinning at her.

            “Uh huh.  Sure,” she said tossing a bottle of water at me.  “I think you were insinuating that I would be slower than my male counterpart, and are therefore impinging upon my personhood by making me feel substandard,” she said grinning like the Cheshire Cat.  “As such, it’s my duty to report you’re recidivist ass to HR.”

            “Moi?  Recidivist?  I think you’ve got me confused with some other ebil bastard,” I said, assuming a slouched posture with my arms out to the side like an ape.  “Grunt.  Scratch.  Grunt.”

            She doubled over laughing.

            “Pete, Mick here.”

            “Go for Pete.”

            “We’ve got arm two started on phase two.  We’re moving back to arm one to hook up the electronics.”

            “Roger that Mick.  How ya’ll doing out there?”

            “Really wishing they could figure out a way to put a cheeseburger in the suit with you right now,” he said wistfully.”

            “What, that choice of water or electrolyte solution not enough for you?”

            “Well, when you put it that way, no,” he said chuckling.

            “I understand.  We’ll have a nice choice of meal packs waiting for you when you get in and get unsuited,” I said, popping a bacon cube in my mouth.

Colonization for fun and profit, part two

So, picking up where I last left off on my discussion of colonizing in Space-ace-ace.
Its a numbers game.  When man spread from Africa, through Asia, across the land bridges and into North and South America and Australia, there was a chance that those first folks would die out.  Why, you ask, when humans are so widespread today?  Because the numbers were low.  Sure, humans are wonderful when it comes to filling niches in the environment.  We're probably the most widely spread land mammal in existence on earth today.  We live and lets face it thrive in diverse environments - deserts to jungles, forests to plains, and from sub freezing temperatures to those close to the boiling point of water.  Its a human 'feature' that we do it so well.  We've even managed to move two species of domesticated animals along with us - dogs being the second most widely distributed land mammal behind humans, and chickens of all things being the third most widely distributed land animal.  But, I digress, we're here to talk about why you want a large number of people when you colonize places far more foreign than anything we've colonized to date.
Humanity actually had it easy in the past.  No where we went in the great burst of colonization starting in the 1400's didn't have humans.  Regardless of where we went and how we treated our fellow man (and yeah, some places we treated them like absolute shyte) there were fellow men there.  Meaning that in a pinch you could keep things going by interbreeding with the locals.  Even if this were officially frowned upon by society back home in the mother country - or by the local culture as well, you could still keep the colony going without an influx of fresh colonists from back home.
Space on the other hand, lacks locals we can breed with to keep the colony going.  Sure, a lunar colony (Selenites, by the way, not Loonies) or a martian colony can and most likely will get fresh influxes of colonists who are looking for the same thing immigrants have looked for in all the years that mankind has wandered the planet - new opportunity, new resources, or just new hills to look over and see whats on the other side.  Or, as has also been common in human history, as a dumping ground for what society sees as undesirables - the US state of Georgia and the country of Australia come to mind as shining examples of penal colonies.  And local shipping, which is what the Moon and Mars would be, is probably going to be an order of magnitude cheaper than say Alpha Centauri will be when we finally finagle FTL into working. 
Its that colony on AC though that will need the bodies.  We're going to handwave the FTL requirements for this discussion.  Assuming that they work (with all the freight that goes with assumption) lets say we've figured out how to cross the 4.7 light years between here and there in a reasonable amount of time (even if it takes say, a year to cover a light year, that, given humanities historical speed of travel seems reasonable to me).  So, a, heh, five year mission, to set up the first extrasolar human colony.  That's if the ship is going on a one way trip - ten years for the crew if they're pulling the return to Earth as well.  We've got to look at how we're going to feed people in space for ten years - I've got an idea for that as well, but it will probably be the topic of a future post.  Here's the model for now - a large colony ship with a crew of between 500 and a 1000 personnel.  That's the ship, not the colony itself.  For the colony, I'd say a minimum of 2000 people, with additional genetic material brought along to increase the genetic diversity of the colony.   I can hear everyone out there now - how are you going to feed 3000 people over the course of five years?  The ship would have to be huge.  Not if you put the majority of people in cryogenic suspension - handwavium, remember?
Why so many people?  Genetic diversity.  Even if the colony ship makes perfect round trips, you're only going to be adding new people to the colony every ten years - and genetic drifting can take place in a very short time in a limited gene pool.  Even with new genetic material every ten years, if you start with a low number of initial members of the gene pool you're only increasing the chance of a bad mutation taking place.  Higher the number in the initial pool, better chance of keeping things semi normal.

So much for genetics, here's today's snippet -

Davidson floated over to where I was by the main console.

            “Pete, got a question for you.”

            “Shoot.”

            “How serious were you about having a meal ready for Mick and Jonathan?”

            “Well, about as serious as I could be, why?”

            “I can pop up to the active commons and grab a couple four trays if you want while they’re still coming in – shouldn’t take more than about ten-fifteen minutes.  We can pop the trays in the warmer over there to keep them hot until they’re done unsuiting.”

            “Works for me,” I said, motioning her to stay in place for a minute and keying my mike.  “Hey Mick, you’ve got a guardian angel here on the docks – what’cha want for lunch?”

            “Cheeseburger sounds good.”

            “Make that two,” Jonathan seconded.

            “Right,” I said.  I looked at Davidson.  “I’d say just grab six burgers and fixings and bring them down here – unless anyone else wants something different,” I threw out at the compartment at large.  No one responded in the negative. 

            “Be back soonish,” Clara said, scooting up the shaft towards the active lounge.

            “Just don’t bring back any quiche,” I said grinning at her back.

            “Like I’ve never heard that joke before,” she said, voice fading in the distance.  She returned a few minutes later, tray’s in tow in a hot box.  She slid the hot box into the warmer, and tossed a case of fruit drink against the wall as well. 

            “Mmmm, burgers and bug juice,” Jane said, opening the case.

            “Yeah, it was what they had,” Clara said, “Has anyone ever figured out what the colors are supposed to correspond to fruit wise?”

            “Whoa there young lady, slow that roll.  Bug juice comes in colors.  The flavor is sweet.  The colors do not correspond with any fruit flavor known to man.  It has been this way since time immemorial,” Bob said, snagging a container of red.

            “It is an ancient mystery that we will never know the answer to,” intoned Jane in a sepulchral tone.

            About that time, the inner hatch popped open and Mick and Jonathan stepped into the bay.

            “The heroes return!  Let us celebrate with libations of bug juice!”

            Mick looked at me. 

“What the fuck, over,” he asked, looking at the lot of us like we had lost our minds. 

“Sorry dude,” I said pulling on gloves to help him unsuit, “you’d have had to be here to get it.”

Jane was hanging there laughing, and the others were chuckling as they moved in to help him and Tony get out of the suits.  The air packs were racked and connected to the air system so they could be purged and refilled overnight.