Log Entry #56: Not a Death Star!

Maybe this log’s title should be ‘How I built my own Death Star’, despite telling Michael that it wasn’t anything like it… it kind of was. Well, not really, but the shape… (Damn you, George Lucas, for ruining the spherical shape of space stations!)

So… this was my biggest secret, my most ambitious project to date. It all started with that house-sized probe we launched from Pagan Island, even before the Ascension was built… ah, those were the carefree days.

It took some time for it to arrive at the Main Asteroid Belt; I was still perfecting the use of Gravity-drives in space at that time. Even so, it did arrive in one piece, and then the onboard MI started executing its orders. The first phase was to choose a nice small metal asteroid and set up shop. At that stage, it was still in exploration mode, as it needed to find the best place to start the entire operation. The nanites started carving that asteroid for the material and created a small nano-factory to build a few hundred survey probes to check out the neighborhood.

They were prospecting for the place that had the highest concentration of needed metals. It would have been a fool’s errand to try to check the entire asteroid belt before starting production. That is why those probes had a mission to make a detailed analysis of the surrounding area, and after that to continue around the entire belt. That additional mission will take years to complete, considering that the Asteroid Belt is immense.

One week later, one of the probes hit a jackpot, a variable bonanza of the materials concentrated relatively close to each other. It even had a few asteroids that were predominantly composed of metal and were as big as some cities on Earth. After consulting with me, the governing MI was ordered to move the operation there; that place fulfilled all parameters I had set for optimal execution of its main mission.

In point of fact, that location was much more than I hoped to find, I knew intellectually that all the materials we would ever need could be found in the belt, but until the probe sent its findings, it was all just a theory.

I was informed of its progress, by daily reports, yet, not something I assigned a high priority; at the time I had more than enough problems to deal with around Earth.

When it reached a chosen site, things accelerated a great deal. The first objective was to create multiple nano-factories whose sole job would be to make new batches of construction nanites, and the job of the new nanites was to do the same.

At this point, I should admit that I made a tiny mistake, it was not a big deal, and it proved to be one of those accidents you are later glad about. Like when you play a game of pool with your friends and make an impossible shot that the pros would be proud of. Naturally, you hide your astonishment and play the whole thing off as if you planned it all along, when inside yourself, you are jumping for joy and are busy patting yourself on the back.

You see, I gave that MI more latitude at interpreting its commands about the numbers of nanites it was to create. I gave it an option to use a good percentage of the initially available materials to convert into them, before starting the main project. How was I supposed to know that he would stumble on El Dorado in the first attempt? So he went above and beyond the intended spirit of his commands and converted a few asteroids that were initially the size of …a few city blocks? At any rate, the freaking nanites clouds started exerting their own gravity. It is a good thing I caught that before it was too late or I would have had more nanites than were needed to finish the job, several times over. As it was, there was barely 5000% more than I initially planned for.

One problem I could not fix was the speed of communication, the lag of my data exchange with the governing MI was infuriatingly slow. Until I break the ‘faster than light’ barrier, there’s no way around it. It would send reports once a day, and then I would send back a confirmation that they were received and any additional instruction I had. It wasn’t so bad, I suppose, but instant communication I had with Earth from the Ascension was something I got used to. Even when Michael and Elizabeth went on their Moon romantic getaway, the lag was only 1.3s; noticeable but tolerable. (On the other hand, I remember using a 33K modem; that thing seriously trained your patience when waiting for a connection.)

The next phase was to build bigger units, the semi-autonomous drones that would be used as carriers of material from all over the mining zone, which was spread over a vast distance. Everything was hauled to the central assembly point where the station was built. Consequently, the assembly spot was beside the biggest asteroid in the vicinity, it was also the richest in how much metal there was inside it. To make all that work, I needed Gravity-drives and fusion reactors; they were relatively easy to make with the great supply of essential materials.

What most people do not know is that there is also an abundance of H2O in the belt. Then there are occasional comets that pass through, and they are like space fountains; grab one of those babies, and you are set for a long while. As a result, there were all of the ingredients the project needed to hit the ground running.

At this stage, the ability of that single MI to coordinate the entire operation was reaching its limit, so a few more were created to spread the load; the original one became an overseer of sorts, giving the others my orders, and reporting on their progress. I did not want to mine only one location, I wanted them to mine dozens at the same time, wherever there were resources that we could use. If they were at a reasonable distance, a MI with the basic complement of starting resources was sent to do the same thing the original one did. It fits with my plans for a few future projects I envisioned.

If a bystander would look at how the nanites clouds mined the asteroid, it would seem to him as if the poor thing was attacked by the swarm of termites. They surrounded it and then started drilling while following the veins of metal inside it. Some of the richer rocks were completely consumed until only dust was left; those poorer were more alike to Swiss cheese. Additionally, there were a few real prizes, if they were ever transported to Earth. There was one that was mostly made of gold, not that we didn't find plenty of those, but this was a true space nugget that weighed more than Michael’s truck. I decided to keep it as a memento; it was so unusual.

The amount of precious metals far exceeded the needs the project had. It was all stored away since there will be a need for it at some point in time. If I am being truthful, I may have developed a pack-rat mentality, I wasn’t planning to throw anything away if there was a chance that I will need it in… say… three hundred years? (What? I have some really long-range plans.)

Don’t get me started on the amounts of precious stones that were excavated during the mining process. If I placed everything on the Earth’s markets, most precious stones would be worth little more than cubic zirconia. There was this one diamond the size of a truck tire that I already planned to be the centerpiece of a fountain. That puppy was simply priceless, and who would ever think that the sparkling ornament was a real diamond. I know some of you will question how did it form without the extreme pressure that is created in the heart of a planet? Well… how the hell should I know, I didn’t ask it for its provenance. It was there, I found it, and now it is mine.

Before deciding on a spherical station design, I played with a notion that was well used in literature and in the movies—asteroid habitats. You take a big rock or a convenient nickel-iron asteroid—if you have one at hand—then hollow it out and place a door at the entrance where you came in. Pump it full of oxygen, fix up the interior, and you have a livable habitat. It was a neat idea and had its merits, but one thought kept nagging me—most rocks have fault lines inside themselves. Even diamonds, one of the strongest materials on Earth, have them too. So, if I did all that work and made a livable asteroid, one good bump on an unfortunate location would break the whole thing. Highly unlikely, but there was a chance that it could happen, so I dismissed the idea and decided on a metal sphere design. And I could make it big and sufficiently thick enough to resist any outside influence, even a meteor strike.

In fact, that big asteroid beside whom I was building a station was mostly hollowed out, but no atmosphere was put inside and it was only used as an enormous warehouse for materials that were not yet needed. There are bunches of small flying rocks in the belt, and I didn’t want to start a game of space billiards with all that gold. I don’t know how many nanites I lost to those pesky little things.

It was not only metals I was after—that would make this thing rather inefficient; with the planned thickness of walls, I needed something of a filler. For one, there is a serious problem with the radiation in space, and I did not want only to count on the energy shield for protection, so I ended up with walls that had several layers, exactly like the Ascension. In comparison, the City-ship had paper-thin walls, these would be so thick that two Ascensions could park side by side and still have half a mile room to spare.

I know it was over-engineered on a megalomaniacal scale, but I wanted our people to be secure, and it’s not as if I was lacking for material. There was enough up there to continue building similar (or bigger) stations, for a very long time. To finish the outside of the shell I used two of the most advanced materials I’ve encountered so far. First was the same crystal matrix that was used to bury the Excalibur on Earth, it proved to be incredibly resistant to all the tests we ran it through. It was relatively easy to make if you knew how, and sure beat the brute force approach I used to dig the Excalibur out of the ground. The final addition was the layer of Resistanium, the metal that protected the memory storage cube we retrieved from the bottom of the Mariana Trench. It was a hundred times stronger than titanium, and best of all, it didn’t tarnish or cave under pressure. It was only two hundred feet thick (60.96 m) since it was surprisingly difficult to make. It was still more than I could dream of making back on Earth. This abundance was spoiling me rotten.

All that was only the outer shell, there were so many levels to do and a central support pillar that should add to the structural stability of the station. Besides, it was very useful as a central point for the transportation system and as an additional residential area. I planned to build a hell of a lot of apartments all over it. Being one mile in diameter, that thing had a lot of space for them, as long as people were not afraid of heights. The part of it that went through the main level was one thousand three hundred twenty feet high (402 m); the view from a quarter-mile up was simply breathtaking.

The engines for this behemoth were built on-site; they were so enormous I wouldn’t dream of building them if it weren’t for the super-reactor which plans I retrieved on that same trip to the bottom of the ocean. It was so freaking powerful and I still needed dozens of them to feed the energy demands the drives had. Plus, one additional to supply all energy needs of the future residents. OK, and twenty more for the Energy shield, with several levels of redundancy. It was serious overkill, but what the heck, I did it because I could. This station is meant to last; if properly maintained—it should be around for many thousands of years.

This time the engines were completed as they should be; I still had nightmares about the Ascension’s engines during the liftoff from Earth. There was no time and so many shortcuts were taken, we were lucky the whole thing didn’t blow up into tiny pieces. These were some elemental forces I was playing with; they needed to be taken seriously. It took me days after the Ascension was in orbit to finish everything to specs and to repair the damage that rough ascension did on them. (Get it? Ascension of the Ascension… I’m cracking myself up.)

It took awhile for the new space station to be in good enough shape to start its trip back to Earth. Not that it was close to being completed, that would still take some time. All the essentials were finished and the rest could be done anywhere. It was only a matter of time as all the other things were on the inside (the fiddly bits, you know).

All the extra material was stored on several levels that had the lowest probability to be used any time soon, and I packed enough ice to make a small glacier. Water was valuable in space, and all our energy production was based on it. Those four levels that were reserved to be residential oases were covered with soil made from dust and by breaking a few big rocks that had the right composition. An enormous area needed to be covered in it and I wasn’t stingy about that. There were almost twenty feet of soil on top of the level’s metal floor, and there was a coating of Resistanium underneath it; I despise rust to an obsessive degree. Of course, there was not a thing that could be grown in it, as it was a completely sterile soil; it needed to be enriched with a few supplements from Earth so the plants could flourish. A vast variety of microorganisms, bacteria, fungi, and algae. And don’t get me started on earthworms or nematodes; fertile soil is a literal zoo when looked at through a microscope.

One of the bigger problems the station had at that point was good old air. People need it to remain alive and are very dissatisfied when there is a lack of it. Therefore, the entire station needed to be pressurized and it was one hell of a job. Fortunately, the good old earth tech came to the rescue, but I didn't think NASA would recognize some of their designs if they could see the monumental machines that were built to make it. They were combined with tech found on the Excalibur to make them extremely productive. Still, it took some time to fill the entire station with the life-supporting gas mixture, and then to heat it to optimal temperature… space tends to be a bit chilly. I don’t want to mention the hassle that the regulatory systems on a station were, and they made sure the temperature remained ideal, not too hot, and not too cold. One thing is for sure, I did not use regular AC.

I planned for Michael to be the first to see it, all along—I wanted to brag for a bit. In hindsight, that was not the smartest idea I ever had. As soon as he came back and broke the news, others wanted to see it too, so he was forced to make another trip.

This time I expanded the tour to include one other thing—International Space Station 2, the very station Michael promised the NASA director.

I decided to build it in the belt when Ares calculated how much material we would need to buy from Earth, and how much that would cost us. I would have paid through the teeth to haul all that material from the planet. In the belt, I could have it built for free—it was an easy choice. It could have been finished even sooner if it wasn’t for the deal Michael was preparing to offer the Earthers. ISS2 and a few other things were leverage for the trade he was planning.

This thing was something else, at least as far as Earthers were concerned. It was much larger than the original International Space Station, and sported my recognizable circular design, slightly changed as it was made to look like a dome. It was easy to make; the modified transporter I made for Philip Cain and his friends gave me the idea.

It was five hundred meters in circumference (or one thousand six hundred forty feet, for those of you that are still metrically challenged,) and had more than two hundred thousand square feet of usable space, all separated by different scientific needs based on the original ISS. It was crazy spacious by their standards and insignificant compared to ours. And it was rather thin, just one level residing on a big metal plate with the embedded and highly secured advanced technology. I even installed a rudimentary MI to maintain the station. It was still not fully furnished, but it was mostly livable. It wasn’t that difficult to make when one compares it to my other projects. Nevertheless, it will be light-years above what they had before.

Also, I wanted to make it as flashy as possible, with lots of windows and an energy shield to keep the radiation at bay. ISS2 was the carrot you place in front of the donkey to move forward. In time they are bound to figure out that there is also a stick involved in their future.

The work on the station is not done, and frankly, I don’t see how it would ever be. As every house owner knows—there is always room for improvement.

It is a good thing I like to tinker with things.