rolled her eyes and reluctantly let go of Tara.
I made Tara buy me a hot chocolate at the baggage-claim Starbucks at Salt Lake City International and hung around while she checked in with her mom by phone.
“Hey, Mom. I’m here … yeah, not for another hour, but the flight got in early to Chicago and they had an earlier flight just leaving and overbooking issues on my scheduled flight so they asked if I’d switch. No problem. I have a book. Just let me know when you’re about to get here and I’ll be curbside.”
She stuck her tongue out at me and disconnected.
“I could’ve stayed with Jade another forty-five minutes!”
“Your mom could’ve been early, too. You guys decide about Europe?”
“She’s going to try and sell it to her parents. You can really get me to Paris?”
“ Mais oui, enfant. A lot easier than it was to get you here. ”
“Okay. She’s selling it to her parents—her dad’s onboard with it already. If her mom stops with the objections, I’ll join them the second week of their trip. A week and a half in Europe wouldn’t suck.”
“Okay. You good? I’d keep you company, but I have to go get some calcium hydroxide.”
“You need calcium? Remember to take vitamin D with. It improves absorption.”
I laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.” I doubted that vitamin D would help calcium hydroxide absorb more carbon dioxide, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to try and swallow any.
I left from a bathroom stall around the corner.
* * *
This was the deal:
I would provide the required parts and materials and wait until Cory rigged up a pressure-sensor onesie so we could test whether we were getting thirty kilopascals evenly over my body. In return, he would create a life-support pack I could use in orbit.
Not that we didn’t argue about some of the details.
“Do you know how much lithium hydroxide costs?” I’d said after five minutes online. “Why can’t we just use diving-grade soda lime? Isn’t that what you were going to use in the chamber tests?”
Cory was working on the sensor onesie, sewing the ends of flexible strain gauges onto a dancer unitard. “Too heavy,” he said without looking up. “The price difference is negligible compared to how much it costs to get it out of the gravity well.”
I shook my head. His habits of thought were still locked into the old system. I said, mildly, “How much does it cost NASA to get something into orbit?”
“With the Falcon Heavy, the rate has dropped to a thousand bucks per pound and that’s the cheapest rate to date. So you see, it’s worth it to go with lithium hydroxide for the scrubber. It’s forty percent lighter.”
“Cory, how much does it cost me to get something into orbit?”
He looked up from the work. “ Oh . I don’t know. I don’t know if you can get into orbit.”
I felt like punching him. I held up my arm, exposing the scab. “I can get a lot farther toward orbit than you can.”
All right, maybe I wasn’t so sure either, but the suit was the roadblock to finding out.
He nodded. “I guess.”
“But the important thing, is, no matter how far up I get, it won’t cost us any more than we’ve already spent. We have the suit, we have the helmet, and it’s pretty trivial to rig air. Even if I’m limited to fifty pounds of cargo, my cost to orbit is effectively zero dollars per pound.”
“What? Even just going by the material costs of the prototype, that’s not true. I’ve got over forty K in the EAP fibers alone. Call it twice that for the whole rig. That’s still sixteen hundred bucks per pound.”
“But if this works, I can go to orbit more than once , Cory, with no further expenses. I’ll be able to go to orbit over and over again, as long as the suit lasts. These are capital costs, not operating expenses. If you’re going to count them against the size of the payload, you need to multiply the size by the number of payloads.”
Cory shook his violently as if to
I made Tara buy me a hot chocolate at the baggage-claim Starbucks at Salt Lake City International and hung around while she checked in with her mom by phone.
“Hey, Mom. I’m here … yeah, not for another hour, but the flight got in early to Chicago and they had an earlier flight just leaving and overbooking issues on my scheduled flight so they asked if I’d switch. No problem. I have a book. Just let me know when you’re about to get here and I’ll be curbside.”
She stuck her tongue out at me and disconnected.
“I could’ve stayed with Jade another forty-five minutes!”
“Your mom could’ve been early, too. You guys decide about Europe?”
“She’s going to try and sell it to her parents. You can really get me to Paris?”
“ Mais oui, enfant. A lot easier than it was to get you here. ”
“Okay. She’s selling it to her parents—her dad’s onboard with it already. If her mom stops with the objections, I’ll join them the second week of their trip. A week and a half in Europe wouldn’t suck.”
“Okay. You good? I’d keep you company, but I have to go get some calcium hydroxide.”
“You need calcium? Remember to take vitamin D with. It improves absorption.”
I laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.” I doubted that vitamin D would help calcium hydroxide absorb more carbon dioxide, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to try and swallow any.
I left from a bathroom stall around the corner.
* * *
This was the deal:
I would provide the required parts and materials and wait until Cory rigged up a pressure-sensor onesie so we could test whether we were getting thirty kilopascals evenly over my body. In return, he would create a life-support pack I could use in orbit.
Not that we didn’t argue about some of the details.
“Do you know how much lithium hydroxide costs?” I’d said after five minutes online. “Why can’t we just use diving-grade soda lime? Isn’t that what you were going to use in the chamber tests?”
Cory was working on the sensor onesie, sewing the ends of flexible strain gauges onto a dancer unitard. “Too heavy,” he said without looking up. “The price difference is negligible compared to how much it costs to get it out of the gravity well.”
I shook my head. His habits of thought were still locked into the old system. I said, mildly, “How much does it cost NASA to get something into orbit?”
“With the Falcon Heavy, the rate has dropped to a thousand bucks per pound and that’s the cheapest rate to date. So you see, it’s worth it to go with lithium hydroxide for the scrubber. It’s forty percent lighter.”
“Cory, how much does it cost me to get something into orbit?”
He looked up from the work. “ Oh . I don’t know. I don’t know if you can get into orbit.”
I felt like punching him. I held up my arm, exposing the scab. “I can get a lot farther toward orbit than you can.”
All right, maybe I wasn’t so sure either, but the suit was the roadblock to finding out.
He nodded. “I guess.”
“But the important thing, is, no matter how far up I get, it won’t cost us any more than we’ve already spent. We have the suit, we have the helmet, and it’s pretty trivial to rig air. Even if I’m limited to fifty pounds of cargo, my cost to orbit is effectively zero dollars per pound.”
“What? Even just going by the material costs of the prototype, that’s not true. I’ve got over forty K in the EAP fibers alone. Call it twice that for the whole rig. That’s still sixteen hundred bucks per pound.”
“But if this works, I can go to orbit more than once , Cory, with no further expenses. I’ll be able to go to orbit over and over again, as long as the suit lasts. These are capital costs, not operating expenses. If you’re going to count them against the size of the payload, you need to multiply the size by the number of payloads.”
Cory shook his violently as if to
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