Tales of the Groundbound: Frozen Skin Worth Mining, Chapter 28

[steuben]

Chapter  28

 

Linus walked the length of the complex collection of pipes, pumps and reactors. Seeray walked along side. He half listened to her as she described the chemistry and mechanics of the system. An ISRU she called it. His chemistry classes were a long time ago, and the rest sounded like plumbing and HVAC.

 

“The resulting products are stored cryogenically here,” she said. “Right now we’re using these standard tanks. But, in the field we can use the standard Lox and LF tanks, either on craft or in a storage site.”

 

Linus looked at his clipboard and the project overview. “So right now you’re using simulated Minmus ices.” He said. She nodded as he continued. “and you want to lift fifty meters of pipes, pumps, and tanks massing five tonnes to Minmus to see if it works on the real thing.”

 

She opened her mouth as if to object, but paused. “Yes,” she said. “That pretty much distills it down.”

 

He looked back along the equipment. “I always get these review and approval tasks,” he thought. “Gus, Bill, or one of the senior engineers should be doing this.”

 

“It seems a bit long,” he said.

 

”This is just the lab bench. The linear layout is just for easy of development For the prototype we going to reduce the production volume to a quarter, fold it up,  and design against the two-five chassis.”

 

“That feels a bit large.”

 

“It is.” She gestured to the other end of the equipment.. “We figure we can get all of this into a two-five chassis. But it would be packed really tight. If we reduce everything we can space it out. That way the system can be worked on or pieces swapped out if we need to.”

 

She gestured to one of the valve handles. Linus noticed for the first time that it was oversized and oddly shaped.

 

“We built and tested this using suit gloves. If we had asked for a three-seventy five, it would have gotten the field testing burnered.”

 

“Probably not,” Linus thought. “Pushed back for redesign most likely.”

 

He looked at the far end of the equipment at the one large tank. “And how will you feed the system on Minmus?”

 

“Well,” she scratched the back of her head. “We have an auger system modified for use in a low-g vacuum environment.” She gestured to a machine in the corner. “With an attached hopper.”

 

Linus looked at it for a moment. “It looks like a snowblower with a large bin attached.”

 

She opened her mouth, but paused. “Well, the tech existed and works, so why reinvent it? We did have to make a few changes for Minmus.”

 

Linus rubbed he forehead with his thumb and forefinger. “Why not just use a pick and shovel?”

 

She gestured to the cabinet next to the snowblower.