Tales of the Groundbound: Chapter 5: A Simple Set of Problems

[steuben]

Chapter 5

Gus leaned back in the chair and looked up at the ceiling of Direc’s office. He blew out a long slow breath, and ran his hands through his hair. He sat back up right.

“Most of these,” he gestured to one of the two stacks of paper on Direc’s desk. “We can do on a common rocket frame. The high speed and high angel ones will probably have to be custom built.” He gestured to the other stack of paper on the desk. “With the double sierra out until we know what happened; I’m looking at burning up three maybe four Hopper airframes. And that’s just with these; we’re probably going to get more as well.”

“I’ll order the science flights to try and maximize the number of waypoints per flight,” Linus said. He felt out of his depth. Wernher had sent him to this meeting, instead of attending himself. Wernher said his research was more important than dealing with the mundane bureaucracy. “That should help reduce the wear on the airframes.”

Gus shook his head. “It’s the number of running hours rather than number of flights. But, it will keep from wearing out the pilots the same way.”

“The airframes aren’t a problem,” Direc said. “If we use them up, so be it. Using up the pilots will be more problematic. I’ve started the process to replace Encal, and given the number of requests we will need a couple more.” He reached down and pulled a file out of his desk. ”This is another project that we may be taking on.” He placed it on the desk. ”Passengers. I’ve had interest from a few kerbals in going up.”

“Up? Up where?” Linus said. “We haven’t even made it past 19 kilometres. There are planes that go higher than that.”

“In what?” Gus said. “Nothing we have is passenger rated.”

“These,” Direc gestured at the stacks of papers, “will keep the lights on and the parts coming in. But, that’s just about all they’ll do. We’re going to need more than that to keep researching the goo. I haven’t decided yet, but Mortimer’s analysis looks good.” He leaned forward. “Besides, altitude and safety rating are just engineering problems.” He grinned and chuckled; being just engineering problems did not make them simple. “Certainly they will be easier than the ones I have to try to solve.”

Gus leaned back in his chair again. He blew out a long slow breath, and ran his hands through his hair. “Okay... I can get something sketched for the computers.”

Linus shuddered at the mention of the computers.

“Good,” Direc said. “This isn’t a high priority task. But if we go ahead, I don’t want to have to start from zero.”