Tales of the Groundbound: Simple Difficulty, Chapter 23

[steuben]

Chapter 23

Hilrina leaned back in her chair and blew out a long breath. The sound of a launch rolled through the room.

“I know these school trips are important. But why do we need to host these school trips?” she said.

“You know the list,” Dowig said as he peeked around his cubical wall. “Encouragement, wonder, science, etc. And then there’s the most important reason, director’s orders.”

“Yeah I know. I just wish it wasn’t so exhausting. Three hundred kids each in thirty minute question sessions. The older kids aren’t too bad. It’s the younger ones that are the problem. They ask such simple questions with such horrible complex answers.”

“Like what?”

“Like, why don’t we fly a plane to the stations? Because there’s no air for the engines up there. So why not bring some? That’s basically what we do with rockets. So why not use the air for the rockets in a jet engine?”

Dowig snorted with a suppressed laugh.

“It would dissolve the engine,” Hilrina continued.

“Followed by the plane and then the pilot,” said Dowig.

“So why not use regular air? We considered it for a while. But the amount of air needed would have been larger than a rocket that went at the same speed. Which ended it.”

“Good answer… did we actually do the calculations?”

“No… not that I know of anyways. I think it wouldn’t work anyways. It’s more than just burning fuel. I think most of the air gets used as part of the exhaust medium, rather than combustion.”

“Yeah, one of the jet guys would know. I’ll drop a line to one that I know.” Dowig leaned back in his chair. “Though I hear Jeb’s gotten a Hopper up to angels 60.”

“With a vee of zero up there. It takes more than angels to make orbit.”

“I know. You need 2.2 k sideways at 70.”

“No way to squeeze that out of a jet. The Wheesley barely breaks 250 at 10.” Hilrina sat up in her chair. “Though don’t the jet guys have something in prototype territory? The Panter, Breather, something like that. They figured out a how to get five times the thrust for ten times the fuel.”

“Still won’t be enough.” Dowig said, sitting up in his chair.

“True. But if you can get up to angels 13 or so and a good 1 kps… we would just need to bolt it around a rocket. It would cut the fuel needed in half.”

“At least half. I’ll ring up that jet guy. See what numbers he has.”

“This could be an interesting bird to design.” Hilrina smiled.

“That’s what they said about the Gull and the Hopper. They’ve both done us well.”