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Also known as: "A slow H-bomb going off in a magnetic bottle." -- Larry Niven, "The Fourth Profession"
I give a very basic description of the mechanics of atomic fusion in Part Seven (Second Contact) of A.D. 2060. I don't talk about how a spacecraft would use it for propulsion, but it's not a huge conceptual leap: if you can contain and control any sort of explosive or combustive blast, you've got a rocket. Fusion just gives you more bang for the buck.
Besides being efficient, the raw material for fusion is cheap. All you need is hydrogen, the most common element in the universe. Glue a water tank to the bottom of a spaceship, hook it up to a battery, and you can get hydrogen for fuel and oxygen for breathing air. The only problem is that there's not a lot of water in space. Prospecting for ice asteroids and minor comets becomes a lucrative profession. Recycling, reclaiming, and distilling water from any number of sources is a necessity. It never rains in the Torus.
However, this isn't quite as bad as it seems. For years now, NASA has been using fuel cells which combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity and water. The Space Shuttle gets about three kilograms of water per hour from this reaction. At the moment that's more than the crew can use -- the storage tanks only hold a hundred and fifty kilos -- so they dump the excess overboard, but can you imagine if your car made gasoline as you drove it down the highway?
Also, it's been theorized that you could use Moon dust to power fair-sized fusion reactors. No, really! Solar wind continually deposits helium-3 in the particles on the Lunar surface, and you can use that for a fusion reaction too (Neutron? What extra neutron?). I haven't researched this much, though, so I don't know precisely how feasible it is.
In the 21st century, data encryption is a basic security measure, as ubiquitous on computer systems as a deadbolt lock on a door. Everyone uses the United Nations-approved General Privacy (GP) standard, described briefly in Part Fifteen (Turnover) of A.D. 2060. GP was proven to be theoretically secure in 2053, but that doesn't mean systems can't still be compromised by bad key management, weak passwords, and other human factors.
GP is presumably a descendant of Phil Zimmerman's Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) program, RSA's Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS), and other initiatives which promote data security for the masses.
Weak passwords are one of the biggest problems which hinder computer security today. In 2060, some of these problems have been overcome through the use of password substitutes -- fingerprints, voiceprints, DNA chroma patterns -- made possible by advancing technologies; but the basic problems of trust and confidence still exist.
Americans fooled around with "automats" in the 1950s, but they weren't very versatile and pretty much disappeared altogether by the end of the 20th century -- fortunately for struggling actors and actresses. By the mid-21st century, however, robotics and computer technology have advanced to a degree where more complicated automation is possible.
Artifical intelligence is still being developed, but how smart do you have to be to fill orders from a predefined menu? Many supply stations in the Torus are equipped with dumbwaiters, which are computerized mechanisms build into dining tables so customers can get a meal without having to wait for a human attendant. Some kitchen and supervisory tasks may still require human intervention, but most of the end-user interaction is fully automated.
Which is good and bad. You don't really have to tip the computer, but then, it isn't very good at small talk either. And you may be frustrated if you try to get toast by ordering a chicken sandwich.
Also known as: Zee-gee (Zero-Gravity) handguns
I never describe these in any detail in A.D. 2060, because it's not necessary -- all the reader needs to know is that astronauts can and do use deadly force, and everyone knows what guns are. In fact, guns aren't even necessary in real-life space: every second that an astronaut spends in vacuum is a monumental battle for survival. Though he may not actively be struggling for life, he's depending on his equipment to protect him from vacuum, radiation, and extreme temperatures. That equipment represents hundreds of man-hours of labor. Think of it as long-distance surgery, where the patient is hooked up to a life support device and will die if the machinery fails for even an instant.
It would take too long to describe all the ways you can kill a man in space. Jac Quinn and Tony Galza discuss it briefly in Part Four (Flickering Flame) of A.D. 2060. Breathing air is the easiest. Just puncture an astronaut's pressure suit and wait for him to suffocate. Of course, you have to make sure he doesn't get a chance to seal the leak; micrometeoroids and other particles are common enough within the Solar System that every spacesuit would include a puncture repair kit. Snatching away his tool belt might be enough. Or, you could push him off into the void, so that even if he fixes his suit, he won't be found before his remaining air runs out.
Compared to all that, a bullet through the heart might seem like a quick and painless death. But firing a gun wastes a lot of energy -- you're detonating a small explosive and launching a projectile, and why do all that when you can just cut an air hose? Guns can jam, but knives don't spontaneously lose their sharpness.
Nevertheless, guns are more accurate than knives at a distance. The distance has to be pretty small, by interplanetary standards -- space combat is another topic -- but if you're close enough to recognize a person, you're close enough to shoot him. That alone makes guns useful in space, even if it is only in situations which approximate the environment of a planetary surface. That's my theory, anyway.
Of course, the recoil of a gun would toss you backward in zero gravity, so you've got to have some kind of reaction compensator. Like a gas jet strapped to the top of your gun. I first saw something like this in Steve Gallacci's Albedo Anthropomorphics comic book, and it seemed reasonable enough. Of course, you'd probably have to wear protective headgear to use such a weapon; it takes a pretty powerful blast of air to nullify the kickback of a bullet traveling at three thousand feet per second.
A related piece of hardware is the "reaction pistol" or "hand thruster". These never showed up in A.D. 2060 for some reason, but they're basically just the recoil suppression mechanism of a zee-gee handgun -- a gas jet with a handle. Point and shoot, and you fly in the opposite direction. They're probably used a lot in space construction sites like Project Skyscraper, but I can make up any number of reasons why Carol Leefield didn't use one in Part Six (Half the Fun).
At one point, I did have this wacky notion that the same gas cartridges would be interchangeable between reactionless sidearms and reaction pistols, and that the gas would be carbon dioxide and the cartridges would be refillable from a spacesuit's breathing apparatus. But then a little voice in my head murmured "Creeping featurism," and I stopped thinking about it.
New materials are being developed every day. Plastics, ceramics, composites, alloys -- all of these allow us to build things that are stronger, more flexible, more resistant to corrosion, or otherwise better in some way than the basic materials that we find in nature.
The supercomposite material of the Freefall universe is steel-crystal, but the name is actually a misnomer. I imagine this material as some sort of ceramic, an ultra-strong substance whose malleability changes when an electric current is applied. Thus "steel" to indicate its durability, and "crystal" because of its piezoelectric properties.
In the work-in-progress Where Is Thy Victory, the steel-crystal lining of a spacecraft's hull is instrumental in solving a murder. In No Fate, Natalie Eves runs a firearms training session and demonstrates how to change out the steel-crystal gas cartridge of a recoil suppressor. And I'm sure there are many other engineering applications which I haven't thought of yet...
Copyright © 1997 Curtis C. Chen. All Rights Reserved.