In my dumb little head, I was like, why not, I’ve been shot at, kind of blown up, and stomped by giant bugs. Surfing sounded rather ordinary. Perfect. Since we were wee kids, we have been going boogie boarding, so we all have wetsuits. The water along the Washington coast is cold even in the summer. We usually end up by the jetty near Westport. Boogie boarding isn’t surfing, but there are some similarities. Why not have a try at surfing?
It was surprising how fast life had gone back to a semblance of normalcy with the departure of the bugs; including the crowded roadways. We would probably just port though. Little did I know; the twins had a different type of surfing in mind. I moseyed along to the twin’s shop.
Well, it’s actually the shop for the mobile home park. It’s a huge metal building. I’m not sure who had it built. It’s way too large for the needs of the park. Whoever built it must not have had a good eye for scale. The twins aren’t complaining; worked out great for them. They have had use of most of the shop building for years. No one minds. A lot of tenants have received help repairing all sorts of equipment and gadgets curtesy of the boys.
Anyway, remember when I said the twins had been working on a space ship? Well, they don’t have a fully functional ship, not exactly. Just a capsule with a rocket of sorts. I have to admit, it’s a sweet space capsule. Roll has always done well in shop classes. He even managed to spend extra time with one of the shop teachers for some special experimental jobs program, resulting in Roll becoming a decent welder. I don’t even know how they were able to integrate the composite materials into the design.
The capsule is well built. It has a nose cone that is heat resistant, but no actual reentry shield at the base. They won’t need that until they have the fuel and staging all worked out. The thing is air tight. It has heating and air conditioning. Oxygen flow. It’s a nice three seat job.
They have a working rocket engine, though that won’t be completely ready any time soon. The fuel is tricky. Getting the fuel to the rocket engine in sufficient quantity to attain the required delta-v to bust the gravity well of Earth, that’s even trickier. No one wants to get blown up. The reentry shielding is another problem. It gets extra hot during reentry. Burnt to a cinder hot.
I suppose they have a better solution now anyway. They can port something the size of the capsule, though it’s close to the maximum of their combined lift ability (without a heat shield). It definitely takes both of them working together to port the thing. They’ve been practicing so they can “carry a little extra payload.” That would be me. Extra payload my foot. Anyway, here’s their idea of surfing. Yes, I did try it. Once. That was enough, thank you very much.
This is how they do it. They get the capsule all nice and warm, oxygen flowing, then hop in. Next up is a port to an orbital position near Jupiter. From there they need to do a series of porting adjustments to set up a highly elliptical orbit.
Rock gets all excited just talking about it. “We need to hit the sweet spot to surf. There are a few basic calculations needed. This surfing thing is really just a matter of some basic math.”
Roll rolled his eyes. “Yeah, just some math. And a tiny bit of engineering to be sure the capsule is airtight; heat, ventilation, and lighting; the guidance system, you sure don’t want to end up to close to a Van Allen belt; shielding from radiation and magnetic fields; radar. Then, there are the pressure gauges, oxygen feeds. We’ve got to have our tunes! Well, I could go on and on now, couldn’t I?”
Rock raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Math and a little bit of engineering and such.”
So, they teleport out to Jupiter. It’s a good thing they’re smart. Because it’s cold out by Jupiter. The capsule has a good heater. Also, Jupiter is big. Incredibly big. A lot of gravity. Crushing gravity. There is the magnetic field; 20,000 times greater than on Earth. A super powerful radiation belt too.
They port in close enough to get a good gravity tug from Jupiter. As they skim the gravity well of the planet, they have to make some adjustments to set up the right angular momentum to gain that elliptical orbit. It’s a little technical but that’s the gist of it. As the capsule moves around Jupiter it goes incredibly fast. It’s bumpy. I thought I would die!
Roll said, “You have to hit just the right spot. We call it threading-the-needle.”
Yeah, I went “surfing” with Rock and Roll. It’s a wild, bumpy ride. Way worse than any fun ride you’ve been on at a theme park. Crazy kind of stuff. I was sure I was going to die. I’ll never do it again. Besides, what if NASA or the bugs or someone saw us ... threading-the-needle. It’s a good thing Mr. T has a lot of stuff for them to do. We really do need to keep them extra busy and out of trouble. Boys!
***
+ BEGIN TIMELINE DROP.
NOTE: Journal Auto-tracking initiated. Drop conducted by Communal. Unusual chronology. There is minimal timeline divergence between date-stamp initiation and Drop location.
Source: WalkMate VidPro Recording. Dojo Twins.
<Descriptive notes by Communal>
“Grandad, do you know who the new guys are?” Liz asked.
“I’m not sure. Better go now, your sensei is calling,” Grandad responded.
<Location: community gym, karate class in session. The instructors have a variety of martial arts backgrounds. The students are benefiting from the several styles which in combination will enhance their self-defense skills. Liz and Mia have been taking lessons
