Lanis’ eyes had widened, “Oh, ’cause Stade’s frictionless, right? You load casks on a platter and spin it up when you have extra power, then use that kinetic energy to generate power when you need it?”
Seba nodded.
They were being seated in a Greek restaurant that didn’t look promising, though both Seba and Lanis assured Prakant the food was good.
Once they’d ordered Lanis said, “A flywheel would be a fun project! What else?”
Prakant couldn’t help but wonder at the confidence of such a young engineer. Is she going to be capable of handling such a diverse array of projects? he wondered.
Seba said, “You could work with Lee on her project to build a space tower. She’s gonna need a hell of a foundation. By the way, we’ve already tried your idea for a foundation of big Stade screws. They wanted the dry casks we’re stazing for Surbury fixed in place so no one can steal them. So, we used a commercial post hole digger to drive in some big screws and welded them to the cask.”
“‘The’ cask? Only one?”
“Uh-huh. They’re doing tests on that one, then they’ll have us do the rest of them.”
She nodded, then narrowed her eyes, “So how’s this space tower supposed to work?”
Prakant could hardly keep from goggling as Seba described an enormous tripod, ten to twenty miles high. A two-hundred-kilometer limb of the tripod would start at Staze East and head southeast up into the sky at a thirty-degree angle, braced by the other two limbs.
“Wait a minute,” Lanis said, “How are you going to hold up these ten-mile-long limbs before they get attached to one another to form the tripod?”
“Um, that’s part of what we need a good civil engineer for. They’ll be made of buoyant Stade so holding them up won’t be a problem, but they’ll still tend to blow around in the wind.”
She blinked, “Of course! I’ve got to get used to working with weightless materials! We could fly a weightless chain from one to the other and just pull them together until they line up.”
Seba grimaced, “Drones aren’t going to fly very well at ten miles altitude.”
“Correct,” Lanis said, undaunted, “you’d have to fly the chain over at something like a mile of altitude, then run it up that limb of the tower to the height you’re going to join them at, then pull them together. I’d love to help with that project too.” She frowned, “Are you planning to launch everything off the rail in the same southeasterly direction? Or, are you planning to change the length of the southern and eastern limbs to angle the southeast limb toward different orbits?”
Seba said, “I hadn’t considered that possibility.” He looked at Prakant, “Would changing the direction be helpful for space launch?”
Prakant nodded, “Hugely helpful. Depends on whether you want a polar orbit, an equatorial orbit, or one of the various inclined orbits. You could launch them all to the southeast and correct them with second stage rocketry, but launching them closer to the angle you eventually wanted to achieve would save a lot of fuel.”
Seba turned back to Lanis, “We should figure on that then.”
She frowned, “That’d take a lot of hydraulic fluid.”
Seba shook his head, “You’re using frictionless Stade. Always try to figure out whether there’s a way to use its bizarre properties. In this case, you could install a kilometers long screw-drive system that pushes an inner piston out of an outer shell.”
Unembarrassed, Lanis laughed delightedly. “Of course you could!”
Their food arrived and they worked on getting set up to eat. Once that was underway, Lanis held up her fork and said, “Not that I don’t want to hear all the other projects you might want me to work on, but can I suggest some of my own?”
Unfazed, Seba just said, “Go.”
“Ms. Vaii said you were going to be looking for a new place?”
Seba nodded.
“Your new building should be constructed of Stade. It’ll serve as advertising of the material, demonstration of its properties, and a new home, all at once.”
“Oh! Good thinking. You have ideas?”
She shrugged, “I’m full of ’em. It should be mounted up in the air on a screw-in foundation so it can provide a shaded outdoor area beneath. Employees can enjoy the area on nice days. It should be planned so it can be extended when the company gets bigger. You could always make it taller since you don’t have to specially design the lower floors for them to be strong enough to add upper floors later. Duh, it’s made of Stade. But you should also be able to expand laterally. The ability to extend it requires that the openings into potential additions need to be planned into the starter building.
“Because it’s built of Stade, except for the windows, it’ll already be perfectly insulated. But we’ll put on panels that tilt up and down over the windows. Tilt them all the way up toward the sun and lots of sunlight comes in. On days that’re too sunny, you tilt them down like awnings to let you see out but provide shade. For storms, or at night, you bring them down to act as window coverings, giving complete insulation and protection.”
Seba said, “Don’t forget that you can’t have the exterior be smooth Stade. The sunlight reflections could be hazardous to others.”
She nodded, “The exterior would need to be textured, but in a fashion that allowed drainage so no dust accumulates and starts to grow stuff.”
Seba cocked his head, “Maybe letting stuff grow on the roof would be nice. The roots couldn’t hurt the roof.”
She shook her head. “The roof should be
