so Jasmine pulled his lips to her neck. The prospect of scoring a hickey before millions of viewers excited her.
“Our tunnel inside the extinct volcano is not long since most of the launcher wraps around the national park. Japan’s Seikan Tunnel stretches 33 miles, the Eurotunnel 31 miles, and the record for a people-carrying tunnel goes to the 35 mile long Gotthard Base Tunnel under the Swiss Alps.
“The idea of using a maglev catapult is at least as old as the 1950s movie, When Worlds Collide. Arthur Clark described it in a book half a century ago. What is original is building a maglev launcher at the highest point on Earth.”
Jasmine feared her mother would orgasm first, so she started talking dirty to James to fuel his furnace.
“Mt. Everest is the highest mountain above sea level, but is not the highest point on Earth. Astronomers measure distance not from the Earth’s surface, but from Earth’s center. The Moon’s mean distance, for example, is 384,500 kilometers from the center of our planet. And because the Earth is fat in the middle, meaning it bulges around the equator, the mountain that rises farthest into the atmosphere is Chimborazo, the extinct volcano that you saw when you landed in Riobamba. Mt. Everest is 8.2 kilometers above sea level, while Chimbo is just 6.3 kilometers. But because our planet bulges around the equator, Chimbo rises over 10 kilometers into the atmosphere. Despite being 2,580 meters lower in elevation above sea level, Chimborazo is 2.168 kilometers closer to orbit than Everest. It’s on Wikipedia — look it up!”
Her first orgasm rose to the heavens. She never knew Morgan Freeman’s voice was so sexy. She hoped her seat didn’t smell like sex permanently as she soaked it.
“When you stand at its peak, you are almost in orbit. You are above so much of the atmosphere that when you look up you see black space instead of blue sky.
“And careful with this information. Locals call it ‘Chimbo,’ which should not be confused with ‘chimba,’ which is South American slang for pussy.
“We looked at Mt. Kilimanjaro at 5.9 kilometers above sea level, Mt. Kenya at 5.2, Margherita Peak at 5.2, and in Ecuador, Mt. Cotopaxi at 5.9 and Mt. Cayambe at 5.8 kilometers high. Chimbo worked best because it reaches farther into space, it’s right on the equator, and because its four-kilometer long caldera lets us extend the launcher another half a kilometer up. Digging up lets gravity take away most of the debris, and the volcano is already partially hollow inside.”
Jasmine heard her mother start to sing an orgasm and chimed in for the chorus. “Go, bitch, go!” That fucker, Bob, really had it going on. She would not mind sampling his platter, herself, although fucking her husband’s father may piss off her mother.
“Not only do we leave the fuel and propulsion system on the ground, but the amorphous metal capsules are very light, strong, and heat-resistant. Bypassing two-thirds of the atmosphere means a fraction of the heat for a fraction of the time, which saves literally tons of ablation shielding and lets us re-use the capsules thousands of times. The capsule will actually ride on top of a sled that has superconducting magnets. The sled will parachute after it separates out of the launch tube and the capsule itself will land on water to eliminate the need for heavy landing gear.”
The screen now showed several versions of the bullet-shaped capsule, for passengers, bulk cargo, water, pressurized gas, fertilizer, and heavy equipment. Her mother’s orgasm ended with a painful yelp as she tried to swallow her embarrassment.
“It costs 32 million joules, or 9 kilowatt-hours, to put a kilo into orbit — about 25 cents worth of electricity. We need a three gigawatts power supply and 50,000 kilowatt hours of electricity in all. The local utility can power it only at night, so we use a Toshiba nuclear battery for primary power. Although it cost $10 billion to complete, our operating costs should be just pennies per pound once we reach full capacity.
“The American government is our biggest customer. We designed plug-and-play satellites that use the same chassis, so we simply add whatever sensor module the customer wants. The U.S. bought one thousand satellites in part to deny those orbits to other nations, giving America not just space superiority, but space supremacy.”
Jasmine had sucked James off in the Gulfstream jet they flew in on, so he pounded her like a carpenter. She looked straight at the old man in the row ahead of her as he tried to score glimpses of her snatch as James pumped away. His bride-to-be finally caught on and smacked him like a boxer.
“America launches from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida because it’s our closest land to the equator. The closer to the equator, the least amount of energy to get into orbit. We only launch from Vandenberg in California for polar orbits. The equator moves faster than any other part of Earth, with respect to space, so all launches are also sent into the east to take advantage of Earth’s rotational energy.
“Orbital velocity is 7.7 kilometers per second, or 27,720 kilometers an hour. A launcher must reach that speed to get into orbit. Anything slower is like swimming 99 % across a lake, only to drown within sight of shore. Yet, at that speed, the atmosphere is a brick wall a dozen miles thick, whereas we want as thin a wall as possible.”
Someone behind her moaned, which ticked Jasmine off. Couldn’t she have peace and quiet while she got laid in the theater? Is that really too much to ask? Oh, it sounded like just a blowjob. She was okay with that. From the location, it was probably either the Russians or the Chinese.
“Space is only fifty miles away. Many Americans drive more than that to work. Traveling up is so hard because half of the atmosphere is compressed into the bottom 5.6 kilometers. The lower atmosphere is four times thicker than the upper atmosphere. Atmospheric density falls exponentially with height. 100 kilometers above sea level has only one-millionth the atmospheric pressure of sea level. So the higher we go, the thinner the atmospheric wall. The higher we launch, the less atmosphere to penetrate.
“The more atmosphere we must punch through, the greater the friction, the greater the pressure drag from the resulting sonic shock wave that forms in front of the launch vehicle, and the greater the parasitic drag and skin drag from air flowing over the vehicle body. Rockets launched near sea-level face compression from the shock wave that superheats the nose of the vehicle to about 54,000 degrees F. So we use ablating materials as heat shields, which literally melt away in carefully controlled layers like an onion, but protect the vehicle underneath. But heat shields are heavy, which increases costs and reduces payload.”
It was that old Japanese guy getting his prick blown! Jasmine arched her head to see that nice dude whispering to the red haired Eurasian whore he was apparently willing to marry.
“People wonder why we chose the largest near-Earth object, rather than a smaller one that would have been easier, cheaper, and faster to re-orbit. Well, size does matter. A small rock would have had little more gravity than the International Space Station.
“ Nothing works in zero gravity, including humans. We grow a few inches taller, our bodily fluids flow towards our head, our face and eyes get all puffy and our legs skinny, we lose calcium in our bones, our muscles atrophy, we get cardiovascular deconditioning, balance disorders, the toilets don’t flush without suction, we can’t take showers, we have to pee and poop in diapers, we can’t cook normal meals — we can’t even have sex without strapping our lover down. On his Mercury flight, Gordon Cooper’s condom broke, surrounding him with drops of pee in his tiny capsule. Try to concentrate in that environment!”
The Arab sheik behind her leaned forward with a camera phone. Jasmine smiled, even though the middle aged lady next to him smoldered in rage. Their seats leaned back so far that they put her head near his crotch.
“95 % of astronauts need medicine. I can’t think of a worse place to drug expensive workers than in space, where sudden decompression, which almost happened on Mir, can literally pop your eyes out. Vladimir Komarov lost power to his guidance computer, which gave him 26 hours to reflect upon his coming fiery death. Russian cosmonauts are forced to wear a ‘core temperature monitor,’ a penny-sized probe inserted up their butts. The toilet recycles urine into water, so the crew could die of thirst if the toilet breaks.
“No, zero-gravity sucks. Humans just can’t be productive wearing diapers and anal monitors. We need micro-gravity. The more massive the rock, the more gravity we enjoy, so we chose the largest rock that crosses Earth’s orbit, and put it into a same highly eccentric orbit as satellite Vela 1A. 60 % of Americans would pay a year’s salary to get into space. With four trillion tons of mass, people could live years on Ganymed using heavy boots and clothes to minimize loss of muscle mass.”
The Japanese man yelped in joy like he scored a goal as he came into his wife. Those around him cheered.
“The maglev launcher here sends us to Ganymed. The maglev there will one day send us to the Moon, Mercury, and Mars. Launchers there will send us back. We haven’t landed on the Moon yet — no one has since 1972 — but once we have a maglev on their tallest mountain, we could probably go from Chimbo to the Moon, then
