Prototype: Cislunar Series, #2

By D.W. Patterson

Prototype: A Short Story
 

James had made it to orbit, where he always wanted to be. He thought the hard work was behind him, but when you are responsible for a hundred million dollar prototype, the hard work may just be ahead.

A glitch, or something, had stopped the robotic inspection of the build site for the first fuel depot in space. James was alone, it was downtime for the build crew and his supervisor had gone to a meeting. James had been distracted when the spider-bot had its problem and now it wouldn't communicate.

James was sure the bot was more important to the company than him and that he would be terminated and sent back to Earth if he couldn't get it going. But without a link he would have to out there, and out there was not like being up here, with the station walls surrounding.

What do you do when your only choice is between your dreams and a nightmare?

Prototype is the first written (but second chronologically) short story in the author's new near-future universe and series, Remembered Earth Universe: Cislunar Series.

 

The stories in the Remembered Earth Universe will feature the probable science and technology of the next hundred years and may be read in any order.

Hard Science Fiction – Old School.

Human-Created-Content.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D.W. Patterson
• Release date: Jun 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215399255

Book preview

To Sarah

Chapter 1

August 5, 2011, was a highly significant date in the history of the space program. On that date, NASA announced contracts awarded to four aerospace companies to define demonstration missions to test the capabilities of cryogenic propellant depots. The contracts effectively created a design competition which would lead to the selection of a company to build an actual prototype depot. Cryogenic propellant depots are a critical component of our entire future space exploration and development effort.

- National Space Society

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2038 A.D.

The spider-like robot scampered from truss to truss.

This is so much easier than training, thought James.

James was teleoperating the robot and running an inspection of the latest trusses for the fuel depot in Earth orbit. The girders would form a giant web-like structure to which all the components, like cryogenic fuel tanks, docking ports and operational habs would be attached. At two hundred feet in length, arranged around a central core the trusses appeared as the arms of a huge twelve sided regular polygon within a polygon, within a polygon. That is, at fifty feet and one hundred feet from the center were cross-members, thus a web-like appearance.

The fuel depot would be the largest structure yet in low Earth orbit (LEO) and would be the first major component of the Cislunar Transportation Architecture (CTA), envisioned years before by many, to be completed.

James wasn't sufficiently versed in the mergers and takeovers of the last few years to know how his company had come to build the fuel depot. He knew that much of the engineering came from a buyout of a startup which then was bought out by the large aerospace firm that had hired James.