Tales from a Distant Star: How Humanity Gets to the Stars

By Raymond Hardcastle

About the Book

Tales from a Distant Star is a short story anthology following a crew and their seemingly never-ending journey through space, which it very well could with the ever-expanding size of the universe. Using real science, the tales within stay as true as possible to the current understanding of space and space travel, and how it may look hundreds of years from now. Raymond Hardcastle’s years of studies in physics and engineering and his love for storytelling are now combined into one fascinating collection.

About the Author

Raymond Hardcastle spent his childhood in orphanages and foster homes until his teenage years, and attended one-room schoolhouses, where he would learn from the higher grades. He went on to take courses at vocational school to learn a trade. Until he was seventeen, he worked mowing lawns, shoveling snow, shining shoes, and as a store clerk until he could join the navy. At twenty-one, he was discharged and practiced his trade while attending college. He now holds a BS in physics and an MBA. He has worked as an engineer on a space shuttle and as an administrator of a scientific research laboratory, and taught technical college classes until his retirement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889258742

Book preview

One

Gravity in Space

Little is known about MASH as we call it today (and take it for granted) and the intrepid pioneers who developed the process. Without MASH, humanity would not have been able to spread out to distant star systems as aggressively as we have.

The following is an attempt to correct the paucity of information about the creation of MASH.

Babu Uhuru,

great-grandson of the MASH team leader

In the Year 135 AM (After MASH – Earth Year 2355)

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Ceres Mining Corp

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Director Babu Uhuru woke up confused on his sleeping pad on the Dwarf Planet Ceres. His wife Jessy was shaking him awake to take a call from Headquarters in Earth Orbit. Director Uhuru had been having a dream that he was back in his native Kenya floating down the river; just another side effect of Ceres’ micro gravity. Their quarters were high up in Ahuna Mons, the large mountain on Ceres, the largest body in the Asteroid Belt.

When Uhuru began mining on Ceres he reported to Earth at the ELEO (Equatorial Low Earth Orbit) HQ. The parent Kenya Corporation at HQ decided to spin off the Ceres operation as an independent subsidiary named Ceres Mining Corp. As Vice President and Senior Manager for Ceres Mining Corporation on the largest body in the Asteroid Belt, Uhuru had the largest and best appointed quarters. Still not large enough for a big guy like Babu. He would rather be in a hut with gravity and a real bed in his native Kenya. Babu’s wife Jessy longed for their home in Nairobi where things stayed where you put them, not drifting with the slightest breeze. They missed Earth. They missed gravity even more.

The missive from Earth expressed the desire to expand operations in Space. The Corporate big wigs at Headquarters on ELEO were concerned that production of precious metals from the Moon, Ceres and nearby asteroids was beginning to taper off. According to Arthur Moore, his British VP of Finance, they were keeping pace, but corporate was never satisfied.

The Corporation had sited its operation on Ceres in Ahuna Mons, the 6 km tall and 15 km wide pyramid shaped volcanic peak. Given Ahuna’s igneous origins and Ceres’ 0.028G gravity, it was easy for the miners to carve out working and living quarters inside the pyramid. They started digging at the base of the mountain and worked their way up making sure they always had at least 3 meters of overburden as protection from gamma rays, x-rays, UV light, etc. The automated mine and crusher were located outside the automatic airlocks. The refinery was located just inside where they could extract water, precious metals and silica, lots of Silica.

Very few people wanted to work in the micro gravity environment. And not many returned after their two month Sabbatical on earth. The free lance Belters and robot miners helped a lot, but you still needed humans to pilot the robots. Ceres Mining also had a need for workers at the crusher, smelter and refinery.

Cold Mountain

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Their main concern initially was that Ahuna Mons is an igneous ice mountain. It is a mountain of water-ice with a lot of metals, carbonates and silicate clays. They planned all along to extract the water-ice to use as rocket fuel. That left them with clay slurry; very cold clay slurry.

Ceres is too cold for humans, so remote controlled robots did all the work initially. At about minus 100 Degrees Fahrenheit, it was difficult enough with robots. After the initial tunnel was dug into the base of the mountain, it was lined with the clay slurry. The tunnel was extended in a continuous upward spiral and imbedded with refined metal for support and heated copper wire for curing the slurry. When they were done, they had a ceramic termite maze carved into an ice pyramid and heated to human comfort levels.

Reiko Hiromoto, the petite young pilot, maneuvered her robot miner on the surface of Ceres delivering regolith to the crusher. Hulking Ike Buratie would use his robot to take the output from the crusher and deliver it to the Smelter. From there, Anika Katri, the Dehli delite, would deliver the smelted product to the refinery. Then little Minh Vu would use her robot to take the refined materials and deposit them in the appropriate caches. The robot pilot mining crew worked well together in separating clay, water-ice, and metals for use as construction materials, fuel and export. They knew their job was key to the whole purpose of Ceres Mining. That didn’t make it less boring.

Rolf Zimmer, the Swiss geologist recruited from the moon’s Alpha Colony in charge of the mining crew, indicated where they should dig close to Ahuna Mons on the surface to find the best raw materials. The only way the crew found to keep the job interesting was to make a game out of it. They decided to rotate jobs every two hours. The most fun jobs were from the refinery to the caches. The second best job was scooping up the regolith and taking it to the crusher. Everyone hated the other two jobs. The game was to overburden the next miner in line so they fell behind, then you got to slack off. Zimmer didn’t mind them competing, it kept them interested and increased production.

At the end of each eight-hour shift all four Ceres miners would take the water-ice in the caches to the electrolysis plant to make fuel. The clay would be taken into the mountain to make clay tiles. Finally the refined metal would be loaded into a barge to await delivery back to Earth when the next freighter arrived. By the time the ore carrier arrived, they had enough valuable materials and fuel for a full load. Kenya Corp. would turn that cargo into cash and goods at the Earth/Moon L-5 factories.

Babu and his wife Jessy had their quarters high up in the pyramid, but still well below ground to shield them from radiation. Flat screens imbedded in strategic locations around the inhabited spaces gave the illusion of windows to the world. Even though they could take data feeds from anywhere to give any desired view, the Uhuru’s preferred one large monitor in their quarters that took feed from a surface camera. There really wasn’t much to see other than the arriving and departing ore carriers.

Earthly Ties

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Ceres freighters delivered refined metals to Ceres Mining’s warehouse in Earth’s L-5 LaGrangian orbit (E/M L-5). There it would be further refined and fabricated by the Russian factories according to customer needs. It was easier to ship from there to any end-use customer even though it was as far from Earth as the moon. From L-5 they had no gravity well requiring a lot of fuel. They could easily ship to customers on the moon, L-4, Earth, Low Earth Orbit (LEO), geosynchronous orbit (GSO), and L-3 for transshipment to Mars and remote areas of the Belt.

Their biggest customer was the Chinese at Earth’s leading LaGrangian point (E/M L-4) where a huge double-decker torus was being constructed. The Chinese already had a much smaller torus there being used as a construction shack. They could achieve effective gravity by spinning the torus as the Russians did by spinning their cylinders at L-5.

Another major reason for Ceres to locate their refinery and smelter at L-5 was to avoid the environmental fanatics on Earth who had already destroyed much of Earth’s Industry. There was no need to waste fuel at L-5 to stay in place as there was in LEO or L-3. They did need to provide shelter for the workers with a spun cylinder covered with smelter waste. Being outside Earth’s protective magnetic shield, L-5 was subject to all sorts of cosmic radiation. There was protection at the company’s Equatorial Low Earth Orbit (ELEO), but not way out at L-4 and L-5. They let the enviros understand it was dangerous out there, but the Green Activists still sent spies and saboteurs occasionally.

Ceres HQ

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Back at Ceres, when Uhuru arrived at his office on an Upper level deep in the mountain, Teri Swanson, his American accountant, was waiting with orders from Headquarters at the company’s ELEO habitat. They had a semblance of gravity there by spinning the habitat. Ceres was too big for that. Ceres had to make do with the giant spinning Ferris wheel in a huge hollowed-out cavern deep in the Pyramid Mountain. Just another reminder of how important gravity was to the human species.

 Teri Swanson spent more time than necessary exercising in the Ferris wheel. The staff on Ceres was rotated back to Earth every six months. They had to exercise in the Ferris wheel for at least two hours a day. If they didn’t, they would lose too much muscle mass and bone density and not be able to walk on earth. Earth had little use for Human worms.

The two Ceres-to-Earth Cyclers were spun to provide some semblance of gravity on trips between Earth and the dwarf planet. Some trips were fully cargo and some fully employees. Very few were mixed people and cargo because of the difficulty to provide proper balance if it needed to be spun. Eventually Ceres Mining Corp. planned to add two more Cyclers that would be exclusively for personnel.

Kenya Corporation was frustrated with the need to provide pseudo-gravity for their people to and from Ceres and anywhere else in the Solar System they wanted to go. They had no idea that an answer would soon come. Not from the vaunted and highly educated scientific staff, but from a small crew of inquisitive Ceres adventurers.

Far Out Mission

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Ceres Mining HQ on Earth’s ELEO wants to increase production by exploring Jupiter’s LaGrangian points (Jupiter/Sun L-4 and L-5), the Trojans, which actually may have more asteroids than the Asteroid Belt. It is figured a tour of the Trojans to collect geologic samples would take at least nine months. Nine months each way without gravity is too long to subject people to zero G. To say nothing of the necessary life support they’d need. Uhuru’s staff consists of less than 200 people in a wide range of specialties and a wide range of nationalities. He doesn’t have the people to spare to build at least two spacecraft scouts. And he has no spacecraft construction specialists.

He asked Teri to communicate that to Earth. An hour later the reply came back. Corporate anticipated his objections and immediately sent him the plans for the ships that will accommodate six to twelve people each. They also notified him that eight large Bigelow inflatable habitats and two central engine hubs were on the way. A dozen people with the necessary spacecraft construction skills would accompany the inflatables. According to the plans they sent, four Inflatable habitats would connect to each other in a ring and to the central hub at the manifold on the end of each inflatable. The Central hub would hold the engine, fuel tank and a cargo hold for a dozen large probes.

Director Uhuru called a general staff meeting to organize the project. The five Ceres engineers and five Scientists under his command, plus the four robot pilots would form the core of the effort. Tukuri Saraki the Engineer from Nigeria would lead the construction team with Helen Hu, a Physicist, Supervising the propulsion system. Tukuri is a Nigerian Chemical Engineer responsible for extracting metals from the mined ore sent to Ceres by Belters. He would make certain that the collecting Robots were ready. Marco Russo, a Tony Curtis look-alike romantic and a Mechanical Engineer from Italy, who would oversee the interior and life support systems. Dr. Anna Hoffman, the young Israeli Internist would assist Russo. With the addition of a Navigator and a couple of Medics, they should have no problem staffing the ships.

Before they can send the manned Scouts, they need to send six Robot probes. Ceres Mining doesn’t want to risk anybody unless there is something worthwhile in Jupiter’s LaGrangian points. The probes will be controlled remotely by Rolf Zimmer, the geologist, with help from Linh Tran as Navigator. The probes will have large cargo holds for collecting specimens. They will have a camera on each side of the forward hatch which can be opened remotely.

The probes are equipped with both long-range and short-range radar. That permitted Linh Tran to guide the probes on the optimal course to intercept the densest concentration of Trojan asteroids. Rolf Zimmer could use the short-range radar to zero in on the most convenient ones to capture. He had only to anticipate 22 minutes ahead of time. He found it wasn’t all that difficult since there was really nothing to change the course once he set it. Then he could move on to the next one.

Mission to Troy

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While the manned Scout ships are being constructed on Ceres by the dozen experts from Earth, Uhuru sends three of the robotic collecting probes to arrive at Jupiter’s L-4, the Greeks ( Achilles, Hektor, etc,) four months later. Another set of three probes is sent to the Trojans (J/S L-5). It’s expected these probes will take nearly a year before they can return to Ceres. The Trojans (Paris, Patrocles, Enomos, etc.) might yield a different set of samples to be analyzed on Ceres. It’s Rolf Zimmer’s job to select the samples and Linh Tran’s to make sure the probes get there and back.

Jupiter/Sun L-4, the Greeks, are visited at closest approach to Ceres. Timing is everything. Radio control from Ceres manages the probes with the 22 minute delay each way. Timing may be everything to Linh, but planning ahead is everything to Rolf. The probes are like sharks. With a camera on each side of the jaw, Rolf will have them approach a suitably sized asteroid, open their forward hatch like a whale and swallow small asteroids whole. The probes are able to spend a month collecting. Samples are taken from a diverse group of Greek asteroids and returned for analysis on Ceres four months later. The ones from the Trojans will take five months longer.

Months later Rolf Zimmer notices that many of the Trojan specimens seem to have surface crystals. Linh Tran teases him that he is a little boy attracted to shiny objects. This is a jibe from a tiny Vietnamese girl to a hulking German weightlifter. Despite their physical and cultural differences, they work well as a team.

Shiny Trojan Rocks

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Back on Ceres a cursory examination of the returned Jupiter asteroids shows a binomial distribution between the Greek and Trojan samples. The ones from J/S L-5 look shinier than those from J/S L-4. Technician Sally O’Reilly was assigned the job of sorting through the Jupiter samples with help from Ike Adelamiki, a Belter on contract.

Sally notices some shiny metallic crystals from J/S L-5 exhibit non-magnetic attraction and repulsion as she sorts them out. That is not the case for the Greek samples. Ike, being a prospector and rock hound, decides to investigate further. He uses a diamond saw to cut thin sheets from the specimens. He notices that the Trojan crystals are aligned in planes. He applies a voltage across the sample and notes that the attractive effect can be marginally increased by an electric field. At first he suspects electromagnetism. Then Sally shows him that non metallic objects like her apple core are also affected.

Some people point out this is Iron Pyrite; Fool’s Gold. It is a mineral that forms cubic crystals that look a lot like gold. The technician speculates that if an electric field can align liquid crystals and affect the passage of photons in one direction like Pokel Cells, why can’t an electric field help align crystals and prevent gravitons from passing in one direction? The engineers laugh at the suggestion, but they are intrigued.

Manned Mission

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The two spacecraft being constructed on Ceres could be used to send a team of explorers on a manned mission to Jupiter’s Trojans to collect and analyze specimens. No longer will they have a forty minute delay in communication. The scoutcraft will need to be spun to provide artificial gravity because it is expected the mission will take at least nine months. Four three-level Bigelow modules are connected in a ring that is secured to the central engine in each spacecraft via a manifold. Fuel and cargo holds are on each Scout. The spin is started after the spacecraft achieve cruising speed on the proper intercept course to the Trojans.

The outward levels of the modules (below deck) are used for supplies and fluid reservoir to help with shielding. The middle level is for sleeping quarters and recreation. The upper level is for workspace and instrumentation.

The spacecraft are built to accommodate 6 people on each ship – two Scientists and four crew. One of the modules is for the scientists and their equipment. One module is for life support and the galley. The other two modules each house two crewmembers so they can monitor ship systems. Access to the central engine and the hold are via a one meter diameter shaft from each module’s end cap manifold. Monitoring of the exterior is by external camera feed sent to all interior displays. Communication between each ship is by comm Laser.

As the scout spaceships are nearing completion, the crews are selected and trained. The ships are named Helen and Penelope to keep up the Trojan theme. Three of the people on each ship are Scientists/Engineers. The other six are Lab and Medical Technicians. Allain Tibbets will captain Helen and Bobi Uhuru will captain Penelope. Yu Yan Liu, Navigator and Reyanesh Singh, Physicist will be with Tibbets on Helen. Agatha Florakis, Chemist and Marco Russo, Physicist will be on Penelope. Upon completion the spaceships are checked out by the Pilots, Minh Vu, Anaka Katri, Ike Buratie and Reiko Hiromoto. With Anna Hoffman and Raila Kenyatta as Medics, they have the crews they need.

The scientists spend most of their time arguing. The older established scientists have been planning for decades to send light sail generation ships on a 3,000 year voyage to Bernard’s Star. Others want to do it in just 1,400 years. The younger ones are appalled and are impatient to get there in one lifetime. The younger generation sees the discovery of the crystals as perhaps a way to achieve their goal. If this discovery results in control of gravity, the prospects for faster than light (FTL) travel may be possible. The old hands say they watch too much Star Trek.

The ships named Helen and Penelope travel together for safety and backup on a nine month tour. The older scientists on Helen, Reyanesh Singh and Allain Tibbetts, want to limit speculation and experimentation if it challenges their cherished research papers. The young ones on Penelope, Bobi Uhuru and Agatha Florakis, are not content to wait for the fossils to die. After all, that’s how orthodoxy is ultimately overthrown. It is better than spending your life in house arrest like Galileo or burned at the stake like Bruno, both of whom challenged the Church’s conception of the Universe. They can’t wait until they return to Ceres to experiment.

Bobi resembles the young Barak Obama as seen in the History vides. He is the nephew of Director Uhuru but has no special rights. With his Physics degree and specialty in Geology, he’s no politician. Like many staff members on Ceres he is of African descent because Ceres Mining Corp is a subsidiary of Kenya Enterprises. Kenya amassed amazing wealth by selling electricity beamed down to Mt. Kenya. They were just lucky that Mt. Kenya is smack on the equator and almost four Km high. That makes it ideal to receive microwave transmission from geosynchronous orbit nearly 24 hours a day. The Kenyans were wise enough to invest their wealth in space enterprises instead of blowing the windfall. The Kenyans have a large footprint in space, not just Ceres Mining Corp. They were among the first to get to the Asteroid Belt and work their mining claim. Few others could afford the risk or expense.

Agatha Florakis with her black ringlets, diminutive stature and light skin, is a dead ringer for the Consoler on Star Trek. She was an impoverished Greek Chemistry student working as a waitress in an Athens tourist restaurant to support her way through College. She was discovered by Jessy Uhuru, Bobi’s aunt and offered a full scholarship if she would sign on with Ceres Mining. Agatha is a space buff and would have accepted the job without the scholarship. Jessy knows how to spot talent. Being a shareholder and married to a Corporate VP, she considers it her duty to recruit good people.

 Agatha learned how to influence people on the mean streets of Athens. She learned how to survive by persuading people to help her. She sees the crewmembers on the manned mission becoming bored on the long voyage and gives them games to play with the older scientists who are also bored. That keeps the crew entertained and the old ones out of the way.

Mashing the Gas Giants

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Bobi Uhuru and Agatha Florakis have freedom to play with the thin samples Ike Adelamiki filched for them from Ceres. They discover many of the key characteristics of the crystals which they name Magnetically Aligned Iron Sulfide Crystals (MAISC). The tiles quickly acquire a mirror finish when electrified.

The two young Scientists find that both metallic and non-metallic objects are attracted or repelled when an electric field is applied to the MAISC. The effect is only in particular directions depending on the direction of the applied voltage. They arbitrarily assign Cartesian coordinates to the filched samples from Ceres. They note that if the electric field is applied in the X direction, there is no effect in the Y direction, but there is an effect in the Z direction. Reversing the field doesn’t change the effect in either the Y or Z direction. Applying the electric field across either the Y or Z direction has no effect at all. Only an electric field applied across the X direction has an attractive or repulsive effect and only in the Z direction. The effect is small but is noticeable in zero G and when the voltage is increased. Increasing the electric field beyond a certain level achieves no greater effect.

Bobi and Agatha form a working hypothesis that seems to explain their results. Suppose the MAISC can be aligned in a particular direction in an electric field to block Gravitons from passing through in one direction. Such a Graviton Filter will show a gravitational potential difference on either side of the interface. Physical objects would be pushed into one side and away from the opposite side. Matter and energy would be conserved. Very little energy would be needed since you’d only be guiding what nature is giving you; not creating anything new. This is much like letting the atmosphere push soda up a straw in your drink. Sucking on your end of the straw creates a lower pressure on your side and lets the higher external air pressure on the surface of the liquid push the soda up the straw into your mouth.

 They didn’t tell the older Engineers on Helen or Scientists on Ceres this since they didn’t want to be ridiculed for their crazy idea. They needed more evidence.

 Helen and Penelope let the Greeks slowly overtake them so they can retrieve samples. Both ships are able to retrieve specimens via robot probes from their holds. While the Probe Pilots collected samples remotely from Penelope, Bobi and Agatha could look over their shoulders and guide them to the most promising specimens. The collecting probes are returned to the ship’s hold and emptied while in vacuum. Video of the samples are sent back to Ceres and the probes are sent back out for another load. This continues until the cargo hold is half full. Then the hold is repressurized so Bobi and Agatha can check out their haul while the ship heads to the Trojans at J/S L-5.

Helen Springs a Leak

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On Helen, only Allain Tibbets, the Geologist, guided the Probe Pilots. Not being so fussy, they fill half their cargo hold quickly. Allain doesn’t bother repressurizing the hold. He doesn’t want to waste time or air. When Marco Russo, the Life Support Engineer on Penelope, calls over and asks: What’s holding you back? Tibbets replied: Helen has problems. She’s leaking air and the Life Support system is acting up. Marco responded: Paris never mentioned that in the Iliad. That got aVery funnyfrom Allain. But Helen’s problems keep the Engineer and Medic too busy to help gather and store rocks. Yu Yan Liu, Mission Navigator, is busy running navigation plots for both ships; they need to get a slingshot assist from Jupiter to get on to the Trojans at J/S L-5.

Mineralogists on Ceres note many small asteroids and the surface of some larger ones are crystallized metal. This gives support to the Penelope Hypothesis. Of course, the Ceres Mineralogists are unaware of the Hypothesis. They take lab samples for analysis before people take pieces of crystal to make jewelry. The skeptics on Ceres wouldn’t be impressed with the Hypothesis, but they would like the jewelry. Director Uhuru puts a stop to that. Many of the specimens are stony asteroids and exhibit no crystallization. The Director doesn’t want them messed with either.

Helen and Penelope let Jupiter slowly overtake them, analyzing samples as they go. They catalog the rocks on Helen while they repair the air leak and replace key elements of the Life Support System. One of the Helen crewmembers fooled around with one of the larger flat crystals in the zero gravity hold. He found that if the sample passed by an electric field there was a small non-magnetic attraction in an orthogonal direction. Realizing his discovery could be worth a lot of money, he keeps it to himself.

The ships pass through Io’s sulfur plume close to Jupiter and discover a startling level of purity, further supporting the hypothesis that molten Iron combined with Io sulfur to form Iron Pyrite crystals. It seems that Jupiter’s Ionosphere reduces the ionized oxygen from the Sulfur-Dioxide enough to get purer Sulfur in Io’s plume.

 After getting a gravitational boost from Jupiter they head toward the Trojans at J/S L-5. More crystallized metal samples are found at J/S L-5. Some are Fool’s Gold – Iron Sulfide as before. There seem to be a lot more of those crystals at the trailing Trojan point.

Laying on the Mash

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The experimenters on Penelope use Bobi’s diamond saw to make several more MAISC tiles. They find that the greater the voltage, the greater the effect up to about 1 Kg/sec/sec or about 0.102G. If they tile a field to the size of a king-sized bed, the effect is increased to nearly 0.14G. Bobi and Agatha agree this makes sense if the effect follows the inverse square law. That limits the effect to the size of the tiled field and it trails off asymptotically. They calculate about 0.23G will be the maximum attainable. They figure that if they block enough gravitons by adding a second layer, they might get closer to 0.3G. They are surprised when a second layer achieves no additional effect.

Then Bobi Uhuru gets an idea. He reasons that if the MAISC blocks gravitons of one wavelength and one polarization, a second layer at right angles to the first will block an equal number with the opposite polarization doubling the effect. Just like what happens with polarized sunglasses. They try that with two small pieces which immediately short out. A very thin dielectric between the layers solves that problem. Sure enough two MAISC tiles of opposite polarization double the effect to almost 0.45G. Bobi explains the effect to Ike Buratie who laughs and says: It doesn’t really matter why it works, only that it does. I’ll take blissful ignorance to get blissful gravity. I’m sure the discoverers of fire didn’t really understand that either.

The young scientists on Penelope propose an explanation anyway. They speculate that iron asteroids that came too close to Jupiter and were sent through the upper atmosphere on a hyperbolic trajectory emerged in a molten state. After they emerged from Jupiter’s atmosphere, the molten iron asteroids passed through Jupiter’s immense magnetic field. This would align the iron molecules. Upon passing through Io’s sulfur plume while still molten, Iron pyrite crystals would form. Then the molten mass gradually cooled in Jupiter’s magnetic field. They surmise that under these conditions the crystals will strongly align. When the aligned crystals are subject to an electric field they are scrunched together and are capable of blocking some gravitons. The result therefore of MAISC under an electric field is gravity. Voila!

The reason this hasn’t been discovered before is it takes molten iron passed through a strong magnetic field in the presence of pure sulfur in vacuum. Those conditions don’t occur very often in nature. The effect is weak and not noticeable except in low gravity.

After sharing their results with Reyanesh Singh on Helen, a furious debate begins about the theory of gravity – push versus pull. The push hypothesis begins to win – if space is awash in gravity waves (gravitons), blocking them in one direction will cause gravity in the opposite direction. Mass blocks gravitons, so all those gravitons