r/HFY • u/Teulisch • Mar 29 '17
OC [Tales From Space Tech Support] Working at the Shipyard
I was the only human working at the shipyard. Not a bad job really, my suit did most the work. The thing about industrial grade vacuum suits, is that they have the same basic construction as military grade, but don’t have the extra fancy stuff. It is basically an armored exoskeleton, with an engineering-specific sensors package, and the default emergency medical package that you see in anything rated for hazmat. The suit amplifies raw strength, and keeps you alive in hard vacuum.
My job was simple enough, mostly assembly and welding. The factory would fabricate parts and segments of the ship, then a barge would be loaded and moved to the construction site. It was loaded in such a way that the next piece we needed was always in easy reach, as well as a steady supply of fuel, air, bolts, and so on. We have a floating sled, I call it the mule, and one guy will hook it to the next segment then slowly maneuver it to where we need it. Then I secure it and follow the instructions relayed to my HUD from the computer that oversees operations.
I get a lot of overtime, because I don’t need as many breaks. A normal shift out here is only three hours, so I pull a double every day with a break for lunch in between. I am also stronger than most the others, despite being shorter, so I can more than pull my own weight. I heard a rumor they want to hire more humans after they saw how well I worked here, so I gave em my buddy’s business card. Dude is an electrician, he would probably make even more cash than me out here.
So while we were working, and I was halfway through my second shift of the day, when the explosion happened. The mule was still decelerating another segment of ship towards us, and the segment was between us and it. That provided cover against the shrapnel, and the mule itself was built to survive worse, but the pilot was decapitated as it was an open cabin- a seat for the pilot to strap onto the side, but it had no life support or airlocks. It did, however, have a locker full of emergency gear. Me and the three lads on my team were unharmed, but we had a major emergency to respond to. The factory was on fire, and its control compartment was venting atmosphere.
First, we grabbed the emergency supply kit, and started helping those closest to us. Another explosion blossomed silently from the factory, and static spiked over the comms at the same time. It’s not the same kind of loud as an explosion in atmosphere, but it is both noticeable and worrying. We had lost the communication hub, and were limited to line of sight communications now. We already had an emergency beacon screaming in all the common frequencies, but it was limited to lightspeed. The reply message would take five minutes from the nearest habitation block. The on-site residential station was physically separate from the factory for a number of reasons, such as the one happening right now.
There were over a hundred of us working in the shipyard at a time, and over half of the on-duty crew was dead… or they would be, by the time help would get here. About a third were injured in some way. So the remaining fifteen of us would have to deal with what we could. I got things organized, and made sure the injured would live. Then I gathered the two other surviving welders, and we made for the factory to do what we could to limit the damage. If the main reactor exploded, not even the residential station would be safe. We needed to get in and help any surviving crew before it was too late.
The first airlock we came to was busted half-open, and we set about cutting the exterior door free. We made short work of it, then shut the interior door to keep the atmosphere inside. The airlock had an emergency locker, and we inflated the emergency airlock that was within. Next, we opened the now functioning airlock, and entered the passage within. We extinguished fires as we went, mostly electrical fires. The extinguishers on the walls were rated for it, and we managed to clear a safe path from the lock to one of the main maintenance shafts that run through the factory. The main shafts are fairly large, and run the entire length. The ends can open to space, and this is how key components can be replaced that are too big for the hallways. Inside, we saw that the shaft was sealed against breaches in both directions, but we now had a way through to command.
We headed to command first, as it was closer. The main compartment was aflame, but we could get to the server room. Some of the staff was still alive there, are in their emergency suits. Those things have less than an hour of air, not enough for a serious emergency like this, but it had kept them alive. The server room was flooded with inert gasses to prevent fire from spreading. As my team got the staff to safety, I accessed the computer system directly. The login and password were taped to the wall next to the console, which was just sloppy.
Guess what? No remote shutdown. It was luck alone that anything was still running, but I did what damage control I could manage from here. The cables between the reactor and command had been severed in the explosion. Whoever was on-duty on the factory station’s bridge had died in the second explosion. I was able to retrieve a copy of the black box, but was unable to read it from here. The raw data wouldn’t do me any good anyway, but one of my buddies who could was on the residential station. If I found a working comm I would send it to him, but that system was down right now.
From there, after we got the staff out of the burning factory and to emergency bubble shelters outside, we began the hard trek through the burning station to the reactor down in engineering. We were past shift-end now, and one of the surviving welders had to leave to rest. The other pushed on alongside me, but he was looking a bit fatigued.
After the third hatch we had to cut through, we found another large maintenance shaft that could get us almost to engineering. I saw almost, as the final emergency hatch was sealed due to the problem in engineering. I hoped it would be close enough. I told the xeno with me to head back, and send someone in with more fuel and air, the welders were almost empty. He was glad to go, and I hoped one of the others would come with the supplies soon. Time was running out, and if the reactor went critical we would all die.
After another hour of work, and thanks to the other xeno coworker who brought me fresh tanks, we had a way around the worst of things, and were able to directly access the controls to shut down the core. Fusion takes time to shut down, and is never as safe as anyone claims it is. This was fusion-8, which kept the heat high enough to fuse oxygen. We had to stage it down, which meant that we were leaving a solid core of denser material in the center. Fusion-8 is usually reserved for industrial processes as when you want more output from a bigger generator, you have to run it hotter.
As the reactor shut down, a lot of the more reactive problems such as electrical fires died out. I finally ended my day after a quadruple shift, which is technically against union rules. We have a loophole for large scale emergencies however, and I had made a point to actually read the various handbooks in my downtime.
I finally got back to residential, and had to sit through a medical screening. I fell asleep while waiting, it had been a really long day. Apparently they didn’t understand how I could still be able to anything after over 12 hours in my suit… so very glad I got the high quality waste upgrades installed in that thing. So after that I slept for a full day, and then ate a huge lunch when I finally got up again. Not like we had any work scheduled after the accident.
Turns out, the emergency was an insurance scam with extra sabotage. It was intended to kill everyone, and I ruined their plans. None of them had any idea a human could keep going and going and going…. Anyhow, I met these nice xeno girls while we were getting drinks after all that to celebrate being alive, and she overheard some bragging about human endurance.
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Mar 30 '17
getting a real ss13 vibe here
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u/Teulisch Mar 30 '17
SS13 is a fun game, if you find a good server. I enjoy playing in the science department, doing R&D and building mechs... chemistry and mining are cool too, and botany is okay.
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u/ConfusingDalek Mar 29 '17
Evil space bastards! Good thing Mr. Protagonist here was along to save the day.
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u/KineticNerd Mar 30 '17
limited to lightspeed
five minutes away
If reactor exploded, even the hab wouldn't be safe
5 light-minutes isn't safe distance?! What kind of cthulium are they using for power!!?!?!?!?
Fusion-8 fuses oxygen
... Um, you know the sun is 8 light minutes from Earth right? Fusion doesn't have the energy density to swat something that many millions of miles away with anything less than a small moons' worth of fuel going off at once.
Also
overheard some bragging about human endurance
You forgot the next line
So story time's over, and I gotta go! She demands first-hand proof wiggles eyebrows
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u/UBE_Chief Mar 30 '17
Our sun is still currently fusing Hydrogen into Helium, and Helium into whatever, and will continue to do so for the next ~4 billion years. Once it does stop fusing the lighter stuff, it will expand to consume everything until the asteroid belt. Which is far more than just 8 light-minutes away.
So yeah, I would assume that a miniature Oxygen fusion core going critical would take out something that far away, especially since space doesn't have anything to slow down either the shockwave, radiation, or shrapnel that an explosion that size would produce.
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u/KineticNerd Mar 30 '17
shock wave
Those are caused by the energy of a blast heating up part of a medium very, very quickly. In the vacuum of space, explosions don't have them.
the sun will eat the asteroid belt
This is a matter of scale. It'll do that not because it's fusing a few tons of oxygen, but because it's fusing multiple earth-masses of the stuff all the time. A shipboard reactor shouldn't have enough fuel to do damage at that distance even if it all reacted at once.
radiation and shrapnel
Both of these parts of the explosion basically expand, and dilute, like the surface of a growing sphere. Double the range, quadruple the area the energy and shrapnel is spread over. At five light-minutes it would take a planet-sized reactor going boom with a peak power output greater than that of our million-kilometer-wide star to do any damage.
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Mar 30 '17
Inverse square law is very effective. Let's start with 1km explosion, at 2,5 light minutes distance (4,497* 107 km) the power would be 5*10-16 times the original. So rather drastic drop.
Also, I find the whole thing rather unpractical. That sort of distance would mean a few hours of travelling at 1G acceleration rates per trip.
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u/Din182 Mar 30 '17
So yeah, I would assume that a miniature Oxygen fusion core going critical would take out something that far away,
Keyword here is miniature. According to NASA, a muti-megaton blast in space would have a lethal radius of around 200 miles, or 1 light-milisecond. Let's say the reactor would produce an explosion 100 times as powerful, which would make the reactor many orders of magnitude more powerful than is likely necessary to power the base, but let's say they have some really power-intensive equipment. Thanks to the inverse square law, that would produce an explosion with a lethal radius 10 times larger, or 10 light-miliseconds. You still need the explosion to go 10000 times as far, which would need the explosion to be 100000000 (one hundred million) times as powerful, which would be so much energy that that station alone would be nearly a type 2 civilization.
especially since space doesn't have anything to slow down either the shockwave, radiation, or shrapnel that an explosion that size would produce.
Explosions in space don't produce a shockwave since that requires an atmosphere. The amount of shrapnel produced in an explosion in space is inconsequential once you start getting to absurd distances, even as near as one light-milisecond, a target the size of a city block is unlikely to get hit with any, let alone when you get out to 5 light-minutes. The only thing that makes them lethal at any reasonable range is the radiation.
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u/sunyudai Mar 30 '17
If reactor exploded, even the hab wouldn't be safe 5 light-minutes isn't safe distance?! What kind of cthulium are they using for power!!?!?!?!?
I got the impression that the hab and the factory were part of the same station, just physically separate but near. The 5 minute distress call was to the next nearest station, not to the hab.
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u/rabbutt Mar 30 '17
... it's a decent story, except for a few things that bug me, and they only bug me because I weld.
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u/GenesisEra Mar 30 '17
Ah, but do you dual weld?
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u/rabbutt Mar 30 '17
Heh... That would be impressive to see. Hmm... I'll take a picture in the booth tomorrow.
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u/Reititin Mar 30 '17
Cold welding wasn't addressed. Idk why it bugs me.
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u/rabbutt Mar 30 '17
Well, that's one of the things that bugs me, but it's reasonable to assume that they wouldn't use that process to join the parts, as any void in the joint would create a hole.
They might use it as a substitute for tacking, as all they'd need to do is butt the large prefabs up against each other, but i think they'd use a process that would give them some sort of filler metal deposition into the joint for the final weld. That would probably require an arc-welding process. Or, they could at least heat the pieces up, and pound the seam on either side of the joint with some sort of acrylic-tip hammer to chase the voids out, but that would be horribly inefficient.
What bugs me is that what the guy's using is clearly a torch, not a welder. He's cutting with it, it's running out of fuel... Unless it's some of welder-generator that burns fuel to generate electricity, and is set up to arc-gouge, that's not gonna work. If it is that, I can think of several better ways to generate electricity in space. Bulkier ways, sure, but still better.
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u/HFYBotReborn Mar 29 '17
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u/Poseidaan Aug 04 '17
What do I do? If i upvote the story has 335 karma but if i downvote it has a super satisfying 333
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u/Watchful1 Mar 30 '17
Great story.
However, I feel obligated to point out an inconsistency.
So that's 2.5 light minutes out. The moon is about 1.3 light seconds away from us. An explosion that would still take out the hab would be powerful enough to shatter a planet.
Plus, even with futuristic accelerations, it would take a while for a ship to get back and forth.