Infinite

The Weight of a Secret- Part 3

Houston, Texas, at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Tuesday, September 24th, 2030, at 7:00 pm

Lucas

Cooper tosses a wrench to me and I tighten the last of the bolts.

"There. Last one," I say to him as I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand. Cooper and I have been working on the design for the space habitat non stop with our crew since the explosion.

"Alright, let's expand this baby!" Cooper shouts to Tran as he hops up off the floor.

We are rebuilding it indoors this time to keep the tests more isolated. The apparatus is a large oval shaped ball made up of a series of woven bands. It looks like a large picnic basket right now, about the size of a dining table. It's expensive to launch spacecrafts into space because they're so large, so we are trying to design something compact that can be carried up and then expanded.

I join the others in the control room and look out the viewing window. The room is completely empty besides the space habitat and our tools. The walls are solid metal with concrete behind them, and the room is about twenty feet tall.

"Here we go!" Tran shouts as he slowly pushes the lever forward, and the habitat begins to expand.

The idea is that when there's enough pressure inside of the apparatus, it will be as hard as steel on the outside. It is basically an inflatable module that can be attached to the International Space Station as an extra room. The woven design isn't for aesthetic purposes, but rather for structural integrity.

170 PSI.

The pressure meter reads before a snapping sound begins to echo through the chamber.

"Turning it off!" Tran shouts as he pulls the lever back down. The apparatus crumples back down into a mess of straps.

"It was almost there!" Cooper shouts. The goal is to exceed 182.4 PSI, which is the ultimate burst pressure for a space application.

"Alright, gentlemen, let's get back to it," I say defeatedly as we start to head into the testing room.

I feel like I haven't seen Rachel at all since Friday. I have been at work every night until after ten o'clock since the explosion, trying to fix the design for our next demonstration. Tran figured out that the metal on the previous habitat became too hot after the initial test, heating up other elements to the point of combustion. That's why we've switched to our current design.

Rachel has also been really busy planning some sort of fundraiser. I feel my heart start to pound as I think about the event coming up. Rachel asked me to go with her, and I told her that I would but I don't enjoy big social gatherings like that. I'm going to have to put on a suit and make small talk with people I'm never going to see again. However, I do get to see Rachel in a beautiful dress and it would make her happy if I went. I smile to myself as I think about her, wishing I could be at home right now.

"Man, I miss my wife! Let's hurry this up!" Cooper shouts, as if he's reading my mind.

We spend the next two hours redoing the straps when Sokolov comes in and says, "Hey, boss says we can just go home for the night. We can start fresh in the morning."

Everyone stops what they're doing and doesn't hesitate to start cleaning up. We all want to go home to our families.

Maybe I'll actually get to see Rachel before she goes to bed.

Cooper and I walk out to our trucks together.

"Hey, man. How's Rachel been doing?" he asks me as he slaps a hand on my back. "Anne hasn't slept since."