...And We Will Have Snow

Chapter 2-8: The Balloon

They had an organic, individually focused but mutually supportive way of going about things. Tengri encouraged this, but it seemed to come naturally to them anyway. All the islanders began directing their attention to the next phase of the plan, working out the details of actually implementing the system Marian had described.

Jack had converted the boat to electric power. His Tesla battery and motor easily took the boat to Seattle and back without needing to run the main engine. That was now just backup. The all-electric boat was an encouraging example of what could be done.

Ryan described the modified boat as a rocket, and they begin to joke about a bottle rocket, but then Jack got seriously excited about the possibility. He said, "The sun bottle can produce about a megawatt. It takes an upward acceleration of at least ten meters per second squared to overcome gravity and get a mass off the ground."

Ryan was paying attention but didn't say anything. Jack went on.

"This translates to an upward force of ten newtons for every kilogram of mass, which translates to ten watts of power. We have a megawatt available, so we should be able to lift a hundred thousand kilograms. The mass of the boat is about ten thousand kilograms. It could take off like a rocket if we had a sun bottle in it!"

Ryan laughed, but Jack said, "I wonder what it would take to lift a whole farm bottle."

So far the design of the bottle structure had been ad hoc, without much attention in the VR model to real life structural details, but now the two of them started to get purposeful about it, focusing on trying to make it transportable under its own power.

While they were at it, Karen came by and draped herself over Jack's shoulder. He welcomed the distraction because he was getting a bit frustrated. He wanted to be able to lift at least the central structure, the farm bottle. But even that pushed the limit of what the power bottle could deliver.

"How about a balloon?" she said.

Jack's wheels started spinning in a new direction. He thought about it for a few seconds, then said, "Karen, you're a genius!" and kissed her available cheek.

She said, "It's exposure to the Q; my mind works better now," and lightly kissed him back then danced away.

Jack looked wistful for a moment, then turned to Ryan and said excitedly, "The sun bottle vents a lot of heat, because the photocells are only about 50% efficient. We could collect that waste heat in a big hot air balloon. With that assist, and additional lift from electric turbofans, I bet we could lift the whole thing, not just the farm!"

Ryan caught the fever. "Yeah, if we crank up the electric power output to maximum, we'll get more heat to vent to the balloon at the same time. Sounds like a win-win!"

They proceeded to get it all doped out, and wanted to propose it to Tengri. They had some computer images to display, so they decided to meet in the conference room. Karen was there with Jack because she had helped with the balloon idea, so Rosita joined Ryan, and word quickly spread until everyone showed up. Jack turned to Tengri and began.

"Marian talked about a farm bottle that will support a thousand people. The mass of a thousand people is about two hundred thousand kilograms, but they don't have to be transported with the bottle so we won't include that mass. Food consumption per person is about two and a half kilograms a day, and efficient harvest-to-table means producing a day's worth of food per day is sufficient, so that's our starting point.

"Marian says it takes a forty cubic meter section of our aquaponic structure to produce enough food to feed one person, so the entire central farm structure requires a volume of forty thousand cubic meters. Picture that as a cylinder a hundred meters high by fifty meters in diameter, with a ten meter central core for access and utilities distribution. There's your central bottle." He brought up an image on the wall display. Tengri studied it for a moment and nodded.