First day at work on Mars
"Hi, I was told to report here, it's my first day." Neil said to the information desk attendant.
"Hi! Welcome to Mars! We have a few long term things but right now there are some folks working on the solar forge. They could use your help." The attendant seemed so friendly and upbeat.
"Sure, happy to." Neil gave his pattent response.
"Great, just head down to the forge section, here's a map." They said while turning to face the next person arriving.
At the forge everyone seemed quite busy. Neil grabs the first available person, "Hi, I was told to report here to assist."
Sarah seems happy to see a new arrival, "Great, they need assistance mounting the mirrors. Hop in a suit and they'll guide you where to go."
"Will do, thank you." Neil says heading to the airlock.
The hab airlock is an airtight dorway to a small room. Inside the room there are cubbies where you can store any gear you don't want to wear outside. Then you exit through another airtight doorway to a narrow hallway. The exit door has a green LED illuminated labeled, "Pressure" If the light is green it's safe, if it goes to yellow that means wait, if red that means there's a problem. As neil enters the hallway and secures the airtight door behind him, he notices a faint dest smell. Along the walls on both sides of the hall are ports, about waste high, big enought to crawl through. They either say available or unavailable and a size range. Neil finds an available one that is big enough for him and taps his earbud. "Neil to base control."
"This is base control."
"I'd like to use suit AF please." Neil reads the number from above the port.
After a pause, "You're cleared for suit AF, your operator will be online with you shortly."
Whenever anyone goes outside they have to have a coms operator monitoring them and communicating. Usually one person can monitor several suites at once. Neil goes to open the panel and notices it's a manual latch. Makes sense he thinks, easier to repair a simple design than a complex one.
Just before crawling outside he taps his earbud and says, "ear buds, initiate hands free mode." He crawls through the hatch and directly in to a suit. Then he realizes he can't reach back and close the hatch while he's in the suit so he twists around a bit and sits on the ledge while he reaches above and around to get the hatch closed. The dust smell is stronger now. He manages to get the hatch closed and he notices that attached to this side of the hatch is a removeable plate. He knows from training that it's used to seal up the back of his suit. Neil positions it and secures the airtight latches all around the edges. He slides completely in to the suit and tightens up the adjustable sizing straps. He calls out, "Neil to base control."
"Base contorl."
"I'm ready to undoc suit AF."
"We'll let you know once you're confirmed."
There's a procedure for confirming everything is safe before disconnecting a suit from the hab. Someone inside double checks the latch is securly in place and, if possible, someone outside also checks to see if the propper latch success led indicators are illuminated. Soon Neil sees someone in a suit approaching from outside.
Neil hears in his earbud, "AF, Hi, how's it going? I'm Leon in suite AC." The space suit waves to him.
"Hi, I'm Neil, in suite AF."
The suits have large characters on the front and back like a football jersey so you can tell who is who. On the inside of the helmet just below the field of vision there's a little label that says, Suite AF. You have to move your head down to see it.
After Leon pokes around a bit Neils earbud relays, "Well it looks like all lights are green. Any issues getting loaded?"
"I think it all went smoothly."
Then a new voice, "Jack here on the inside, port AF looks secure hab side. Go for undock."
Now the sound of base control, "Confirmed, Leon?"
"Confirmed, outside looks good too, I'm go for undock."
"Neil, I have go for undock twice, and we're confirming go for undock thrice, you are go to undock." Said base control.
Neil replied, "Great, thanks everyone." And started to stand up. The suit is nearly sitting on the ground when you frist get in it. You have to stand up to slide it up and off the port. As he stands he knows that he's sliding the port cover in to place and an associated suit cover is sliding down over the back of his suit at the same time. Once he's fully standing there's a light green led that inicates that his suit cover and the hab port cover are sealed. He throws the seperation lever and the edges of the two covers seperate and lock in to place. Neil turns around and inspects the port cover to be sure it's secure. At the same time Leon does a quick inspection to be sure the suit cover is good. Then they both head for the door. They're in the suit room, it's not pressurized but it is intended to be less dusty than outside. They go through the first doorway and close it and Leon explains that this is where they'll dust each other off before heading inside. Then they walk through the second set of doors, this is the last door to going outside. They walk through and seal it up. Neil notices dusting brooms connected with twine to the walls here.
"Allright, we're on forge assembly duty today. There are robitics operated from inside the hab doing all the heavy lifting. Our job is to facilitate any finer troubleshooting issues that require finess to resolve." Leon explains.
"Like what?" Neil asks.
"Well, if we're lucky, nothing. If we're unlucky then thermal expansion might make something not fit together, then we'll either have to heat it or cool it or lubricate it so that it slides together. Or the robotic arm might drop something or move something in a way that makes it difficult for it to pick up again. Or if a robot unplugs itself by accident or cuts its power cord or something. Things like that. Like I said, on a good day we just watch. On a bad day we're stuck figuring out why assembly isn't working. Don't worry though, we're basically just the hands, if it's obvious then we dive in and fix it, if not, there's an entire team whose job it is to figure this out and let us know what they want us to do. If it gets extremely hairy we'll send out a message to earth and wait forever for them to figure out an answer. When the issues get that hairy though, it's usually a multi day turn around time."
"Sounds good to me. Hey, can I ask how the forge works anyway, I mean I know the gist but can you give me more overview?"
"Sure, see that tower with what looks like a half built quadrouple billboard of mirrors on it? That's the heliostat. It moves with the rotation of Mars to track the light from the sun as we rotate under it. The intention is to always be reflecting that sunlight to the same location inside the concentrator building. That's it over there." Leon points to a shed size building with an open wall facing the heliostat. "Inside there is the concentrator, it's a curved dish, like a big satelite dish, that concentrates all the light coming in to the building on to the concentrator there." Leon points to a smaller building a little smaller than a square meter. "Inside the concentrator there's a small mirror, about 10cmx10cm. It just takes all that concentrated light and reflects it straight down into a mirrored tube. Below the tube is the forge. The folks in there take finely sifted mars dust and melt it in to glass. That's pretty much how we make everything. If it can be made of glass using only melted and fused mars dust then it's plentiful. If it can't then it's rare and expensive. But you'd be surprised how many things can be made of glass in one way or another. I know I was, and still am impressed with the ingenuity of those folks. Same goes for most everything around here though."
"Sounds interesting, making melted glass in to whatever we need."
"You bet, they can do special requests if there isn't anything urgent they need to get done. But for now just keep an eye on the assembly process. Today they're mounting more mirrors to complete the heliostat." Leon points to the robots lifting large sheets of mirrored glass up and screwing them in place with comically big, glass bolts.
"The nuts and bolts are made of glass too. They have to be bigger to be as strong as we need but they work. The parts we can't make here are the parts to be concerned about. Once everything else is complete they'll bring out the motor that actually rotates the heliostat throughout the day. We haven't been able to make all the parts for that here on Mars yet."
A few days later Neil is in a forge helping to move around buckets of sand and containers of hot molten glass. Heat doesn't radiate as well in the martian atmosphere so there's low risk of damaging the suit as long as you stay a safe distance away from the molten glass.
references:
https://www.nrel.gov/csp/facility-hfsf.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitport
The suits have large characters on the front and back like a football jersey so you can tell who is who. On the inside of the helmet just below the field of vision there's a little label that says, Suite AF. You have to move your head down to see it.
After Leon pokes around a bit Neils earbud relays, "Well it looks like all lights are green. Any issues getting loaded?"
"I think it all went smoothly."
Then a new voice, "Jack here on the inside, port AF looks secure hab side. Go for undock."
Now the sound of base control, "Confirmed, Leon?"
"Confirmed, outside looks good too, I'm go for undock."
"Neil, I have go for undock twice, and we're confirming go for undock thrice, you are go to undock." Said base control.
Neil replied, "Great, thanks everyone." And started to stand up. The suit is nearly sitting on the ground when you frist get in it. You have to stand up to slide it up and off the port. As he stands he knows that he's sliding the port cover in to place and an associated suit cover is sliding down over the back of his suit at the same time. Once he's fully standing there's a light green led that inicates that his suit cover and the hab port cover are sealed. He throws the seperation lever and the edges of the two covers seperate and lock in to place. Neil turns around and inspects the port cover to be sure it's secure. At the same time Leon does a quick inspection to be sure the suit cover is good. Then they both head for the door. They're in the suit room, it's not pressurized but it is intended to be less dusty than outside. They go through the first doorway and close it and Leon explains that this is where they'll dust each other off before heading inside. Then they walk through the second set of doors, this is the last door to going outside. They walk through and seal it up. Neil notices dusting brooms connected with twine to the walls here.
"Allright, we're on forge assembly duty today. There are robitics operated from inside the hab doing all the heavy lifting. Our job is to facilitate any finer troubleshooting issues that require finess to resolve." Leon explains.
"Like what?" Neil asks.
"Well, if we're lucky, nothing. If we're unlucky then thermal expansion might make something not fit together, then we'll either have to heat it or cool it or lubricate it so that it slides together. Or the robotic arm might drop something or move something in a way that makes it difficult for it to pick up again. Or if a robot unplugs itself by accident or cuts its power cord or something. Things like that. Like I said, on a good day we just watch. On a bad day we're stuck figuring out why assembly isn't working. Don't worry though, we're basically just the hands, if it's obvious then we dive in and fix it, if not, there's an entire team whose job it is to figure this out and let us know what they want us to do. If it gets extremely hairy we'll send out a message to earth and wait forever for them to figure out an answer. When the issues get that hairy though, it's usually a multi day turn around time."
"Sounds good to me. Hey, can I ask how the forge works anyway, I mean I know the gist but can you give me more overview?"
"Sure, see that tower with what looks like a half built quadrouple billboard of mirrors on it? That's the heliostat. It moves with the rotation of Mars to track the light from the sun as we rotate under it. The intention is to always be reflecting that sunlight to the same location inside the concentrator building. That's it over there." Leon points to a shed size building with an open wall facing the heliostat. "Inside there is the concentrator, it's a curved dish, like a big satelite dish, that concentrates all the light coming in to the building on to the concentrator there." Leon points to a smaller building a little smaller than a square meter. "Inside the concentrator there's a small mirror, about 10cmx10cm. It just takes all that concentrated light and reflects it straight down into a mirrored tube. Below the tube is the forge. The folks in there take finely sifted mars dust and melt it in to glass. That's pretty much how we make everything. If it can be made of glass using only melted and fused mars dust then it's plentiful. If it can't then it's rare and expensive. But you'd be surprised how many things can be made of glass in one way or another. I know I was, and still am impressed with the ingenuity of those folks. Same goes for most everything around here though."
"Sounds interesting, making melted glass in to whatever we need."
"You bet, they can do special requests if there isn't anything urgent they need to get done. But for now just keep an eye on the assembly process. Today they're mounting more mirrors to complete the heliostat." Leon points to the robots lifting large sheets of mirrored glass up and screwing them in place with comically big, glass bolts.
"The nuts and bolts are made of glass too. They have to be bigger to be as strong as we need but they work. The parts we can't make here are the parts to be concerned about. Once everything else is complete they'll bring out the motor that actually rotates the heliostat throughout the day. We haven't been able to make all the parts for that here on Mars yet."
A few days later Neil is in a forge helping to move around buckets of sand and containers of hot molten glass. Heat doesn't radiate as well in the martian atmosphere so there's low risk of damaging the suit as long as you stay a safe distance away from the molten glass.
references:
https://www.nrel.gov/csp/facility-hfsf.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitport
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