Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7) by Laurence Dahners Read Free Book Online Page A

said, “how close are you to flying your 747 up to LEO?”
    “Pretty close, but the damn thing s ucks up huge quantities of fuel. We’re just trying to calculate to be sure we have sufficient supply in case we have any trouble.”
    “Don’t we still have ports over at Aerogas to supply LOX?”
    “Yeah, we have several LOX suppliers. You wouldn’t think we’d have trouble getting enough Liquid Natural Gas, but, as a hazardous flammable material, PHMSA is giving us trouble over sending it directly from the supplier to the plane.”
    “Really, why?”
    “Just the way they’re reading the rules I think. They want us to move it to our own tank then send it from that tank to the plane.” He sighed, “It’s pretty frustrating because the tank we have is short of the safety margin we’d like.”
    “But if you’re putting it into the tank from the supplier as fast as you’re sending it to the 747?”
    He barked a laugh, “No! Then they consider it to be a ‘pipe’ with a reservoir tank, still against s othe rules.”
    Ell frowned, “Won’t the rockets on the 747 burn hydrogen?”
    Braun shrugged, “Sure, but hydrogen’s really expensive.”
    Ell frowned, “Aren’t you getting hydrogen from Jupiter?”
    Braun looked puzzled a moment, then his eyebrows shot up, “You mean…?”
    Ben said, “Jupiter?”
    Braun turned excitedly to Ben, “Jupiter’s atmosphere is 90% hydrogen and… I think 10% helium with traces of other stuff. But,” disappointedly he turned to Ell, “It’s gaseous. We need liquid to get enough flow through portals.”
    Ell said, “Oh, yeah. Well you could use the methane lakes on Titan? That’d be your LNG right there. You just have to drop some ports into them.”
    Braun’s eyes narrowed, “There are methane lakes? Really ? Or are you just pulling my leg?”
    Ell grinned and winked at them, “Why don’t you ask the guys over at ET Resources? They should know the answers to questions like that.”
    Ben and Rob both snorted, “That was a low blow. But if you’re right we’ll just have to submerge our embarrassment in gratitude. It’ll just take a while to fly some ports out there.”
    Ell tilted her head, “Come on guys, we already flew you some ports out to orbit each of the major planets. You can just roll up some bigger ports and send them through. Then send rockets through those ports and fly them down into the fluid. Submerge them deep enough and you’ll have a good head of pressure driving the LNG into your engines.”
    Rob squinched his eyes in frustration, “Sorry, I’d forgotten about the orbiting ports. That’ll work. Do you also have a source of LOX somewhere out there in the solar system?”
    “Sorry, no. There may be oxygen slush someplace , but it probably isn’t very pure. Can you let me know when you’re sending the 747 up? I’d like to celebrate with you.” Ell held her hand up for a pause as she got a far-away look, “You know… if you prefer to use hydrogen you could just drop your ports down deep to Jupiter’s atmosphere where the hydrogen has condensed into a liquid? Though it would be hot. It’s only liquid because of the pressure. It might melt the ports so you’d have to look into that a little farther.”
    “Sure,” they said, then watched her walk away. Ben turned to Rob, “Dammit, it just seems so obvious after she pointed it out!”
    Rob sighed, “Yeah, yeah, it’s always obvious after someone points it out. I suppose we should start thinking about selling LNG here on earth?”
    Ben grinned, “How can you make that sound like bad news? Though I suppose first we better find out how clean these ‘methane lakes’ are.”
    “I don’t know… I guess I was hoping to do something cooler out there in space than mining natural gas.”
    “Just think of it as the way you’re financing your space ‘habitat habit.’”
     
    Roger looked up as Ell walked into the Quantum area. He felt a twinge of sadness. Wearing cutoff jeans and