Holt called a conference of his key men at the plant of United Spacecraft, that they might be apprised of the state of advancement of the planning. He gathered them in the study of Richard Peyton, the chief Designer, for a report by the latter on the manifold questions relative to the details of the designs.
Dick Peyton was an old-timer at the business. When he and Spencer began their work together in the days of the early long-range rockets, it was his engineering conscience which had provided the balance-wheel for Spencer's almost pestilent fantasy and furious creative drive. If Spencer was the man whose wide vision could connect seemingly unrelated factors and discover new solutions when no progress seemed possible, if he could win an argument with his own engineers with the same assurance that he could overpersuade a board of directors or a Pentagon party, Peyton was the lover of detail, paternal to his designers, never allowing an error in a drawing, no matter how insignificant. He had a strange gift with subcontractors, coordinating their efforts in producing the hundreds of special parts and auxiliary equipment which went into the building of great rocket ships.
When the meeting was called to order, Peyton began with a report on the requirements for steering the great ships on their long voyage through space. He made it clear that steering could only be applied during the relatively short power applications.
Between these power maneuvers, the ships would coast through space for weeks on end, like wandering meteorites, their flight paths predetermined by the direction and energy imparted to them during the preceding application of thrust. But, if the running position checks by star angle should show any departure from the precomputed course, it would, of course, be necessary to enter a corrective maneuver, during which accurate steering would be as necessary as during the main maneuvers.
No one needed to be told that the steering problem of the Mars vessels would be attacked by automatic mechanism, as was that of the mighty triple stagers on their departures from Earth. Manual steering, as used in busy bees, could not be considered for any such high degree of accuracy as the navigation of the Mars vessels required.
A gyroscopic plane of reference was to be established by a system of control gyros, rigid in space. So-called "program devices" were slowly to displace this plane in angle during applications of power. Any deviation of the vessel from the attitude imposed by the gyros would then call into being the angle-changing moments which would bring back the set attitude.
Such control moments were to be generated by four relatively small rocket motors. These were to be mounted symmetrically at four opposite points on the periphery of the main motor. Each could be rotated around one axis. When all were set to zero, their jets would parallel the jet of the main motor. Yaw and pitch control would be given by changing the angles of one or the other pair of opposite jets, each moving conjointly in angle. Rotation of the vessel around her own longitudinal axis could be initiated or stopped by deflecting all jets clockwise or counterclockwise. The angular displacement of each steering jet was to be produced by a small electric motor whose motion was controlled by rheostatic devices coupled to the gyros.
"Up to this point," remarked Peyton, "attitude control of space ships is a routine problem.
"But the actuators of these control jets now are called upon to fulfill a novel function, for we are steering not a single ship, but a whole convoy. We shall hardly be able to produce mechanisms uniform enough so that there will not be very slight divergences in track and velocity at combustion cutoff. In the course of a long coast through space, the ships will therefore diverge more or less. The busy bees will find their trips from ship to ship growing longer and longer. Therefore, it will be necessary to close up the convoy from time to time. To do this with the main motors would call for a laborious turning of each vessel in space by its directional flywheels, so that the thrust of the main motor, even though applied but momentarily, would be in exactly the right direction. That would be quite an elaborate procedure for what is, after all, a very minor correction.
"We are therefore making provision to cut out the automatic gyro control devices temporarily, and are equipping the steering rocket jets with manual electric remote controls which permit them to be directed anywhere within a full 360 degrees around their axes of rotation. Thus, should it be found that a ship is moving too fast in line with its longitudinal axis, all four steering jets can be turned to face forward, and their thrust will decelerate the vessel directly. Similarly, we can swing any ship into or out of the convoy column. The main advantage is that we can make really fine corrections with these fractional thrusts when compared to the main motors. Corrections can be made by small thrusts over extended periods rather than by short, but violent ones. You will, I think, easily appreciate the advantages of this modification."
Next to come up was the question of waste disposal. To eliminate every pound of weight possible prior to each new power maneuver meant fuel saving and increased reserves of power. Such reserves might be of vital importance if a navigation check should show that any maneuver had not turned out entirely according to plan.
The problem was to expel waste matter from the pressurized living spaces into the surrounding vacuum of space and simultaneously to prevent the accumulation of masses of such matter in the immediate proximity of the ships. Nothing, as a matter of fact, would prevent some discarded tin can from following faithfully throughout any portion of the voyage between power maneuvers. Peyton described a clever dodge which might solve this problem. It was planned to place waste matter in an airlock through a small door. The door would then be closed, and a piston impelled by the internal air pressure would project the waste with considerable velocity into the outer vacuum. It became plain that one of Peyton's pet projects was to connect this gadget with the ship's sewage system. He discoursed pridefully and solemnly at some length on the problems attending the use of the latter during long, unpowered stretches of the voyage under weightless conditions. So serious and detailed was his presentation that howls of laughter burst from his auditors.
Peyton further reported that Untied Spacecraft was already in negotiations with the American Blower Corporation of Detroit for air regeneration equipment. This company had pioneered in the development of machinery of this kind for the pressurization of Lunetta, but here too, was a knotty problem.
First, the air would have to be freed of the carbon dioxide developed in the lungs by breathing. Air continuously exhausted from the living spaces would first pass through a dust filter and then traverse, under increased pressure, a tank into which water was simultaneously sprayed. The carbon dioxide would combine with the water under this increased pressure and form carbonic acid. Then, when the water was subsequently decompressed, the carbonic acid would bubble out, as it does from the contents of a bottle of soda-water, and be exhausted into the vacuum of space between the worlds. The air, now free of carbon dioxide, would be passed through a bone charcoal filter for deodorizing. Then it would be replenished with oxygen, the latter being carried in liquid form and hence requiring to be gasified. After this treatment, and before being readmitted to the living spaces, the air thus regenerated would require conditioning to the exact temperature, pressure and humidity desired for breathing purposes.