Rocket Season - Chapter 5

 

Copyright © 2024 D.W. Patterson

All rights reserved.

Second Printing – February 2025

Future Chron Publishing

Cover – Copyright © 2024 D.W. Patterson

Cover Image – Photo 115346712 / Rocket Launch © Nexusplexus | Dreamstime.com

Previously published as:

Rocket Summer

Rocket Fall

Rocket Winter

Rocket Spring

Contains additional material.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission, except in the case of brief quotations for the purpose of review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events and people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Hard Science Fiction – Old School

Human Generated Content

CHAPTER 5

Georgia Polytechnic University

Atlanta, Georgia

USA

Jack was busy trying to pull his experiment together. He had let the material he needed get away from him by not moving quick enough. Now, he was scrambling to find a new source, a problem becoming more urgent in a world with collapsing supply chains and regional aggressions.

At three inches under six feet, with hair that always needed cutting, he was the perfect image of a physics student. His glasses also contributed, but he was just as skilled in other areas of his studies as the sciences.

As a graduate student, his project was highly constrained by the general funds budget of the department. That's why he had waited to order the materials he needed. He thought they would become cheaper as production ramped back up after the war but then, as he waited, the war had started again. Luckily, he was safe in the United States, but New India was skirmishing again with Southern China over territory, the exact territory where the element Jack needed was being mined. There were other mining areas, but their output was almost all taken, the result was that the price of rhenium had tripled.

Jack had come up with the idea of adding the heavy metal atom to the PZT matrix (which would then become RPZT) because he was hoping that it would increase the internal energy capacity of the stack, which was important to the Mach thruster's efficiency. The idea came from his early days as an engineering student when he was studying rocketry, where rhenium was used in rocket engine metallurgy because of its high melting point.

After some discussion with a chemist friend, he had decided that rhenium could do the job. He found a company that was willing to modify its PZT stack for Jack in return for the results of his research. He was all set, until he got the latest news.

In his small dorm room that night, Jack was talking with his dad, who was back home in the North Georgia mountains.

“Yeah dad, I don't know if the department will come up with the additional funds or not, I put the request in, so now I just have to wait.”

“What will you do in the meantime?” asked his father.

“Well, the theory still needs some work. You remember my telling you about frame-dragging in general relativity?”

“Something about acceleration of local objects affecting other objects?”

“Yeah, if an object accelerates, then it pulls spacetime with it and this pulling of spacetime translates into a gravity-like force on other objects nearby. I think that force, which the non-accelerating objects resist, is linked to inertia. But I haven't proven it mathematically.”

“Do you have an approach son?”

“Well, the equation for the Mach principle shows that the inertial reaction forces are a radiative effect. That is, they have a distance dependence as the inverse first power, like radiation, and not as the inverse second power, like gravity.”

“Oh, so the inertial force is not related to the gravitational field as is frame-dragging,” said his dad.

“Not exactly,” said Jack. “Related maybe, but the exact mechanism is different. You see, if the Mach effect, which says that local inertia is related to the universal mass, is correct, then the question becomes, how does the local inertia of an object couple to the universal mass?”

“What do you think?” asked his dad.

“Well, I still think it is a field effect but I'm at a loss to name the field, after all the effect of inertia is immediate and most field effects take some time to propagate.”

“Especially if they are generated by the entire mass of the universe,” said his dad.

“Right,” said Jack. “Einstein said that Mach's conjecture was a guiding principle in his development of general relativity. He even named it Mach's Principle. But something has been missing from physics since Einstein developed his relativity theory.”

“Talking about Einstein is pretty heady stuff Jack.”

“I know,” said Jack. “But professor Tucker says if we have to, we have to.”

Jack and his dad continued the talk by discussing his mom and three sisters before saying goodbye. Jack sat a moment and thought about what they had discussed.

Talking about Einstein is pretty heady stuff. It's a mystery also.

And it was still a mystery the next day, he had again tried and failed to get his experiment to work.

Why doesn't it work? Even just a little?

Jack was thinking about the experiment; it was the same experiment he had done as a teenager. Except as a teenager he got it to work, or thought he had.

The only difference is the manufacture of the stack. Everything else is the same, or better. Certainly, the equipment has improved. I can't imagine why it's not working.

He still hadn't received any word on his rhenium order, the war was still raging, as were several in other locations across the world. So many countries were desperate for resources, even food, and were fighting over them. Wars in Africa, in Asia, the Middle East. It had gotten to the point that Jack was careful to only read the news at the end of the day, otherwise it would affect his concentration while he worked.

So, he gave up on his experiment and went to dinner and to read the news.

As usual the next morning Jack was in the lab early. The lab was pretty much as one would expect at a university, a large room with rows of workbenches and walls of shelf storage containing all manner of electronic equipment. There were oscilloscopes and function generators, digital multimeters and capacitance meters, and power supplies from small five-amp capacity up to fifty amp, both direct current and alternating. Larger current requirements could be supplied by the power supply built into the workbench, up to a hundred amps was available, this was what Jack was using for his experiment.

The place smelled of all manner of electronic, electrical, and chemical, depending on what experiments were setup and more precisely, on what went wrong with the last experiment, whether it was burned electronics, spilled chemicals, or the sweat of a dozen graduate students working all night to get their labs done, all mixed with the ever-present odor of pizza.

Jack's experiment sat on his workbench. It was very similar to his teenage setup. A vacuum chamber made of a strong, clear plastic, cylindrical, about six inches across and one foot long. And inside the chamber was the PZT stack (within a Faraday cage as usual) and the measuring sensors. The Faraday cage minimized electromagnetic interference, especially since very small signals were expected from the sensors. In the latest configuration the cage sat upon a pair of rails with wheel bearings which resulted in very little friction.

Again, the most important measuring sensors were the strain gauges which could indicate small movements of the stack. All the measurement signals were brought out and power was brought in through the walls of the vacuum chamber to the Faraday cage with noise suppressors on all the lines.

Jack was sitting and looking at the chamber as the air it it was being evacuated.

Maybe if I double up on the stacks, I'll see some signal. If I don't see anything with this run, that's what I'll do.

An hour later, having seen no signal, he was adding more PZT disks to the stack. Within an hour Jack was again sitting and staring at the chamber as it was pumped free of air.

I'm going to have to give up if this doesn't work, at least until I get the new stack of disks with the added rhenium, that should increase the capacity of the internal energy change, which is what I may need to see Mach effects.

The pumping was finished, the experiment was ready for another run. Jack controlled all the equipment from his AI-based tablet agent he called Tabbie. He started the power supply, hearing the whumpf as the huge power capacitors inside the supply charged. Jack didn't like audible interfaces, so he just tapped the screen, he then started the voltage oscillation to the stack. Each disk in the stack was wired in such a way that the voltage across it could reverse during the second half of the voltage cycle. This effectively charged the PZT stack during the first half of the voltage cycle and discharged it during the second half.

At 32.35 kilohertz the charge and discharge cycle caused the PZT not only to gain and lose energy but also to expand and contract. Essentially, energy added to the stack increased its mass and inertia while energy drained from the stack did the opposite while simultaneously accelerating (expanding/ contracting) the assembly.

Jack switched Tabbie's display to the sensor outputs. He watched as they began to register movement. Then he heard a fireworks sound. Jack remembered the sound; he had heard it years before in his parent's cellar. This time he didn't look up but immediately turned away, the explosion hurled a chunk of the chamber his way, hitting him in the back of the head and knocking him down, he caught the corner of a workbench driving it into his eye socket, by that time Jack was unconscious.