Chương 6: Chapter 2. Easy technical break. sub-chapter 2.
Alas, the gravpolars, especially of the first centuries, turned out to be far from ideal. The great complexity of the device, expensive materials, low energy efficiency, the minimum effective installation size is from twenty meters, it is useless to put on bolides, gravpolars are too large and heavy for them. Only for capital ships. Their effective launch zone began outside the planetary system of the star - after each gravpolar jump, you need to fly to the planet you are interested in on an EPE or ion engine - and this is a long time, depending on the power of the engine, the mass of the ship, the size of the star system and a bunch of other parameters, the flight could take from several hours to a month in triples and multiples star systems. It is useless to launch a gravpolar in the zone of intense gravity of a star. The movement will start, but not faster than on the EPE, and the energy overruns will be such that you will want to switch to the EPE or ion engine on your own. The older the gravpolar, the more problems with it and the worse its characteristics. A little later, of course, gravpolars were miniaturized to ten meters, increased power, reliability, and safety. Overload compensation and gravity correction systems have been developed for ships. Gradually, the cumbersome and inconvenient warp gates became a thing of the past and all interstellar communication switched to gravpolar ships. It is worth noting that the ion engine, and especially the EPE, turned out to be not only an effective means of space transportation, but also ... became almost an absolute weapon. And the point is not in the exhaust jet, which can also cause trouble, but in the banal fact that any object accelerated to a speed of tens of kilometers per second when hitting a more or less material target instantly disintegrates into atoms and generates a monstrous explosion of both itself and partially of what it hit. All the space empires, the military, and just ordinary people quickly realized this. And they were scared to the point of losing their pants. Since then, long-range and short-range anti-space defense has been the most important element of space infrastructure in the development of star systems. Because even a light torpedo ship on an EPD, accelerated to a couple of thousand km per second, will do any planet and its inhabitants very badly. The movements of spaceships in star systems are monitored with all eyes, gradars and telescopes, any unknown ship that has appeared in the system without warning is a serious threat, even if it does not carry weapons, because the speed of a spaceship is already a terrible weapon. And if there is no response to the request, a system patrol group instantly flies to intercept it. Several or more alien ships that invaded the star system without prior warning - already, consider it a war - first the patrol will intercept them and try to destroy them, and only after that they will figure out who it is and why they came to the star system. If you do the opposite, you can be left without your planet. During the Great Interstellar War, more than one hundred thriving planets fell victim to such a "misuse of the engine". Someone from the ancients wisely said that no matter what people invent, first of all they see it as a weapon…
Gravpolars are somewhat more complicated in this regard. Despite the superluminal speeds, and the fact that when a ship with a gravpolar engine (GPU) collides, according to calculations, it should tear apart gas giants and extinguish stars, this does not happen. For two reasons at once. The first is that a ship flying at superluminal speed does not exist in sublight space, and if it is capable of colliding with a solid object, it will fly through it, only slightly deflecting it with its gravitational wake. The second reason is that the gravpolar is effective only outside the gravitational cocoons of stars, inside the system its trajectory is strongly bent and extinguished under the influence of the star's gravity, and even when the ship with the gravpolar continues to work, it slows down and is carried out into normal, sublight space, and the ship turns on jet engines for further controlled movement.
In order for these wonderful, magnificent units to work, an extremely powerful source of energy is needed. In fact, it is necessary to ignite a pulsar-class micro-star in a small volume, keep it from disintegrating and maintain its operation. And there are also two of the most common methods- a power-EPE and a nuclear reactor in space design. The power EPE is a small extraplasmic propulsion device that does not take its ejection outside and works in a closed mode exclusively to generate energy for itself and power the main EPE, and already the main EPE gives an outburst for the movement of the ship. The first gives energy, the second releases it. This is a two-circuit EPE. The power EPE spends a smaller part of its energy on its own plasma formation and the operation of the EMP accelerator, gives most of it to the more powerful second EPE for plasma formation and the operation of magnets in it, and already the second EPE emits an outburst. The starting charge for the first plasma formation of the power EPE is received from a battery that can have any nature and design, as long as it gives out the starting charge of the required power and can be recharged from the further operation of the EPE. There are also multi-circuit EPEs, where there is a whole cascade of such units from the smallest starting to the largest and most powerful, issuing the final exhaust. It was on the basis of such a multi-circuit EPE, in which all plasmagnetic vortices were transferred to a closed mode of operation without external emission and their orientation was rebuilt, and the first gravpolar was created. So, we can assume that gravpolars have grown out of EPE and are their highest stage.
The second method of production energy is a nuclear reactor, with converters of thermal energy into electrical energy from a special energy-condensing grade of carbosil. This, by the way, partially solves the problem of cooling the ship in space. Its disadvantage is that you need to have nuclear fuel, usually these are radioactive metals of the uranium group, the advantage is a long service life, ease of maintenance, there is no need for frequent replenishment with consumable fuel-you need to change plutonium rods every few decades. For EPE, on the contrary, plasma-forming substances are needed - usually a helium-hydrogen mixture, sometimes with additives from other gases and dispersions, and when released in sublight flight in the form of a plasma jet, it is consumed. It will end- and that's it, you need to replenish, or fly on the energy of backup batteries in the ion engine mode without plasma. Fortunately, the helium-hydrogen mixture is not a precious rarity - it is easy to pump it on any gas giant or brown dwarf (in general, on any large gas planet that has not grown to the status of a star that has a helium-hydrogen atmosphere). And usually a nuclear reactor is used in conjunction with an ion engine, and a power EPE is used in conjunction with a flight EPE or gravpolar. The reverse scheme is extremely rare. There is also a third type of engines- combined engines, which are both EPE and gravpolar, and everything depends on the operating mode- if the units work to emit a plasma plume outwards, this is EPE, and quite powerful, and if plasma flows are closed in annular magnetic circuits to obtain gravitational interaction with distant objects, then this is already gravpolar.
To our relief, there is a gravpolar on the "Photon". In the largest compartment, fifteen meters in diameter, in the central core of the spherical ship. Moreover, it is a combined engine. The southern shaft, opposite to the one through which we got to the ship, serves several tasks at once - this is another entrance, the final contour for the release of plasma during sublight movement, the shaft for the release of probes and bolides (yes, they are here too), the contour for the attracting beam and the contour of the gravity cannon. A separate gun is not required, the operation of the gravpolar is simply reconfigured - with the help of the magnetic contours of the shaft, the repulsive effect from the gravpolar in the form of an expanding cone is focused into a narrowing cone, and for a second the power rises to the possible limit safe for the space base. Any substance in the path of such a beam is penetrated by the strongest piercing effect. And immediately, instantly, with absolute speed and over huge distances. Like an instant prick with an invisible rapier of cosmic proportions. Here is such a utilitarian, inhuman functionality - each compartment, unit and mechanism has several purposes here at once.
But, much more surprising is the source of energy - disintegration. Yeah, the one Ariadne used to scare me with. There are no classical EPEs and reactors here. There is one large explosive disintegration chamber, in the very center of the station. The gravpolar itself here is the outer layer of the main disintegration chamber and part of its working circuit - the chamber gives plasma and energy for the gravpolar, the gravpolar gives gravitational and electromagnetic forces for disintegration. The procedure is something like this - a charge going from all sides to the center and compressed by the magnetic field of the gravpolar passes through the workpiece in the center of the chamber, the workpiece is saturated with charged particles that reduce atomic bonds, after which a short-term jump in the work of the gravpolar creates a strong tearing force inside and the workpiece splits into atoms, releasing a wild amount of energy and forming atomic dispersion. The energy is captured into storage converters from the energy carbosil that makes up the walls of the chamber, and goes to storage in the battery compartments from it, and the dispersion flows through the magnetic separation compartments, is divided there into separate chemically pure substances and they are already driven further along the magnetic vacuum lines to the storage compartments. They communicate with each other and, if necessary, can share the dispersion obtained as a result of disintegration by mixing the compositions. They, in turn, go to plasma for gravpolar contours and replication installations - this is a kind of means of rapid printing of material objects of any shape and with any chemical composition - there would be raw materials. By appointment, this is like our printed plasmatrones- machines for welding printing of objects made of lithoplast, but here printing is carried out by magnetic condensation of an object from a cloud of atomic dust constantly entering the replicator chamber, without any solid physical manipulators and plasma dischargers. And much faster than in plasmatrones. There are more than thirty installations, of various sizes and purposes - from repair units for damaged equipment and bolides, to small-sized fabricators made of organic food and water. There is a group of such mini-installations even here, in the central hall, hidden in wall niches. If necessary, they can quickly collect any necessary object from atomic dust and give it through a wall niche into the hall. Some of the installations assemble the parts of the station's hull from the same "military carbosil", from the outer skin to the internal mechanisms, and along the highways between the compartments with the help of a magnetic motion system, new parts take the places of the damaged ones, which are sent to the preliminary disintegration chamber for coronization, where they are slowly split into separate compounds under the influence of a substance-devouring discharge, then they are driven to the blank forming compartment, and the blanks are already in the queue for disintegration. This is an almost completely closed system, and to repair broken equipment and even if the ship itself is damaged, we do not need to dock at a repair station or a shipyard - we are completely autonomous and can even act as a bolide shipyard ourselves. This space station was designed for many years of wandering through the wildest, most remote places of the galaxy and intergalactic space.
The sparkling-snow-white space lithoplast, which makes up the structural elements of the station and the skin of the compartments, was also designed specifically for this series of ships. It is characterized by the strongest resistance to high temperatures - its crystal lattice is built with the expectation of multiple and deep re-reflection of any radiation. But, in terms of strength, such a lithoplast is still inferior to purely military grades. But with such protection, you can temporarily enter the crown of the star without the threat of immediate overheating and melting. Moreover, near the star, it is even possible to open special receiving ports located outside, recharge the batteries and fill the storages with ready-made plasma dispersion. Of course, such a material has a big drawback- in space, such a ship cannot hide in the visual range. He will shine in the rays of the star, like a little star himself. But there was a solution for this, too- the outer layer is equipped with a polarization matrix that allows the skin cells to change color, if necessary, to any other, up to solid black. In the interior, the wall cladding in the form of hexagonal honeycombs, fitted to each other so precisely that the joints are not visible, are also equipped with similar matrices and, if desired, you can diversify the situation or bring the view from the survey scanners from the outside to a spherical panorama. Alas, it was of little use now - there was solid rock around us- a conglomerate of glacial sedimentary deposits compressed from time.
The Photon turned out to be an aircraft carrier. Along the equator of the spherical station there are a number of replicator compartments, in which small universal modular bolides are enclosed. Outwardly, these machines most resemble an egg with a circle of bulges in the expanded part. There are no wings and other planes, however, there is a small disintegrator and an EPE on board, which means that even without wings, it is able to fly in atmospheres on purely jet propulsion. The cars are needed to fly to other ships and stations, and to descend to the planets. As Ariadna assured us, the Photon itself can land on any planet and take off from it - its powerful exhaust in EPE mode from the southern shaft and more than a hundred maneuvering engines evenly placed in niches throughout the hull allow it.
All the outer equipment of the space base is sunk into the space under its outer skin, and can move out only at the moments of use. This applies to engines, gun installations, sensors, in a word, everything. From the outside, the space base looks just like a huge white ball. A hundred-meter space pearl.
In addition to the control room, a number of other blocks are intended for the crew - residential, medical, recreation block and several technical rooms that can be rebuilt depending on the tasks. The entire habitable compartment is protected by a double layer of carbosil, between which protective magnetic circuits and artificial gravity systems are laid. These adjustable superconductors give out a magnetic field and the force of attraction quite normal for a person, they also correct gravitational parameters, compensate for interference from the operation of the gravpolar, they allow you to reduce overloads during acceleration, braking and maneuvers to acceptable and partially neutralize time anomalies that occur when overcoming the light barrier. According to Ariadna, this system is able to protect even from the psychic influence of strong mentalists equipped with neural amplifiers... Well, maybe. The topic is still poorly studied and partially secret. I'm not an expert in this.
Not to be a blind kitten, in addition to optical survey sensors and six telescopes, similar to a large eye, helps gradar- a detector of the presence and change of gravitational forces in space. Gradars are the main means of orientation in space, depending on the gravitational force of space objects (mass multiplied by the speed of rotation) and the distance from them, the gravpolar is able to sense stars and planets for hundreds of parsecs, everything depends only on the resolution of the matrix mass detectors of the gradar.
Of course, all this conglomerate of high-tech machines must be managed - millions of computing processes and thousands of mechanical operations occur on the ship every second, especially when it is in space. And for this, there is a compartment with a cluster group of AI - a separate module is responsible for each area of activity on the ship, together they are united by a central core, a quantum computer with a binding of traditional semiconductor machines, which, in fact, represents Ariadne's mind. One part of her mind constantly communicates with the systems and gives them instructions, the other thinks humanly and contacts the crew. By the way, he was supposed to be very small for this ship - ten people. But, in principle, the commander is enough for the flight, everything else is optional. If there are instructions, the cyber pilot is even able to control the space base completely autonomously, but, as Ariadne said, this ship was built for people, not as a drone, and that she is here rather as an administrator, and decision-making and the flight task plan is a matter for the crew.
By the way, a few words about Ariadna. She still connected to the nearest Galanet node, so as not to attract attention, not directly, but through an adapter on one of our wrist intercoms. She criticized our "wristwatches" to the nines, with snide remarks, something like "I don't understand which way a thousand years have passed -forward or backward?" Well, yes, since the foundation of Novorossia of the first wave of colonization, many of the less important technologies have been deliberately simplified to the necessary minimum, while, on the contrary, we have invested all our strength and resources in the development of other, most important ones. It doesn't mean that we have regressed in everything, does it? I hope she understands that. In general, she promised to rid us of our "poor consumer goods" and give us "elite prototypes". At first we almost choked with indignation. The word "elite" is abusive for us, it has remained somewhere there, in the old Area. However, we made a discount on the age of our old-regime cyber-person. While she was pumping information about everything in the world for the last era, an obvious thing came to me, which I didn't think about except because of excitement. And you don't have to be a genius to guess before that. The name of the AI, the appearance of its projection, the name of our star sector, portraits from articles and books about the Founders, and the skeleton found at the excavations and the commander's key-rod were harmoniously combined from disparate fragments into a single picture. It seems that we are dealing not with anyone, but with a neuromatric copy of one of the Founders - the legendary space engineer from "Phoenix-Svarog", Ariadna Belikova. She was the leading developer of a number of SICF projects - new scientific theories, materials, stations, ships, engines and power units. The one that at the end of the war, the Founders pulled out from the side of the convoy ship of the Alliance, and subsequently she led the Founders' fleet to one of the secret bases of the Phoenix-Svarog, which the Founders themselves could not have found in a million years... She is one of the most important figures in the foundation of Novorossia. Maybe even crucial. It seems that she hid the prototype of the Photon project on our remote planet. But why? And what happened to her? In the chronicles about her affairs after the beginning of the new colonization, nothing is said, so, general phrases that she led one of the scientific expeditions and spent the rest of her life in unexplored cosmic distances.
This is another mystery, and perhaps we will solve it someday, or maybe, on the contrary, it will remain one of the great mysteries of our millennium. And since the AI is her projection, then I suspect that it was she who was the lead designer of the "Photon" project even before the war began. This was classified information-"Phoenix" always advertised its public representatives and managing administrators, but kept the identities of its scientists secret. In old Russia and the three empires, no one even knew about her existence, as well as hundreds of thousands of other scientific employees of the corporation. At the time of the Big Escape, she was not even thirty years old- also, apparently, a techno-sorceress from prodigies - mediocre personalities were never taken into service at Phoenix, and the current Order of the Renaissance has not changed this tradition - many worthy Rosses dream of joining its ranks, but in the end only the best and most often at a young age… Judging by what we have seen here, even before the war, Ariadna Belikova was developing a large-scale project based on this ship, which, one way or another, did not fully take place. And now we have come on board.
That's how we got an extremely unusual ship. With not the most ordinary AI.
After the briefing, two important things came to light - the first is that we got too carried away talking with the AI and stayed on the Photon for almost a whole day, while at home no one can figure out where we have gone - the intercoms don't pick up the signal when we are underground. Relatives are worried, perhaps they have already started looking for us. And we're stuck somewhere. Friends and father asked to go home to settle household chores, coordinate their departure with their families. I remained on board in the role of Commander, who, according to the holiest rule of spacemen, should not leave the ship unless absolutely necessary. The ship for the commander is the best friend, a faithful beast and a home in one bottle. Okay, I'll say goodbye to my mom and sisters by teleconference- I'm not sentimental, somehow I'll do without unnecessary tears and hugs. In the meantime, I will continue to study the ship's systems. Ariadne let the others go, sending the lifting system up, they got out the same way - through the magnetic cushion of the northern mine and a small lake above it. Friends and the elder did not crawl to the station on foot and simply called a friend from the club to come for them on a helicopter. He did not refuse, and an hour later they flew home. Why there was a lake above the mine is also a mystery. Ariadne opened the hatch automatically, according to the instructions, when the wand approached and was sensed by the sensors of the space base. One thing pleased me - friends are fifteen years old, at this age a person receives a personal weapon, complete documents in the form of a ring with an infochip and the right to go wherever he wants - no one has the right to stop him. At first, I was overcome with thoughts - if someone finds out about the base from the city, then a good crowd of people will want to ride to the stars on it, but ... In general, when friends and father returned the next day, they did not bring anyone else with them. And no wonder. Hardly anyone will want to join us after learning that the ship runs on energy from explosive disintegration - since apart from our ship, even now there are no hulls capable of withstanding such loads, even big enthusiasts will doubt the attractiveness of our new vessel. I'm afraid of myself. Our ship is actually a guided bomb. This, by the way, is one of the reasons why I want to take this space base away from the planet Bryanskaya - finding such an object on it is simply dangerous. Well, how will Ariadna want to turn on the self-destruct mode again? The probability is small, but, as they say, it's not desires that matter, but opportunities… In addition, the space bases designed for a small crew - only ten, and there are already six of us. Even after scrolling through the list of acquaintances in my head who could complement our crew to the limit, something worthwhile did not occur to me. Mom and sisters? Mom can't stand flying in any form - even if necessary in the service, if something needs to be replaced or repaired outside the city and the group uses a helicopter, she doesn't look out the window until he sits down at the landing site. The sisters are small, they need to study. And they don't know anything about space affairs either. Who else? Former wards from the flight squad? So they're already with me, but everyone else is a girl. There are no special claims to them, but there is no trust either. Diana Mirzoyan, nicknamed Iron Di, our instructor-curator? We have quite friendly relations, she even promised me the best recommendation to the patrol if I wish to go to their service, and she is a good specialist, but… She might be happy to fly with us, but she is testing our airworthiness, communication with the system patrol and the representative office of the Defense Council is not the most suitable position for a long vacation. I don't have any other people I would definitely trust. Even in our relatively flat society, my circle of trust is very narrow. And, finally, in relation to the orphan property found, we have the right of the finder - the one who found it first becomes the new owner. The finder can take it for himself or give it to the property of his Society, if he wishes. And serious people from the Defense Council and the Order, who, perhaps, can make claims against us, are too far away for us to somehow reveal ourselves.
The second news is more serious. Most of the storages with variance is empty. And without them, the ship simply will not be able to take off, let alone something more. M-yes… Whether engineer Belikova spent the station's bins a thousand years ago on something to zero, or deliberately emptied them for some reason. And this had to be dealt with closely. It is necessary to collect seventy-two substances in different quantities, and if with the simplest ones- oxygen and hydrogen, everything is more than clear - to get from the water, of which there is as much as you want on the planet, simply splitting the water into components in a disintegrator, then everything else had to think hard about it and solve this problem, otherwise- we're going nowhere from here. But, it's already tomorrow, but for now... sleep. Sleep urgently.
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