Kessa Dahlstrom
Sorry this is later. Marta said I didn’t tell the whole story of the space elevator trip, so here’s the rest, but I don’t think she’s right, because the rest of the time wasn’t really the space elevator, it was the tender.
Okay, so at the top, the elevator slowed downand came to a stop. Actually it wasn’t really the top. The cable went up for hundreds of kilometers more, but we were at the rendezvous point where we pick up the space tender. 400 kilometers up! Looking down on our planet was wonderful. I didn’t quite realize how complicated the atmosphere is. And my stomach was pretty tingly. Thorsten told us we were about 10% lighter than on the surface..
Marta and I were looking around, but we didn’t see see any particular infrastructure that looked like a platform or landing dock. We were kind of wondering how it was all gonig to work when this bulky ship came in silently from above us, almost hidden from view by the ceiling and the glare of the sun. That ships was the tender. A tender is a little boat that ferries passengers to a bigger ship, if you don’t know. It looked pretty much ike one big, cylindrical rocket engine with another elevator car just strapped onto one side. I realized that was the ground-bound car. GReat big robotic arms picked it up and moved it over from the tender to the elevator cable. Then my least favorite part, those same arms grabbed onto our car and transferred us to tender, which kind of grabbed onto us with a giant claw. The thunks and vibrations were terrible!
But then once we were settled, it got lovely and quiet again, and we could feel ourselves accelerating upwards and sideways, because the tender’s rocket was blasting us both higher and laterally as well to insert us into a true orbit.
Somebody asked why we couldn’t just ride the elevator the whole way to the Okafor. The answer is, first of all, it would take too long. The elvator is fast but the tender is much faster. THen also, we had to match orbital velocities, which if you want to know about you should probably ask Jet. Jet also says space elevators are much more energy efficient than space orbiter ships like he and Stoke fly, but Earth doesn’t have a space elevator so it has to use orbiters, which I guess is just as well for Jet and Stoke.
After awhile our motion changed because we stopped accelerating so hard, and the solid pull of the floor began to fade. In a few more minutes, we were completely weightless! People were going Whee! and Gaah! and laughing. Everyone was strapped into a chair, but our arms and legs and hair and loose clothing were all drifting up and around in unexpected directions. Even Marta like that part.
Okay, it was really amazing when we first say our spaceship, Okafor in the distance. You know that famous Alçubierre shape, with a large drive ring around the outside and the cigar-shaped passenger capsule in the middle. (That makes me wonder, what is a cigar? Everyone knows the shape, but what’s in named after?) As we came closer docking, the drive ring just got bigger and bigger! On Okafor, it’s almost 50 meters across. I had to crane by neck to follow its curve from high above, to out to the side, and then down below. They make them matte black, but you could still see it really well. In a way it was kind of creepy.
Compared to that, the passenger capsule seemed pretty small, which Jet says that’s because of physics that makes only a small amount of volume available for payload. I think it was only 4-5 meters in diameter, which was was hardly wider than our elevator car in which they were riding. I was wondering if we were all going to fit.
Docking was, well, whoa. You’re weightless for one thing. Then they turn, and flip, and things. I almost changed my mind on the spacesick hypo. But eventually we attached to Okafor with a big, satisfying thunk,. They opened the hatch and there was a slight hiss, and then we could see into the interior of the ship. Thorsten helped everybody and we got to float through the door in zero G! All I can say is wow. If you haven’t done it, you should.
OK, then our captain Narisa gave a little speech, and then Marta finally told me we had to take get knocked out for THREE days because we were doing snooze cruise, which I hated, but I’m going to say any more about that..
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