Stepping Stones (Founding of the Federation Short Stories Book 1) by Hechtl Chris

Author:Hechtl, Chris [Hechtl, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Self
Published: 2015-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

2150

Millions of people were now in space, scattered across the solar system. Space around Earth and the moon was crowded by platforms and space stations big and small. Even the sun had its own observation and solar energy platforms. But contrary to the astronomy community and the purists, there was one other facility near the sun. Perilously near, yet it survived and endured. Some called it the doomsday of doomsdays for the solar system. Others called it Jack's latest nutty scheme.

The station was mostly automated. It was an energy platform like no other. The platform had a “straw,” a way to scoop plasma directly from the surface of the star itself. The process was called a solar tap and was highly controversial. Protests had been mounted on Earth and on a few of the colonies but in vain. Jack was a stubborn man who would not be deterred by the fears and jeers of small-minded folk. He had ignored it all, just like the scientific community had ignored the supposed threat in 2008 that the large hadron collider on Earth would have destroyed the star system with a micro black hole while attempting to find the Higgs boson.

The threat of possibly destabilizing the sun's “climate” state was indeed real. So real that Lagroose Industries took great pains to model what it could and couldn't produce with the solar tap and under what conditions.

Many people thought the solar tap was a waste of time. A science project, but one that would be best done by observation, not direct work. The idea of using it to generate electricity had been scoffed at. Sure nuclear fusion had entered its second generation and mankind had learned how to handle superheated plasma readily, but it was still foolhardy. The solar farms Lagroose and other companies and Earth nations had built in orbit of the star were enough for everyone or so they thought.

Jack Lagroose had other ideas. He'd set the solar tap up as a demonstration model to develop new technologies and test bed them but also to power massive and powerful particle accelerators in the first industrial application of such machines in order to not only research and better develop an understanding of hyperspace physics but also to produce something more tangible. Antimatter.

Some of the scientific community had cried foul at the prostitution of such valuable machines, and again, Jack had ignored it. Star Reach had predicted that antimatter would be needed to power starships and advanced sublight craft. They hadn't, however, found a way to mass produce the stuff in any useful quantities. He aimed to change that.

However the scientists and engineers involved in the initial labs had found that creating and storing antimatter was difficult verging on impossible. So while they worked on perfecting more efficient methods, Jack had ordered his people to take an alternate route. Quantity, building dozens of particle accelerators in order to mass produce the fuel. Jack believed in building, not spending decades stuck in research.

Trapping the antimatter was easier in space, which already had a vacuum.

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