Chapter 8

Will still has the Narrative

Following lunch, Ed took us out to the onsite crusher location by bus. This is where the freshly mined material is taken by the haulers to be broken down to a manageable size before being moved to the new concentration site just off of the mine property by conveyor belt.

The crushers are located in a couple of large channels cut into the earth at the top of the mine property to reduce the amount of noise they produce when working. The crushers here are of two types, jaw crushers and rotary crushers. There are currently three jaw crushers at the site. The jaw crusher works by moving a large steel plate toward a fixed plate on a cyclic basis to break rocks from a large size to a smaller size. The plates are positioned so that the opening at the top is much greater than the gap at the bottom before the movable plate begins to close on the fixed plate.

The material is first dumped into a bin by the hauler where it is stored until the crusher is ready for it. Before it can enter the crusher, it passes over a grizzly, which is a series of steel bars or rails that are spaced the same distance apart as the gap at the bottom of the jaws. This allows the smaller pieces of rock to fall through to a conveyor belt that takes the output of the jaw crusher to the next crusher. The oversize pieces pass through to the now moving jaws of the crusher and are reduced in size before falling onto the same conveyor belt to be taken to the next crusher.

The other type of crushers used here are the rotary drum type. They are covered with replaceable carbide picks to break up the rock under the rotating drum they are attached to and feed the material along to the conveyors. These crushers also have grizzlies, but they are more like large screens that allow the smaller particles to pass through them, while the larger ones are sent through the crusher.

Crushers are by their very nature large, loud, and maintenance intensive machines. They also run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which is why several of each type are required to handle the 500,000 tons of material a day produced by the mine. Maintenance is ongoing on those off line while the others work.

We spent much of the afternoon at the crusher site. Mare and the rock miners were more interested in this equipment than I was, as I had seen and toured similar equipment on Vespa II. I was more interested in the electronic controls and how the crushers and the conveyor belts were connected and their monitoring system. By mid-afternoon we finished with the crushers and had looked at the ones that were off line and being worked on.

The next thing that we looked at was the conveyor system that moved the now manageable material to the processing site. These were open conveyor belts, however they weren’t flat, but cup shaped to keep the material from falling off of them. We were told the belts were 54 inches wide and ¾ inch thick. They were constructed of a rubber like substance with steel cords and weighed 89 pounds per yard according to Ed. The belts moved at about 12 miles an hour.

As I have already mentioned, there were conveyor belts that moved the rock from the storage bins to the crushers, and then moved the crushed material to the next crusher. From the final crusher, there are conveyors that move the now crushed material to the processing plant a number of miles away. There are several transfer stations along the way to the processing plant. They move the material from one conveyor belt to another. These stations are automated to control the speed of the belts and the flow of materials. They use specialized industrial computers that are linked by fiber optic cables.

The computers can also direct the material to either the plant or to a stock pile site. There are cameras all along the length of the conveyor system that allow the operator at the jaw crusher to monitor what is happening along the crushing / conveying system and take action where necessary. There are also cameras to observe the bin chutes, hoppers, and stockpiles so the operator can work on any problems. I was very interested in how this system was set up and the amount of control that the operator had. On Vespa II, we had more manual control of the system.

The others in our group were more interested in how large the conveyors were and how long they were, in addition to their capacity. I had a very interesting discussion with our guide, Ed, about the conveyor system and its controls plus the seven linked computers that controlled the belts. We were picked up by a small bus later that afternoon and taken back to our hotel.

“I’ll meet you here tomorrow morning, and take you through the recovery process,” Ed told us before releasing us for the evening.

Most of us went up to our rooms to clean up and to change clothes before going to dinner. Even though we had only been outside, we were all covered with grit from the wind, as it was constantly blowing especially around the crushers and the conveyor system. Mare and I had no more than gotten to our room before she fell into my arms.

“How in the world do you stand it?” she asked with a sob. I held her tightly to me and tried to comfort her. She was shaking so that it was hard to hold on to her.

“Stand what?” I asked unsure of what she meant.

“All of that open space. There are no structures, everything is out in the open and it just goes on and on. There is nowhere to get out of the sun or the wind. How can people live and work like that?” she demanded with another shiver.

“They are used to it. People here are used to being outdoors most of the time. It’s what they have grown up doing. It’s as natural to them as being inside all of the time is to you,” I told her.

“Things on Vespa II are basically the same as here. We do open pit mining. The equipment is similar, though not the same, as we use homegrown trucks that are manufactured on Vespa. Only some of the really high-tech equipment comes from off planet,” I reminded her, as we had discussed equipment previously.

“A lot of our equipment comes from off planet. We need equipment that is more heavy duty than what is used here, because of the higher gravity. It needs to be able to work underground or inside of structures also,” she reminded me. She had stopped shivering and seemed calmer now that we were inside.

“We should go to dinner,” I told her when she seemed okay.

“Yes, but we need to wash up from being outside and in all of that dust and wind. Should we shower now, or wait until later?” she asked.

“The others may already be eating by now, and it would be crowded. If we shower now, some of them should be finished by the time we get to the hotel’s restaurant,” I told her.

We needed to shower separately, as the hotel’s showers were small. By the time we finished and reached the restaurant downstairs, the majority of our classmates had finished eating, and we were able to get a table at the back of the room where we could be alone. That is, we were alone for a few minutes before the two rock miners in our class joined us.

“Have you recovered?” Andrew asked, as they joined us.

“Yes, I’m doing better now,” Mare told them.

“It took a while for us to recover also,” Henry told us. “All of that open space and the wind are a lot different than our usual working conditions. The wind made us think that there was an air leak. It was really hard to keep from panicking, thinking that we would be pulled out into open space or suffocate,” he added.

“The open space and all of that sunshine weren’t any help either,” Andrew added. “It’s usually dark when we are outside the ship, and the sun is just a faraway dot,” he finished.

Following an enjoyable dinner, we returned to our room. All of the energy that we had expended today had caught up with us, and we were ready for bed soon after returning.

“Hold me tonight, Will. I need someone close to me tonight,” Mare asked before we got in bed.

“Sure, Mare. It’s not a problem,” I assured her, as we got into bed. I moved up behind her and wrapped an arm around her. Her skin was very soft to the touch, and she was very warm there next to me. We both slept very well that night under the warm hotel blankets despite the cold outside.

In the morning, we were up at our usual time, but were disappointed to learn that the hotel had no exercise facility. We weren’t disappointed for long, however. As we were standing in the lobby with the manager, a hotel employee came in looking for him.

“We got a problem,” the employee told the manager, who we had been talking to about the exercise facility.

“Can it wait?” the manager snapped at him in irritation, as he had been talking to us.

“Sure, if you don’t mind the smell of old garbage circulating through the hotel,” the man, who his name-tag identified as Mark, answered.

“What?” the manager shouted in shock. “What happened?”

“That old garbage bin has finally given up the ghost. The wheels have fallen off, and we have no way to move it. It’s right under the air intake for the heating system,” Mark told him.

“We can help with that,” Mare instantly volunteered on hearing this.

“What could you do?” Mark asked on looking at her.

“I’m from Telchines. There are few things that I can’t move,” she told him with a broad smile.

“Well...!” the manager said, unsure of what to say.

“I’ll take any help I can get,” Mark said and led the way back to where the bin was.

Approaching the bin down a fairly well-lit utility hallway, we could see that it was some five feet wide and about the same tall, but couldn’t judge its length.

“It’s the wheels on the front of the bin that have collapsed,” Mark told us.

“Do you have something that you can slip under the front of the bin so we can move it?” Mare asked.

“If we can raise the front end, there is a heavy-duty pallet jack in the equipment room, but how are we going to lift the front end to get the jack under it?” Mark asked.

“I’ll lift it up, and you can slide the jack under the front,” Mare told him.

“Do you realize how much that thing weighs?” Mark asked.

“I only need to lift the front end. The rest of the bin will pivot on the rear wheels,” Mare pointed out.

“Yeah, but you are still talking about eight or nine hundred pounds at least,” Mark pointed out in return.

“Where is the problem then?” Mare asked. “I work out with eight hundred pounds of weights all of the time,” she added to Mark’s surprise.

“She is from Telchines,” I reminded him.

“Okay, if you think you can handle it, I’ll get the pallet jack,” he agreed.

The smell, as we moved down the length of the container, was enough to make you gag and want to vomit.

“How long has it been since they emptied this thing?” I wondered while holding my breath as we moved past it.

Arriving at the front of the bin, we could see a lot of rust where the front wheels had been attached, and that was undoubtedly why they had failed. The rest of the front end looked rust free, and we had to hope that it held together while picking it up, or there would be garbage all over the hallway. Mare sized up the bin as we waited for Mark to return with the pallet jack.

“This shouldn’t be too difficult,” she assured me, as she checked out the square steel tube that ran across the front of the bin. The welds holding the tube to the bin looked to be in good shape with no rust. Mark soon arrived with the pallet jack and a question.

“How are we going to do this?” he asked.

“I’ll pick up the front end, and you shove the pallet jack under it. Try to get it centered,” Mare cautioned him.

“How do I do that if you are in the way?” he asked.

“I’ll move to one side after I pick it up. Will can take the other side when I move. Just get the jack under it. We can change its location once the bin is up by blocking it up with something. Then we can move the bin out of here before it contaminates everything,” she told him.

“Do you have anything solid that we can use as blocks?” I asked him.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Anything solid. Metal or even wood will do as long as it is taller than the pallet jack at its lowest height,” I told him.

“There are some short pieces of steel I-beam that we have been using to weight things down. They were cutoffs left over from the construction of the rear loading platform,” Mark told us.

“Bring two of them out and we’ll use them,” Mare told him, and Mark went to get them.

He was soon back, and we were ready to begin. Mark moved the end of the pallet jack up to the bin while Mare gripped the underside of the tubing on the front of it and heaved. The front end came up a good seven inches and Mark shoved the forks of the pallet jack under the front end a good two feet.

“Pump it up far enough to get the I-beams under the front,” I told him, and he started to pump the handle, but the jack wasn’t all of the way under the bin, so we soon had trouble, and he lowered the pallet jack.

“Get ready to shove the pallet jack all of the way under the bin when I lift it again,” Mare told him, as she crouched down and then heaved the front end of the bin up even higher than it had been. Mark shoved the pallet jack all the way under the bin, and Mare relaxed her grip on it.