Chapter 9

Will still has the Narrative

Following the trip to the Bingham Canyon mine, the remainder of February and early March were heavy with review classes before the mid-term exams, which started on Monday, 10 March, and ran through Thursday, 13 March. On Friday, grades were posted before Spring Break officially started on Sunday, 16 March. Many students had already left by Friday afternoon.

Neither Mare nor I had anything pressing to do for Spring Break. It wasn’t a holiday in the official sense, so there were no seasonal jobs available at the spaceport. Monday, the 17th of March, was Saint Patrick’s Day. A lot of the Irish in our area of Colorado celebrated with parades and drinking. We both had a few drinks, but neither of us are Irish. We did enjoy some of the Irish dishes served in a number of the local restaurants. For the remainder of the week, we had our workouts in the gym as usual and spent time going over what we had learned since the start of classes back in January. It is still rather cold in Colorado in mid-March.

Classes resumed on Monday the 24th of March. They were still heavy on mining and geology courses, but there weren’t any field trips scheduled.

The semester ended on Friday, the 23rd of May, after exams, and Summer Break began on Saturday. Nick, Mare, and I along with the remaining rock miners went to see about seasonal employment at the space port on Saturday morning. Ski was glad to see us and put us right to work, as a number of his people had taken advantage of the holiday to take additional vacation days off, as their kids were out of school for a short time also. Nick, Mare, and I worked all of that day and through Saturday, the 31st of May. Nick and I moved cargo, but Mare spent at least a part of each day in maintenance fixing broken equipment before joining us.

The regular crew returned on Sunday, the First of June. We had the next eight days off before classes began for the summer session. This definitely presented a problem of what to do, as Mare wasn’t likely to go swimming or sun bathing again. She also wasn’t likely to be interested in seeing the outdoor sights around the Denver area either. Sitting around here with nothing to do for the next eight days but workout wasn’t an option either.

I had been preparing for this class break for the past several weeks and had looked up what attractions were available in both the Golden and the Denver area. Specifically, attractions that weren’t outdoors. I had been surprised by the number of inexpensive or free places of interest that we could visit.

After our workout in the gym on Sunday, the First of June, I brought up the idea of visiting Denver and checking out several of the places I had found doing my research.

“We don’t need to sit around here and be bored for the next week plus. I have found some things to do,” I told Mare as an opening gambit.

“What kind of things?” she asked in a wary voice. “It’s not something out in those mountains, is it?” she continued.

“No, it’s not. I knew that you wouldn’t be interested in something like that. I have been checking out the attractions in the Denver area that are in the city and mainly inside of buildings. There are numerous museums and other attractions.

“There are museums of art, history, transportation, space travel, and natural Science plus a Planetarium. Most that charge a fee have reduced access fees for students, and some are free. There are also art galleries, several historic houses, the Zoo, the Botanical Gardens, and the Denver Symphony gives free concerts outdoors in the late spring, summer, and early fall. It was also mentioned in several places that Denver has a very walk-able downtown area where many of these attractions are located,” I said as I concluded my sales pitch. Mare considered what I had said for a time.

“Okay, we’ll try it,” she finally agreed. “It will be better than sitting around here with nothing to do,” she added.

“Should we invite Nick to join us?” I asked.

“You can ask him, but I think the rock miners might be more interested. Nick is an outdoor kind of guy,” she told me. In fact, Nick had a trip planned to the mountains around Denver with several of his friends, but Henry and Andrew were very interested in joining us, as they also had little to do during class breaks.

Each day for the next week plus, we took public transportation into Denver, where we would visit one or more of the attractions on the list that I had printed out. Our student IDs got us in at reduced rates where a fee was charged, but a number of the locations were free to students. We visited a couple of historic houses, the Nature and Science Museum, the Planetarium, and the Art Museum. The art galleries were more expensive, though some did give the student discount. The rock miners, Andrew and Henry, made sure that we visited the Space Travel Museum. The Zoo and the Botanic Garden were last. We hadn’t spent much time at the malls, since we didn’t want to spend a lot of money.

We had an enjoyable week off from our studies and part time jobs, and it didn’t cost much. We did eat lunch downtown, but that wasn’t too expensive, plus Mare and I had dinner downtown on Wednesday night when we attended a concert given by the Denver Symphony in a park.

Our summer courses started on Monday, the 9th of June, and we finished them on Thursday the 14th of August. The summer classes were more of what we had been doing in the Spring Semester, so weren’t any trouble. There were only a couple of days between the end of the Summer Semester and the start of the Fall Semester. Mare and I only relaxed. There were still our workouts in the gym every day, but we caught up on some reading and went to two movies here on campus. Mostly though we just relaxed for a time before the Fall Semester started.

The Fall Semester didn’t start until Tuesday the 19th of August. This would be our last year here. Next year this time we would be on our way home. We received the download of our classes on Saturday, the 16th of August. As soon as I saw the complete list of classes, I knew that we were in trouble, for right there for all to see was Explosive Engineering I. I just knew that this was a class that Mare was looking forward to, and I wondered how much disruption there would be between her, the rock miners, and the professor. I approached Mare about it on Saturday night after we returned from dinner. I waited until we up in her room to bring up the subject.

“How are you going to approach this Explosive Engineering class?” I asked her, prepared for an explosion.

“I’m looking forward to it,” she told me calmly. “I’ve come to realize that they will be able to teach me things that I need to know. On Telchines, we have developed techniques that work there. But they are all based on experience and not that much on knowledge. I will wait to see what they can teach me and see how it will mesh with what I know works there. I’m hoping that I will learn why we do things a certain way and ways to do things better,” she finished. I was greatly surprised.

Wednesday, the 20th of August, was the first class in Explosive Engineering I. I noticed that not all of our classmates were taking the class, but the two rock miners, Andrew and Henry, were. The Professor introduced himself before the start of class and followed that with questions and a statement.

“Good morning class. I’m Professor Rivers, and this is Explosive Engineering I. Before we get started, I need to know how many of you have experience using explosives, and where you have used them.

“Please stand, give me your name, where you used explosives and how much experience you have with them,” he finished. Mare and the rock miners stood up. They were the only ones who did. The professor seemed quite surprised.

“I usually only get one or at most two students who have used explosives before,” he told us before asking, “What is your name, young lady?”

“I’m Marianne Riedasel. I’m from Telchines, and I have been handling explosives for ten standard years. We usually blast twice a week in each of the mines in the area where I lived,” she told a very surprised Professor Rivers. Andrew and Henry followed her, and they left him just as startled as Mare had.

“Well, we certainly have some very experienced people in this class. That is good in a way, as they will be able to assist me during the practical application phase of both this class and in the second phase of the course,” he told us before turning serious.

“Several of the other Professors in the mining course and I have developed a series of correction factors for the use of explosives in gravity that is different from that here on Terra. All of the formulas and conditions that we will be discussing are based on the use of specific explosives here on Terra. The correction factors are to be applied for work in space, or on other planets where the strength of gravity is different.

“These correction factors will be downloaded to your data units over-night. We ask that when you return home that you check to see how close the correction factors bring the formulas to matching the existing conditions there. If you would let us know how the factors worked for you, we will be able to adjust them as necessary once we have sufficient data,” he finished before starting the actual class.

The instruction began at a very basic level so that everyone knew and understood everything about explosives. Even I was bored for the first two classes, thanks to what I had learned from Mare. She paid very strict attention at all of the classes, even the most basic beginning classes. She said very little to me or anyone else about them.

We were more than half way through the class, when Mare remained behind after class one day. I stayed with her not knowing what to expect.

“Thank you, Professor Rivers. What you covered today is something that we have always done on Telchines, but I never knew the reason why or how to calculate the amount required. We do a lot of things based on previous experience,” she told him and seemed very sincere. Professor Rivers didn’t say anything, just smiled.

We were three quarters of the way through the class before we had the practical exercise. This was carried out at a location in the mountains west of Denver where the school had a demonstration site set up for the practical exercises that needed to be conducted for a number of mining classes. The site held a crusher, wagon drills, and the other equipment needed for its operation. Blasting was used to create rock for the crusher to use. The crushed rock was sold to the state for road work.

We had already drilled the holes needed for this exercise in another class that we were taking and would use them for the blasting exercise. Mare and the rock miners were right at home doing this, while the rest of us in the class were a bit apprehensive about handling explosives.

At the site, Professor Rivers went over what we were going to do, and how the amount of explosives had been calculated before we actually started work at the demonstration site.

The blasting agent that we would be using was an ammonium nitrate – fuel mixture known as ANFO. It is a granular, free flowing material. Because ours was only a small teaching blast, we would be loading the bore holes manually with the ANFO material. At large blast sites like open pit mines and quarries, it is delivered by commercial bulk explosive delivery trucks which mix and load the exact amount of the material into the prepared holes with compressed air.

The ANFO that we would be using today had been delivered in bags to the site that morning and would all be used today. There were a number of containers of the correct size at the site used to measure out and to pour the correct amount of the granular explosive material into the boreholes.

Detonating cord would be used to initiate the explosion. Two ring mains would be run and would be connected to each bore hole. This was a safety precaution in case any of the charges were not set off because of a poor connection or other problems.