Chapter 10

Ben proved to be an adept designer of a Mars base. He rarely went underground, saying it was too confining. A slip thru his memories revealed that he had experienced a few alarming events as Christian, getting trapped in a small place as a child, and a college hazing incident involving being bound and locked in a trunk for about 16 hours. Not a car trunk, but an actual old time steamer trunk.

Young Doris went just by Dee now, to help us differentiate when talking about her, as Young Doris, or Mars Doris didn’t seem appropriate somehow. Dee was brilliant in the garden, tending plants and harvesting food. I was trying to make the place as self sustaining as possible. Val spent most of her time on Mars coordinating the maintenance lists of equipment, and procedures, as Ben designed, and I built. Her natural organizational skills helped her keep organized on what was happening.

She did this mostly by staying by my side, and adding ideas as we discussed planning. One of her selves back on Earth did all the typing up of reports, and making binders of directions, procedures, and future plans. She had been doing research on what had been published by NASA and the Mars Society, so was very helpful in pointing out potential problems.

Mars House was working brilliantly, but wasn’t getting much sunlight through the water shielding. I had to triple the lights in the greenhouse, each new set hung from a cord either two or four meters lower than the ceiling lights. Hanging down they shined not only brighter on the ground plants, but also outward onto the taller items like the trees and grapes. I also attached lights directly over the plants at the edge of the windows, making them much happier. Simple solutions, like this, from Dee were priceless.

I landed the SE1 on Mars, at the top of the crater. With two of me, I stored Admiral Adam, and Captain Val as superfluous. I conjured a duplicate of Mars House, setting it up about 250 meters away. With additional accommodations, Tyr and Odin joined the group as Big T and Amy. That left a free bedroom. David wanted it, as did Frederick.

“Angelina,” I explained, “If I twin you, then I twin the baby too. Then I have to agree to erase the extra child, so you can go to Mars. I don’t think pregnant on Mars is the best choice right now. Do you really want two babies?”

The argument was that Frederick couldn’t go unless Angelina went, but that it wasn’t fair for David to take up a berth for two all by himself. I refused to send a pregnant Angelina, and she refused to eliminate a baby, no matter how extra.

The argument got nowhere, until Nora suggested bunk beds. I could remove the King bed, and install bunk beds for the brothers. They immediately started arguing about the top bunk. I was glad I didn’t have to share that house with them.

David’s expertise made an immediate improvement in waste water treatment, and recycling plans. He also increased the robustness of the small power grid, creating automatic shut offs for safety, something I had not added. He also determined that my efficiency of 450w panels was not 45% as I had assumed. I had used a figure of 150w for a square meter panel at a rated 15% for my calculation, and extrapolated. He wasn’t sure of the efficiency, but really wanted to try it on Earth, where the sunlight is much much stronger.

I conjured a sample for him, and he took it outside to test it. He came back with a huge grin, he was getting 790 wats in the sun, in Zurich, at noon, in the winter. Frederick and David met with me at my office, excited about the potentials.

Frederick laid a map out of potential solar locations, he circled a spot in dark red. “It will be a difficult location to get to, but Tschingelspitz is ideal. All rock, no plants, no permanent snow pack, already sloped, and facing due south.

“We think Thurn would be the place to manufacture, as they have a number of manufacturing jobs already. We can lift the panels in by helicopter from Trachsellauenen, it is just 5km from the mountain top. The panels would need to be at least 20 meters in the air, and an automated snow removal system,” Frederick said.

“Easy enough to do,” I replied, “how much money do you need to start?”

“Three million. That will get us the land, and construction started on the factory, as well as the environmental reports, and checking our assumptions. If it’s too difficult, we have alternative solar locations in Lausanne,” David answered.

“What about wind?” I asked.

“We want to get the solar in first, and then when there are complaints about how solar doesn’t work at night, we want to propose wind. The location is not visible from any of the major ski areas, or any local towns, but there are numerous hiking trails thru the area. We think we can get approval for both, but we want to approach it as solar first,” Frederick explained.

“Do you have an installation target amount, or date?” I asked.

“We would like to be ready to install by this summer, but if we can’t make that, it’ll have to be next summer,” David said.

“We have an excellent factory building plan, there’s no problem with creating the parts here, and shipping them to be constructed. We can even create a manufacturing plant here first, to work out the kinks on the solar panel production, then duplicate it there,” I told them.

“What about international manufacturing plants? What kind of price point are we looking at?” Frederick asked.

“I’m thinking we can be very profitable at .50 a watt. An 800w panel we can sell for 400. Ten panels make an 8kw system, and with 5 hours of sunlight you get 40kw a day production. For commercial production we set them up in 100 panel groups. How big of an area have you mapped out as usable?” I stated.

“We figure ¾ of a square kilometer, so 750,000 1 sq meter panels. That’s 600 megawatts at total coverage.”

“With wind speed a larger factor, I’m thinking modules 100 meters long, with two half meter wide by two meters long panels on each side. Run the stands north to south, so that they can tilt to follow the sun. Even if they only cover half the available land, it’s a 300 megawatt plant. That’s much bigger than anything else in Switzerland.”

“Do we form a separate company to sell the panels to, or do it all as part of a ZZ subsidiary?”

“I don’t know, Frederick, investigate if it is better to go with a partner, or do it on our own. A partner will bring political capital to the table that we don’t have yet. I’m just as happy selling the panels, and taking a piece of the solar plant, as trying to keep it all.”

I conjured a stack of 10 panels, “Go shop these around,” I instructed.

They gathered them up, and headed out. I called Frederick back, “Are you interested in opening a plant in the US or Canada?” I asked him.