Chapter 7

Well, it was obvious to me that I would have to back off with my ambitions. I needed a lot more information, and probably some help, before I was going to the stars. In the meantime, I would content myself with the solar system. I had an idea for a propulsion system for less than the speed of light if I could make the equivalent of a perpetual motion system for space.

I wondered what would happen if I put an artificial gravity device on one side of my spaceship and my gravity and inertia nullifier on the other side. Could I pull up a ship with the added gravity while shielding it from the other side with the gravity nullifier?

Assume the concept of a box within a box. Inside the inner box would be all of the heavy stuff that would provide a living space and the power source for the drive system and anything else needed for life support or comfort. On the outside of this box would be mounted a gravity shield that would nullify all gravity and inertia, so that the drive system would have very little work to do.

The outer box would support the artificial gravity system at an appropriate distance and provide the mass for the artificial gravity to pull against. This outer box would be as light as possible, but not so light that the artificial gravity machine would not have something to pull against. In other words, I want the outer box to fall towards the artificial gravity generator. How can I make that happen? Dammit, a simple glance at Newton's Third Law of Motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, shows that I can't. OK, back to some form of rocket.

At least, I am limited in the amount of fuel I can take only by the limitation of the dimensions of the fuel container. A fuel container shielded from gravity and inertia could be any size; a breath of air could move Yankee Stadium if it was shielded from gravity and inertia. Therefore, I need to know how much fuel I need for a specific job so I know what volume it is. The fuel has to be liquid or gas so that it can be throttled and shut off as needed.

Oh, hell, the rocket fuel is one place where I need help!

I decided that I had wasted enough time chasing my tail on the propulsion system. I needed to do some serious work on that AGG (artificial gravity generator). I followed the directions religiously and had an AGG built in a couple of weeks. It sure is convenient when you can adapt commercial items like a coffee maker to your needs.

This device simply projected a field that could be adjusted for the sphere of influence and intensity. One of the first things I did when we got home with the Emily V was to pull the gasoline engine and the associated components. We didn't dare run the gasoline engine when we were in space, anyway, and the vehicle was no longer going anywhere under its own power. I also pulled the transmission, fuel tank, and wheels. This gave me convenient places to put things. For example, I put the AGG in the former engine compartment, with the business end pointed toward the passenger cabin.

I spent some time with the louvers under the passenger cabin closed while I got the gravity adjusted to a comfortable level. I couldn't tell any change in the power drawn by the unit, no matter how much gravity was being generated, so I just set the AGG to produce 1 g and left it at that. Don't ask my how I did it, I just followed directions, but I was able to get the gravity to act toward the floor of the cabin even though the generator was located to one side of the cabin. Go figure!

Anyway, now we needed a new source of power, since the vehicle battery couldn't power everything for the needed length of time. I looked at what was available in the way of storage batteries, and decided that the batteries used in the new all-electric cars would be my best bet. I bought eight banks of them and rewired the banks to provide 24 volts at more amps than I could imagine us ever needing. The refrigerator and stove were swapped out for electrical units running at 24 volts DC input.

I called NASA in Houston and got the address of a place that could supply us with space suits. I bought one for each of us—we had to go in for a fitting. Well, actually it was two trips. The first one was for the initial measurements of our bodies, and the second one was for the final adjustments to make sure that everything fit the way it was supposed to. We had fitted the tail end of the shuttle with an airlock so that we could get in and out in an airless environment, like the moon or Mars.

Eventually, everything was ready, and I couldn't take any more postponements. We planned a trip to the moon over the weekend. A new pulse jet was made to run off of oxygen and propane, and that was plenty enough power for this short trip. I had invited the contractor who had done so much work for us to come out and bring his crew to see the launch. Several other people were also invited.

We had a little party on Saturday morning and launched right after noon on Saturday. The moon was just past New, but it was directly overhead, so the setup was ideal for the launch. I had invited radio and TV news people to come out, but only the local TV station was there—about what I had expected.

There were no big speeches or any other great hoopla, I just announced with a bullhorn that we were ready to leave. I said that people were welcome to stay until the beer gave out, but to please clean up after themselves. With that, we entered the shuttle door and dogged it closed.

We went to the RV passenger cabin and sat down to watch the fun from our view cameras. I switched on the gravity shield and the AGG, ignited the pulse jet, and we took off! I kept the power down on the jet at first, since I thought that people would expect to see a slow initial lift-off. I slowly raised us to a level of about 50 feet and held that position for a few moments. Jenny said that she could see the TV camera pointed at us, so I hit full power, and we literally jumped toward the moon.

The only power to lift us was the down-thruster, so I wasn't sure just how fast it could push us up, but, with no weight or inertia to fight, just air resistance, we went up so fast that the TV cameraman had trouble following us. I figured to put on a good show, so I just took us up to 100,000 feet without pause as fast as we could go.

I didn't want to waste fuel, so I cut back on the power level, but we continued to move at a very rapid clip toward the moon. We were now using the gravitational attraction from the moon as most of our lifting power and were using the gravity shield at full power, so there was no way we could tip over. Therefore, there was no further need for any of the rockets, so I cut them off. We were now "coasting" toward the moon, and we were accelerating at a rapid clip.

I couldn't help it—I began to laugh. This caused some inquiries from my family, and I explained that I could imagine the reaction at NORAD headquarters under Cheyenne Mountain about now. Surely, they must have spotted us on their radar and classified us as a UFO. I could imagine that the telephone wires were close to melting from the traffic to and from NASA headquarters in Houston as they tried to figure out what was going on.

The Russian space shuttle was the spitting image of the NASA birds, so I imagined that there was some confusion and wonder at how one of the obsolete NASA shuttles had managed to get launched. Once they counted noses, they were going to be even more confused, since the Russians had never officially listed the existence of our particular bird. It had never been finished, so there had never been any reason to announce its existence.

We were watching CNN on one of our monitors, and they broke into whatever they were currently doing—some nonsense about the Yankees' prospects of moving into first place. Pictures of our lift-off were shown, then there was a switch to a NASA feed of our progress through one of their super telescopes.

I had been correct, there was considerable consternation that a ship had taken off with no major rocket blast and still no sign of one. Nobody could figure out what was going on, especially since we continued to accelerate without benefit of a large rocket exhaust. We soon faded out of sight and were replaced by a series of talking heads, most of whom were certain that this was some sort of hoax. This was when we were far enough away that we could no longer get a reliable signal, so Jenny cut the TV off. We had a lot of fun talking about how we were a figment of a mass hallucination or a cruel hoax played on the American people.