“A what?”
“Power for station is generated mostly by solar cells or by hydrogen fuel cells,” Boomer explained, “neither of which produces enough power for a multimegawatt-class laser. A nuclear reactor on Earth uses the heat from the fission reaction to produce steam to turn a turbine generator, which is not doable on a space station because the turbine would act like a gyroscope and upset station’s steering and alignment systems—even the flywheels on our exercise bikes do that. The MHD is like a turbine-style power generator, but instead of spinning magnets producing an electron flow, the MHD uses plasma spinning within a magnetic field. The power generated by the MHD is massive, and the MHD generator has no moving or spinning parts that can affect station’s orbit.”
“But the catch is . . . ?”
“Creating plasma requires heating ion-producing substances to high temperatures, far past the steam state,” Boomer said. “In space, there’s only one way to produce that level of heat, and that’s with a small nuclear reactor. Naturally, a lot of people are wary of nuclear anything, and that goes double if it’s flying overhead.”
“But nuclear reactors have been orbiting Earth for decades, right?”
“The MHD generator was America’s first nuclear reactor in space in twenty years, and is by far much more powerful than anything else up here,” Boomer replied. “But the Soviets had launched almost three dozen satellites that used small nuclear reactors to generate electricity using thermocouples until the USSR went broke. They never squawked about their nuclear reactors, but when the USA launched one MHD generator after the USSR canceled their program, they go berserk. Typical. And they’re still squawking, even though we haven’t fired Skybolt in aeons.”
The passenger studied the Skybolt module for a moment, then remarked, “Ann Page designed all that.”
“Yes, sir,” Boomer said. “She was just a young female whippersnapper engineer and physicist when she produced the plans for Skybolt. No one took her seriously. But President Reagan wanted a ‘Star Wars’ missile defense shield, and he had scared up the money, and Washington was frantically looking for programs to start up so they could spend all that money before it went to some other program. Dr. Page’s plans got into the right hands at the right time; she got the money, and they built Skybolt and stuck it on Armstrong in record time. Skybolt was Dr. Page’s baby. She even talked her way into attending partial astronaut training so she could go up in the shuttle to supervise installation. They say she lost thirty pounds of ‘executive spread’ in order to be chosen for astronaut training, and she never put it back on. When her baby said its first words, it shook the world.”
“And that was almost thirty years ago. Amazing.”
“It’s still state of the art, but if we had the funds, we could probably improve it considerably in efficiency and accuracy.”
“But we could reactivate Skybolt now, couldn’t we?” the passenger asked. “Improve it, modernize it, yes, but load it up with fuel and fire it now, or in fairly short order?”
Boomer turned and regarded his passenger for a moment with some surprise. “You’re serious about all this, aren’t you, sir?” he finally asked.
“You bet I am, Dr. Noble,” the passenger replied. “You bet I am.”
A few minutes later they had moved within a few hundred yards of Armstrong Space Station. Boomer noted the passenger’s eyes growing bigger and bigger as they closed in. “Kinda feels like you’re in a tiny rowboat paddling up beside an aircraft carrier, doesn’t it?”
“That’s exactly what it feels like, Boomer.”
Boomer unstowed a wireless device that actually did resemble a familiar console game controller and positioned it in front of the passenger. “Ready to do more than be a passenger, sir?” he asked.
“You’re serious? You want me to fly this thing up to the space station?”