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“An outer membrane of piezoelectric plastic generates electricity from wind. Then two sheets hold a layer of airgel insulation. Then the inner layer is a radiation-capturing membrane, which turns purple and must be replaced. More clear than a window, isn’t it?”
machismo,
Defend a weak new neighbor to weaken the old powerful ones, as Machiavelli had said.
They were to be both extraordinary and extra ordinary, at one and the same time.
The selection committee had thus created some of the very problems it had hoped to prevent. Some of them were aware of this; and naturally they took care to include among the colonists the most qualified psychiatrist they could think of. So they sent Michel Duval.
They were on their way. It was the beginning of a nine-month voyage—or of a voyage that would last the rest of their lives. They were on their own.
The colonists sank to the floors, and stood in a pseudogravity of .38 g, very close to what they would feel on Mars. Many man-years of tests had indicated that it would be a fairly healthy g to live in, and so much
There was enough pull to make balance relatively easy, but hardly any feeling of pressure, of drag. It was the perfect equivalent of their mood;
Hopefully this marriage would go better than that one had, she thought, because this one was going to last forever.
A brief gesture at their comrades: “This is going to be fun, don’t you think?” Chalmers glanced at her. “If it goes well,” he said.
As if it were Sunday morning every day, as Nadia said. But Maya’s Sunday mornings had never been particularly relaxed. In her childhood that had been the time for cleaning the one-room apartment she had shared with her mother.
Good transition to character backstory. Take note Matthew.
what kind of Δv would it take to escape history, to escape an inertia that powerful, and carve a new course? The hardest part is leaving Earth behind.
“The arrangement of a building shows what the designer thinks should go on inside. We saw that at the beginning of the voyage, when Russians and Americans were segregated into Torus D and B. We were supposed to remain two entities, you see. It will be the same on Mars. Buildings express values, they have a sort of grammar, and rooms are the sentences. I don’t want people in Washington or Moscow saying how I should live my life, I’ve had enough of that.”
“Rectangular, the conventional shape! With work space separated from living quarters, as if work were not part of life. And the living quarters are taken up mostly by private rooms, with hierarchies expressed, in that leaders are assigned larger spaces.”
“Everything is political,” Arkady said at their backs. “Nothing more so than this voyage of ours. We are beginning a new society, how could it help but be political?”
“Getting back to the shelters. How would you make them different?”
I think work space and living space should be mixed as much as is practical. Our work will be more than making wages—it will be our art, our whole life.
“We are all equally responsible now, and our buildings should show it. A circle is best—difficult in construction terms, but it makes sense for heat conservation.
Everyone should have their room, sure, but these should be small. Set in the rim, perhaps, and facing larger communal spaces—” He picked up a mouse at one terminal, began to sketch on the screen. “There. This is architectural grammar that would say ‘All equal.’ Yes?”
And with communal space is being the larger rooms it encourages community and team building, a clever little touch I must say.
they bounced around the chamber as they got their clothes off, miscalculating angles and momentums until with a gentle thrust of the big toes they flew into each other and met in a spinning embrace, and floated kissing among their floating clothes.
the computers would control burns that would gradually circularize their course just inside the orbit of Phobos.
“No, no, no, no! History is not evolution! It is a false analogy! Evolution is a matter of environment and chance, acting over millions of years. But history is a matter of environment and choice, acting within lifetimes, and sometimes within years, or months, or days! History is Lamarckian! So that if we choose to establish certain institutions on Mars, there they will be! And if we choose others, there they will be!”
But flying on Mars was no easy thing, because of the thin atmosphere.
Hydrogen and the latest in superlight materials gave them the lift to carry a cargo like their windmills,
