Innovation

System: Sol

Saturn's moon Titan

Barlow Heavy Industries

April 10, 2681

As the Grayhound class executive transport jumped into the Titan system, Commander Rutledge felt a bit of regret. It wasn't often that he got to travel in such luxery. Grayhound series ships usually shuttled Admirals around to useless meetings but today it was taking his team to do something useful.

Rutledge and his team of five naval archictects and engineers were members of the Fleet's Design Bureau. They were assigned to develop the Fleet's next generation of ships on an impossible schedule and Barlow Industries might have just the edge that they needed.

The Grayhound's pilot activated the PA system in the passenger cabin and said, "We have arrived at Titan and will be landing momentarily. We are cleared directly to the Barlow Naval Yard. Eveyone please be seated and prepare for landing."

Rutledge looked out his window at Titan but he couldn't see very much. Everyone else was looking at Saturn- the ringed gas giant that still intrigued humans after centuries of space travel. Titan's soupy atmosphere obscured all but the most basic details of the surface. The surface of Saturn's largest moon was a key industrial facility and Titan Station in orbit was the largest Fleet installation in Earth's solar system.

The pilot skillfully landed on a waiting pad at Barlow Industries sprawling complex. An eight-wheeled utility crawler attached itself to the hook on the nose of the Grayhound and pulled her into a nearby hanger. Even through the hull they could hear the hiss as the hanger was pressurized and finally an ear rending pop and the ship equalized pressure with the hanger.

Rutledge and his team debarked the ship into a clean, brightly lite hanger and were greeted by a delegation from Barlow Heavy Industries.

A man wearing a lab coat approached Rutledge and extended his hand, "I'm Dan Barlow. Welcome to our facility. I hope you had a good trip."

Rutledge took his hand and said, "We got to fly on a Grayhound. The trip was gravy. We're looking forward to seeing your work with ceramics and advanced composites."

Barlow beamed. "Then lets get to work."

He lead them to a subway car and when everyone had piled in he programmed the car to take them to the R&D center within the complex.

Barlow began speaking as the car got underway. "Pratically every sub-system within star ships is modular these days. Engines come as pre-fabed modules. Power plants come as pre-fabed modules. So do computers, life support systems, weapons- the whole bit. With conventional ship construction, the only thing that is fabricated by hand is the hull."

"We realized in our own yards that if we could pre-fabricate the hull in modules, we would cut construction time for ships of all sizes, lower our labor costs and dramatically reduce the time it takes to build ships of all classes. What our company has been working on for several years is the right mix of technologies to make this happen."

The car came to a stop and Barlow said, follow me to the conference room and I'll show you what we've got."

Rutledge and his team followed Barlow's men up a flight of stairs to another level. He brought them into a nicely appointed conference room where he got down to brass tacks about his new process.

"To make this happen we had to get the right materials, machinery and the technology. First we looked at materials. We experimented with a number of metal alloys and they all had the same problems. Metal components require welds and that creates a structural weakness from the very start. Metals are heavy and they make bright sensor contacts. When we looked at ceramics and carbon composites and realized we had exactly what we needed."

He passed around four samples. "These are the materials that we are plan to use. Two are ceramics and the other two are carbon composites. All four are harder than any metal but have very special properties. Before they are heated, they are more or less a goo and are easily worked by our machinery."

"The second part of our process involves the casting of components.We have created a very special casting machine that is controlled by computer. We put the blueprints in, the computer programs the mold and then we put in one of our four materials and within five minutes we have a cast module that is perfect down to the millimeter and ready for installation."

Jerry Nash, Rutledge's composites expert asked, "How do you eliminate the need for welds?"

Barlow smiled and replied, "Nanotechnology. We put nanites into the material matrix in the casting machine. Once the cast is done, the nanites begin doing their work. They actually knit the material of the hull together in the strongest possible molecular configuration down to the atomic level. They even vary the density of the material to provide radiation protection for the crew that would take inches of highly dense metals like iron or lead. When we put the modules in place, we program the nanites to knit the hull modules together without welds. Its like one very strong whole without seems or welds. The nanites remain in place for the life of the vessel and can perform modifications to the hull or repair damage."

Barlow said, "For military applications I think you'll like the carbon mix. It has the same blackbody curve as carbon and would be hard as hell to pick up on sensors- very stealthy. Enough sales talk. A prototype is worth a thousand words. Let's have a look at a ship built with the carbon composite I like for your ships."

Again the delegation followed Barlow to hanger where a crew was finishing up work on a sporty looking black scout.

Barlow said, "This is my prototype for the Scout-62 contract. We cast its hull this morning, installed the systems and it's ready to fly this afternoon. My cost per unit is less than any conventional shipyard in the Alliance and I can build thousands of them."

Rutledge ran his hand over the smooth hard surface of the scout. He looked at Barlow and he looked at his team and said, "Mr. Barlow. I think we can do business. We need to talk to our superiors but we want to leave you some our designs for your consideration..."