Bill switched on the lights on his spacesuit as he exited the hatch. They had managed to bring life support back online, and Jeb was rebooting the fusion generators. Bill had an idea of what had stopped them in their tracks and he went out to investigate the sensors on the gravitic displacement generators.
“The only reason both of them would short out would be some kind of static charge build-up,” he spoke in his comms device, knowing full well that he would not get a response for some time.
They were in trouble. By performing only half a burn, they would miss Kerbin completely and now the sun would give them a little push, swinging them on a thousand-year orbit or possibly to another star.
KSC was coaching them towards the cryo-pods, confident that in years to come they would be rescued by newer spacecraft, but Bill was not looking forward to a saber powered coffin, as he referred to this solution.
He headed back to the hatch. His suspicions were confirmed. A static overload had caused the shutdown and it was dissipating, very, very slowly. “A year or so,” he told Jeb. “Based on these numbers it will take a year to dissipate enough static charge to get home. Or a month, I can’t really tell.” Jeb shook his head. All other systems had been restored, but the generators were still un-operational due to the static charge that had built up.
“So where is this charge?” asked Jeb. “Can’t you move it someplace else?” Bill shook his head, “it’s not fluid or gas, it’s a charge, you would need a capacitor the size of a….” he stopped. “size of a?” Jeb asked. “Buckboard! help me put back on my suit!”
There was a spare Buckboard in the cargo hold. Mainly because they were so convenient to reconfigure to almost anything. Bill headed out and pulled up the reconfiguration interface. “Are you sure you want to delete 2/3 of your life-support supplies?” the system asked. Bill paused, then pressed the button. “Either we end up in a coffin, or the charge ends up in this one,” he said.
As soon as the reconfiguration was complete the static charge started to settle over the available space and in doing so freed up enough of the gravitic displacement generator to reboot. When the green diagnostic lights started to light up one by one Jeb and Bill cheered and started programming a correction course.
They saw the engine spin-up and burn the correction. They were back on track! Bill had successfully turned a story of space coffins into, well, static coffins I guess. Bill had created a measurement device to keep track of the static charge. It was still rising, but not to the extent that they would run troubles before getting home. They would need to come up with some way to discharge during flight, but it could wait.
They were quite happy to get back in the orbit of Kerbin without a problem. The alignment was quite good, a laughable 64 m/s was all that was needed for a rendez-vous.
They docked with UKSS01 and powered the craft down. Despite the mid-journey problems this was a huge success. A couple of small upgrades and the Manley would be good to go. KSC was running a number of scenarios, on what to do with the little explorer.
Soon after that Bill, Jeb, Korolev, and Arlan returned to Kerbin to oversee the design of the next-generation ship, codenamed “Project Nova”. A ship that could traverse the wormhole and explore this new dimension. It would require a massive investment, already a contract was awarded to Raptor Spacecraft for a new commercial shipyard in low Kerbin orbit.
KSC Archives 