Rongqing Dai
“Ladies and gentleman, welcome aboard FS 29 between London and New York. Right now it is 1525PM on June 11th of 2029, at the London International Miscellaneous Flights Port, London, UK. The craft will take off in 5 minutes. During the first 1 minute after the takeoff, the craft will speed up to about 45 miles per hour, which is our atmospheric ascent starting velocity. Therefore, please stay buckled up in your seats for the next 6 minutes until the unbuckle signal is sounded. Thank you.”
After her melodious announcement, the Chief Purser Lady started to demonstrate the operation of buckling the seatbelt in her own belt-seat on a low deck above the floor, facing the audience scattered in the cabin of a major arc shape.
Like most of the 50 passengers, Pauline started to buckle up when the buckle-up alert signal was sounded, without following the demonstration. Right after she buckled the seat belt, her watch belt started to vibrate on her wrist. It was her husband calling from New York.
“Where are you now?” she greeted with a question.
“I just left Philly, and on my way driving to Newark.”
“Just left Philly? My craft is taking off now, and I will be at JFK about two hours, how could you just leave Philly?”
“I am so sorry that I was caught up in something…”
“Pah,” a crumpled paper ball hit on Pauline’s head.
She looked ahead and found the CP Lady hushing at her with a finger placed before pursed lips; in the meantime, the teenager in the seat ahead of Pauline’s turned his head back, staring at her with a sneering look.
Pauline realized that her voice was too loud. She moved her mouth close to the phone and murmured, “I gotta go, you better be careful with your driving. See you in two hours. Bye.”
No sooner had Pauline hung up the phone than the craft started to take off. Pauline subconsciously grasps the side belt of her seat when she sensed a slight sinking-down of her body. All the seats on the Saucer were hanged on a set of belts that are connected to the ceiling with a mechanism similar to seatbelts, and thus they were called belt-seats. They were just part of the standard setup on all the Saucers for the sake of dissipating any possible sudden change of the flying direction or speed, although it would be overkill for a fixed route intercontinental flight like Pauline’s.
“We are now in the speedup phase.” The CP Lady explained to the passengers, “It will exert an extra force of about three percent of the earth gravity, and a big part of it will be absorbed by the elongation of the belt of your seat, and many of you might have sensed the sight sinking of your seats caused by that elongation. The seat will restore to its initial position after the extra g force disappears.”
“Does the cabin air pressure change with the height?” Pauline asked.
“No,” CP responded. “Although we will continue to use the ventilation connecting to the external atmosphere until surpassing the stratosphere, the cabin pressure will be very well regulated, and thus you won’t feel uncomfortable with your ears. If you do feel it necessary, you might use the special earplugs we provide on your seat to avoid ear popping while enjoy the music or movies.”
After a long pause, CP announced, “Saucer FS 29 has now reached her atmospheric ascent starting velocity. Now you might unbuckle your seatbelts. For the next 20 minutes or so, the Saucer will continue to speed up but with a much smaller acceleration, and at the end of this period, the ascending velocity of the craft will be about 135 miles per hour, which is our atmospheric ascent ending velocity, but you won’t sense the acceleration at all, because it is just few thousandth of the gravity.
We don’t expect any turbulence above us. So you might now leave your seats to walk around and enjoy the scenes from the windows around this cabin before we enter the mesosphere in about 20 minutes. But those …”
The passengers all got excited since there was never any intercontinental travel by Flying Saucer in the whole world until a couple months ago, and thus most of them had never experienced it.
Pauline unbuckled her seatbelt right after she heard the chime sound of “Ding Dong” for the unbuckle signal, even before CP made the announcement. She did not want to miss the chance to catch the bird’s eye view of this avant-garde Saucer Port, and then the surrounding area, and then the panoramic view of the whole London, and then …, as the Saucer vertically ascending from the ground all the way up to the boundary of the atmosphere.
Quickly, she walked to the nearest window behind her seat, while most of the passengers were still in their seats. But when she started to look out of the window, she almost fainted at the view.
The cabin was at the lower part of the “rim” of the Saucer, and thus all the windows were inclined outward, which provided the best visions when looking downward. But when Pauline got to the window, the Saucer had already been about a thousand meters above the ground, so the sudden feeling of looking down from the middle of the sky almost debilitated her legs.
Pauline promptly grabbed the handrail in front of the window and closed her eyes, and then she heard CP reminding the passengers, “Again, let me repeat, those of you who are acrophobia or fear heights, please take cautions when looking down from the windows.”
“Too late,” Pauline whispered in her heart. Obviously, she must have not paid attention to that part when CP first announced it. But on the other hand, she never knew that she had the acrophobia symptom until that moment. A few seconds later, Pauline opened her eyes when she heard some others coming towards her place. She looked down again, and this time she felt much better. But she already lost the passion of enjoying the view of the receding ground.
Pauline left the window and walked across all rows of seats to join the circle of passengers formed around the seat of CP. She could hear the voice of the teenager whose seat was in front of hers, even before she found a good spot in the circle.
“Why does it take so long to ascend, instead of having a much shorter ascent period like a spacecraft?”
“Because we are not astronauts,” CP replied with a chortle.
“You mean we cannot take that big g force?”
“You’re right,” CP replied. “Actually, the descending time would be much longer to make up the two hours total. The main concern is to avoid making passengers uncomfortable.”
“That makes sense,” a lady chipped in. “Anyway, the total of 2 hours is already much faster than the flight of 9 hours by airplanes.”
CP cast a smile to that lady, and then continued, “as a matter of fact, the intercontinental flight by Flying Saucer is a very different concept from all other types of sub-orbital flights including sub-orbital transportations of cargos or humans.”
“What’s the difference?”
“We don’t need to reach the orbiting speed and we don’t attempt to make a minimum ascending time,” CP replied.
“Why?”
“Because we will use propulsion for a bit while even after entering the theoretical free fall orbit,” CP explained. “The denser the air and the faster the ascending velocity, the more energy will be consumed. So with a moderate ascending velocity, we could save a lot energy during the ascent period; then once we get to the orbit, where other types craft will fly freely to save fuel, we can use some propulsion since we still have more than enough fuel and the air drag is almost zero there so that it won’t cost much fuel.”
“I thought Flying Saucers all use nuclear power, why do you still need to consume fuel?” the boy asked again.
“We don’t have a reactor on FS 29,” CP replied.
“Flying Saucers normally are all glowing in the sky, but I don’t see any light outside our Saucer,” Pauline chimed in.
CP nodded at her, “For those that need to make irregular flights within the atmosphere, the fastest and also most efficient way, especially for military purposes, is to make use the forces generated from the plasma field. But for the fixed route intercontinental fights like ours, we don’t need to use plasma to generate the propulsion forces.”
“So Flight FS 29 uses rocket propulsion?” someone asked.
“Actually, we have a mixed propulsion plan. For most part of the ascent period, we use either jet engines or rotors, but we will start to shift from the conventional propulsion to rocket propulsion after we enter the Mesosphere and before we enter the free fall orbit.”
“What are we using now?”
“For this Saucer, we are using rotors, but for some other Saucers of FS 29, we use jet engines.”
“Why do you need to start the rockets in the Mesosphere layer?”
“Well, that air density in the Mesosphere is too low for jet engines and rotors is one reason, and another important reason is that our current installation of jet engines or rotors can only propel the craft vertically. The flat and round shape makes the Saucer very stable in the atmosphere and thus we only need very minimal horizontal assistance for steering the ascending and descending without the need of horizontal thrust.”
……
Time passed fast. The passengers all went back to their seats after the chime for the buckle-up alert signal was sounded.
“Please all buckle up your seat belts. The Saucer is now leaving the Stratosphere. Within a few minutes, some of our engines will be rotated from rotors to rockets, and our direction will be changed from vertical to an inclination towards the entry point where we will enter our free fall orbit. All rotors will be shut off a few seconds before we pass the boundary of the atmosphere, the so-called Kármán line. We will stay in the orbit for about 15 minutes and then reenter the Mesosphere. We will soon shut off all the ventilation outlets as well, and use the carry-on oxygen until we reenter the Stratosphere. Thank you for all your cooperation.”
……
Epilogue
Two hours after its takeoff from London, FS 29 quietly landed on the International Saucer Port of Newark. Pauline dialed her husband’s number with a hope that he was already at the arrival gate waiting for her.
“Hi honey,” her husband answered phone.
“I just landed. Are you at the Port?”
“No, I am so sorry.”
“Where are you now?” Pauline sounded a bit disappointed.
“I
am still on the Turnpike between the exits 11 and 12. The traffic has been so
bad, I am not sure for how long I will be stuck here.”
……
The Garden of Creative Prose of Ron Dai 