Lou Corlin didn’t mind the occasional “crunch time” project. He understood the necessity of going beyond normal working hours to get something done by a deadline because unexpected complications had resulted in delays. Equally, he understood that things could come up suddenly and necessitate long hours to get them done on time.
However, he was seriously wondering why NASA had ever allowed so much vital electronic equipment to be put in the topmost levels of the settlement. And it wasn’t just the admittedly hasty expansions that had been constructed right after the Expulsions, when they had to make room for so many unexpected residents. What they were moving right now had been installed in the original construction effort, over a decade ago. Surely someone at one or another of the various research centers had at least heard of the Carrington Event.
Unless they thought it was something so rare that it could be considered effectively unique.
It would certainly go a long way to explain why so much important equipment, especially in Agriculture, was at ceiling level rather than in sub-floor plena. Half the water pumps for the hydroponics would have to be shut down for anything but the mildest solar storms, and in a major one there was a real risk that the power cables would produce enough system-generated EMP to arc over the switches and burn out the windings.
And all this could’ve been prevented if someone had just considered that lower means more shielding.