Tag: Ursula Doorne

Categories
Narrative

Reminiscences

Ursula Doorne had become a number of things she’d never expected when she accepted this posting on Farside. She’d known when she’d come up here that she would be participating in the maintenance work of the settlement as well as being an astronomer — she’d been chosen at least partly because her secondary degree in electrical engineering had so many additional applications relevant to living and working up here.

But she’d never anticipated teaching grade schoolers basic science. Sure, she’d done her fair share of work as a TA during her grad school days, but even undergrads were adults, and it was generally expected that they would take a certain measure of responsibility for their own education. Not so kids of eight or nine, or even tweens. You had to spend as much effort on keeping order in the classroom as actually getting the concepts across — concepts you had to break down into much simpler terms than even a 101 level intro class in college, where most of the students were actually just there to get one of their general-ed classes done.

And she’d never expected to be a mother. It wasn’t like she was asexual — she’d had various boyfriends over the years — but she’d never really seen much way to pursue her career goals and have children. And then, not long after the Expulsions began, there was an accident in the cryo-freezers. Thirty-seven embryonic clones were thawing, and there could be no question of re-freezing them.

She’d stepped up, and her whole life had changed. And now she had a little boy who was overhearing the bigger kids’ whispered speculations and worrying. A lot.

“We’ll pull through somehow.” She tried not to think about the small number of things that the lunar settlements were still dependent upon Earth for — right now there were sufficient spares that there was time for someone to come up with substitutes. “We pulled through the Expulsions, and that was a really close-run thing.”

“I know, Mom. We studied oxygen-carbon dioxide cyclesin science class last week.”

Rusty had the basic understanding of artificial habitats that every child on the Moon picked up. They might not know the fine details of a settlement’s oxygen budget, but they had the basic concept that oxygen production and consumption had to be balanced, and if it got out of balance, there would be trouble.

“Which was why there were times when we literally had carbon-dioxide scrubber modules set up in people’s rooms, like something out of the old Apollo missions, because that was the only way we could keep things going. We even sent some of the older teens out to the various outlying settlements who had room for another person, just to stretch things out here. But we pulled through.”

No, she couldn’t say and nobody died. True, nobody literally had to stop breathing because there wasn’t enough oxygen to go around. But there had been a number of accidents in those desperate days of jury-rigged solutions to the latest crisis, and a number of new names on the Wall of Honor down in the formal entrance.

But she wasn’t going to dwell on that. “And the first Thanksgiving Day after the Expulsions, we had a big celebration, because we finally were ahead of the game enough that we actually had a little surplus. But first, we all had the traditional three kernels of parched corn, so we wouldn’t forget those desperate days, or the privations of other pioneers before us.”

Yes, Rusty was familiar with the old/new Thanksgiving tradition. Ursula had read about it — was it in the Little House books? a history book? — but it was something old-fashioned, something you’d read about in a book. And then Captain Waite had reintroduced it that first Thanksgiving after the privations of accommodating all the Expulsees and integrating them into the community, and the old was new again.

And yes, she could see some of the fear in Rusty’s eyes subsided. Whatever he’d heard the older kids saying, her words had convinced him that yes, there was hope. That this was a community of can-do people, used to resolving “impossible” problems.

Categories
Narrative

And Bad News on the Moon

Ursula Doorne had sent a text to her husband as a sort of heads-up. Let him know it looked like they’d all be in for some unsettled space weather. She hadn’t expected him to text her back.

Just as she was doing spot checks on some data, her phone chimed incoming text. Thinking it might be one of her student assistants, or perhaps a colleague elsewhere, she picked it up to see Tanner’s name at the head of the message.

Things are getting interesting here at Schirrasburg. Rumint is someone turned up sick. We’re now all under complete lockdown. No movement outside your quarters unless absolutely necessary, food and other deliveries by robot. They’re even canceling every mission that isn’t critical, so who knows when I’ll be out of here.

Ursula’s guts clenched. Could the diablovirus have somehow slipped through all the quarantine procedures and gotten up here on the Moon? They’d already had one close call, and while all the various space programs had tightened up their protocols to make sure no one who went home at night had any contact with astronauts preparing for a flight, or the people who had direct contact with them, human nature didn’t change. There was always the possibility of one person deciding the rules didn’t apply to them, that this one little trip wouldn’t hurt.

On the other hand, it was also possible that the person in question had come down with a completely ordinary bug. But given the current circumstances, Medstaff would have to assume the worst. Until the patient’s illness could be identified — which could take several days depending on what they had — they’d follow full biocontainment procedures. And if the person fell sick after arriving, there’d be no telling how many people they were in contact with.

However, there was nothing she could do about it at the moment. Fretting about it would only take time and energy away from her work, some of it extremely serious.

You take care. Keep me posted on how things develop. So far things are remaining calm over here on Farside, but that could change if the Sun starts acting up again.

Will do. And you keep me posted on things over there.

Categories
Narrative

The Sun that Warms

Ursula Doorne had known when she accepted the much-sought-after astronomy position up here on the Moon that she would not get to spend all her time on her specialty. She’d need to apply some significant amount of her time to using her EE degree to deal with the more mundane aspects of the settlement and of the various outposts where the radio telescopes were located.

But it always felt good to be able to return to her primary specialty, to analyze the reams and reams of data pouring in from the various radio telescopes under her purview, to determine what new observations would be needed in the light of what they were learning from the latest. And that was just the deep-space work that had always been her primary area of interest. Now, with the Sun in an unsettled state, she had an even greater reason to want to get back to her office quickly.

True, she was well aware that many of her colleagues on the ground were specialists in solar astronomy and knew far better how to read the reams of data she was dealing with. However, she also knew that a number of them had ceased communicating since the current crisis began. Some of them were just in areas where modern digital communication systems were thin on the ground, and were lucky if they could even manage to check in with other people on Earth once a week or so. But far too many of them were in the US, in Europe, in Israel, in Japan and South Korea, places where communications infrastructure was pretty much presupposed. People who should’ve been able to keep in touch, even if they weren’t able to go in to their offices at the various universities and other research institutions where they worked.

Ursula tried not to worry about them, reminding herself that there was nothing she could do on their behalf — even trying to contact their local police departments for a welfare check was an iffy proposition when law enforcement agencies had more important things to do than allay the fears of a colleague in a distant city. But it still concerned her, especially given that several of them were older, even in frail health.

But she was still glad to be back in her office, to pull up the latest data and look through it. Most of it was just more of the usual, but as she was looking at the magnetic field data, she noticed a number of anomalies.

Either we’ve got a problem with our sensors, or we’re looking at a serious new development. Time to get as many eyes looking at it as possible.

As soon as she’d set up a mailing to send the relevant segment of the data to the people best able to deal with it — more complete datasets could be put on hard drives and sent down via the lunar ferry — she retrieved her phone to text Tanner. Even if the situation was still uncertain, it was best if he and the other pilots were aware that changeable space weather was on its way.

Categories
Narrative

Know When to Hold ’em

Although Spruance Del Curtin was a reasonably decent assistant in the process of troubleshooting the main mixing board, his skills really weren’t to the point that it made sense to have someone else cover his air shift so he could continue helping. Ken had told him to go ahead and sign on, since the Timeline Brothers both had other obligations in the afternoon.

However, the process of tracing and testing the circuits was not going nearly as well as she would’ve liked, even with a couple of the younger kids. They were good about handing up tools upon request, but they really didn’t know electronics well enough to interpret what they were seeing and offer any insight.

Ursula Doorne wasn’t exactly sure where it became clear the problem was much larger than any single component. By mid-afternoon, it was becoming increasingly clear that continuing to trace the circuitry in hope of isolating the problem was a hopeless task.

Ken had just come back to see how things were going, and it was clear he’d been dealing with some other issues somewhere else in the settlement. No, he was not going to like the news.

But there was no point wasting further time just to spare his temper. Especially since she had projects on her desk back in the Astronomy Department, and not just the more abstract and abstruse ones involved with using dishes on both the Moon and Mars to create an array on a baseline that dwarfed all previous efforts.

“Whatever’s wrong with this, it’s not just one component. We’re going to have to completely tear it down and rebuild it.”

Ken muttered a word he didn’t ordinarily use in the presence of civilians. “That’s going to be a lot of work.” He met her eyes directly. “But if you’re right, it’ll save us a lot more work in the long run. However, we are going to have to make sure that the remote rig gets a complete maintenance cycle as soon as we get a working main mixing board. That thing was never designed for the level of use we’re putting it through, and we cannot afford to have it give out on us.”

Categories
Narrative

A Change of Plans

Spruance Del Curtin was on his way to the Astronomy Department when his phone chimed incoming text. What would it be now?

It was Dr. Doorne: Meet me at the station.

So whatever was going on with broadcast quality, she was involved in it. On second thought, he probably shouldn’t have been surprised, given that signals processing was her engineering specialty.

He wasn’t sure whether to be happy or disappointed that he wasn’t going to be going through data today. Quite honestly, it was getting tedious, even if he did like being someone’s special student, trusted with actual research material.

All the same, he knew he was going to get some questions when he turned around and headed back the other way. There were enough people up here in Miskatonic Sector who knew he was doing data work for Dr. Doorne every morning, and would want to know why he was heading the “wrong” way.

Except that, given most people around here did listen to Shepardsport Pirate Radio at least some, even if only on their alarm clock, they’d be aware that something was wrong down there.

As it turned out, he actually managed to arrive at the station offices before his mentor. Then again, she might not know some of the back ways through the service passages that he did. He’d worked for Engineering long enough that he’d learned quite a few shortcuts that weren’t strictly approved, but could shave off a few minutes when seconds counted.

As he’d expected, the place was already crowded. Not just the usual station staff, but half a dozen people from Engineering, including the big boss himself. And no, Ken Redmond did not look pleased today.

Make that double when he looked at Sprue. “So what brings you down’ here today?”

“Sir, Dr. Doorne just texted me to come down here.”

Ken narrowed his eyes. “How convenient–“

At that moment a familiar voice joined the fray. “Major Redmond, if you will listen to me for a moment.”

Dr. Doorne spoke with sufficient authority that Ken Redmond turned to face her. She continued in the same firm tone. “I requested Mr. Del Curtin to meet me here because I believe the skills he’s learned with me will be of use in this problem. Now, if we can take a look at the equipment we are dealing with.”

With that settled, Ken Redmond led them back to the main mixing board. Dr. Doorne set out a bag of equipment and they set to work.

Categories
Narrative

The Many-Talented

Ursula Doorne went over the latest solar activity data, seeking the patterns that warned of imminent instability in the Sun’s magnetic fields. Normally she’d be reasonably confident of her ability to scan through the data and pick out those patterns, although it wasn’t her specialty. After having been surprised twice now, she was no longer feeling so confident.

In fact, she was feeling very much like a rank beginner all over again. A whole lot of stuff she had assumed about the way in which the Sun — and by extension main-sequence stars of that size in general — operated was now very much in question once again. Theories that had been considered pretty much standard when she was doing her undergraduate work were now having to be reconsidered.

When she’d been a student, she’d thought it would be so exciting to be a scientist during such a major paradigm shift. And quite honestly, it might well have been, if the science she was dealing with were something in distant galaxies, so far away as to effectively be abstract. But this was stuff that could mean the difference between life and death for thousands of people up here on the Moon, millions down on Earth. And not just faceless masses, but her own family, her colleagues, her neighbors. Her own husband was a pilot-astronaut, and while spacecraft shielding was a hell of a lot better than in the early days of Apollo and Zond, it still provided only sufficient protection for ordinary solar storms. For the big X-class ones, the astronauts depended in getting sufficient warning that they could get to shelter, whether in one of the larger orbital facilities or on the surface.

And if the Sun isn’t behaving the way our theories say it should, our forecasts are going to be just as unreliable.

Maybe that was why she felt as much at sea as right after the Expulsions began, when she got a message from the training department that she was being assigned an intro to astronomy class. And not even an undergraduate-level one. This one was going to be aimed at middle-school kids, at a time when she wasn’t even sure how to talk to kids that age, let alone describe the discipline she’d spent a lifetime mastering in words they could understand.

And you went back to first principles. Started with the story of early humans looking up at the sky and seeing the lights in them, and realizing over time that there were patterns to their movements. There’s got to be a new set of patterns in the data, but we just don’t know how to see them yet. Best case, it’ll turn out that our current theories are a special case, and we just haven’t seen the conditions that are leading to what we’re observing. Let’s hope we don’t have to throw out everything we thought we knew and start all over.

And then her phone rang. She’d halfway expected it to be one of her colleagues with a new insight on the data. Instead it was Ken Redmond from Engineering.

“Dr. Doorne, we’ve got a problem down here at the station. You’re our best signals processing person who isn’t tied up in one kind of quarantine or another. Can you get down here and take a look at it?”

In this context “the station” would refer to Shepardsport Pirate Radio. For the most part she’d viewed it as something on the order of the underground newspaper that had been circulated at her high school, albeit a little more approved by the authorities than those photocopied sheets that passed from hand to hand every morning. But given that the head of Engineering was specifically requesting her skills, there wasn’t much way of saying no.

“I’ll be on my way.”

Categories
Narrative

When It Rains, It Pours

Spruance Del Curtin had come to the Astronomy Department a little early today in hopes of touching base with Dr. Doorne, not just about his ongoing work for her, but also about the statistics class which had been in a state of suspension ever since the first serious CME threat. However, he arrived to find the entire department in what could only be described as a situation of organized chaos.

People were coming and going, about half of them talking on their phones. From the halfalogues he could hear, it sounded like most of them were talking to colleagues elsewhere in the Earth-Moon system. Whatever it was, it clearly had them worried, but most of what they were saying was way too technical for him to make heads or tales of. A lot of numbers, terms that made him think of the engineering side of radio broadcasting, all of which soon became such an intense information overflow that there was no way he could even hope to follow it.

And then here was Dr. Doorne, breaking off a conversation with someone on the other end of a phone connection. “Sprue, I have a new data set I need you to sanitize ASAP. You’ll find it in the usual folder.” She rattled off a file name that was an alphanumeric string.

There was nothing to do but say, “Yes, ma’am” and hurry over to the computer. Already Dr. Doorne was heading off to confer with someone else about whatever she was getting from her colleague elsewhere.

As soon as Sprue logged on and pulled up the data file, he had a good idea what it probably was. However, Dr. Doorne’s tone made it pretty clear that he was not to ask any questions or or otherwise do anything that would compromise his ability to get the data ready for whatever she was planning to do with it. Whatever it represented, it was so critical that there was no time to risk introducing bias because he just had to find out what he was looking at.

And if he was right and it did involve solar activity data, it might well be a matter of life and death for people in space and some of the smaller lunar habitats that weren’t nearly as well shielded as a big settlement like Shepardsport.

Categories
Narrative

Of Deep Space and Deep Time

The air in Reggie Waite’s office felt oddly stuffy. One look at the panel of the life-support systems monitor told him that everything was nominal: temperature, pressure, partial pressures of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Even humidity was well within normal range.

Which meant that it was psychological. Probably because he was trying to sort through the data Dr. Doorne had sent him, and even with all her annotations, he was still finding it heavy going.

She’d had one of her junior TA’s run it up here, mostly because she was helping supervise the effort to relocate or harden the electronics in the upper levels — when she wasn’t helping put together procedures for all the various outlying settlements and research outposts that were associated with Shepardsport but had their own command.

Quite honestly, he couldn’t blame her. Solar astronomy was not her specialty, and her choice of data reflected her much stronger background in deep-space objects, and the use of statistical techniques to study massive amounts of radio data from them. It made more sense for her to concentrate on her EE skills, which could help with the more immediate issues of protecting their equipment from overloads and damage if they did get hit with a major solar storm. Even shutting down might not necessarily protect equipment from an X-level CME, especially if it were to induce system-generated EMP in the wiring. During the Carrington Event of 1859, disconnected telegraph lines had still transmitted messages as a result of such induction.

The data Dr. Doorne had sent was not for the Sun. Instead, she had selected a wide variety of G-class stars of comparable age to the Sun, all going through similar activity levels to a solar minimum. She’d highlighted certain patterns in the data, particularly related to frequency of flares and magnetic storms associated with what few starspots those stars were having.

Which looks very much like we’re going to be in for a wild ride for the next month or two. Right while Earth is still in disarray from the ongoing diablovirus pandemic and effectively unable to help us if we lose anything vital.

Categories
Narrative

So Near and So Far Away

Steffi Roderick looked over the tangle of equipment they had worked so hard to relocate so quickly. “So it’s ended up going far enough to the side that we just got a didn’t get any worse electromagnetic effects than a typical lunar sunrise.”

Dr. Doorne’s lips tweaked into a wan little smile. “More or less. Of course we’re talking in layman’s terms, using analogies of terrestrial weather and geography, for the complexities of orbital mechanics.”

“Of course.” Steffi knew her own smile was a little forced, that the astronomer was trying very hard not to sound condescending, and now doing nearly as well as she thought for the simple reason that it was so obviously effortful. “It’s the language we’d use in an announcement for general consumption. Just like the average user doesn’t need to know the ins and outs of the quantum behavior of electrons to understand that they’ve got a glitchy system that throws unpredictable errors in certain circumstances.”

She paused, looking back at all their hard work. “But it still leaves me feeling like we did all this for nothing.”

“It’s not wasted, Steffi. All the current data is indicating an extended period of unsettled solar magnetic activity. Solar astronomy is most definitely not my specialty, but I’ve been in touch with all the big names, and while they disagree profoundly on the particulars, they’re pretty much agreeing that something serious is going on in the solar magnetic field.” This smile was a wry one. “As an astronomer, I’m feeling like a kid waiting for Christmas, going oh goodie, we’re going to be learning a whole bunch of fascinating things about how the Sun works, and by extension, how stars work. But as an electrical engineer, I’m going oh crap, this could be really, really bad.

“In other words, fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a wild ride.”

“That’s about the size of it. If we’re lucky, the bigger flares and CME’s will pass far enough away that we’ll just have great seats for the show, and I’ll have so much data it’ll have to be sent on physical media so it doesn’t choke our downlinks to Earth. If we’re not, everyone up her had better use this interval to harden all their vital electrical and electronic equipment, or we’re going to be in a world of hurt. Especially since we’re pretty much on our own for the duration.”

Categories
Narrative

Battening the Hatches

Spruance Del Curtin was winding up the day’s work for Dr. Doorne. Now that he knew what the data represented, and why certain types of data tended to move in tandem, what he was seeing was very worrisome.

If this goes on, what will even be left? Already some countries were no longer reporting data, and were having to be dropped from the analysis. Most of them were small countries in Africa, but there were some in South America and in Asia.

Others were hanging on in spite of taking a beating. The US was a big country, with lots of depth of field to absorb blows, but Japan and even Israel remained functional, albeit struggling under the weight of enormous losses.

Sprue recalled his conversation with Cindy Margrave — when had that been? — about Colonel Hearne’s discussion in class about trust, and about how levels of trust were so critical in determining how well a society would function, particularly when under strain. Of course the colonel was recalling the Energy Wars — although he was already a veteran astronaut by that time, he knew more than a few people who’d served in the Middle East during that time — but current events were certainly playing out that argument in real time.

Just as he was doing the final checks on the data, Dr. Doorne walked in. “Statistics class is canceled for today. I just got word that Engineering and IT are beginning a special effort to increase the hardening on our electronics in the upper levels against a worst-case solar storm.”

Not surprising when one considered she held an advanced degree in electrical engineering as well as astronomy — one of the big reasons she was up here, rather than down on Earth. “Do you really think we’ll have a storm bad enough to do that kind of damage?”

“It’s hard to say. However, we are clearly moving into a historic solar minimum, and there is strong evidence both from history and from studies of other G-class stars of similar age in the galactic neighborhood that the incidence of these sorts of events actually increase during these periods. There’s a lot of speculation about stellar dynamo magnetodynamics, but to put it in layman’s terms, we think that sunspots actually serve to relieve the strain, rather like small earthquakes on a fault line.”

Sprue recalled some things that Juss Forsythe and Spencer Dawes had said about studying in California. “And if there aren’t any for a long time, when the fault does move, it’s a big one.”

“Exactly. Although we have a much better grasp of the mechanics involved in earthquakes, for the simple reason that seismologists have a lot of faults to study, and we astronomers have only one Sun. Until recently, we simply didn’t have the technology to study other stars at the level of detail we needed to even make educated guesses at how their internal dynamics compared to that of our own.”

It sounded very much like she was about to launch into a story of the state of astronomy when she was working on her PhD. Sprue didn’t need to be told to know the technology she was talking about would be the radio and optical telescopes right here on Farside.

Not to mention that he couldn’t linger here. “Um, Doc, I’ve only got an hour to get down to the dining commons and grab lunch, and then get to the station and start my air shift.”

“Right, of course. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He could hear the unspoken assuming we don’t have further schedule changes as the situation develops. And given that his work with Engineering was now having him liaison with IT, there was a good probability he’d be roped into this task too.